coyne is often daft, but he's making the right argument here.
and, i want to clarify a point: in canada, this is a position that is academic rather than partisan. i would consider andrew coyne to be a conservative; he'd probably call me a left-wing extremist.
but, we're going to sound almost identical when it comes to this. and, it's because we read the same textbooks, not the same political pamphlets.
what trudeau has done to the senate is, constitutionally, pretty much the most objectively wrong thing that a canadian prime minister could possibly do.
and, this is why you will get the same responses from conservatives that you do from social democrats.
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-the-senate-has-no-business-meddling-with-the-budget
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
if it's passed in the house (and it's not ultra vires, in which case it is null), it's law.
i don't care about royal assent.
fuck the queen.
fuck the senate.
let's take a stand on this, canada.
as far as i'm concerned, marijuana is already legal. do you agree? then, let's act like it.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i don't care about royal assent.
fuck the queen.
fuck the senate.
let's take a stand on this, canada.
as far as i'm concerned, marijuana is already legal. do you agree? then, let's act like it.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
well, i dunno.
is justin trudeau a potential dictator?
it seems comical. not because he's a liberal icon, but because he's obviously a dunce.
but, they said the same thing about hitler, didn't they?
i don't know what you even seize in canada, really. the oil fields, i guess. i wouldn't expect a canadian invasion of america any time soon. and, in that sense, it's hard to predict what might happen if he were to launch a coup tomorrow.
but, what he's done to the senate has crossed the line of 'concerning' and entered the region of 'scary'.
as a country, we have to address this as soon as we can. there are three options that are consistent with our history as a democracy:
1) elected senate. i think this is a bad idea.
2) abolition. i think this is a bad idea.
3) return to the previous status quo of unelected senators that only interfere in the process as an absolute last resort. i'd prefer this.
the idea of an unelected, activist senate is not a serious option in a free & democratic society.
'last resort' means 'if the government is trying to pass unconstitutional legislation'. and, we have a good example.
in the late 80s, the mulroney government tried to pass a law that would criminalize abortion, in clear contradiction to a court ruling that had struck the previous laws down as unconstitutional. the law was clearly ultra vires. so, it was an abuse of power, for that reason. this law was ultimately blocked in the senate.
it was the first time that the senate had blocked legislation in decades. and, presuming we can elect responsible governments, that's about as often as i want to hear from the senate - every few decades.
it's there, in case of emergency. but, it shouldn't be used unless necessary, because it's hopelessly undemocratic.
and, when the government loses it's democratic legitimacy, it breaks the social contract.
in my view, the marijuana legislation has already been passed. and, if the senate blocks it in the end, the country has a good reason both to discard the senate's behaviour (in favour of the relevant judicial precedent) and, frankly, to openly revolt.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
is justin trudeau a potential dictator?
it seems comical. not because he's a liberal icon, but because he's obviously a dunce.
but, they said the same thing about hitler, didn't they?
i don't know what you even seize in canada, really. the oil fields, i guess. i wouldn't expect a canadian invasion of america any time soon. and, in that sense, it's hard to predict what might happen if he were to launch a coup tomorrow.
but, what he's done to the senate has crossed the line of 'concerning' and entered the region of 'scary'.
as a country, we have to address this as soon as we can. there are three options that are consistent with our history as a democracy:
1) elected senate. i think this is a bad idea.
2) abolition. i think this is a bad idea.
3) return to the previous status quo of unelected senators that only interfere in the process as an absolute last resort. i'd prefer this.
the idea of an unelected, activist senate is not a serious option in a free & democratic society.
'last resort' means 'if the government is trying to pass unconstitutional legislation'. and, we have a good example.
in the late 80s, the mulroney government tried to pass a law that would criminalize abortion, in clear contradiction to a court ruling that had struck the previous laws down as unconstitutional. the law was clearly ultra vires. so, it was an abuse of power, for that reason. this law was ultimately blocked in the senate.
it was the first time that the senate had blocked legislation in decades. and, presuming we can elect responsible governments, that's about as often as i want to hear from the senate - every few decades.
it's there, in case of emergency. but, it shouldn't be used unless necessary, because it's hopelessly undemocratic.
and, when the government loses it's democratic legitimacy, it breaks the social contract.
in my view, the marijuana legislation has already been passed. and, if the senate blocks it in the end, the country has a good reason both to discard the senate's behaviour (in favour of the relevant judicial precedent) and, frankly, to openly revolt.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
but, more seriously, about the senate.
we now have a reality in front of us that is actually kind of a pressing emergency. when most of us weren't paying attention, the trudeau government erected an unaccountable, unrepresentative & unelected layer of government at the top of the pyramid that has the power to completely negate the country's democratic institutions.
canada now has a really big problem on it's hands. and, all of the parties, including liberal backbenchers, should be standing up and making a lot of noise on that point.
it didn't matter when they didn't do anything. but, now that they are meddling in the democratic process, something needs to be done to formally minimize the influence of the senate.
otherwise, we are on a one-way ticket to the kind of fake democracy that exists in iran.
you need to take this seriously.
the sudden emergence of an unelected activist senate is probably the biggest crisis of democracy that the country has ever had to deal with.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
we now have a reality in front of us that is actually kind of a pressing emergency. when most of us weren't paying attention, the trudeau government erected an unaccountable, unrepresentative & unelected layer of government at the top of the pyramid that has the power to completely negate the country's democratic institutions.
canada now has a really big problem on it's hands. and, all of the parties, including liberal backbenchers, should be standing up and making a lot of noise on that point.
it didn't matter when they didn't do anything. but, now that they are meddling in the democratic process, something needs to be done to formally minimize the influence of the senate.
otherwise, we are on a one-way ticket to the kind of fake democracy that exists in iran.
you need to take this seriously.
the sudden emergence of an unelected activist senate is probably the biggest crisis of democracy that the country has ever had to deal with.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i need to be clear about what's happening in canada right now.
the liberal party in the senate is blocking legislation from the liberal party in the house. on first glance, it appears as though the liberals are just hopelessly incompetent; it's a schizophrenic system, akin to what happens to a body when it gets overrun by cancer.
but, this cancer is not accidental. this is by design.
in fact, the liberal party redesigned the system, so that the liberals in the senate would be able to block legislation from the liberals in the house. they did this by splitting the caucus in half.
this is the way this is supposed to work:
1) trudeau makes an election promise. like proportional representation. the dry run was marijuana legalization.
2) after the promises win the election, the party passes legislation in the house and sends it to the senate.
3) the party controls the senate, but what they've done is split the caucus in half. half are called liberals and half are called 'independents'. they were all appointed by the liberals. that way, the party can block it's own legislation without technically voting against it, then blame it on the opposition.
4) then, they can run on the same empty promise in the next election.
the model is the obama administration, which managed to avoid doing anything substantive through years of unified government via a similar mechanism.
but, the next government isn't going to want to do anything like this. the conservatives are still going to exist in the senate. they will eventually regain a majority. and, they will promptly undo everything that trudeau has done, in order to reassert control over it.
in the mean time? don't fall for this.
trudeau's words are not worth the paper that somebody else wrote them on.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
the liberal party in the senate is blocking legislation from the liberal party in the house. on first glance, it appears as though the liberals are just hopelessly incompetent; it's a schizophrenic system, akin to what happens to a body when it gets overrun by cancer.
but, this cancer is not accidental. this is by design.
in fact, the liberal party redesigned the system, so that the liberals in the senate would be able to block legislation from the liberals in the house. they did this by splitting the caucus in half.
this is the way this is supposed to work:
1) trudeau makes an election promise. like proportional representation. the dry run was marijuana legalization.
2) after the promises win the election, the party passes legislation in the house and sends it to the senate.
3) the party controls the senate, but what they've done is split the caucus in half. half are called liberals and half are called 'independents'. they were all appointed by the liberals. that way, the party can block it's own legislation without technically voting against it, then blame it on the opposition.
4) then, they can run on the same empty promise in the next election.
the model is the obama administration, which managed to avoid doing anything substantive through years of unified government via a similar mechanism.
but, the next government isn't going to want to do anything like this. the conservatives are still going to exist in the senate. they will eventually regain a majority. and, they will promptly undo everything that trudeau has done, in order to reassert control over it.
in the mean time? don't fall for this.
trudeau's words are not worth the paper that somebody else wrote them on.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
blaming andrew scheer for opposing marijuana legislation in the context of trudeau giving him the opportunity to do so, despite having a majority in both houses, is like blaming a lion for eating a child that's fallen into the exhibit.
i'm not stupid.
i'm not falling for that.
sorry.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm not stupid.
i'm not falling for that.
sorry.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
so, who's fault is this?
it's not andrew scheer's fault. he's the opposition leader. he's opposing. that's his job.
he does not have a mandate to compromise. he does not have a mandate to work with the government. he has a mandate to oppose every single thing that's put in front of him; that is what an opposition leader must do in a westminster system.
bipartisanism is a purely american concept. that is just not how our system works. if he were to do anything else, he would be incompetent and ought to be removed in a vote of no confidence.
no. this is unambiguously, 100%, entirely, completely, not-even-a-little-bit-somebody-else's fault but justin trudeau's.
and, i expect him to take responsibility for it.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it's not andrew scheer's fault. he's the opposition leader. he's opposing. that's his job.
he does not have a mandate to compromise. he does not have a mandate to work with the government. he has a mandate to oppose every single thing that's put in front of him; that is what an opposition leader must do in a westminster system.
bipartisanism is a purely american concept. that is just not how our system works. if he were to do anything else, he would be incompetent and ought to be removed in a vote of no confidence.
no. this is unambiguously, 100%, entirely, completely, not-even-a-little-bit-somebody-else's fault but justin trudeau's.
and, i expect him to take responsibility for it.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i called this.
and, this is why trudeau set the senate up this way: so he can make whatever promises he wants, then blame it on the senate when it doesn't actually happen.
...the senate that he actually has a majority in.
just like obama!
is this going to actually happen? well, there's an election next year...
thankfully, whether legal pot actually happens here or not, this catastrophic joke of a "reformed senate" will not last one day past trudeau's eventual removal from power.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/15/politics-not-independence-leads-to-senate-delay-on-pot-legalization.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
and, this is why trudeau set the senate up this way: so he can make whatever promises he wants, then blame it on the senate when it doesn't actually happen.
...the senate that he actually has a majority in.
just like obama!
is this going to actually happen? well, there's an election next year...
thankfully, whether legal pot actually happens here or not, this catastrophic joke of a "reformed senate" will not last one day past trudeau's eventual removal from power.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/15/politics-not-independence-leads-to-senate-delay-on-pot-legalization.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm actually chomping at the bit to go after these religious groups - and demonstrate the point i've been making for a very long time: religion is never an ally to the left, but always the enemy of the future..
i'm not interested in building understanding. i want a full out war. and i want these forces to be defeated.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm not interested in building understanding. i want a full out war. and i want these forces to be defeated.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
to be clear: i'm not interested in compromising on the sex-ed curriculum. in fact, as mentioned here, it still has a long ways to go in removing religion from the system and replacing it with science.
i would push back hard from the other direction.
i don't think that students should be given waivers; if parents take them out of class, the students should be given failing grades and forced to redo the year. no exceptions.
and, if either wynne or horwath take compromising tones on this, it will be a vote breaker: i'll vote for the one that takes the stronger stance against ford.
and, if they're both unacceptable, i could very well not vote at all.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/14/leave-sex-ed-to-the-experts-not-fear-mongering-politicians.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i would push back hard from the other direction.
i don't think that students should be given waivers; if parents take them out of class, the students should be given failing grades and forced to redo the year. no exceptions.
and, if either wynne or horwath take compromising tones on this, it will be a vote breaker: i'll vote for the one that takes the stronger stance against ford.
and, if they're both unacceptable, i could very well not vote at all.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/14/leave-sex-ed-to-the-experts-not-fear-mongering-politicians.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it's not that there aren't also white people opposed to the sex ed curriculum on the grounds of anti-queer bigotry, of course there are, it's that it isn't a swing demographic - that's the tory base.
they don't have to run this for them.
who it's for, who they're trying to swing, are socially conservative immigrants.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
they don't have to run this for them.
who it's for, who they're trying to swing, are socially conservative immigrants.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
this is why ford will win the primary.
it's also also why he'll lose the general.
the tories have already lost this election. but, their coalition requires those socially conservative middle-class immigrant voters. the demographics in ontario are such that you simply can't win with the typical white conservative demographics. they have to reach out. and this is really all they've got for them, at this level of government.
and, what it's about is teaching that homosexuality is normal; the parents don't want their kids taught that homosexuality is natural, as it contradicts their religious beliefs. the rest of it is trivial. this is pure anti-queer bigotry masquerading as "religious freedom".
i would actually argue that, the more that parents push back against science in the name of upholding religion, the more important it is to ensure that their kids are given exposure to the science, to unbrainwash them.
i have absolutely no patience and absolutely no sympathy for these parents. the harder they push, the harder society should push back. for the sake of democracy, it's imperative that their kids are educated, and not left to languish in ignorance, where they can perpetuate their hate to the next generation.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/doug-ford-is-gambling-ontario-parents-are-still-concerned-about-sexual-education/article37988965/
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it's also also why he'll lose the general.
the tories have already lost this election. but, their coalition requires those socially conservative middle-class immigrant voters. the demographics in ontario are such that you simply can't win with the typical white conservative demographics. they have to reach out. and this is really all they've got for them, at this level of government.
and, what it's about is teaching that homosexuality is normal; the parents don't want their kids taught that homosexuality is natural, as it contradicts their religious beliefs. the rest of it is trivial. this is pure anti-queer bigotry masquerading as "religious freedom".
i would actually argue that, the more that parents push back against science in the name of upholding religion, the more important it is to ensure that their kids are given exposure to the science, to unbrainwash them.
i have absolutely no patience and absolutely no sympathy for these parents. the harder they push, the harder society should push back. for the sake of democracy, it's imperative that their kids are educated, and not left to languish in ignorance, where they can perpetuate their hate to the next generation.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/doug-ford-is-gambling-ontario-parents-are-still-concerned-about-sexual-education/article37988965/
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
if the government is serious about legislating around s. 35, we're going to be launched into a significant debate in the country, and are going to be subjected to a lot of voices (perhaps including mine.) that ought not be prioritized.
i have partial indigenous ancestry, and it is in fact visible, but i'd never claim to be, and never have claimed to be, culturally indigenous. i've used it as pushback against certain baseless accusations, but it's been with the intent to twist their own words around and make them seem stupid when they are in fact being stupid, as people stuck in a certain mode of thinking have difficulties thinking things through logically; pointing out that i am partially indigenous (as a substantive number of canadians in truth are...) has the effect of allowing people to see the actual arguments more clearly, and not be blinded by base racialism. nonetheless, the closest thing i have to any childhood upbringing in indigenous culture would be the couple of months i spent learning about tree leaves in the scouts program. i do not speak on behalf of indigenous people, and would not claim that i do.
