i was literally moments away from getting back to work on what i was doing, when the power flickered off and on.

i'm going to have to reimage.....

it seems to be a little bit better with 2 gb of ram, and i'm wondering - does the surveillance software have a 4 gb minimum system requirement? is that it?

if so, that's rather egregious and gets to what my point was, the whole time - i think anybody would push back against police surveillance, but what was actually pissing me off was that it was slowing my computer down.

please rewrite your software to be more efficient, you noobs.

well?

does anybody have a body count for jfk?

http://www.socialist.ca/node/1992

also - jfk was infinitely worse than fidel castro.

sorry. those are the facts.

i just don't understand how anybody can line buttigieg and biden up beside each other and pick biden - that's just an irrational decision, that has to be driven by something emotional, like a connection to obama, or an aversion to his sexuality.

i insist that it can't hold up, in the long run, even if biden wins this state by a large margin....

once we get enough data in to gloss over these anomalies, that should be clear enough.

asking white south carolinians what they think about trump directly is like asking ukrainians what they thought about stalin.

you're not going to get a straight answer. 

but, there's a lot of evidence that there's a lot of unease, particularly amongst evangelicals.

buttigieg has an opening, and these firms that are polling democrats and independents might have missed it.

i'm not saying that's going to happen, i'm saying it's a potential curveball, and one that would not be inconsistent with what we saw in the other early states.

so, what's my projection of south carolina?

biden seems like he's going to win in a landslide, and that would appear to be unavoidable to project.

sanders will get a few delegates. it seems unlikely that anybody else will.

what are a few wildcards to note, though?

south carolina is an open primary, and the kind of state where republicans tend to take their faith seriously. i would suspect there's a fair amount of restiveness in the base. buttigieg, in particular, has the potential to appeal to white, rural republicans - and they can vote in this primary if they want to. the data is not there to suggest a surprise surge, but don't be too surprised if he eeks out a third place finish, and a small number of delegates. he tends to do better than his polling, so if the polling has him at 12-13%, he's on the bubble. i'm going to stop short of suggesting this is likely, though - it's an outside possibility. he'll probably walk out without delegates.

klobuchar could also appeal to some write-in republicans, but this particular electorate is very religious and i question her ability to break out. if she's going to have another surprise surge, it's going to be somewhere like michigan or illinois.

i don't know why steyer has fallen, but i don't know why he rose in the first place, and it seems clear enough that he has. you wonder if it was real or not. i also wonder what kind of write-in that bloomberg can produce, in a state that is more ideologically in line with him.

but, whatever flukes happen, it seems clear enough that joe biden, that old racist, is going to ride the black vote to a landslide win, here.

and, then we'll see if the rest of the country cares or not next week.

they should just eat the damned locusts.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/running-out-of-time-east-africa-faces-new-locust-threat

it was indeed automatic.

it's in the mail...

the letter says "you may start using the program as soon as you receive and activate your new card".

that sort of suggests it's in the mail.

i really wish people would be more clear.

the border agent couldn't answer the question, though. she took my number and promised to call me back....

so, they didn't try and sneak anything in on me, and i've left another message with the motion coordinator.

last call is nexus.

so, the answer to the question is that the tribunal served the respondent with the request for deferral and she will be expected to respond to it with the other responses by march 24, 2020. i consequently do not need to serve her because they did it for me.

that is not explicitly stated in the correspondence, but it does make a lot of sense, in hindsight.

so, now i need to call the divisional court...

let's kind of think this through, though.

if a new virus shows up in china and starts killing chinese people, is it more likely that it was created by the chinese or by their enemies?

if the chinese were going to create viruses and let them loose, you'd expect them to let them loose here, right?

so, who is the most likely suspect, if we take the premise seriously? it would be the americans, of course.

which is making the infection rate in iran seem curious.

but, i still think this idea is dubious, because the virus is just too weak for that. it might save the chinese some money on public health care. it's hardly weapons-grade material...

so, did they create this thing in a lab?

they could have. if they did, they'd probably let it loose in iran first.

but, you'd think they'd be a little more efficient.

so, i'm going to classify that claim as highly doubtful. but, anybody trying to browbeat you with the idea that that's "debunked" or "wrong" should be treated as a propagandist - it's entirely plausible, in principle.

like, apparently the country with the second highest death toll is iran.

that's just kind of a curious fact.

ok, i'm calling now. for real.

let's try the human rights tribunal, first.

the data they've given us says that chances are that you'll catch this thing and have it pass without even knowing you have it...

but, again - why is the who freaking out, then?

