laws only function insofar as they are enforced.

and, systems only have as much power as the body politic allows them to have.

the individual remains paramount in enacting systemic change.

if you think that anti-social behaviour is truly in your self-interest, you haven't really thought it through very well.

the health care debate in the united states - and the broader services debate in the post-industrial world - is not about funding, it's about what kind of a society it is that we want to live in.

so, if you don't need taxes to fund services, why is it such a struggle to get services?

this isn't an argument about resources.

it's ideological.

services providers make more money when services are private. some people think services are better when they're more expensive and/or private. and, there are fascists out there that want you to work hard to pay for your health care.

reducing the issue to a debate about the budget is actually conceding the issue on two levels. first, it constrains the debate to an acceptable discourse in the neo-liberal paradigm - this is a debate that conservatives like to have, because it's about accounting, rather than about ideas. second, it concedes that services are expensive, and we have to make sacrifices to have them - despite the fact that government services are actually more efficient, and there's no reason we have to sacrifice to have them at all.

if you let them define the terms as an accounting debate, you're going to lose this argument. and, so, you might wonder if that's why you're being herded into it.

so, is there a magic money tree, then?

yes.

so, no - you can't print money to pay off the debt.

you print money to create the debt; you destroy money to pay off the debt.

the problem is really in the language we use. what we call "government debt" isn't actually debt in the way that people understand it, but when we use the language we use, we create a broad misunderstanding around it. i've brought this up repeatedly in the past - we should be talking about creating and destroying money, not borrowing and repaying debt. by using the language we use, all we're doing is confusing ourselves.

and, i don't see any particular reason why we should be concerned with the government crowding out private investment, whether it's a reasonable complaint, or not.

but, i think we should have more public ownership of things, and less private ownership of things, too.

because i'm a communist, not a neo-keynesian.

the correct answer to the question of "how do we pay for this?" is that the answer is incoherent - government doesn't pay for things, it funds them by creating as much money as it wants. you can't actually answer the question, because it doesn't actually make any sense - which is why so many people get stumped by it. rather, it's an opportunity to teach the questioner a little bit about how government creates and distributes money.

"how are those squirrels going to save enough red meat to last them through the winter?"

there is actually no reason that you can't cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy and pay for universal health care at the same time. the debt produced by the budget deficits that would result from creating this money would merely be an accounting note: we created this much money to pay for that.

"repaying this debt" would mean collecting the money that was created and destroying it. you're not repaying anybody, you're just destroying the money - which, nowadays, means little more than changing a number on a screen.

repaying government debt is quite literally the destruction of public wealth. broadly speaking, it's a bad thing that should be avoided and vigorously fought against.

there are other reasons why we might want to increase taxes on the rich, specifically at the subnational level. a state or provincial or municipal government has to borrow money like any other entity. we may have a moral problem with runaway inequality. and, there are reasons why we might want to prevent the money supply from expanding out of control.

but, the idea that you fund public spending with tax money is completely economically illiterate, and when you hear people state this - whether it's as an argument to reduce spending, or as an argument to increase taxes - you can safely deduce that they're either completely ignorant or completely dishonest.

as an aside, universal health care is actually a way to save money, not a way to waste it. but, for the sake of this particular argument, that's a cursory fact.

i am in favour of big government, myself.

huge government.

seems like democrats want to run on reducing the deficit, now.

yeah. that's what the country needs - less spending.

fuck.

it's an unavoidable consequence of a two-party system - you don't get any kind of dialectic, you just get this constant pull in one direction or the other. so, you end up with the democrats trying to position themselves to the right of the republicans.

i was concerned that trump would collapse the state by reducing the size of the government, which is the reason that the soviet union collapsed. thankfully, he's not actually doing that. is it what the democrats want?

vote democrat for perestroika?

