the recent court ruling in canada to uphold the safe country agreement, combined with the biden administration caving to pressure to increase the number of refugees it is accepting, are both good to see and both beneficial to canada, if implemented effectively.

no, the market will not figure this out - we need to get back to more centralized planning in resettlement.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-administration-will-keep-cap-refugees-trump-administration-levels-n1264320

https://globalnews.ca/news/7759738/safe-third-country-agreement-constitutional-federal-court/

the united states is a big country with a large amount of infrastructure, and they can facilitate many more refugees than they're accepting, so i do hope they decide to take in more, allowing canada to go back to being canada, which is a smaller country with less infrastructure that needs to be more selective to prevent itself from being burdened by it.

there's going to be groups that the left can work with and there's going to be groups that they can't work with. i had a lengthy debate about the farmers' union not long ago, and want to take it back to that because this was exactly the issue that the farmers had in front of them and couldn't figure out - how do you work with these powerful unions, that fly confederate flags and are the backbone of the kkk? or, more to the point: you can't not work with them, so what do you do? and, as a trans person, i have a lot of problem with religious groups, the most powerful of which at this point in time are muslims. how do i work with people that would kill me on the spot if they could get away with it?

and, you have to pick the right groups, and be careful you don't pick the wrong ones.

but, what the farmers' movement never seemed to figure out was the need to hold the mirror up. ultimately, you have to find a way to get the white supremacists and the religionists away from their beliefs by teaching them that it's all a system of control. if you can't teach them this, and they won't learn, then there's no way forwards, anyways - we can't have socialism and "religious freedom" at the same time, the social revolution must come first.

so, you gotta get out there and engage with the racist and the christians and the muslims and try to get them away from their chapters, and away from their churches and away from their mosques.

and, mr, hedges isn't going to be of much help in that struggle, or have much wisdom or advice to depart regarding it, as he's one of the most brainwashed talking heads out there.

"any movement that forgets about class is a bowel movement"

i had to deal with that, first. i'm sorry.

i spoke too soon - there was some dark, iron-fortified shit. yikes. surely, there's more than enough carbon in there to alloy it to steel.

so, stay out of my way - i'm shitting steel.

so, we're done with the flashpoint history run through, and my opinion of this channel is not very good. i let him finish like i said, and i'll spend a little time tonight consolidating comments, but i will not be subscribing and will not be keeping up. my opinion of this guy as a person is also quite negative.

first, despite his claims to the contrary, this is not a secular history channel and is not being told from an unbiased or neutral position. what this site is is a narration of real and fake history from a decidedly pro-muslim (or is it just anti-western?) bias. when he was going through the mythological origins of the ummayad caliphate, it's not like it really mattered much - it was bad methodology, as a historian, but these are little mini-films, so whatever. but, he's still reciting muslim propaganda when he gets to manzikert...

i don't know who this guy is or what his background is, but he does not appear to have been a muslim when he started this, at least - it doesn't seem like he intended to create a site dedicated to disseminating islamic myths, legends and propaganda. maybe he found an audience; maybe he found a market; maybe he found a benefactor. or, maybe he just got sucked into it. i dunno.

what i know is that the way he's approaching this is to take the muslim sources entirely uncritically as mystical or divine, and to entirely ignore the western sources as flawed and decrepit and this approach towards the islamic world from a western perspective is what edward said call orientalism. 

to be clear: the right way to do this would be to be equally critical and dismissive of both sides. unfortunately, the bias is consistent throughout, which is really forcing me to haul out the said.

second, i find the guy to be a sad excuse for a human being in terms of how he narrates the history. in the past, i've called him a nihilist in the technical sense of the term, and i think that's correct in a certain sense, but he's also demonstrated that he doesn't even adhere to a concept of master morality - he's happy to applaud attila, for example, for having the "cunning" to ravage the balkans by breaking peace treaties. he glorifies war, celebrates destruction and applauds pointless slaughter. if you call him on it, he'll probably pull back, but it seems like it's all for show.

there's a now somewhat old silver mt zion tune where the line is "power's the province of miserable pricks". and, a man who dedicates his life to worshipping miserable pricks is inevitably going to be one himself.