...but i was close enough to the idle no more movement to be able to direct outside observers to some important internal voices within the country. and, i'm going to direct people to these two voices, specifically.
the first is chelsea vowel, who split publishes under an indigenous name that i'd have to copy and paste in order to spell right. she publishes fairly widely, but she also runs a blog (google 'chelsea vowel'). and, i'd expect that she'll be writing quite a bit on what's coming up.
this is her most recently published article:
http://www.chatelaine.com/opinion/indigenous-languages-census-canada/
whether you call it 'religion' or 'spirituality' doesn't matter much to me; i don't want 'spirituality' in the schools any more than i want religion in them. but, i don't have any ideological opposition to teaching language, in principle.
and, i recognize the importance of protecting languages, too.
but, i'm just looking at a school curriculum, and i'm not convinced that teaching languages that are barely spoken is a useful way for kids to spend in-class time, considering all of the science that kids need to be learning to be competitive nowadays. i mean, consider if you're a second-generation chinese immigrant that grew up with chinese as a first language. i know that kids in western europe are expected to learn multiple languages, but you have to keep in mind that there are really only two major languages in western europe - there is the germanic language group and the romance language group (in addition to the smaller celtic and basque groups). dutch isn't so hard if you know english, and french isn't so hard if you know spanish. telling a kid they need to learn an indigenous language on top of learning chinese, french and english (four different language groups.) and learning about everything else is...you'll get a handful of kids that can do it, but the reality is that we can barely get english kids to speak french in this country. the truth is that less than 20% of canadians self-identify as officially bilingual, despite taking 15 years of instruction in both languages. so, the end result of this is inevitably that most kids don't learn to speak the indigenous language at the end of the process, anyways.
and, i don't see what is being accomplished by taking time away from other studies to learn what are going to be very difficult languages for most canadian kids, and difficult languages that they don't have much use for in day-to-day life.
so, i'm not opposed on principle. but i just don't see this leading anywhere but failure - and broadly so.
if you're going to do this, what you're going to need to do is look at something like an arabic language school for a model. and, i don't think that's the right path forwards. i'd be more likely to argue that we should abolish arabic schools than that we should build indigenous schools, regardless of the actual history that i'm not addressing.
so, i'm not going to argue that language should be kept out of schools the way i'd argue that spirituality should be. but, i would argue that if we're going to be bringing in more languages in schools that the kids would be better off learning more important languages, like chinese. this has to fall on parents. and, if in the end, the language isn't being used, it belongs in a museum, and not in a class room.
maybe funding voluntary after school programs is a better idea.
another voice i'm going to draw attention to is pamela palmater:
http://www.pampalmater.com/
pam is very active, and you will see her on the news from time-to-time, but she's more broadly in the "ignored by mainstream media because she pushes difficult truths" category.
if there is bullshit in the legislation, pam won't just find it, she'll organize and fight against it. she should be the go-to source.
i'm sure there will be groups on the ground, as well. some of them will be legit. others will be organized in the classic cia data-mining manner, and operate as front groups for the state, with aimless foot soldiers that are barely informed of what they're talking about. the independent press will fall for this.
but, i'm going to suggest that the more careful side of the independent media focuses less on the movement building and more on the academic analysis, as what's coming up is going to be shrouded in legalese, and probably difficult for most people to understand. the state will make the legislation look very pretty. i can guarantee you that. it will be these academics that will see through it, if necessary.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i have partial indigenous ancestry, and it is in fact visible, but i'd never claim to be, and never have claimed to be, culturally indigenous. i've used it as pushback against certain baseless accusations, but it's been with the intent to twist their own words around and make them seem stupid when they are in fact being stupid, as people stuck in a certain mode of thinking have difficulties thinking things through logically; pointing out that i am partially indigenous (as a substantive number of canadians in truth are...) has the effect of allowing people to see the actual arguments more clearly, and not be blinded by base racialism. nonetheless, the closest thing i have to any childhood upbringing in indigenous culture would be the couple of months i spent learning about tree leaves in the scouts program. i do not speak on behalf of indigenous people, and would not claim that i do.
...but i was close enough to the idle no more movement to be able to direct outside observers to some important internal voices within the country. and, i'm going to direct people to these two voices, specifically.
the first is chelsea vowel, who split publishes under an indigenous name that i'd have to copy and paste in order to spell right. she publishes fairly widely, but she also runs a blog (google 'chelsea vowel'). and, i'd expect that she'll be writing quite a bit on what's coming up.
this is her most recently published article:
http://www.chatelaine.com/opinion/indigenous-languages-census-canada/
whether you call it 'religion' or 'spirituality' doesn't matter much to me; i don't want 'spirituality' in the schools any more than i want religion in them. but, i don't have any ideological opposition to teaching language, in principle.
and, i recognize the importance of protecting languages, too.
but, i'm just looking at a school curriculum, and i'm not convinced that teaching languages that are barely spoken is a useful way for kids to spend in-class time, considering all of the science that kids need to be learning to be competitive nowadays. i mean, consider if you're a second-generation chinese immigrant that grew up with chinese as a first language. i know that kids in western europe are expected to learn multiple languages, but you have to keep in mind that there are really only two major languages in western europe - there is the germanic language group and the romance language group (in addition to the smaller celtic and basque groups). dutch isn't so hard if you know english, and french isn't so hard if you know spanish. telling a kid they need to learn an indigenous language on top of learning chinese, french and english (four different language groups.) and learning about everything else is...you'll get a handful of kids that can do it, but the reality is that we can barely get english kids to speak french in this country. the truth is that less than 20% of canadians self-identify as officially bilingual, despite taking 15 years of instruction in both languages. so, the end result of this is inevitably that most kids don't learn to speak the indigenous language at the end of the process, anyways.
and, i don't see what is being accomplished by taking time away from other studies to learn what are going to be very difficult languages for most canadian kids, and difficult languages that they don't have much use for in day-to-day life.
so, i'm not opposed on principle. but i just don't see this leading anywhere but failure - and broadly so.
if you're going to do this, what you're going to need to do is look at something like an arabic language school for a model. and, i don't think that's the right path forwards. i'd be more likely to argue that we should abolish arabic schools than that we should build indigenous schools, regardless of the actual history that i'm not addressing.
so, i'm not going to argue that language should be kept out of schools the way i'd argue that spirituality should be. but, i would argue that if we're going to be bringing in more languages in schools that the kids would be better off learning more important languages, like chinese. this has to fall on parents. and, if in the end, the language isn't being used, it belongs in a museum, and not in a class room.
maybe funding voluntary after school programs is a better idea.
another voice i'm going to draw attention to is pamela palmater:
http://www.pampalmater.com/
pam is very active, and you will see her on the news from time-to-time, but she's more broadly in the "ignored by mainstream media because she pushes difficult truths" category.
if there is bullshit in the legislation, pam won't just find it, she'll organize and fight against it. she should be the go-to source.
i'm sure there will be groups on the ground, as well. some of them will be legit. others will be organized in the classic cia data-mining manner, and operate as front groups for the state, with aimless foot soldiers that are barely informed of what they're talking about. the independent press will fall for this.
but, i'm going to suggest that the more careful side of the independent media focuses less on the movement building and more on the academic analysis, as what's coming up is going to be shrouded in legalese, and probably difficult for most people to understand. the state will make the legislation look very pretty. i can guarantee you that. it will be these academics that will see through it, if necessary.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i can't be unique, right?
you probably know this person: the one that calls people out on their bullshit, because they are their friend.
and, you can't imagine how frustrated that person is going to get in a social grouping where everybody's just fucking full of shit all the time. they'll be constantly calling everybody out, won't they?
and, that person is consequently going to want to get out of that situation asap.
which is what i did.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
you probably know this person: the one that calls people out on their bullshit, because they are their friend.
and, you can't imagine how frustrated that person is going to get in a social grouping where everybody's just fucking full of shit all the time. they'll be constantly calling everybody out, won't they?
and, that person is consequently going to want to get out of that situation asap.
which is what i did.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
my position is that i was an excellent friend, but i was surrounded by people that were too stupid and narcissistic and selfish and close-minded and short-sighted and just fucking capitalistic assholes to realize what being a good friend is, and what just being a fucking narcissist's outlet to rant in the mirror is.
these people weren't looking for friends, they were looking for parrots to talk to themselves to.
and, i made the correct choice to distance myself from all of these people - because all of them were stupid and narcissistic and selfish and close-minded and short-sighted, and all i've ever wanted or been interested in or been able to deal with is honesty and transparency for the common good.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
these people weren't looking for friends, they were looking for parrots to talk to themselves to.
and, i made the correct choice to distance myself from all of these people - because all of them were stupid and narcissistic and selfish and close-minded and short-sighted, and all i've ever wanted or been interested in or been able to deal with is honesty and transparency for the common good.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
you can separate your friends from hangers-on by focusing on those that are willing to stand up to you, those that are willing to criticize you and those that are willing to set you straight when you're wrong.
it is those that focus on evidence over loyalty that are actually your friends, and those that insist on vacuous nonsense like "loyalty" that are trying to manipulate you for self-interest.
those that remain quiet, that let you make stupid mistakes, that take your side withouut conditions - these are not your friends.
and, when people make ultimatums about support on the basis of loyalty, they are certainly not your friends, either.
nor are they very intelligent... or somebody that you should lament the loss of. these are people that you not only don't want to fall for, but that you want to actively push away from you.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it is those that focus on evidence over loyalty that are actually your friends, and those that insist on vacuous nonsense like "loyalty" that are trying to manipulate you for self-interest.
those that remain quiet, that let you make stupid mistakes, that take your side withouut conditions - these are not your friends.
and, when people make ultimatums about support on the basis of loyalty, they are certainly not your friends, either.
nor are they very intelligent... or somebody that you should lament the loss of. these are people that you not only don't want to fall for, but that you want to actively push away from you.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm very much evidence-based.
solidarity without evidence is as vacuous as faith.
and, if i'm never on your side? maybe you're always wrong. and, rather than crtiticize me for not taking solidarity with positions that are vague or incorrect, maybe you should sharpen your argumentation, or flat out change your position to better align with the evidence.
if you can't convince people that you're right, that's your own fucking fault, isn't it?
friends are people that criticize each other in an attempt to get to a better approximation of the truth, not people that mindlessly fall in line behind each other to serve each other's narrow or dishonest self-interest.
solidarity without evidence is what is wrong with this world, and what needs to be abolished in order to build a better one.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
solidarity without evidence is as vacuous as faith.
and, if i'm never on your side? maybe you're always wrong. and, rather than crtiticize me for not taking solidarity with positions that are vague or incorrect, maybe you should sharpen your argumentation, or flat out change your position to better align with the evidence.
if you can't convince people that you're right, that's your own fucking fault, isn't it?
friends are people that criticize each other in an attempt to get to a better approximation of the truth, not people that mindlessly fall in line behind each other to serve each other's narrow or dishonest self-interest.
solidarity without evidence is what is wrong with this world, and what needs to be abolished in order to build a better one.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
measuring from the top of my middle finger to the base of the palm, i'm around 6.6" - which is actually below average, even for women.
i need to do something productive.....
but, to complete the thought: the last time i checked hand sizes with my ex-gf's daughter she was about seven years old, and had roughly comparably sized hands. my hand size is truly not in the range of adult women, but more comparable to that of a young girl's.
back to work...
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i need to do something productive.....
but, to complete the thought: the last time i checked hand sizes with my ex-gf's daughter she was about seven years old, and had roughly comparably sized hands. my hand size is truly not in the range of adult women, but more comparable to that of a young girl's.
back to work...
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
personally?
i'm willing to accept that i may have had minimal testosterone exposure, but i'm less interested in my digit ratios and more interested in my body hair patterns.
my father was italian, jewish, french and cree. he was as hairy a man as you ever will meet. i'm told my maternal grandfather was a roughly normally hairy guy. so, i should have expected something between normal and ape-man, growing up.
in truth, i've never seen more than peach fuzz, from my belly-button up to my neck. i mean, nobody is truly hairless, sure. but, my chest hair would be in the normal range for women, rather than the normal range for men. and, i was not on testosterone suppressors early enough to expect to prevent growth...
i've repeatedly argued that this is the only phenotypical evidence i have to present.
i remain convinced that my identity is not exactly a choice - although i will argue until i'm blue that i have the right to make that choice - but more of a function of my early upbringing.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm willing to accept that i may have had minimal testosterone exposure, but i'm less interested in my digit ratios and more interested in my body hair patterns.
my father was italian, jewish, french and cree. he was as hairy a man as you ever will meet. i'm told my maternal grandfather was a roughly normally hairy guy. so, i should have expected something between normal and ape-man, growing up.
in truth, i've never seen more than peach fuzz, from my belly-button up to my neck. i mean, nobody is truly hairless, sure. but, my chest hair would be in the normal range for women, rather than the normal range for men. and, i was not on testosterone suppressors early enough to expect to prevent growth...
i've repeatedly argued that this is the only phenotypical evidence i have to present.
i remain convinced that my identity is not exactly a choice - although i will argue until i'm blue that i have the right to make that choice - but more of a function of my early upbringing.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
2.8/2.9 = .96551, which puts me in the normal female range.
but, this strikes me as a neo-phrenology and not something to take particularly seriously. given what we know about the importance of nutrition, i would reject the rigidity of this correlation, in the first place: i would not accept the claim that finger length is determined in the womb, but would rather point to environment factors and request that more study be done to clearly demonstrate the point.
but, does this idea that hormones in the womb might affect your sexual orientation make sense? no. this is no less irrational than the idea that it is genetic, which is indeed deeply irrational (and void of any meaningful evidence, i might add).
that said, i can accept the idea that androgenic changes may affect gender identity rather than sexual orientation. and, if you read the studies properly, which i have, you'll see that this is usually what the data actually suggests, but that researchers continually present it in screwy ways.
you'll note that, like the birth order studies, which i will repeat have the strongest correlations that we've been able to find, far stronger than this, this idea simply does not apply to women. they've really only discovered a very specific thing, which is that xy fetuses that are underexposed to testosterone in utero develop more feminized traits - that is, that this is perhaps a partial explanation for the 'queeny' type of queer male, as well as the male to female transsexual.
but, what about bears? are you going to tell me that you think macho, rough gay men are what they are because they have a lack of testosterone? that's ridiculous. and, let's be clear about this: more than half of the population of gay men out there are hyper-masculine, tough guys with chiselled body-building type physiques, and that pride themselves on this hyper-masculinity.
the queeny types may not transition, in the end. but even the queeny gay men that identify as queeny gay men for their entire lives are expressing a kind of gender fluidity, and a kind of gender-queeredness. and, as mentioned, this actually makes sense, because an xy fetus with zero testosterone in utero would just end up female, and if the presence of testosterone is low enough, the testes may grow but not fall. we can do these experiments and see what happens. sure.
but, as a general explanation, this fails horribly. it does not describe the phenomenon of masculine gay men, which in truth is statistically the most of them. and it does not describe any kind of homosexuality or bisexuality in women at all.
what it describes is the phenomenon of effeminate men, whatever their orientation. and, it didn't require a study - you could have pulled it out of a textbook.
besides putting forth the argument that masculine gay men are created by an exaggerated excess of testosterone in the womb, and presenting some research for it that argues that heterosexuality only exists in a narrow range of testosterone production, i don't see how this idea of exposure in utero has any future. to my knowledge, this has not been done. and, the idea would likely not go down well, either.
but, i'll remind you that i'm skeptical about the idea that digit ratios are developed in the womb in the first place..