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2017/01/also-in-long-run-ill-need-to-keep-eye.html

i don't believe in dominance or submission, i believe in equality.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2015/03/yeah_26.html

sam harris isn't even an atheist, so don't pull that strawman shit on me.

dude believes in "spirituality" and magic forces and other such specious, stupid stuff. he's basically a fucking buddhist yoga guru.

free your mind, man.

again: i don't want to bring this up.

i don't know why she's home all day. she could have cancer or something. no, really - i have no idea. all i know is that i can hear her up there - coughing - pretty much every day during normal school/work hours and that the smoke is correlated with him leaving.

so, i can still potentially assume he doesn't realize it. if that is the case, i want to wait for him to bring it up.

it's cold out. i have somewhere safe & warm. i'm focusing on suing the cops right now. this isn't going to be a serious issue for me until the spring at the earliest, and by then it might resolve itself.

i need to point something else out, though - it tends to get better when i complain about it, here. and, the other explanation that is consistent all around is that i'm not hearing a kid up there but a cop.

the kid seems to pretty much always be home. i dunno...

when he's home - and he's been home a lot lately - it comes right down, but when he's gone she seems to chain smoke.

obviously, i'd rather do something else besides sue him. but i don't want to live in a smokey environment - and i explicitly signed a non-smoking lease for that reason.

it seems like it's his daughter that is smoking.

i'm going to guess she's about 14, and she doesn't seem to go to school or anything.

again: it's very hard for me to understand why the property owner strung me along like this into thinking he doesn't smoke. there is clearly a smoker upstairs.

i was very clear that i wanted a non-smoking environment. what could he have possibly expected, besides conflict?

i'm just baffled.

so, now i'm going to have to figure out who is smoking, document it and sue them to get out of the lease. again.

why go through the expense? why waste my time and his? i don't get it.

if you're going to make me choose between well-meaning spiritualist dipshits that think they can bring the dinosaurs back with positive thinking and neo-augustinian conservative zealots that think there never were any dinosaurs in the first place, i'm going to go do something else, instead.

sorry.

a pox on you both.

the rejection of logic is not a philosophical position.

there is no epistemology that upholds intuition over empiricism, or feelings over facts.

if you are insisting on rejecting logic in favour of subjective personal experience, the position that you're taking is called anti-intellectualism, which is historically associated exclusively with fringe movements on the religious right.

and, that's why they taught you it - because they want you to be reliant on the church for guidance.

if you are a young person in america today, and you do not understand logic, and have even been taught to disdain it, you should try and take a step back from the situation and realize that this is not an accident. your disdain for logic was not implanted into you by marxists - marxists love logic - but by a school curriculum that was designed by conservatives in order to keep you distracted, ignorant, reliant and unable to organize. this attack on public schools was mirrored by a movement from the elite to pull their kids into private schools; it's a type of class warfare, and perhaps an expression of vulgar marxism, but, as such, the diametric opposite of actual marxism.

as adults, you have the ability to look into this, if you want. school funding was absolutely decimated in the 80s and 90s by this clinton-reagan axis that wanted you to be too stupid to be able to resist. the curriculum ejected anything to do with critical thinking because it realized that neo-liberalism doesn't hold up to much of it. it slashed science education, and brought in faith-based programs to compensate.

if you are a young american today, you are a product of this system, and your inability to deal with an idiot like ben shapiro is a consequence of the fact that the basic education you experienced was terrible - by design. i'm sorry to be the asshole that says it to you, but if he makes you feel stupid, then you are stupid.

but, that's not your fault - the system produced you this way.

what's important is that you realize it, and take steps to change it.

again: logic is supposed to be the weapon that liberals use to defeat conservatives with. you can learn this. if you want to.

i don't blame anybody.

i made that mistake. i take responsibility for it.

"this is my mistake, let me make it good."

and, i've been celibate - by choice - since.

briefly.

when i went into transition, i was a virgin. i met a girl that misinterpreted me as a rock star, and she convinced me to experiment before i went through with it. well, i was a virgin, and i'll admit that i saw some value in using my penis at least a couple of times before i got rid of it. so, i agreed to try it for a little while. i was still young.

the experiment was a horrible failure; rather than transition into a male role, i spent the whole time trying to devise a way to convince this girl to accept me as female. she never did, and i eventually had to walk away. but, it was a lot harder to go back into transition than i initially assumed it would be...

in hindsight, that was a mistake - i should not have done the experiment, i should have just pushed through with it. and, i absolutely regret it. unequivocally.