they don't have elections to worry about. they're not pandering to their base. they're supposed to be beyond all that shit.

we'll see what happens...

let me answer a question directly, though.

will this be a pandemic?

well, we have flu pandemics every year. that word is presented as this scary, terrible thing, when it really isn't.

so, yes - the experts are suggesting it's likely, but that doesn't actually mean anything, and the mere existence of a pandemic doesn't justify the kind of reactions we're seeing.

i don't understand what's going on with the coronavirus at this point in time, and i haven't presented a hypothesis.

i have pointed out that the reaction seems to be unjustified, given the weakness of the virus. this is really just as virulent as the flu.

or so they tell us, anyways. i can hypothesize about actors and motives, but i can't make up data. the data says this is not that scary. but, then, why are they doing this?

so, what i've drawn attention to is that contradiction - they tell us this thing has a 0.5% mortality rate, and then they treat it like it's ebola. they, here, is not the media, it's not "liberal" politicians, but it's rather the global authorities that you expect to operate outside of the alarmism, and actually adhere to the science.

so, when these agencies tell you that this disease is not very dangerous, and then act like it's a serious threat to global health, it makes you wonder what's actually happening.

are they hiding a deeper death toll in order to prevent mass panic? that would explain why they tell us one thing, and act as though another is true.

or, is there some kind of power grab going on behind the scenes?

i don't know....

i know there's a contradiction.

we'll have to see how this plays out, but it really has to be one or the other - either the death toll is far greater than is claimed, or this is going to be used as an excuse to take away people's rights.

again: i could shrug it off if it was a politician overreacting. but, these are the global health authorities, and something is not adding up.

you can call me a media critic.

but, i criticize all media - i'm not aligned with any party or group.

i don't even have a cell phone. i use google to call out.

but, the reason i got off social media is that i got sick of correcting all of the nonsense people were posting. i felt like i was just wasting a lot of time with it. and, i realized it was a bad source of data.

youtube can, in theory, be a source of quality journalism, and there have been some good sites out there over the last few years, but there appears to be some powerful people trying to shut it down and turn it into a source of lightweight commentary that acts as a propaganda arm for the party machinery.

journalists need to try to find ways to evade that as best as they can. and, trust me - if i can track you down, if i can find you, i'll watch you. get yourself out there. i don't want to watch the mindless garbage on youtube, and i won't - that's why i gave up cable in the 90s.

it's very sad to see amy goodman reduce herself to a propaganda outlet for a cfr stooge. but, if you watch her, she seems to get giddy about lying, as though she's emancipated herself from the shackles of honest journalism. but, she's not a good liar - you can see it in her facial expressions.

i don't want to say it's sad to lose her, because she should be retired, anyways.

i think there were some financial transactions behind the scenes, there. it's a shame. but, this is what capitalism does.

i don't actually read social media. i don't have a twitter account, and while i still use facebook for local show listings, i don't actually read any feeds. i have a total of zero friends on facebook. i haven't sorted through a social media feed of any sort in five or six years. these ideas are my own.

...but if you think that i'm aligning with certain personalities on the right, you're actually just wrong. that's just another baseless smear by people that make a lot of money from routinely smearing people.

what does the young turks do? they're not journalists. they don't write articles, they don't do research. rather, their job is to smear people; they're professional gossip clowns that traffic in lies and misrepresentations. and, cenk uygur is an actual, legit rush limbaugh wannabe - something i've pointed out on many occasions in the past.

there seems to be some money floating around behind the scenes that is essentially trying to align all of these other media sources - democracy now, the real news, etc - with the young turks, using a series of shady shell operations like pacifica radio. i've only seen some cursory reports, but i've watched the coverage shift dramatically and i am convinced there's something pretty awful happening.

my best guess is that there's a fear that media coverage leading up to the next election might lead people away from the democrats. so, they're trying to get all of these alt-left sites aligned with the party line.

but, let me be clear - i'm not repeating the views of other people, here. i think for myself, and i produce my own ideas. that is a typical, cynically right-wing (and terribly wrong.) idea of how people behave, and i'm happy to sit here and poke giant holes in your flawed concept of "human nature" all day, if you insist on it.

so, go ahead and read through this, and then read through the views presented by those on the populist right, and tell me if you think they're even consistent. they're not.

why do they key on me, though? why don't they just ignore me? if i'm so wrong...

my hypothesis that the deep state was out to get hillary clinton (and prop up donald trump) started taking shape in early 2016 and is developed in posts to this site over late 2016 and early 2017, when i stepped away from it. i was claiming they'd never let her win as early as 2013. i have accused the nsa of rigging the election in favour of donald trump, and then blaming it on the russians as a distraction mechanism. i have called donald trump a pawn of the deep state, a creature of the intelligence agencies and a front for the cia - all before he was inaugurated.

is that what those other people are saying? or is it actually the precise, exact opposite position?

some of these people are no doubt working for the same groups that rigged the election for him....

think for yourself, people. it's critical. don't let other people define things for you, and when it comes to what these dishonest smear artists say, just consider the source - which does not have a good track record for honesty or fact-based reporting, at all.

i want to find this, or at least figure out what happened to it.