(and, yes, my hands are very small.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
but, this strikes me as a neo-phrenology and not something to take particularly seriously. given what we know about the importance of nutrition, i would reject the rigidity of this correlation, in the first place: i would not accept the claim that finger length is determined in the womb, but would rather point to environment factors and request that more study be done to clearly demonstrate the point.
but, does this idea that hormones in the womb might affect your sexual orientation make sense? no. this is no less irrational than the idea that it is genetic, which is indeed deeply irrational (and void of any meaningful evidence, i might add).
that said, i can accept the idea that androgenic changes may affect gender identity rather than sexual orientation. and, if you read the studies properly, which i have, you'll see that this is usually what the data actually suggests, but that researchers continually present it in screwy ways.
you'll note that, like the birth order studies, which i will repeat have the strongest correlations that we've been able to find, far stronger than this, this idea simply does not apply to women. they've really only discovered a very specific thing, which is that xy fetuses that are underexposed to testosterone in utero develop more feminized traits - that is, that this is perhaps a partial explanation for the 'queeny' type of queer male, as well as the male to female transsexual.
but, what about bears? are you going to tell me that you think macho, rough gay men are what they are because they have a lack of testosterone? that's ridiculous. and, let's be clear about this: more than half of the population of gay men out there are hyper-masculine, tough guys with chiselled body-building type physiques, and that pride themselves on this hyper-masculinity.
the queeny types may not transition, in the end. but even the queeny gay men that identify as queeny gay men for their entire lives are expressing a kind of gender fluidity, and a kind of gender-queeredness. and, as mentioned, this actually makes sense, because an xy fetus with zero testosterone in utero would just end up female, and if the presence of testosterone is low enough, the testes may grow but not fall. we can do these experiments and see what happens. sure.
but, as a general explanation, this fails horribly. it does not describe the phenomenon of masculine gay men, which in truth is statistically the most of them. and it does not describe any kind of homosexuality or bisexuality in women at all.
what it describes is the phenomenon of effeminate men, whatever their orientation. and, it didn't require a study - you could have pulled it out of a textbook.
besides putting forth the argument that masculine gay men are created by an exaggerated excess of testosterone in the womb, and presenting some research for it that argues that heterosexuality only exists in a narrow range of testosterone production, i don't see how this idea of exposure in utero has any future. to my knowledge, this has not been done. and, the idea would likely not go down well, either.
but, i'll remind you that i'm skeptical about the idea that digit ratios are developed in the womb in the first place..
(and, yes, my hands are very small.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
and, i gave her three three months, even.
it just produced denial.
"i told you in november than i'm moving out on february 1st. it's mid january. what are you doing?"
"you're not moving out."
"but, i am."
and, so she shows up at my new apartment mid way through february and wants to move in, because she's on the brink of being evicted.
and, yeah - i fucked her in that apartment.
more than ten times.
but, i never let her move in.
remember this. it's a life lesson.
when somebody is cruel to another person, it's only ever half that person's fault. the other half of the blame belongs to the person that lets it happen.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it just produced denial.
"i told you in november than i'm moving out on february 1st. it's mid january. what are you doing?"
"you're not moving out."
"but, i am."
and, so she shows up at my new apartment mid way through february and wants to move in, because she's on the brink of being evicted.
and, yeah - i fucked her in that apartment.
more than ten times.
but, i never let her move in.
remember this. it's a life lesson.
when somebody is cruel to another person, it's only ever half that person's fault. the other half of the blame belongs to the person that lets it happen.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i've gone out of my way to reject comparisons regarding myself. there is no basis of similarity, and that will only become more clear as time unfolds.
the similarity is with the ex-partner, not with me. but, i'll concede a similarity, even as i point out that it's really not a similarity with me, but a similarity with her...
we got a place together and decided on splitting the rent 50/50. i would not have accepted any other arrangement; i fully expected that she would pay her way. at the time, i thought she wouldn't have accepted anything different, either - we didn't really have this discussion, though, it was just unstated.
i mean, i made her pay 50% of the bill - and 50% of the tip - on the first date. she actually liked my insistence on this at the time. and i insisted. strongly. i guess she'd never met anybody that had this mindset; i must have come off like a character in a novel. in hindsight, i think she may have said one thing and actually desired another. i may have been pushing social expectations on her that she actually wasn't prepared to accept, after all.
so, when it came time to put the lease down, however many years later, we thought we knew where we both stood without having to talk about it.
maybe i should have asked.
(although, as it happened to be, she had a larger income than me at the time)
then, she cheated on me. so, i walked out on her, leaving her with a monthly rent that she couldn't afford to pay. and, she had just spent a thousand dollars, all of her savings, on a bicycle, too.
one might ask the question. she didn't have a math degree, and tended to stare back at me blankly when i spoke in math, but she wasn't a stupid person: she could do enough math to realize that her income was not sufficient to pay the rent.
so, why did she cheat on me, then?
because she never thought i'd do it. she thought i was bluffing.
she took me for granted.
that's the commonality, here.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
the similarity is with the ex-partner, not with me. but, i'll concede a similarity, even as i point out that it's really not a similarity with me, but a similarity with her...
we got a place together and decided on splitting the rent 50/50. i would not have accepted any other arrangement; i fully expected that she would pay her way. at the time, i thought she wouldn't have accepted anything different, either - we didn't really have this discussion, though, it was just unstated.
i mean, i made her pay 50% of the bill - and 50% of the tip - on the first date. she actually liked my insistence on this at the time. and i insisted. strongly. i guess she'd never met anybody that had this mindset; i must have come off like a character in a novel. in hindsight, i think she may have said one thing and actually desired another. i may have been pushing social expectations on her that she actually wasn't prepared to accept, after all.
so, when it came time to put the lease down, however many years later, we thought we knew where we both stood without having to talk about it.
maybe i should have asked.
(although, as it happened to be, she had a larger income than me at the time)
then, she cheated on me. so, i walked out on her, leaving her with a monthly rent that she couldn't afford to pay. and, she had just spent a thousand dollars, all of her savings, on a bicycle, too.
one might ask the question. she didn't have a math degree, and tended to stare back at me blankly when i spoke in math, but she wasn't a stupid person: she could do enough math to realize that her income was not sufficient to pay the rent.
so, why did she cheat on me, then?
because she never thought i'd do it. she thought i was bluffing.
she took me for granted.
that's the commonality, here.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
fuck, i'd be happy to never leave the apartment again. really.
well, except concerts.
i dunno how well i'd be able to meet friends around here, because i haven't tried. i've spent a lot of time avoiding people, and almost no time looking for them.
which isn't to say i'm an exception. i had my share of sketchy behaviour; i walked out on somebody with a lease, and eventually left her homeless, forcing her to shack up in a way that left her with an...let's say an unprepared pregnancy. and, while i'd do the same thing a second time, and think i was right to do it, i'll take some responsibility for the fact that my cruelty had some unintended consequences.
what i'm unwilling to deduce is that i'm a loner because of this.
i really am alone primarily by choice.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
well, except concerts.
i dunno how well i'd be able to meet friends around here, because i haven't tried. i've spent a lot of time avoiding people, and almost no time looking for them.
which isn't to say i'm an exception. i had my share of sketchy behaviour; i walked out on somebody with a lease, and eventually left her homeless, forcing her to shack up in a way that left her with an...let's say an unprepared pregnancy. and, while i'd do the same thing a second time, and think i was right to do it, i'll take some responsibility for the fact that my cruelty had some unintended consequences.
what i'm unwilling to deduce is that i'm a loner because of this.
i really am alone primarily by choice.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
at the end of the day, all three of these dipshits are going to end up with ruined careers, completely separated from each other, and plausibly at opposite ends of the country - alone. that's what happens when you behave like this, and they're all guilty of it.
there are no good guys, here. and, nobody gets out of the situation alive. everybody gets turned on. everybody loses.
it is a tale of three morons.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
there are no good guys, here. and, nobody gets out of the situation alive. everybody gets turned on. everybody loses.
it is a tale of three morons.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
in fact, the only new record i spent any substantive amount of time with in 2017 was the new do make say think record and, by default, it consequently wins record of the year.
and, it's a strong record - it's going to deserve somewhere in the low 90s, out of 100. it deserves mention, at least.
if there were stronger records released last year, i'm not the person to look to for elucidation, at this point. broadly speaking, i need to dig hard to find what i want; i'm not going to find much of value in these year end lists, and, for me, 2017 was a 'me' year, where i focused mostly on my own music, while restricting my exploration to acts i already had a high confidence in. i don't expect to spend much time digging over 2018, either. rather, i'll probably end up cycling back over 2019 or 2020.
when i get to the process of digging, you will no doubt be surprised by what i pull out - and much of it will be obscure or forgotten.
i've added a few new acts to my core list over the last few years, and they've mostly run the course, at this point. cloud nothings & la dispuye are done. i'm going to give touche amore one more, at most - but they're going to sell out, not break up. but, in truth, wasn't even really keeping up with that, and that's something i'm going to be doing as i finish what i'm doing over the next few weeks.
and, it's a strong record - it's going to deserve somewhere in the low 90s, out of 100. it deserves mention, at least.
if there were stronger records released last year, i'm not the person to look to for elucidation, at this point. broadly speaking, i need to dig hard to find what i want; i'm not going to find much of value in these year end lists, and, for me, 2017 was a 'me' year, where i focused mostly on my own music, while restricting my exploration to acts i already had a high confidence in. i don't expect to spend much time digging over 2018, either. rather, i'll probably end up cycling back over 2019 or 2020.
when i get to the process of digging, you will no doubt be surprised by what i pull out - and much of it will be obscure or forgotten.
i've added a few new acts to my core list over the last few years, and they've mostly run the course, at this point. cloud nothings & la dispuye are done. i'm going to give touche amore one more, at most - but they're going to sell out, not break up. but, in truth, wasn't even really keeping up with that, and that's something i'm going to be doing as i finish what i'm doing over the next few weeks.
i have no intention to move from firefox to chrome, due to the spyware that comes packaged with chrome.
no, i mean google spyware. installing chrome on your system is basically like installing a trojan for google. and, because i exclusively use older machines, all of the bloat is a substantive problem.
but, i'm going to hope that firefox follows their lead on this point. because, i don't really run ad blockers to block the ads - i'm post-paradoxical on the ads, i don't even see them - but because the ad blocker dramatically increases the responsiveness and speed of the browser.
i came to this conclusion about the ads quite some time ago, though, when i was walking past a billboard. i realized that i'd walked past that billboard at least 500 times, and had never taken the time to read it. this is why they make the ads invasive in the first place, of course.
but, in a situation where the ads are purely text? i won't even notice that they're there.
rather, i suspect that google is beginning to realize that it's business model is really very delicate, and not due to ad blockers but due to the actual efficacy of the delivery method.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/critics-wary-as-google-s-chrome-begins-an-ad-crackdown-1.3803866
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
no, i mean google spyware. installing chrome on your system is basically like installing a trojan for google. and, because i exclusively use older machines, all of the bloat is a substantive problem.
but, i'm going to hope that firefox follows their lead on this point. because, i don't really run ad blockers to block the ads - i'm post-paradoxical on the ads, i don't even see them - but because the ad blocker dramatically increases the responsiveness and speed of the browser.
i came to this conclusion about the ads quite some time ago, though, when i was walking past a billboard. i realized that i'd walked past that billboard at least 500 times, and had never taken the time to read it. this is why they make the ads invasive in the first place, of course.
but, in a situation where the ads are purely text? i won't even notice that they're there.
rather, i suspect that google is beginning to realize that it's business model is really very delicate, and not due to ad blockers but due to the actual efficacy of the delivery method.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/critics-wary-as-google-s-chrome-begins-an-ad-crackdown-1.3803866
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
aaaaand, in other news, former prime minister kim campbell has invented a time machine.
this is what she had to say, upon returning from the 1950s.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/former-pm-kim-campbell-says-sleeveless-dresses-demeaning-for-tv-broadcasters-1.3801543
i don't know why they keep putting microphones in front of her. it's been one disaster after another, for twenty years going.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
this is what she had to say, upon returning from the 1950s.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/former-pm-kim-campbell-says-sleeveless-dresses-demeaning-for-tv-broadcasters-1.3801543
i don't know why they keep putting microphones in front of her. it's been one disaster after another, for twenty years going.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
not really a lot to react to here, other than that we once again see that this government cares more about what the foreign press thinks than it does about what canadians think.
i wrote an essay about this:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/essays/aboriginalself.html
will we get something like a nisga'a agreement?
if you read the essay, you'll see why i'm skeptical about the idea that what the government is up to is anything more than a continuation of existing assimilationist policies, mostly for the benefit of the resource sector - which is not just oil but also minerals.
we'll see what it looks like, though.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-speech-indigenous-rights-1.4534679
jagmeet singh must his beard.
i wrote an essay about this:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/essays/aboriginalself.html
will we get something like a nisga'a agreement?
if you read the essay, you'll see why i'm skeptical about the idea that what the government is up to is anything more than a continuation of existing assimilationist policies, mostly for the benefit of the resource sector - which is not just oil but also minerals.
we'll see what it looks like, though.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-speech-indigenous-rights-1.4534679
jagmeet singh must his beard.
the warren peace report
so, is amy goodman complicit or misinformed?