i never decided to reverse anything. rather, i made a decision to put my transition on hold in order to carry out an experiment, and then ran into financial problems when i tried to resume it.

and the experiment failed. i did not accept a male sexual role at all, but flailed against my inability to live up to the expectations of a female partner that was uninterested in accepting my femininity. and, the relationship was short-lived because i couldn't do it, and didn't want to do it.

the only thing i regret is not transitioning more quickly back when i had the chance.

i'll admit i'm stuck in the enlightenment and the ideals of the french revolution, but, in my mind, the left is supposed to uphold rigour and logic and empirical observation as it presents science as a revolutionary counter to the conservative dogma of religious tradition. specifically, the left - as a revolutionary force - is supposed to aggressively attack religion as conservative and backwards, and it is supposed to do so using the language of science.

i've been over this dozens - if not hundreds - of times at this point. everything is confused in the united states because the liberal party (the republicans) succumbed to nietzsche's predictions and collapsed into nihilism. that hasn't happened anywhere else in the world. but, it's created this kind of optical illusion where the traditional conservative party (the democrats) are misperceived as representing the left, and it has created this weird set of alliances that an enlightenment-era thinker has no option but to reject as incoherent.

so, how do you explain the premise of an empirically driven religious person like ben shapiro, that attempts to forcefully push reason and logic to uphold religious tradition? in any other place in the world, at any other stage in history, this would be a contradiction in terms - a complete absurdity. something like this:

and, do not take this too lightly - for this is the reality that a world full of ben shapiros will create; dark age arguments produce dark age thinking.

but, the flip side of this is the intuitively driven liberal, that attempts to argue against a conservative ideology and traditional values using appeals to personal opinion. this is no less of a contradiction, no less ridiculous, no less ahistorical. when you take away logic from liberals, you are denying them of the only weapon that they actually have in their fight against tradition, rendering them helpless fools that are easily pillaged by rampaging barbarians, like shapiro.

but, is all of this ahistorical absurdity not, in truth, quintessentially american? is this not a perfect idiosyncrasy? what has america ever cared for history, or for the rest of the world, anyways?

all i can do is try and hold up a mirror, and insist i can't take either side in their carrollian reality.

so, i just pulled down another 300 doc pages of hidden posts from 2016 and will need to insert them into the master document and uphold, overnight.

as always, that was more time consuming than i wanted, but the data is now pulled, and i'm still pushing forwards on it.

it was cold today and will be cold tomorrow so i wouldn't have gone anywhere, anyways. i'm considering even waiting a few things out and filing mid-month, so that i only have to leave the house once..

i repeat: the cia, itself, was the source of the leaked emails to assange.

source: deductive reasoning.

assange was being fed information by the deep state, and he didn't realize what he was doing.

he was utilized as a useful idiot.

what exactly has ben shapiro done in his life that should necessitate me learning who he is or caring what he thinks?

i actually don't have the slightest clue who ben shapiro is, and i don't suspect i'd find him very interesting to listen to at all.

sorry.

i mean...

the reason i live on disability and focus on art, rather than teach at a school or do research, is precisely because i didn't want to be an intellectual.

i believe in public education, and i think i have some obligation to help, but that stems from my politics; i spend a lot of time helping stupid people understand simple things, and i see it as a revolutionary act, but i don't spend any time at all arguing with people that have advanced degrees, and i don't want to do that, either.

i've never made any attempt to define myself as an intellectual, and i'm sorry if you've misinterpreted me as one.

i self-identify as a sound design artist.

i'm just not sure why they aren't arresting apple employees, too.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/peaceful-parents-happy-kids/201405/why-punishment-doesnt-teach-your-child-accountability

so, 100 people show up at the border and claim refugee status.

three are actual refugees. the rest are just americans looking for free health care.

what you want is a system that can quickly identify the legitimate refugees and process them appropriately and just as quickly deport the economic migrants. that is the actual problem we're dealing with: how to weed the worthy out and then quickly dispose of the worthless. and, how do you do that? well, you need better data collection, to start off with, and you need to be able to get it from the source countries. you need more judges. and, you need to be able to act quickly and decisively when you reject somebody.