....because if i'm actually citing a repealed law, i should stop doing that.

ok. 

i'm going to make those calls and then see if my firefox filters really are useful here or not.

what the filters do is block all of the completely useless sites that appear at the top of the google search, making it possible to actually find useful information on the internet, again, like it used to be back in the olden days.

this act, from 2015, also has some overlapping language with the act i'm remembering, but can't find - suggesting it may have been created, partially, to replace the act i'm remembering.

https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/14s15

that law i posted - the public works protection act - is not the law i cited back in 2013 to the food not bombs activists, but it contains the kinds of provisions in the law i did cite.

it has been repealed.

is it possible that i can't find what i'm looking for because it's been repealed? yes. the wynne government in ontario was pretty unabashedly liberal. that's the kind of thing they would have done, after 2012. 

i can't prove that, though.

if you can find the information i can't find, great.

the only other thing i can think of is that it was actually a city of ottawa bylaw, but i don't think that's right, either.

i'm trying to figure out what the right search terms to use for something i haven't looked at in seven or eight years.

and, i have to get the language exactly right, too, or the search won't return it. it's trained to send back common results, and ignore these kinds of appeals to very specific academic terminology.

so, i'm trying to give it these wonkish phrases and it wants to send me to "constitutionalrightsfordummies.com", instead.

it's very frustrating...

i can't find it, and i'm giving up.

as mentioned, i initially did this research in relation to some questions posed by some food not bombs protesters at city hall.

food not bombs is an anarchist soup kitchen that attempts to get the christians out of the process and get directly at the lumpenproletariat. it's essentially a ploy to talk to homeless people about anarchy. i didn't get much out of it, because nobody stopped to talk.

we had a choice between "serving" at the city hall or across the street, and i heard a lot of kind of populist fallacy common sense type rhetoric about reclaiming the city hall for the people. but, i remembered from one of the cases i had studied (i don't remember this, either) that this was actually backwards - you actually have less rights on public property, for the reason that your constitutional rights are so intrinsically tied into property in the first place. 

i tracked down the precise laws, and i wrote up a summary and i posted it in some local activist spaces. there was a debate, but i think i got my point across - be careful bringing drugs into public spaces. you might think you have greater protections in public spaces, but you're actually not protected at all!

i can't find them. and, i'm giving up.

it was anti-terrorist legislation written in about 1980 or so, but it's still on the books. but, it hasn't been tested, and it would get struck down if it was.

iirc, the way the law is written is almost a direct negation of the relevant charter right against illegal searches. it's literally something like "the police have the right to search you without a warrant or probable cause if you are engaging in suspicious behaviour on provincially owned property", and it explicitly defined a rail link as a protected area.

i'm going to give up fairly soon. i wish that google wasn't so useless nowadays :\.

i still can't find the bill i'm looking for.

but this is the story i want to tell.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2015/06/during-occupy-moment-number-of.html

actually, it's not. i'm still looking for what i'm looking for...

this is the law i'm referring to:
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p55

in fact, that's something that mr. blair should know about because he exploited that law to arrest protesters during the g20 fiasco.

i want to clarify a comment i made about charging the protesters with terrorism. because the issue is to do with rail service, specifically, this is actually true, at least in ontario. it stems from a law written during the bill davis years (it is pre-charter) that has never been enforced and would probably be struck down if they tried, but it's there nonetheless.

i cannot find this law right now, and i'm on the chromebook so i'm stuck without my filters (google wants to send me to "know my rights" sites, which are completely useless), but i've had this argument quite a few times. people seem to think that being on public property gives them more rights, when the exact opposite is true.

so, for example, police can legally search you without a warrant if you are on any kind of municipally or provincially owned property. again - that hasn't been tested in court. but, there is a law that explicitly gives police the right to search you at city hall. 

in this same law, rail service is categorized as a specific type of infrastructure, and disrupting it is actually considered to legally be terrorism under the law, here. it would also be considered terrorism to disrupt the electrical grid.