i'm actually going to vote for both. i'd be surprised if anybody needed to actually explain to her what is actually happening; it would be a first in so long as i've been watching or listening to the program , which is, off and on, about twenty years or so. she's the host, so it's her job to be quiet and let others speak. but, she will correct you if she knows you're wrong, and i've never heard her say anything that isn't correct. it would be hard to believe that she's just misinformed, seven or eight years into this.
but, there's not actually a meaningful contradiction in taking what these spooks she brings on her shows say seriously and actually knowing what is actually happening. that contradiction only arises when you synthesize, and start generalizing; so long as you avoid that step, you can hold these contradictions separate and believe both of them. orwell described the phenomenon as doublethink. and, the context is devastating, because amy goodman has most certainly gone through standard pc brainwashing; all that the intelligence networks need to do is send her a brown person and tell her they're from syria, and she'll instantly drop any kind of critical analysis, because that person needs to be able to tell their story.
and, so she can believe a fact-based narrative on the one hand, which is that syria was never a civil war at all, but always a proxy conflict. there is no substantive movement against assad inside syria, but only a rat's nest of foreign fighters carrying out foreign interests, for money or religious orthodoxy (which are equally corrupting influences). and, she can allow these cia tools to pretend they're telling a syrian narrative, too. as long as they don't directly interweave, it doesn't matter.
so, is she misinformed, then? she is in the sense that she allows herself to be, through the mental trojan horses that the state has installed inside of her, which then let them in to feed on her mind. and, if she's not careful, she could lose her mind altogether, in which case she would quickly end up more classically uninformed, on top of being misinformed.
how is she complicit then? because she does know the truth of it, even as she upholds the doublethink. it would be bad enough if it was just silence. but, she of course runs an influential broadcast.
these questions are important, because i don't actually think she's been bought. i think she's actually struggling with this.
the propaganda is powerful. it's designed by professionals to hook people. and, in the end, nobody is invincible.
not even the ineffable amy goodman.
we'll be back in a few minutes....
i'm actually going to vote for both. i'd be surprised if anybody needed to actually explain to her what is actually happening; it would be a first in so long as i've been watching or listening to the program , which is, off and on, about twenty years or so. she's the host, so it's her job to be quiet and let others speak. but, she will correct you if she knows you're wrong, and i've never heard her say anything that isn't correct. it would be hard to believe that she's just misinformed, seven or eight years into this.
but, there's not actually a meaningful contradiction in taking what these spooks she brings on her shows say seriously and actually knowing what is actually happening. that contradiction only arises when you synthesize, and start generalizing; so long as you avoid that step, you can hold these contradictions separate and believe both of them. orwell described the phenomenon as doublethink. and, the context is devastating, because amy goodman has most certainly gone through standard pc brainwashing; all that the intelligence networks need to do is send her a brown person and tell her they're from syria, and she'll instantly drop any kind of critical analysis, because that person needs to be able to tell their story.
and, so she can believe a fact-based narrative on the one hand, which is that syria was never a civil war at all, but always a proxy conflict. there is no substantive movement against assad inside syria, but only a rat's nest of foreign fighters carrying out foreign interests, for money or religious orthodoxy (which are equally corrupting influences). and, she can allow these cia tools to pretend they're telling a syrian narrative, too. as long as they don't directly interweave, it doesn't matter.
so, is she misinformed, then? she is in the sense that she allows herself to be, through the mental trojan horses that the state has installed inside of her, which then let them in to feed on her mind. and, if she's not careful, she could lose her mind altogether, in which case she would quickly end up more classically uninformed, on top of being misinformed.
how is she complicit then? because she does know the truth of it, even as she upholds the doublethink. it would be bad enough if it was just silence. but, she of course runs an influential broadcast.
these questions are important, because i don't actually think she's been bought. i think she's actually struggling with this.
the propaganda is powerful. it's designed by professionals to hook people. and, in the end, nobody is invincible.
not even the ineffable amy goodman.
we'll be back in a few minutes....
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
democracy now has had it's head lodged in it's rear around the syria
issue for years, now. it still doesn't seem to have figured out that
there never was an internal uprising, and these people they pull in are a
combination of western intelligence agents and their naive useful
idiots.
what should the united nations do about the situation?
well, where is international law being broken?
1) the russians were invited by the syrians.
2) the turks were invited by the russians.
so, they are not breaking international law.
however, nobody invited the kurds. and, nobody invited the americans.
it is the kurds and the americans that are in breach of international law, here. so, the united nations really ought to be acting to fund an expeditionary force to expel the americans and kurds, and reassert syrian sovereignty over the east of the country.
but, that would start a war, you say.
no. it would be the american refusal to withdraw, and obey international law that would spark the war. the united nations has a mandate to uphold international law. it can't be avoiding conflict out of consequence, it has to lay the law down on the americans and kurds, who are operating as a rogue state.
and, it is the activist left that is eating cake, here. for, it wants to argue that the united nations should step in to protect the kurds, under a concept of international law that it pulled out of it's ass. rather, a legal un operation would differ from a turkish force only in ability. the turks are the ones upholding the law, here.
we have entered a new world, where the russians are the ones upholding the rule of law, and america is the rogue state that requires sanctions.
what should the united nations do about the situation?
well, where is international law being broken?
1) the russians were invited by the syrians.
2) the turks were invited by the russians.
so, they are not breaking international law.
however, nobody invited the kurds. and, nobody invited the americans.
it is the kurds and the americans that are in breach of international law, here. so, the united nations really ought to be acting to fund an expeditionary force to expel the americans and kurds, and reassert syrian sovereignty over the east of the country.
but, that would start a war, you say.
no. it would be the american refusal to withdraw, and obey international law that would spark the war. the united nations has a mandate to uphold international law. it can't be avoiding conflict out of consequence, it has to lay the law down on the americans and kurds, who are operating as a rogue state.
and, it is the activist left that is eating cake, here. for, it wants to argue that the united nations should step in to protect the kurds, under a concept of international law that it pulled out of it's ass. rather, a legal un operation would differ from a turkish force only in ability. the turks are the ones upholding the law, here.
we have entered a new world, where the russians are the ones upholding the rule of law, and america is the rogue state that requires sanctions.
no, really.
it doesn't matter what dead people might think, if they were to magically arise from the dead and look at us now. dead people are dead. their feelings are irrelevant.
it doesn't matter if they were your ancestors or not: they are still dead, and their feelings are still irrelevant.
i repeat: the people of the past will never understand the present. so it doesn't matter what they might have thought.
but, the people of the future will understand the present, which will be their past. their views matter. and, it should be the focus of the contemporary government to govern for the future, and not for the past.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it doesn't matter what dead people might think, if they were to magically arise from the dead and look at us now. dead people are dead. their feelings are irrelevant.
it doesn't matter if they were your ancestors or not: they are still dead, and their feelings are still irrelevant.
i repeat: the people of the past will never understand the present. so it doesn't matter what they might have thought.
but, the people of the future will understand the present, which will be their past. their views matter. and, it should be the focus of the contemporary government to govern for the future, and not for the past.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm going to close this down by making a request, and this request is not limited to this issue, or this government, or even this country.
to all those bastards that would wield power to harm others, however necessarily or unnecessarily, let this point be clear: a leader, be they a prince or something else, should always be judging themselves through the long lens of history, rather than the short term fluctuations of public pressure.
democracy would be preferable. but, despite the heavy and thick propaganda, it's really not possible to synthesize republican government with any kind of democracy. there is no stable way to build a government where representatives are constantly being replaced via plebiscite; either you elect people and walk off, or you move to direct democracy. our system is not a direct democracy, and is therefore not really a democracy at all, and in such a system a government is really truly required via obligation to be unpopular, when it feels it is necessary, for that is the reason we have a representative government, and not a democracy.
the system requires benevolence, which in context means having the integrity to make unpopular decisions that will eventually be seen as correct.
so, this is my request: fuck populism. be benevolent.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
to all those bastards that would wield power to harm others, however necessarily or unnecessarily, let this point be clear: a leader, be they a prince or something else, should always be judging themselves through the long lens of history, rather than the short term fluctuations of public pressure.
democracy would be preferable. but, despite the heavy and thick propaganda, it's really not possible to synthesize republican government with any kind of democracy. there is no stable way to build a government where representatives are constantly being replaced via plebiscite; either you elect people and walk off, or you move to direct democracy. our system is not a direct democracy, and is therefore not really a democracy at all, and in such a system a government is really truly required via obligation to be unpopular, when it feels it is necessary, for that is the reason we have a representative government, and not a democracy.
the system requires benevolence, which in context means having the integrity to make unpopular decisions that will eventually be seen as correct.
so, this is my request: fuck populism. be benevolent.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
Monday, February 12, 2018
https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/hp/1977-v12-n1-hp1112/030819ar.pdf
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
you don't hear this debate.
nobody asks the question any more: what were these societies like, before contact?
maybe the question is closed, but it hasn't lost it's historical value. sadly, few people seem to care about the answers to these questions...
what kind of technologies did they have to make their labour easier, or not have to make their labour harder? was the society hierarchical? was the distribution of resources fair, or were there tyrants that took more? what social norms existed in the society? were gender norms enforced, and how so? did the society accept the freedom of queer people to be queer, or did it enforce arbitrary rules around sexuality? did the society accept non-conformity and the freedom to be different, or did it enforce a conformity of thought under threat of expulsion or death?
were they some abstraction of noble savages, or would a modern mind look at the society and see the same underlying problems of salem witch trials and scarlet letters and think it is more akin to a quasi-fascism?
and, if so, should this society be destroyed?
we tend to just imagine that life is always greener, don't we? we don't really analyze this question: how free were the indigenous peoples, before contact? truly? all of them? is this a culture that should be resuscitated? or should it be taken off life support? and, how free would they be today, should they reassert sovereignty?
truly?
all of them.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
* note that the question of whether the traditional indigenous cultures were tyrannical is separate from the question of whether the colonial powers were also tyrannical, which is not ambiguous.
nobody asks the question any more: what were these societies like, before contact?
maybe the question is closed, but it hasn't lost it's historical value. sadly, few people seem to care about the answers to these questions...
what kind of technologies did they have to make their labour easier, or not have to make their labour harder? was the society hierarchical? was the distribution of resources fair, or were there tyrants that took more? what social norms existed in the society? were gender norms enforced, and how so? did the society accept the freedom of queer people to be queer, or did it enforce arbitrary rules around sexuality? did the society accept non-conformity and the freedom to be different, or did it enforce a conformity of thought under threat of expulsion or death?
were they some abstraction of noble savages, or would a modern mind look at the society and see the same underlying problems of salem witch trials and scarlet letters and think it is more akin to a quasi-fascism?
and, if so, should this society be destroyed?
we tend to just imagine that life is always greener, don't we? we don't really analyze this question: how free were the indigenous peoples, before contact? truly? all of them? is this a culture that should be resuscitated? or should it be taken off life support? and, how free would they be today, should they reassert sovereignty?
truly?
all of them.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
* note that the question of whether the traditional indigenous cultures were tyrannical is separate from the question of whether the colonial powers were also tyrannical, which is not ambiguous.
norway is, in fact, in the list of ancestor countries, but i would be quick to jump on a way to finland, while placing norway in the uk/ireland/france pile of "what's the difference?".
i'll at least concede that canada to norway is largely a sideways move, whereas canada to ireland, especially, would be a step backwards. i don't think that western europe has a good future; if i'm moving back to europe, i'm going to try to pick somewhere that is going to retain a majority indigenous population, like finland or switzerland (i don't have swiss ancestors).
all i'd get out of moving to norway is the need to learn to speak norse. finnish isn't even germanic - it would be hard to learn. but, a move to finland would legitimately be a move to the very fringes of the empire. and, i may find that my opinions are not seen there as radical.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'll at least concede that canada to norway is largely a sideways move, whereas canada to ireland, especially, would be a step backwards. i don't think that western europe has a good future; if i'm moving back to europe, i'm going to try to pick somewhere that is going to retain a majority indigenous population, like finland or switzerland (i don't have swiss ancestors).
all i'd get out of moving to norway is the need to learn to speak norse. finnish isn't even germanic - it would be hard to learn. but, a move to finland would legitimately be a move to the very fringes of the empire. and, i may find that my opinions are not seen there as radical.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
woo!
go finland!
http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2333-less-than-a-third-of-finns-believe-in-god.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
go finland!
http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2333-less-than-a-third-of-finns-believe-in-god.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
listen.
i didn't migrate here. i was born here. i have indigenous ancestors, but i reject ancestor worship, so i don't care what my ancestors did or what my ancestors thought, or think it is in any remote way binding on me - i am an individual, i am not my ancestors, nobody owns me, i am not indebted to anyone, and i have no obligation to anybody to do anything.
so, i don't feel an obligation to watch my mouth in my neighbour's house, so to speak. i was born here as much as anybody else and have the right to say what i want where i want, like everybody else does. where our individual ancestors came from and what they thought is simply irrelevant; they are dead, and nobody cares, so what i see in front of me is a competition for ideas. if my ideas are different than theirs, then we'll have to fight about it and one of us will win and the other will lose.
but, would i move to one of the places my non-indigenous ancestors came from, if some indigenous group wrote me a check and gave me a plane ticket?
i would.
well...i'd go to finland, for sure. i'd be apprehensive about italy, but, with the proper conditions, i'd go. i would not want to live in france or in the united kingdom.
if presented with a realistic option, i'd rather leave. because i'm an individual - i'm not attached to a community. i'm free, on that level of mind control.
on the level of rent, on the other hand....
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i didn't migrate here. i was born here. i have indigenous ancestors, but i reject ancestor worship, so i don't care what my ancestors did or what my ancestors thought, or think it is in any remote way binding on me - i am an individual, i am not my ancestors, nobody owns me, i am not indebted to anyone, and i have no obligation to anybody to do anything.
so, i don't feel an obligation to watch my mouth in my neighbour's house, so to speak. i was born here as much as anybody else and have the right to say what i want where i want, like everybody else does. where our individual ancestors came from and what they thought is simply irrelevant; they are dead, and nobody cares, so what i see in front of me is a competition for ideas. if my ideas are different than theirs, then we'll have to fight about it and one of us will win and the other will lose.
but, would i move to one of the places my non-indigenous ancestors came from, if some indigenous group wrote me a check and gave me a plane ticket?
i would.
well...i'd go to finland, for sure. i'd be apprehensive about italy, but, with the proper conditions, i'd go. i would not want to live in france or in the united kingdom.
if presented with a realistic option, i'd rather leave. because i'm an individual - i'm not attached to a community. i'm free, on that level of mind control.
on the level of rent, on the other hand....