i don't know what's next. let me look around.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTYmTYuan0fSGccYXBxc8cA

i think you got it right in the end, i just want to point out something that gibbons and everybody else not just seems to miss, but seems to ignore, and i want to tie it to roosevelt's good neighbour policy - because he's really the only major leader in history, that i know of, that seemed to get this point: it helps, in the long run, if you don't make so many enemies through belligerent actions, in the first place. and, here's a thought to ponder that nobody ponders, and nobody ponders to ponder - might rome  have been destroyed by her enemies, in the end, because she went to such great lengths to create them?

even as a child, it was always actually prince's sexuality that i found overbearing, not michael jackson's. i remember having this debate as a 10 year-old, and i always took the side of michael jackson - prince was hedonistic and weird, whereas michael jackson was fluffy and fun. and, i would actually use the word appropriate, in context; even today, i'd rather let my kids listen to the often silly and yet broadly progressive work of michael jackson, rather than the sleazy and provocative work of prince.

as i aged, i'll acknowledge that i could appreciate prince a little more in small doses - but not overall. i still basically think he's completely disgusting, but there's some moments. i think michael jackson's work, while perhaps intended for a younger audience, is more compelling and more interesting, overall - and will last longer in the end.

again - that's probably not the answer you were expecting, but i'm happy to tear down this strawman of me that was built by some unknown source. if you knew me at all over any period of time, this should come as no surprise - i've always been a michael jackson fan, and have never really liked prince.

it's kind of the same thing as the other stomach issues, though - if i had low stomach acid, i'd probably have broader digestion issues, rather than just low iron, specifically. and, it's not like i'm shitting out red capsules, either.

i never got my fruit this morning, so i'm going to start with that, today.

i'm not going to drink baking soda.

but, i very rarely burp, ever.

just a reminder that i'm still exhausted...

it's been less than a week. what if i got a boost of energy, stayed up too long and needed to sleep longer to catch up on it? or what if it's just not working?

when i took the first pill, i took the filings out of the capsule - and noticed it on the way out. since then, i've been taking the pills in the form of pills. these are large pills, too. and, i haven't noticed much of any effect at all.

so, i'm going to try to take the filings out of the capsule again tomorrow.

and, maybe that's it - maybe i've got low stomach acid.

and, now the original syntax works, again. 

i was almost done, but i'm going to stop.

i just want to sort through the documents the human rights commission sent me yesterday before i make some fruit.

for the kids out there with no idea of history...

the task was to pick a beatles song and take the existing notation and flesh it out, as a george martin might have. the options were limited. the guy that plays guitar later on in rabit is wolf picked help, but i decided a ballad was a better idea - it was voice leading. that guy was a dolt; bad choice, obviously. anyways, i wish i had what i did to it, but i don't.

today's post is inri028, which is also presented as a single because it existed that way.

=====

i can't date this exactly. i know it was the first half of the second semester of grade 12, which was spring of 1999. further, i'm taking it forward to about midway because the first part of the course was about voice-leading and i spent it orchestrating the beatles' something. i don't have any files. 

i was lucky: i went to a high school with a big music department. not an arts school, mind you. just a school that had enough funding to run a wide array of course options that are outside the basic core topics. there were three main assignments in the course, and while i don't remember the exact assignment questions, i do have two pieces to show for it. 

this, here, is a conceptual piece about pop music. all of the sounds are created from pop cans. yes, puns are fun. the samples run from pouring water out of pop cans into the sink, to crushing and smashing pop cans, to opening them, to exploding them, etc. 

i used the tab of a pop can as a pick as i played the ambient guitar parts. it's all thrown together, processed, warped and perfected in a wave editor. 

constructed over a few days in april, 1999. ripped back to wav format from cd-r in late 2013. released as a one track single on nov 21, 2013. release finalized on sept 12, 2017. first liner note release added on dec 26, 2019 & updated on jan 27, 2020. as always, please use headphones. 

this track appears unmodified on my third record, inridiculous (inri033): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous 

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1999, 2013-2019). as of dec 26, 2019, the release includes a 5 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013. as of jan 27, 2020, the booklet is now 7 pages and includes entries over nov-dec, 2013. 

released april 15, 1999 

j - guitars, effects, samples, loops, digital wave editing