i'm not suggesting they should be charged with terrorism. but, mr. blair was legally incorrect in his response, as he often is.

ok, that was a lot of distractions.

i'm going to get a bit more fruit, because i want to eat it up, and then get back to what i'm doing.

with the weather, it could be a few days before i get up and go anywhere. 

so, apparently trump wants to take money away from fighting ebola in africa, a disease with an up to 90% mortality rate, and use it to fight the coronavirus, which has a roughly 0.5% mortality rate, which is on par with the seasonal flu, instead.

this is baffling.

and, it is reasonable to call it racist.

somebody needs to stop him from doing this.

buttigieg should expect to be competitive in most states:, 
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia

biden should expect to be competetive in far fewer states:
Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia

klobuchar has a few shots, too:
Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont

i don't think warren should expect to be competitive in any of these states, although she may win delegates in a few.

only sanders can expect to compete everywhere, except for the black-dominated alabama:
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia 

and, bloomberg? we don't know. i don't expect him to do well, though.

i'll just remind you about the demographics in the remaining deep south states.

these are 2016 results:

arkansas: 80% white. 66% clinton.
tennessee: 67% white. 66% clinton.
texas: 46% white. 66% clinton.
virginia: 61% white. 64% clinton.

so, skin colour did not seem to be a predictor factor in 2016 at all, actually - about the same number of people voted for clinton, regardless of the demographics of the state.

that might be a little different this time, oddly. biden really only seems to be polling well with blacks - nobody else likes him. latin-speaking voters appear to prefer sanders. and, white moderates mostly want buttigieg.

biden could very well see himself win south carolina in a landslide, and then barely register in almost all of the super tuesday states.

i hear bloomberg is polling well in alabama, too.

it's increasingly becoming clear that we're going to wake up to a mess on wednesday.

who votes on tuesday?

Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia 

you could potentially see three or four or even five victors, if bloomberg pulls anything off.

or, bloomberg could cut enough into biden's numbers to give sanders some more weak victories.

but don't expect a biden win amongst black voters in south carolina to mean much to voters in massachusetts or vermont, who are still going to be looking at the candidates that did well in new hampshire.

so, what's the polling update, then?

it would appear as though steyer is falling, and biden is gaining those votes back. if these polling numbers hold, biden will win in a landslide.

if. we've seen this before. but, i'm not going to make numbers up - the polling says what it does.

this is the first example we've seen of what i was saying about bernie's competitiveness being a sort of a mirage - he's only appearing to do well because the vote is so badly split. any consolidation will see him leapfrogged.

really, the story in new hampshire and nevada was that the centre of the party couldn't pull it together behind one candidate, allowing sanders to win with a rather small plurality. if new hampshire would have decided on either buttigieg or klobuchar, they would have won by a large margin. likewise, if iowa or nevada would have gone all in on buttigieg (biden got under 15% in all but two counties; buttigieg was really the more competitive candidate, overall, despite underperforming with white voters in las vegas).

so, bernie may get beaten very badly here, if the split undoes itself. and, that may happen over and over again in these southern states, if they've come back to biden, in the end, and are sticking with him. but, that doesn't mean sanders is done....

black voters in the south may expect moderate northern and western voters to fall in line behind biden. i think it's increasingly clear that that's not going to happen, not any more than the opposite did.

so, rather, what's opening up is a potential schism in the moderate wing of the party, with southern blacks insisting on biden and the rest of the country increasingly settling on buttigieg, who still appears likely to do well everywhere except the south.

for right now, the thing in front of us, immediately, is south carolina and the polling does seem to suggest a landslide victory for biden, driven by a consolidation of the black church vote.

but, unlike previous cycles, there appears to be little evidence that this is going to clinch him much of anything, or even that the rest of he country is going to take much notice about who south carolina votes for at all.

so, the case they sent me is about an athlete that got caught doing drugs, and then tried to appeal a decision made by an international body to the divisional court in ontario.

it would indeed be rather obvious that the divisional court in ontario would not have jurisdiction to hear a judicial review of a decision made by an international body. that much is pretty obvious.

however, there does not appear to be any logical application of that precedent to the question of whether the divisional court has jurisdiction to hear a case that is clearly governed by the judicial review procedure act. 

so, i don't know whether to interpret this as a disingenuous stalling tactic or total incompetence on behalf of the city's lawyer. i have reason to believe both things.

i'm going to have to call in the morning to try and get an update and make sure they didn't try to sneak something in on me.

if this is their honest argument, the judge should essentially laugh at them. no. really. i will not be surprised if i watch the judge burst into a fit of laughter.