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
"but, we can't separate our religion from our identity."
i agree - they can't.
but, that's not a feature. that's the bug. that's what is wrong - too much collectivism, not enough individualism.
i just don't think it's an argument. what i think it is is a diagnosis.
and, i have absolutely no interest at all in accommodating a culture that cannot separate the individual from the whole. until it can get to the point where it's members can say "i am an individual. i have a self. and i am distinct from my community. i have interests and ambitions and desires that may differ from my community and i am interested in expressing them, even if it doesn't conform with the norms in the community. i exist as an individual, to better myself, as an individual, and not merely as a corollary of the community i come from.", i just don't see anything that is worth saving. to the contrary, i might argue that such a society really ought to be destroyed, in the first place.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i agree - they can't.
but, that's not a feature. that's the bug. that's what is wrong - too much collectivism, not enough individualism.
i just don't think it's an argument. what i think it is is a diagnosis.
and, i have absolutely no interest at all in accommodating a culture that cannot separate the individual from the whole. until it can get to the point where it's members can say "i am an individual. i have a self. and i am distinct from my community. i have interests and ambitions and desires that may differ from my community and i am interested in expressing them, even if it doesn't conform with the norms in the community. i exist as an individual, to better myself, as an individual, and not merely as a corollary of the community i come from.", i just don't see anything that is worth saving. to the contrary, i might argue that such a society really ought to be destroyed, in the first place.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i agree that religiosity is primarily a function of poverty, rather than (a lack) of education, but this article is underestimating the effects of governments to maintain religion as a tool of control through demographic tinkering and immigration.
if you were to slow it down with a co-efficient such that the tipping point happens around 2050, i'd be in greater agreement.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201204/atheism-defeat-religion-2038
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
if you were to slow it down with a co-efficient such that the tipping point happens around 2050, i'd be in greater agreement.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201204/atheism-defeat-religion-2038
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
you know, i don't buy it, this idea of "spiritual awakening".
i mean, consider the term. make me laugh. i'll grant that a "spiritual awakening" is what you would expect would happen to a population, after you've dumbed it down with television to the point that it can barely operate a cash register. in that context, a "spiritual awakening" would be something like "mass insanity".
but, i actually i think we're on the cusp of a paradigmatic rejection of religion in the west, and that it could be almost entirely eliminated, at least amongst white people, by the year 2100. the next generation of white americans could very well define itself by it's godlessness.
and, i welcome that.
but, i wish the left would stop trying to appeal to the dying demographics of religious observation, and key in that, by paying too much lip service to religious values, it is slowly losing what will be the dominant atheist vote to the right.
the way things are shaping up right now, the atheists will get the tipping point to seize power once the boomers seriously die off, but, when they do, they will be republicans. and, that's a problem.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i mean, consider the term. make me laugh. i'll grant that a "spiritual awakening" is what you would expect would happen to a population, after you've dumbed it down with television to the point that it can barely operate a cash register. in that context, a "spiritual awakening" would be something like "mass insanity".
but, i actually i think we're on the cusp of a paradigmatic rejection of religion in the west, and that it could be almost entirely eliminated, at least amongst white people, by the year 2100. the next generation of white americans could very well define itself by it's godlessness.
and, i welcome that.
but, i wish the left would stop trying to appeal to the dying demographics of religious observation, and key in that, by paying too much lip service to religious values, it is slowly losing what will be the dominant atheist vote to the right.
the way things are shaping up right now, the atheists will get the tipping point to seize power once the boomers seriously die off, but, when they do, they will be republicans. and, that's a problem.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
geez.
there really are a lot of religious crazies in bc, aren't there? you need to be careful when you're in the mountains, out there.
they shouldn't be doing this, either, of course. but, it's not anywhere near as bad. i would be a lot less upset if they were just giving kids pamphlets on native religion. and, the world religions courses i took were too focused on the monotheistic religions, and not really a 'world religion' course, in the broadest sense.
i'm mostly posting because i like the idea of the atheist comics. and, i would suggest that he should be allowed to distribute the atheist comics regardless, as the bibles have already been handed out.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gideons-versus-godless-abbotsford-public-schools-criticized-for-distributing-bibles-1.3514276
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
there really are a lot of religious crazies in bc, aren't there? you need to be careful when you're in the mountains, out there.
they shouldn't be doing this, either, of course. but, it's not anywhere near as bad. i would be a lot less upset if they were just giving kids pamphlets on native religion. and, the world religions courses i took were too focused on the monotheistic religions, and not really a 'world religion' course, in the broadest sense.
i'm mostly posting because i like the idea of the atheist comics. and, i would suggest that he should be allowed to distribute the atheist comics regardless, as the bibles have already been handed out.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gideons-versus-godless-abbotsford-public-schools-criticized-for-distributing-bibles-1.3514276
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
"sure.
i'm all about teaching my white kids indigenous knowledge. all of this eurocentric academic stuff might claim it's empirical, but it's really just racist.
i mean, it's what the indigenous people were raised on, right? for thousands of years? and, look how they turned out.
that's exactly how i want my kids to be."
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm all about teaching my white kids indigenous knowledge. all of this eurocentric academic stuff might claim it's empirical, but it's really just racist.
i mean, it's what the indigenous people were raised on, right? for thousands of years? and, look how they turned out.
that's exactly how i want my kids to be."
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i just remember learning at some point in grade school about the scientific definition of life. i think it provided seven criteria like growth, reproduction and movement.
i don't think a chair meets many of them. and, i would have expected a teacher to correct an indigenous student on the point, because what their parents told them about chair spirits was wrong.
"no, sweetie. chairs aren't alive. these are the criteria used to determine if something is alive."
but, maybe i've only interacted with very sneaky chairs over my life time.
given that they are teaching children that chairs have spirits, i have to wonder what the science curriculum looks like in these schools.
jagmeet singh must cut is beard
i don't think a chair meets many of them. and, i would have expected a teacher to correct an indigenous student on the point, because what their parents told them about chair spirits was wrong.
"no, sweetie. chairs aren't alive. these are the criteria used to determine if something is alive."
but, maybe i've only interacted with very sneaky chairs over my life time.
given that they are teaching children that chairs have spirits, i have to wonder what the science curriculum looks like in these schools.
jagmeet singh must cut is beard
no, seriously, i think this is why the indigenous religion is so much more widely scoffed at than others, which are not really any less stupid. i mean, i'm an atheist, as you know, i don't have time for any of it, but the indigenous stuff is particularly lame because these aren't new ideas to westerners (unlike the eastern religions, which were legitimately something different) but ideas that western culture has already deduced are wrong.
it's not an issue of relativism. it's not about seeing things from a different perspective, or making way for ideas that are different. rather, it's something more akin to a kind of orwellianism: to be respectful of indigenous religious positions, you have to open yourself up to the possibility that basic empirical facts like the shape of the earth or the effects of smoke inhalation are, actually, wrong, and on the strength of evidence that not only wouldn't hold up in a lab but wouldn't even hold up in a court.
i tossed thales out there. he was an early greek philosopher that put forth the theory that inanimate objects have spirits. this is, in fact, as western an idea as anything socrates came up with. but, that was 2500 years ago. and, it's been viewed as a disproven and false theory in the west for most of the last 2500 years.
we could take about a lot of things, here. dna. migrations. the age and size of the earth.
maybe indigenous cultural leaders should be focusing less on retaining ideas that everybody else in the world knows are wrong and more focused on finding ways to modernize and synthesize what's left of the culture, to facelift it into something that is less self-parodying.
because, i'll make fun of christians. and i'll make fun of muslims. and i'll make fun of jews. but it's never as personal as it is when i make fun of people with indigenous beliefs, because they haven't developed that distance - they haven't entered modernity.
i want to help them, not make fun of them. but they make it hard...
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it's not an issue of relativism. it's not about seeing things from a different perspective, or making way for ideas that are different. rather, it's something more akin to a kind of orwellianism: to be respectful of indigenous religious positions, you have to open yourself up to the possibility that basic empirical facts like the shape of the earth or the effects of smoke inhalation are, actually, wrong, and on the strength of evidence that not only wouldn't hold up in a lab but wouldn't even hold up in a court.
i tossed thales out there. he was an early greek philosopher that put forth the theory that inanimate objects have spirits. this is, in fact, as western an idea as anything socrates came up with. but, that was 2500 years ago. and, it's been viewed as a disproven and false theory in the west for most of the last 2500 years.
we could take about a lot of things, here. dna. migrations. the age and size of the earth.
maybe indigenous cultural leaders should be focusing less on retaining ideas that everybody else in the world knows are wrong and more focused on finding ways to modernize and synthesize what's left of the culture, to facelift it into something that is less self-parodying.
because, i'll make fun of christians. and i'll make fun of muslims. and i'll make fun of jews. but it's never as personal as it is when i make fun of people with indigenous beliefs, because they haven't developed that distance - they haven't entered modernity.
i want to help them, not make fun of them. but they make it hard...
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
you know, thales may have had some concept of a distant land beyond the oceans, from phoenician and egyptian records, and dim memories of possible contact.
he may have had an x haplotype, which has been found in strange percentages amongst indigenous people on the eastern coast.
i could imagine thales walking into an indigenous village..
"i am thales, the great sage of ionia. please bring me your greatest minds, so we can sit and contemplate existence."
*pause*
one steps forward.
"sage, huh?"
*split screen to thales, tied up, and being slowly lowered into a burning pit*
he may have had an x haplotype, which has been found in strange percentages amongst indigenous people on the eastern coast.
i could imagine thales walking into an indigenous village..
"i am thales, the great sage of ionia. please bring me your greatest minds, so we can sit and contemplate existence."
*pause*
one steps forward.
"sage, huh?"
*split screen to thales, tied up, and being slowly lowered into a burning pit*
"no, no, you're ignorant for not being open-minded. maybe thales was right, and every inanimate object does have a spirit. how do you know that that chair doesn't have a spirit? and how do you know that it isn't evil? and how do you know that evil spirits don't like burning sage? you just need to expand yourself to different possibilities.
you bigot."
gee.
i guess that's a reasonable, well thought out position. isn't it? shouldn't we all respect this deeply thought through position? i mean, isn't science supposed to be skeptical?
i guess that's it, then.
i'm just a big racist. i need to expand my horizons, to let go of my ignorance of the chair-spirits, the desk-spirits, etc and open my eyes to the broader spirit world.
sorry.
(it actually sounds to me like the teacher should have her license revoked and be sent to a psychiatric ward.)
you bigot."
gee.
i guess that's a reasonable, well thought out position. isn't it? shouldn't we all respect this deeply thought through position? i mean, isn't science supposed to be skeptical?
i guess that's it, then.
i'm just a big racist. i need to expand my horizons, to let go of my ignorance of the chair-spirits, the desk-spirits, etc and open my eyes to the broader spirit world.
sorry.
(it actually sounds to me like the teacher should have her license revoked and be sent to a psychiatric ward.)
the school system should not be encouraging children to inhale or otherwise bathe themselves in toxic chemicals to tap into some disneyfied concept of magic, it should be explaining why this "cultural practice" is both foolish and dangerous, and why the smoke of these grasses is not beneficial but harmful.
the school system is meant to educate kids, not to make them ignorant.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/16/canada-mother-ban-indigenous-ceremonies-public-schools
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
the school system is meant to educate kids, not to make them ignorant.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/16/canada-mother-ban-indigenous-ceremonies-public-schools
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i would support a ban of this type, in the public schools. this is not educational, and does not belong in a class room - not even if viewed through a racist filter as some kind of harmless magic trick.
even taking a softer stance of informed parental consent, there should have been a consent form sent home. and, yes, i would have prevented my kids from taking part in such a farce, although i would have also taken it as an opportunity to debunk the ceremony.
"first, sweetie, you don't want to breathe in the burning sage. it's carcinogenic. that means it causes cancer. they might tell you it's some kind of medicine, but this is simple ignorance - it is, in fact, actually poisonous. you should tell the other kids that, especially the indigenous ones, because they might not know it. so, when you see them start burning the leaves, step away from smoke. don't breath it in. and, i'll be calling your teacher in the morning to talk to her about unnecessarily exposing children to dangerous levels of smoke, before i call the principal in the afternoon.
these people suggesting that there's any magic value in breathing in smoke are just making up nonsense. i've raised you well enough to see that on your own, but i'm just telling you again. excepting the combustion taking place, there's no energy being transferred in the process. science would reject their claim outright. there's just dangerous smoke that you want to get away from, and an incredibly irresponsible teacher that is unnecessarily exposing you to environmental toxins, and a lack of decent critical analysis."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/16/canada-mother-ban-indigenous-ceremonies-public-schools
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
even taking a softer stance of informed parental consent, there should have been a consent form sent home. and, yes, i would have prevented my kids from taking part in such a farce, although i would have also taken it as an opportunity to debunk the ceremony.
"first, sweetie, you don't want to breathe in the burning sage. it's carcinogenic. that means it causes cancer. they might tell you it's some kind of medicine, but this is simple ignorance - it is, in fact, actually poisonous. you should tell the other kids that, especially the indigenous ones, because they might not know it. so, when you see them start burning the leaves, step away from smoke. don't breath it in. and, i'll be calling your teacher in the morning to talk to her about unnecessarily exposing children to dangerous levels of smoke, before i call the principal in the afternoon.
these people suggesting that there's any magic value in breathing in smoke are just making up nonsense. i've raised you well enough to see that on your own, but i'm just telling you again. excepting the combustion taking place, there's no energy being transferred in the process. science would reject their claim outright. there's just dangerous smoke that you want to get away from, and an incredibly irresponsible teacher that is unnecessarily exposing you to environmental toxins, and a lack of decent critical analysis."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/16/canada-mother-ban-indigenous-ceremonies-public-schools
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
no. having remote farmers try remote farmers is not a decent summary of the idea of a jury of peers.
i don't know the facts in the case. it seems like somebody was trespassing, and they got shot after causing a commotion on the property they were trespassing on; extra-judicial, and perhaps not proportional, but without being clear on the facts, i'm not going to weigh in on it.
i'll restrict my comments solely to the idea of a jury of peers.
the idea of the jury of peers was meant to reduce bias in the court system, in an era where activists and dissidents specifically (rather than just general poor people) had to face two systemic, institutional class problems in what was essentially a racially homogeneous (if religiously heterogeneous) island, on the fringe of europe. the first systemic, institutional class problem allowed for wealthy aristocrats to essentially target people they saw as problems on trumped up charges, through relying on judges more than willing to play along, through common interests or bribes or even coerced threats. the second problem was of apathy in the judicial process, from the bottom up. what putting decisions in the hand of juries did was take the decision away from an authority that was institutionally unreliable, due to these class biases and interference, and put it in the hands of what ought to have been a neutral body.
so, juries were about talking decisions away from biased, corrupt judges and putting them in the hands of people that had no ulterior motives, and were better able to independently analyze the evidence. i know that your average tory will push back against this, but it is actually the truth of it. and, at the time, it was a good idea - not a perfect idea, but a good idea.
since then, a lot of things have happened. to begin with, the british judicial system has evolved to take itself more seriously. we can have a discussion about critical legal theory, but i think everybody can agree that it's at least gotten a lot better. another major shift is that the system has been transported from a racially heterogeneous island to a racially diverse colony on a large continent, opening up new issues of biases in the jury, itself.
i'm not a conservative. i don't see value in holding to tradition for the sake of it. i want to look at why a system existed, ask whether the tactics employed by it serve their ends and tweak it to better serve those ends. and, if the purpose of a jury selection was to eliminate systemic bias, the fact that the jury selection process today actually introduces bias makes it an open question as to whether it's something that should be continued, or if there are contexts where it should be suspended.
the most obvious context where it should be suspended is in a situation where the following three things are true:
1) the victim is of a historically oppressed minority group
2) the accused is in the dominant majority
3) it is impossible to construct a jury that doesn't also reflect the dominant majority.
that is a situation where bias is inevitable, and the system should step in to prevent it, by moving to a trial by judge.
so, i wasn't there. i don't have the facts. i'm not reacting to the decision. but, this article gets the point about juries completely backwards: it was meant to remove bias, not to introduce it. and, if a trial by jury cannot operate without that bias, as i think is true in this case, the judge should step in.
this man could not have possibly received a fair trial by jury, under the circumstances.
further, in order to prevent the judge from falling under the same bias, the judge's decision to not step in should be subject to outside judicial review before the trial, if requested; if lawyers on either side are so convinced of the impossibility of a fair trial by jury, they should have a body to appeal to before it starts.
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-gerald-stanley-being-tried-by-his-peers-isnt-a-bug-its-a-feature
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i don't know the facts in the case. it seems like somebody was trespassing, and they got shot after causing a commotion on the property they were trespassing on; extra-judicial, and perhaps not proportional, but without being clear on the facts, i'm not going to weigh in on it.
i'll restrict my comments solely to the idea of a jury of peers.
the idea of the jury of peers was meant to reduce bias in the court system, in an era where activists and dissidents specifically (rather than just general poor people) had to face two systemic, institutional class problems in what was essentially a racially homogeneous (if religiously heterogeneous) island, on the fringe of europe. the first systemic, institutional class problem allowed for wealthy aristocrats to essentially target people they saw as problems on trumped up charges, through relying on judges more than willing to play along, through common interests or bribes or even coerced threats. the second problem was of apathy in the judicial process, from the bottom up. what putting decisions in the hand of juries did was take the decision away from an authority that was institutionally unreliable, due to these class biases and interference, and put it in the hands of what ought to have been a neutral body.
so, juries were about talking decisions away from biased, corrupt judges and putting them in the hands of people that had no ulterior motives, and were better able to independently analyze the evidence. i know that your average tory will push back against this, but it is actually the truth of it. and, at the time, it was a good idea - not a perfect idea, but a good idea.
since then, a lot of things have happened. to begin with, the british judicial system has evolved to take itself more seriously. we can have a discussion about critical legal theory, but i think everybody can agree that it's at least gotten a lot better. another major shift is that the system has been transported from a racially heterogeneous island to a racially diverse colony on a large continent, opening up new issues of biases in the jury, itself.
i'm not a conservative. i don't see value in holding to tradition for the sake of it. i want to look at why a system existed, ask whether the tactics employed by it serve their ends and tweak it to better serve those ends. and, if the purpose of a jury selection was to eliminate systemic bias, the fact that the jury selection process today actually introduces bias makes it an open question as to whether it's something that should be continued, or if there are contexts where it should be suspended.
the most obvious context where it should be suspended is in a situation where the following three things are true:
1) the victim is of a historically oppressed minority group
2) the accused is in the dominant majority
3) it is impossible to construct a jury that doesn't also reflect the dominant majority.
that is a situation where bias is inevitable, and the system should step in to prevent it, by moving to a trial by judge.
so, i wasn't there. i don't have the facts. i'm not reacting to the decision. but, this article gets the point about juries completely backwards: it was meant to remove bias, not to introduce it. and, if a trial by jury cannot operate without that bias, as i think is true in this case, the judge should step in.
this man could not have possibly received a fair trial by jury, under the circumstances.
further, in order to prevent the judge from falling under the same bias, the judge's decision to not step in should be subject to outside judicial review before the trial, if requested; if lawyers on either side are so convinced of the impossibility of a fair trial by jury, they should have a body to appeal to before it starts.
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-gerald-stanley-being-tried-by-his-peers-isnt-a-bug-its-a-feature
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
i remember watching the swearing in ceremony in 2015 and thinking to myself "why is the prime minister groping all of the female cabinet ministers?".
a few things crossed my mind as to what i was observing. and, while some of the ministers, the older ones, were visibly tense in the encounter, others seemed to almost interpret it as an opportunity. i would be hard-pressed to suggest that the female ministers were of one mind, on the topic.
it shouldn't be hard to find the footage. it's the swearing in ceremony, where he names the cabinet ministers on by one. and, it gets cringey. really.
but, this is the ambiguity attached to a person like justin trudeau, who is both a (to anybody's knowledge) straight white male with executive power and an international sex symbol. i think there's always been concerns that the dauphin may have a clintonesque streak, where the intersection of real power and real sex appeal makes consent and coercion difficult to disentangle, and the thrill of existing in this grey area almost addictive. the idea that justin trudeau might have an active sex life with multiple partners, many of them colleagues, is not at all unbelievable.
but, i don't buy it.
trudeau's a nerd. he gets squiggley and shy when you put him beside attractive women. it's a classic nerd inferiority complex. the media image is a fabrication.
if trudeau was that other person, a person into conquest, he could be a force for serious malice, it is true, and i think everybody around him should look for signs that he might be becoming that person.
but i actually think he's strictly into monogamy, and probably kind of sexually boring. really.
i'll give warren an out on this: while i don't think the prime minister is a conqueror, i do think he'd be prone to being conquered, and that he may be the type to develop romantic feelings for staffers he spends a lot of time behind closed doors with. kind of an inversion on lewinsky. if a sex scandal is going to take this prime minister down, i would expect it to be in the form of something like that.
http://warrenkinsella.com/2018/01/column-metoo-isnt-just-coming-to-political-canada-its-here/
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
a few things crossed my mind as to what i was observing. and, while some of the ministers, the older ones, were visibly tense in the encounter, others seemed to almost interpret it as an opportunity. i would be hard-pressed to suggest that the female ministers were of one mind, on the topic.
it shouldn't be hard to find the footage. it's the swearing in ceremony, where he names the cabinet ministers on by one. and, it gets cringey. really.
but, this is the ambiguity attached to a person like justin trudeau, who is both a (to anybody's knowledge) straight white male with executive power and an international sex symbol. i think there's always been concerns that the dauphin may have a clintonesque streak, where the intersection of real power and real sex appeal makes consent and coercion difficult to disentangle, and the thrill of existing in this grey area almost addictive. the idea that justin trudeau might have an active sex life with multiple partners, many of them colleagues, is not at all unbelievable.
but, i don't buy it.
trudeau's a nerd. he gets squiggley and shy when you put him beside attractive women. it's a classic nerd inferiority complex. the media image is a fabrication.
if trudeau was that other person, a person into conquest, he could be a force for serious malice, it is true, and i think everybody around him should look for signs that he might be becoming that person.
but i actually think he's strictly into monogamy, and probably kind of sexually boring. really.
i'll give warren an out on this: while i don't think the prime minister is a conqueror, i do think he'd be prone to being conquered, and that he may be the type to develop romantic feelings for staffers he spends a lot of time behind closed doors with. kind of an inversion on lewinsky. if a sex scandal is going to take this prime minister down, i would expect it to be in the form of something like that.
http://warrenkinsella.com/2018/01/column-metoo-isnt-just-coming-to-political-canada-its-here/
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
Friday, February 9, 2018
i guess they'll have to leak it, then.
i'm in favour of showmanship to hold fast to a point, but this is just poor sportsmanship. it's an interference in due process. there's no hidden redeeming bombastic quality to this: we must be able to hear both sides, and a fair leader would see that, whatever his arrogance.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-memo-russia-probe-democrat-1.4529653
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i'm in favour of showmanship to hold fast to a point, but this is just poor sportsmanship. it's an interference in due process. there's no hidden redeeming bombastic quality to this: we must be able to hear both sides, and a fair leader would see that, whatever his arrogance.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-memo-russia-probe-democrat-1.4529653
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i believe that ontario has chosen the cap & trade option, rather than the carbon tax option, and that the cap & trade system was developed independently of ottawa's plan, which has had no real effect on ontario.
so, it's unclear why a lawsuit would be necessary to prevent a carbon tax that is not being imposed.
the only people talking about a carbon tax were the conservatives, who had questionable motives with it from the start. but, if i get this right, the candidates are now campaigning against their own party's policy, which they are falsely attributing to the federal government.
yikes.
i'm going to play along with the cynicism a little: maybe you trick enough people to hold some obscure ridings, this way. you plant the false stories as ads, then ship them out over facebook - it would no doubt trick enough idiots, but how much growth is there in the conservative base?
and, yes - you'll see this show up somewhere in the next few months:
vote conservative to stop kathleen wynne's carbon tax!
then, if they win, and there's no carbon tax....
i don't think they win an election like this. but, that's general populace - not card carrying members, who are just going to take the narrative as an insult, if they're not naive enough, themselves, to think these candidates don't know what they're talking about.
up against this kind of fast talking, the straight talker is going to be most appealing, whoever it ends up being.
in the primaries, anyways.
this will happen in the general.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/caroline-mulroney-carbon-tax-ontario-1.4528480
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
so, it's unclear why a lawsuit would be necessary to prevent a carbon tax that is not being imposed.
the only people talking about a carbon tax were the conservatives, who had questionable motives with it from the start. but, if i get this right, the candidates are now campaigning against their own party's policy, which they are falsely attributing to the federal government.
yikes.
i'm going to play along with the cynicism a little: maybe you trick enough people to hold some obscure ridings, this way. you plant the false stories as ads, then ship them out over facebook - it would no doubt trick enough idiots, but how much growth is there in the conservative base?
and, yes - you'll see this show up somewhere in the next few months:
vote conservative to stop kathleen wynne's carbon tax!
then, if they win, and there's no carbon tax....
i don't think they win an election like this. but, that's general populace - not card carrying members, who are just going to take the narrative as an insult, if they're not naive enough, themselves, to think these candidates don't know what they're talking about.
up against this kind of fast talking, the straight talker is going to be most appealing, whoever it ends up being.
in the primaries, anyways.
this will happen in the general.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/caroline-mulroney-carbon-tax-ontario-1.4528480
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
sadly, this will probably be more effective than any protests in canada.
and, if you want to know how to get them to budge, that's it: make it an issue of canada's reputation abroad. and, this is fair game, for we are buckling to pressure from a regime of questionable integrity - in kahoots with the quasi-fascist regime in china, to destroy the planet to fuel absurdly unsustainable growth.
when it's canadians, they think they can manage it. they're wrong, but they're in a naive comfort zone that prevents them from reacting, really, at all. but, when you make it international, you set off the panic buttons.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trans-mountain-protest-california-1.4528947
and, if you want to know how to get them to budge, that's it: make it an issue of canada's reputation abroad. and, this is fair game, for we are buckling to pressure from a regime of questionable integrity - in kahoots with the quasi-fascist regime in china, to destroy the planet to fuel absurdly unsustainable growth.
when it's canadians, they think they can manage it. they're wrong, but they're in a naive comfort zone that prevents them from reacting, really, at all. but, when you make it international, you set off the panic buttons.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trans-mountain-protest-california-1.4528947
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/investors-pull-most-money-out-of-dow-jones-etf-in-nine-months
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
Thursday, February 8, 2018
as much as i've criticized her, elizabeth may needs to take some leadership over the ndp caucus, and maybe parts of the liberal caucus, in very carefully examining the new regulatory legislation. if there's a principled opposition, and constructive suggestions, it will come from elizabeth may. but, she's completely powerless without some kind of coalition with the ndp - who may be of two minds on this.
she has no technical power but she has great sway, because she has respect from her colleagues.
i don't know, really. i think the process should always be open to modification, and that regulatory overhaul should really be a recurrent process. i've seen some upsides and some downsides. so, it probably needs to be studied and amended, where necessary.
what i'm getting at is that the parliament is going to have to find a leftist front to amend this, or slow it down in the face of entrenchment.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
she has no technical power but she has great sway, because she has respect from her colleagues.
i don't know, really. i think the process should always be open to modification, and that regulatory overhaul should really be a recurrent process. i've seen some upsides and some downsides. so, it probably needs to be studied and amended, where necessary.
what i'm getting at is that the parliament is going to have to find a leftist front to amend this, or slow it down in the face of entrenchment.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
i want to clarify something.
the end of quantitative easing shouldn't produce a single crash, so much as it should produce a series of stutters. the market will have good days and bad days over the next few months, but the trajectory will be downwards, until all of the fake money that was pumped into the system finds it's way out of it.
you can think of the stock market like a balloon. what quantitative easing does is it allows the balloon to fill up. what ending quantitative easing does is it lets the air out. unfortunately, however, a lot of otherwise intelligent people think that if you blow the balloon up, it will stay inflated, even after you remove quantitative easing. this is really an article of faith, and very much at the crux of the term market fundamentalist.
the balloon will never hold air. it will always deflate. so, if you want a full balloon, you must provide a constant flow of air. there is no "equilibrium".
but, i'm not going to make a personal prediction. i'm just going to point out what the expected effects of ending quantitative easing would be:
1) you would have a delayed reaction, to start, as the last bit of easing would need to take some time to work through the system.
2) as the effects of the end of easing become felt, you would slowly see what amounts to a simple divestment of money in the market. this money doesn't show up anywhere else. it just goes into accounts, and out to pay "bills", in whatever abstraction.
3) eventually, this divestment becomes recessionary, as the money slowly dries up.
4) there is no equilibrium point to reach, in the modern economy. there is simply rock bottom, when debt pyramids begin unravelling to expose there's nothing there.
so, in the end, you go back to easing - after you've stunted the economy for however long you've decided to stunt it for..
i don't know how long this takes. but, it's not a situation where you expect the balloon to burst, so much as it is a situation where you expect the balloon to slowly lose it's air. that's because the stock market devaluation, in this context, is an effect rather than a cause. the economy doesn't suffer because of the market crash; rather, the market crashes because the economy isn't generating enough investment, which is what you need the easing for.
it's access to capital. you need capital for capitalism, or it just stops working.
so, if you own stocks, what do you do?
you wait. and, you resolve to sell at the end of the next cycle, when you hear the announcement coming
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
the end of quantitative easing shouldn't produce a single crash, so much as it should produce a series of stutters. the market will have good days and bad days over the next few months, but the trajectory will be downwards, until all of the fake money that was pumped into the system finds it's way out of it.
you can think of the stock market like a balloon. what quantitative easing does is it allows the balloon to fill up. what ending quantitative easing does is it lets the air out. unfortunately, however, a lot of otherwise intelligent people think that if you blow the balloon up, it will stay inflated, even after you remove quantitative easing. this is really an article of faith, and very much at the crux of the term market fundamentalist.
the balloon will never hold air. it will always deflate. so, if you want a full balloon, you must provide a constant flow of air. there is no "equilibrium".
but, i'm not going to make a personal prediction. i'm just going to point out what the expected effects of ending quantitative easing would be:
1) you would have a delayed reaction, to start, as the last bit of easing would need to take some time to work through the system.
2) as the effects of the end of easing become felt, you would slowly see what amounts to a simple divestment of money in the market. this money doesn't show up anywhere else. it just goes into accounts, and out to pay "bills", in whatever abstraction.
3) eventually, this divestment becomes recessionary, as the money slowly dries up.
4) there is no equilibrium point to reach, in the modern economy. there is simply rock bottom, when debt pyramids begin unravelling to expose there's nothing there.
so, in the end, you go back to easing - after you've stunted the economy for however long you've decided to stunt it for..
i don't know how long this takes. but, it's not a situation where you expect the balloon to burst, so much as it is a situation where you expect the balloon to slowly lose it's air. that's because the stock market devaluation, in this context, is an effect rather than a cause. the economy doesn't suffer because of the market crash; rather, the market crashes because the economy isn't generating enough investment, which is what you need the easing for.
it's access to capital. you need capital for capitalism, or it just stops working.
so, if you own stocks, what do you do?
you wait. and, you resolve to sell at the end of the next cycle, when you hear the announcement coming
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
i would have probably used the term "humankind" rather than "peoplekind", but i tend to argue that woman is less a diminutive of man and more that both are equal subsets of 'human'. so, something like womyn strikes me as rooted in an etymologically confused argument.
but, if you sort through this space, you'll see i pretty exclusively use people as a sub for a gendered suffix - mail-people is one example i know i've used, although when pressed for examples i'm finding i tend to avoid it altogether: police officers, firefighters, etc.
what trudeau was doing was deflecting from the question. and, it's hard to see what the point of the town halls is, if he's deflecting questions and generating bad press; i'd expect these to end, soon.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
but, if you sort through this space, you'll see i pretty exclusively use people as a sub for a gendered suffix - mail-people is one example i know i've used, although when pressed for examples i'm finding i tend to avoid it altogether: police officers, firefighters, etc.
what trudeau was doing was deflecting from the question. and, it's hard to see what the point of the town halls is, if he's deflecting questions and generating bad press; i'd expect these to end, soon.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
everybody in bc and alberta should both watch the monorail episode, because that is what rachel notley is trying to sell you both: a monorail.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dwvc6
* this analogy is in no way meant to impugn on the reputation of the local transportation network in the rather larger city of vancouver, which i navigated once with a backpack on my way to camp on the beach in tofino. the skytrain appeared to serve a number of useful functions for the city.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dwvc6
* this analogy is in no way meant to impugn on the reputation of the local transportation network in the rather larger city of vancouver, which i navigated once with a backpack on my way to camp on the beach in tofino. the skytrain appeared to serve a number of useful functions for the city.
http://www.netnewsledger.com/2018/02/07/kinsella-can-doug-ford-win-ontario-pc-race-damn-right-can/
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
so, what is doug ford?
well, he's not donald trump. and, by that, i mean he's not going to come out hard against immigration, or fight against trade agreements. that's not what doug ford is.
to begin with, the fords actually come out of a fairly migrant-heavy area of toronto, and have always relied fairly heavily on the votes of brown and yellow people to gain office. there were some racist anecdotes attributed to rob ford when he was alive, but the fords, as a family, have actually gone out of their way to appeal to a sense of disenfranchisement amongst the first-generation migrant poor in the areas that they have represented in city council. further, doug has always been seen as the less stupid of the two, and he is no doubt well aware of the need to appeal to non-white voters in order to win an election in toronto, and by extension in ontario.
so, doug ford is not going to run on immigration (which is largely a federal concern) or xenophobia; to the contrary, expect him to run a fairly inclusive campaign that reaches out to minorities along conservative cultural grounds, to the exclusion primarily of the queer community. following a strategy engineered by jason kenney, and that is becoming standard amongst conservatives across the country, he is actually going to try to tap into conservative sentiment in the various religious minorities. one of the ways he's going to do that is to push looking into the sex-ed curriculum in ontario schools, which has substantial opposition from various christian and non-christian religious groups. america may actually want to look at this carefully, as doug ford is actually quite likely to succeed in building coalitions between christian, muslim and other religious groups to enforce more of a classical right-wing social agenda.
but, again following the harper model, the intent is just to string them along - there's not going to be a change in the sex ed curriculum, or provincial laws against abortion, or any of the other wild fantasies that keep money pouring into the party.
and, this campaign will be targeted, and probably actually kept a little bit quiet. one of the tricks that conservatives have used in the past is to run ads for religious minorities in the languages they speak, so the white majority doesn't catch wind of it.
what doug ford is going to run on is a classic economic libertarian policy - cutting red tape, reducing government waste, lowering business taxes, that kind of thing. it will be a classic business conservative campaign, free of open dog whistling or white supremacist race-baiting.
and, when you look for the dog whistles and do find them, buried, you'll be surprised to see what they are, to the point that you'll have to ask an ontarian to make sense of them.
i know the fords get some coverage outside of the country. doug ford isn't going to get caught smoking crack at an unrequited high school sweatheart's town house. his statements are not likely to be nearly as gauche, either. but, this is still a race worth watching.
the pc election is at the beginning of march. the provincial election is at the beginning of june.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
well, he's not donald trump. and, by that, i mean he's not going to come out hard against immigration, or fight against trade agreements. that's not what doug ford is.
to begin with, the fords actually come out of a fairly migrant-heavy area of toronto, and have always relied fairly heavily on the votes of brown and yellow people to gain office. there were some racist anecdotes attributed to rob ford when he was alive, but the fords, as a family, have actually gone out of their way to appeal to a sense of disenfranchisement amongst the first-generation migrant poor in the areas that they have represented in city council. further, doug has always been seen as the less stupid of the two, and he is no doubt well aware of the need to appeal to non-white voters in order to win an election in toronto, and by extension in ontario.
so, doug ford is not going to run on immigration (which is largely a federal concern) or xenophobia; to the contrary, expect him to run a fairly inclusive campaign that reaches out to minorities along conservative cultural grounds, to the exclusion primarily of the queer community. following a strategy engineered by jason kenney, and that is becoming standard amongst conservatives across the country, he is actually going to try to tap into conservative sentiment in the various religious minorities. one of the ways he's going to do that is to push looking into the sex-ed curriculum in ontario schools, which has substantial opposition from various christian and non-christian religious groups. america may actually want to look at this carefully, as doug ford is actually quite likely to succeed in building coalitions between christian, muslim and other religious groups to enforce more of a classical right-wing social agenda.
but, again following the harper model, the intent is just to string them along - there's not going to be a change in the sex ed curriculum, or provincial laws against abortion, or any of the other wild fantasies that keep money pouring into the party.
and, this campaign will be targeted, and probably actually kept a little bit quiet. one of the tricks that conservatives have used in the past is to run ads for religious minorities in the languages they speak, so the white majority doesn't catch wind of it.
what doug ford is going to run on is a classic economic libertarian policy - cutting red tape, reducing government waste, lowering business taxes, that kind of thing. it will be a classic business conservative campaign, free of open dog whistling or white supremacist race-baiting.
and, when you look for the dog whistles and do find them, buried, you'll be surprised to see what they are, to the point that you'll have to ask an ontarian to make sense of them.
i know the fords get some coverage outside of the country. doug ford isn't going to get caught smoking crack at an unrequited high school sweatheart's town house. his statements are not likely to be nearly as gauche, either. but, this is still a race worth watching.
the pc election is at the beginning of march. the provincial election is at the beginning of june.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
the transmountain pipeline is a hare-brained scheme by an industry taking it's last dying gasps of air that will neither generate jobs nor export markets, but will instead leave british columbia a disaster area for generations to come while investors slowly pull out of alberta, and the province collapses back whence it came.
it is a foolish idea that will burn every fool that gets involved with it.
and, only a fool would support it.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
it is a foolish idea that will burn every fool that gets involved with it.
and, only a fool would support it.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
guys.
if oil is trading at x dollars in country y due to z supply, what happens to x when you double or triple the supply to that country?
does x increase? decrease? stay the same?
because the policy seems to be based around the idea that x remains fixed, even after the introduction of substantial supply, with no comparable reaction in terms of demand, and this is so economically naive as to be embarrassing - but, really, par for the course in alberta. i don't want to make it seem like the pc or socred dynasties were brilliant economic managers, or anything. really, the ndp is just carrying on the tradition of making poorly researched choices.
the feds, on the other hand, should know better than this - they should be fully aware that the full entrance of canada into the asian energy market will have the effect of reducing energy prices in asia rather than the effect of increasing energy profits in canada. and, they should be as sober and clear headed about this as they can be, as they are forming their strategies to try and exist between the two superpowers.
i don't think that this is the proper catalyst for a struggle with the americans. canada will gain nothing but scorn, and trudeau will end up very badly damaged in key constituencies.
he should accept the environmental review as a stalling tactic and wait for the dust to settle a little.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
if oil is trading at x dollars in country y due to z supply, what happens to x when you double or triple the supply to that country?
does x increase? decrease? stay the same?
because the policy seems to be based around the idea that x remains fixed, even after the introduction of substantial supply, with no comparable reaction in terms of demand, and this is so economically naive as to be embarrassing - but, really, par for the course in alberta. i don't want to make it seem like the pc or socred dynasties were brilliant economic managers, or anything. really, the ndp is just carrying on the tradition of making poorly researched choices.
the feds, on the other hand, should know better than this - they should be fully aware that the full entrance of canada into the asian energy market will have the effect of reducing energy prices in asia rather than the effect of increasing energy profits in canada. and, they should be as sober and clear headed about this as they can be, as they are forming their strategies to try and exist between the two superpowers.
i don't think that this is the proper catalyst for a struggle with the americans. canada will gain nothing but scorn, and trudeau will end up very badly damaged in key constituencies.
he should accept the environmental review as a stalling tactic and wait for the dust to settle a little.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
what i want to see as therapy is getting them all together in an aerobics dance class that runs through successive covers of eleanor rigby.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/07/uks-focus-on-loneliness-a-reminder-of-governments-true-purpose.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/07/uks-focus-on-loneliness-a-reminder-of-governments-true-purpose.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
see, you have to understand that the western mythology is that everything is the east's fault. it doesn't matter what it is, really. so, history becomes malleable to uphold the point - whatever is happening at this very instant is always the east's fault.
the country as a whole has given the western mythology a gift, in raising the dauphin to the status of prime minister, but it would have carried along the same way, regardless.
so, let's look at the actual history.
in a response to the uncertainty surrounding opec oil imports that occurred throughout the 70s, the liberal government of the time (headed by pierre trudeau) designed a plan for energy security that would provide the industrial base in eastern canada with cheap oil flowing in from western canada. this would be accomplished by a combination of state controlled industry and price and export controls, which would lead to a subsidized market for oil in eastern canada.
western canada found the situation most aggravating, as it claimed it could sell oil to the americans at a higher price. so, with the help of quebec, it managed to defeat the ruling liberals and install a conservative government that, while headed by a quebecker, had a western-first political strategy. through two successive mandates, the mulroney government did two major things to the canadian oil industry: it abolished the national energy program, which subsidized eastern canada with cheap alberta oil, and instead opened up a market in the united states....to provide the americans with subsidized oil.
and, alberta was actually quite content with this for some time.
so, the national energy program was meant to subsidize eastern canada with cheap energy from an expensive source. alberta rejected this, in favour of a plan (nafta) meant to subsidize the western united states with cheap energy from an expensive source. now, they are blaming trudeau's son for the fact that they are stuck subsidizing the americans with cheap oil from an expensive source, despite it being their own decision.
in the end, if the oil flows to china, alberta should prepare itself for the economic reality: it will be providing china with cheap energy from an expensive source. because it is the operation that is unprofitable, and no amount of pipelines will resolve that.
trudeau is actually even wrong on this point. the pipeline is backwards thinking and should be stopped. i just didn't expect to be able to see this play out politically - and this is no doubt due to the power invested in the small green party contingent in the legislature. i suspect that the bc ndp actually support the pipeline, they're just being forced to oppose it to prevent an election. but, even a short delay, politically, could help the court process sort the problems out before shovels hit the ground. so, this is an unexpectedly fortuitous balance of power in the legislature. bc voters voted wisely.
http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/jack-mintz-another-nep-fiasco-looms-as-westerners-suffer-for-trudeaus-energy-follies
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
the country as a whole has given the western mythology a gift, in raising the dauphin to the status of prime minister, but it would have carried along the same way, regardless.
so, let's look at the actual history.
in a response to the uncertainty surrounding opec oil imports that occurred throughout the 70s, the liberal government of the time (headed by pierre trudeau) designed a plan for energy security that would provide the industrial base in eastern canada with cheap oil flowing in from western canada. this would be accomplished by a combination of state controlled industry and price and export controls, which would lead to a subsidized market for oil in eastern canada.
western canada found the situation most aggravating, as it claimed it could sell oil to the americans at a higher price. so, with the help of quebec, it managed to defeat the ruling liberals and install a conservative government that, while headed by a quebecker, had a western-first political strategy. through two successive mandates, the mulroney government did two major things to the canadian oil industry: it abolished the national energy program, which subsidized eastern canada with cheap alberta oil, and instead opened up a market in the united states....to provide the americans with subsidized oil.
and, alberta was actually quite content with this for some time.
so, the national energy program was meant to subsidize eastern canada with cheap energy from an expensive source. alberta rejected this, in favour of a plan (nafta) meant to subsidize the western united states with cheap energy from an expensive source. now, they are blaming trudeau's son for the fact that they are stuck subsidizing the americans with cheap oil from an expensive source, despite it being their own decision.
in the end, if the oil flows to china, alberta should prepare itself for the economic reality: it will be providing china with cheap energy from an expensive source. because it is the operation that is unprofitable, and no amount of pipelines will resolve that.
trudeau is actually even wrong on this point. the pipeline is backwards thinking and should be stopped. i just didn't expect to be able to see this play out politically - and this is no doubt due to the power invested in the small green party contingent in the legislature. i suspect that the bc ndp actually support the pipeline, they're just being forced to oppose it to prevent an election. but, even a short delay, politically, could help the court process sort the problems out before shovels hit the ground. so, this is an unexpectedly fortuitous balance of power in the legislature. bc voters voted wisely.
http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/jack-mintz-another-nep-fiasco-looms-as-westerners-suffer-for-trudeaus-energy-follies
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
so, i'm distributing some of my archives, here, from 2015-2016.
i have limited archives going back to 2008, but i started at 2015 because i'm running through the master document anyways, and i wanted to get my thoughts about the long election season of 2015-2017 in. this space will eventually house documents going back as far as i can find them.
this archive currently begins right after the last american election. so, i'll be filling in my comments around that election, around the primaries that preceded it and around the canadian election, starting in about august, 2015.
i've currently worked up to march, 2015 on the composer's blog (which goes back to july, 2013) and on the political ranting space (which now starts in january, 2015). i will need to put everything in sync from march, 2015 to whenever i get finished, which is going to shift to backing up files on the blogs to the master document, once i get to mid-2016 for the music blog and late 2016 for the politics blog...
while there will be some reviews on the composer's blog, there will be a third blog for music reviews, put up at some undetermined point in the distant future. so, i'm skipping over this. i'm also skipping over long youtube conversations that i've had for right now, but will eventually integrate these conversations into the rant blog. i just want a skeleton up for now, and largely to focus on the election stuff.
it's going to be a while before i get the whole thing up, but the first two months of 2015 are available to scroll through over on the side of the page.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
i have limited archives going back to 2008, but i started at 2015 because i'm running through the master document anyways, and i wanted to get my thoughts about the long election season of 2015-2017 in. this space will eventually house documents going back as far as i can find them.
this archive currently begins right after the last american election. so, i'll be filling in my comments around that election, around the primaries that preceded it and around the canadian election, starting in about august, 2015.
i've currently worked up to march, 2015 on the composer's blog (which goes back to july, 2013) and on the political ranting space (which now starts in january, 2015). i will need to put everything in sync from march, 2015 to whenever i get finished, which is going to shift to backing up files on the blogs to the master document, once i get to mid-2016 for the music blog and late 2016 for the politics blog...
while there will be some reviews on the composer's blog, there will be a third blog for music reviews, put up at some undetermined point in the distant future. so, i'm skipping over this. i'm also skipping over long youtube conversations that i've had for right now, but will eventually integrate these conversations into the rant blog. i just want a skeleton up for now, and largely to focus on the election stuff.
it's going to be a while before i get the whole thing up, but the first two months of 2015 are available to scroll through over on the side of the page.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
well, of course the kurds want you to blame it on turkey.
but, if this group is al qaeda linked, the most likely means of the americans distributing these weapons, and especially considering the geopolitical realities at the moment, is via the saudis. the russians really took out the saudi positions in syria pretty badly; my guess is that there's probably quite a bit of hardware floating around, after that - all of it american made, and purchased with oil money.
this will not be the only saudi retaliation against russia; unfortunately, the russians should expect some bombings to take place. they should also expect the saudis to continue funding forces in the region, regardless of outcome or consequence, more or less for so long as the regime exists.
with the turks aligning with both russia and iran, expect the saudi-turk conflict to become the dominant proxy war in the region, and note that the dimensions have changed: this is no longer a struggle over who gets to take control of syria under american hegemony - who gets to be the regional power - but now a struggle between whether the area is remade in american or russian interests. this proxy war has merged with the cold war between the saudis and iran and is in the process of consuming it - if there is movement from iran against the saudis, it will be co-ordinated with the turks.
and, maybe the russians.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/02/russia-jet-downed-syria-idlib.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
but, if this group is al qaeda linked, the most likely means of the americans distributing these weapons, and especially considering the geopolitical realities at the moment, is via the saudis. the russians really took out the saudi positions in syria pretty badly; my guess is that there's probably quite a bit of hardware floating around, after that - all of it american made, and purchased with oil money.
this will not be the only saudi retaliation against russia; unfortunately, the russians should expect some bombings to take place. they should also expect the saudis to continue funding forces in the region, regardless of outcome or consequence, more or less for so long as the regime exists.
with the turks aligning with both russia and iran, expect the saudi-turk conflict to become the dominant proxy war in the region, and note that the dimensions have changed: this is no longer a struggle over who gets to take control of syria under american hegemony - who gets to be the regional power - but now a struggle between whether the area is remade in american or russian interests. this proxy war has merged with the cold war between the saudis and iran and is in the process of consuming it - if there is movement from iran against the saudis, it will be co-ordinated with the turks.
and, maybe the russians.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/02/russia-jet-downed-syria-idlib.html
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
"against turkey and iran."
strange words to hear, regardless of their veracity, from a nominal ally.
listen: so, is it the case that turkey has decided in favour of the persian empire over the byzantine empire, despite the inevitability of absorption? and could the kurds exist in a broader turko-persian alliance, perhaps without an explicit identity or sovereign borders? it would be strange to see a synthesis that didn't seek out a peace settlement, although the kurds must recognize that that peace settlement would have to reflect the changed reality of an integrated empire coming up around them. they would no longer be a wedge, but instead must be converted into a bridge.
"and, maybe the russians."
in the end, yeah. eventually.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-usa/erdogan-says-u-s-has-calculations-against-turkey-iran-russia-in-syria-idUSKBN1FQ1C5
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
strange words to hear, regardless of their veracity, from a nominal ally.
listen: so, is it the case that turkey has decided in favour of the persian empire over the byzantine empire, despite the inevitability of absorption? and could the kurds exist in a broader turko-persian alliance, perhaps without an explicit identity or sovereign borders? it would be strange to see a synthesis that didn't seek out a peace settlement, although the kurds must recognize that that peace settlement would have to reflect the changed reality of an integrated empire coming up around them. they would no longer be a wedge, but instead must be converted into a bridge.
"and, maybe the russians."
in the end, yeah. eventually.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-usa/erdogan-says-u-s-has-calculations-against-turkey-iran-russia-in-syria-idUSKBN1FQ1C5
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
up until a few days ago, i would have rejected the premise of the question. alas...
the reason is just simply that the nazis didn't have time to wipe the slavs out in numbers comparable to the jews. it's less that the nazis saw the jews and poles differently (although they did see them differently, it didn't make a difference in their prescription: there was a final solution for poles, they wanted both of them exterminated.) and more that there were just way, way more slavs to exterminate over a much larger space, so it required a longer term strategy to do so.
again: the estimates are that upwards of 25% of the population was killed. it's not 90%. but it's a start.
i apologize for the grim statements, but this is the actual historical truth: they got a quarter of the way into it and ultimately lost. in the end, they got outnumbered, even - and that is actually the truth of it, in the end, the russians just simply had more soldiers, and were consequently left standing after the slaughter.
it's not due to a difference in intent. it's not due to a difference in design. it's just a question of how far they got into their plans before they were ultimately stopped, by one of their prime targets for extermination.
if the nazis could manage to wipe out a quarter of the slavic population in what amounted to about three years, it stands to reason that if the war had gone on another 6 years or so, we'd be up to around 75% of the population. and, with the absolute destruction of the jews, the nazis would have focused squarely on the slavs, so it would have picked up in pace, as well. it could very well have reached close to 90%.
do not doubt the intentions. and do not forget the dead. call it an accident of history. but, understand what happened, please.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3efw1g/why_arent_slavs_normally_counted_as_victims_of/
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
the reason is just simply that the nazis didn't have time to wipe the slavs out in numbers comparable to the jews. it's less that the nazis saw the jews and poles differently (although they did see them differently, it didn't make a difference in their prescription: there was a final solution for poles, they wanted both of them exterminated.) and more that there were just way, way more slavs to exterminate over a much larger space, so it required a longer term strategy to do so.
again: the estimates are that upwards of 25% of the population was killed. it's not 90%. but it's a start.
i apologize for the grim statements, but this is the actual historical truth: they got a quarter of the way into it and ultimately lost. in the end, they got outnumbered, even - and that is actually the truth of it, in the end, the russians just simply had more soldiers, and were consequently left standing after the slaughter.
it's not due to a difference in intent. it's not due to a difference in design. it's just a question of how far they got into their plans before they were ultimately stopped, by one of their prime targets for extermination.
if the nazis could manage to wipe out a quarter of the slavic population in what amounted to about three years, it stands to reason that if the war had gone on another 6 years or so, we'd be up to around 75% of the population. and, with the absolute destruction of the jews, the nazis would have focused squarely on the slavs, so it would have picked up in pace, as well. it could very well have reached close to 90%.
do not doubt the intentions. and do not forget the dead. call it an accident of history. but, understand what happened, please.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3efw1g/why_arent_slavs_normally_counted_as_victims_of/
jagmeet singh must cut his beard
no, like, really, this is kind of serious.
the only part of the holocaust that i can see that is being denied right now is the systematic slaughter of three million ethnic poles, for the crime of speaking the wrong language, and perhaps of having distant ancestors in central asia.
three million dead ethnic poles was not the same percentage of dead poles as jews, but the genocide was no less actual, it was just a little bit slower. the jews were merely the first on the list. and, the poles were most definitely second on the list.
what the narrative is doing is denying the slavic extermination policy, and replacing it with an american concept of critical race theory, which suggests that the slavs had a choice to collaborate or not. but, this is the denial of actual history.
the nazis are thought to have killed between 20-25% of the population of eastern europe, and i think this is widely understood, but it's maybe less understood that these people were not casualties, not collateral damage, but intentionally targeted.
why did hitler invade russia?
c'mon. don't look it up. do you know the answer to this question: why did hitler invade russia? you should.
the answer was to exterminate the slavs, so the region could be repopulated with germans. so, the germans didn't invade carefully with the intent of building on the existing civilization. they destroyed everything: farmlands, cities, infrastructure. when the germans got to ukraine, the first thing they did was burn the crops, so that the ukrainians would starve to death, and the germans could build their pseudo-historical gothic settlements in the crimea (which were in truth never more than pirate bases, to raid the greek settlements from). and, they did starve to death. in large numbers. the german occupation of ukraine was one of the most brutal occupations of the war, with a full on genocide of the ukrainians set in motion...
it's mind-boggling, to me, that this could be a narrative, that we could seriously bring up the question of polish collaboration with the nazis. but, like i say, this is rooted in the problem i've been pointing out for years: crt is not a universal truth, and this is what happens when you try to generalize - you turn victims into oppressors, because they are white, and you don't understand.
...which is racist, yes.
this is the exact point that people are wrong about: they think in their mind that the poles had a choice to collaborate or not. this is obvious to them because the poles are white, and therefore in some way the same as the germans. once you establish that the poles had a choice, they can then be criticized for making the wrong choice.
but, the poles had no choice. the nazis had declared them inferior from the start; the extermination of the slavs was at the very crux of what nazism was. like jews, poles had their backgrounds checked for racial impurities and were rounded up by the secret police and put in work camps, mostly due to the help of ethnic germans, who were given positions of power over the inferior poles when they signed up to be a part of the volk. they were worked to exhaustion, and then cremated in the death camps.
if you want to talk about polish death camps, you should use the term in the same way that you use jewish death camps.
can we make sure we don't forget that the poles were the second largest victim of the holocaust, and might have been the largest (in fact, were the largest if you consider all the jews that died to also be poles) if the war had carried on a little longer?
yeeesh.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
the only part of the holocaust that i can see that is being denied right now is the systematic slaughter of three million ethnic poles, for the crime of speaking the wrong language, and perhaps of having distant ancestors in central asia.
three million dead ethnic poles was not the same percentage of dead poles as jews, but the genocide was no less actual, it was just a little bit slower. the jews were merely the first on the list. and, the poles were most definitely second on the list.
what the narrative is doing is denying the slavic extermination policy, and replacing it with an american concept of critical race theory, which suggests that the slavs had a choice to collaborate or not. but, this is the denial of actual history.
the nazis are thought to have killed between 20-25% of the population of eastern europe, and i think this is widely understood, but it's maybe less understood that these people were not casualties, not collateral damage, but intentionally targeted.
why did hitler invade russia?
c'mon. don't look it up. do you know the answer to this question: why did hitler invade russia? you should.
the answer was to exterminate the slavs, so the region could be repopulated with germans. so, the germans didn't invade carefully with the intent of building on the existing civilization. they destroyed everything: farmlands, cities, infrastructure. when the germans got to ukraine, the first thing they did was burn the crops, so that the ukrainians would starve to death, and the germans could build their pseudo-historical gothic settlements in the crimea (which were in truth never more than pirate bases, to raid the greek settlements from). and, they did starve to death. in large numbers. the german occupation of ukraine was one of the most brutal occupations of the war, with a full on genocide of the ukrainians set in motion...
it's mind-boggling, to me, that this could be a narrative, that we could seriously bring up the question of polish collaboration with the nazis. but, like i say, this is rooted in the problem i've been pointing out for years: crt is not a universal truth, and this is what happens when you try to generalize - you turn victims into oppressors, because they are white, and you don't understand.
...which is racist, yes.
this is the exact point that people are wrong about: they think in their mind that the poles had a choice to collaborate or not. this is obvious to them because the poles are white, and therefore in some way the same as the germans. once you establish that the poles had a choice, they can then be criticized for making the wrong choice.
but, the poles had no choice. the nazis had declared them inferior from the start; the extermination of the slavs was at the very crux of what nazism was. like jews, poles had their backgrounds checked for racial impurities and were rounded up by the secret police and put in work camps, mostly due to the help of ethnic germans, who were given positions of power over the inferior poles when they signed up to be a part of the volk. they were worked to exhaustion, and then cremated in the death camps.
if you want to talk about polish death camps, you should use the term in the same way that you use jewish death camps.
can we make sure we don't forget that the poles were the second largest victim of the holocaust, and might have been the largest (in fact, were the largest if you consider all the jews that died to also be poles) if the war had carried on a little longer?
yeeesh.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
Monday, February 5, 2018
this isn't obscure history, it's the kind of thing i remember learning about in the third grade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.
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