so, what we need are ways to speed up the process, and the things outlined in the document should help us do that, if other countries facilitate it.

unfortunately, the country we're having the biggest problem with as a source - the united states - doesn't seem interested in participating. but, if the ideas get standardized, they should trickle down.

this is a political document, and the reaction to it in canada is political, with the pseudo-left embracing it (as consistent with multiculturalism) and the right rejecting it (because they're racist).

and, i actually think the broader pushback should be at the united nations. the un should realize that if they're going to produce political documents then it's going to produce political reactions. then, they scold people for misrepresenting the information. but, why do they waste so much time on these non-binding resolutions that just end up as dubious talking points, in the first place?

so, i don't see any use in opposing it or supporting it, because it's not of any consequence, either way - it's just a political statement.

that being said, what we need is an agreement that makes it easier to deport people by facilitating greater communication between existing states. we've created a situation where people expect to show up at a stranger's door and be sheltered and fed - and that is a problem that we need to find ways to effectively reverse. there has to be a more efficient way to facilitate the return of rejected migrants to their source countries, in order to minimize the amount of time that they're being kept in poor conditions, awaiting deportation. and, this might be a step in that direction.

https://www.un.org/pga/72/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2018/07/180713_Agreed-Outcome_Global-Compact-for-Migration.pdf

at the very end, she mentions indigenous title, and this is in fact a very limited specific situation where there is a good argument that indigenous sovereignty (if not title, per se) is a way out, because the area in question is outside of the douglas treaties.

first, the explanation in this video is rather bizarre; a head of state cannot just sign whatever they want, what they sign does remain subject to domestic law, and particularly insofar as it relates to the court's jurisdiction, in the domestic country. in canada, the way it's supposed to work is that the international agreement gets introduced into the house of commons, at which point it becomes domestic law, and subject to constitutional requirements. it is only after the agreement is "ratified" in the house that it gains any actual legality. so, if harper (or trudeau)were to sign an agreement, and the agreement were to be found to be unconstitutional, it would no longer be law in the areas under the jurisdiction of canada's law - the government can't just sign whatever it wants and then claim it's a contract and we're all on the hook for it. that's some kind of imperialist nineteenth century logic. harper wasn't an emperor; we don't even have an executive branch, in this country. nor is a country a corporation. he acts merely as a spokesperson, and can be overturned by the house, if it comes to it - even if that is only likely in a minority scenario.

fipa was indeed tabled in the house of commons, and is now a part of canadian law. so, if fipa were to be repealed in the house of commons, it is unclear what kind of legal recourse the chinese would have to claiming it's still valid. again: we don't have an executive branch in canada, so it was only law because the house ratified it, and if the house had not ratified it, it would not become law. so, can any country modify the terms of an agreement unilaterally? well, if they pass a law against it, they can - that's called democracy. and, while some quasi-judicial international body may order us to pay some kind of compensation for it, they can't force us to uphold something we've struck down in law, as that would be an infringement of sovereignty. democratic legitimacy trumps everything else, in the end.

so, that is one way to get rid of the fipa - to repeal it. we may be ordered to pay a fine, but we could do it. sure.

the other way out is to question if the government had jurisdiction to it, in the first place. indigenous title is not the correct legal idea, as it does not provide for real sovereignty, or the ability to override federal authority. but, the reality is that this area was neither conquered, nor was it settled, nor was it purchased. the actual reality is that the federal government really has no legitimate jurisdiction over much of british columbia at all, as it doesn't even fall under the area covered in the 1763 proclamation. the situation in much of british columbia, including most of vancouver, is, legally, best described as an occupation; it's not very different from the illegal israeli occupation of the west bank in terms of the rule of law, even if canadian soldiers aren't murdering people - or at least not every day, anyways.

so, if enough of the bc tribes could come together to make the argument, there may be some way to question the jurisdiction of the government over the area. this might be a s. 35 argument, but it wouldn't have to do with title. see, i'm being careful in what i'm typing, because the premise that s. 35 is even in force presupposes some kind of jurisdictional primacy in an area that was never ceded in any way at all. they may have to use s. 35 as a kind of trojan horse, but they'd essentially be making a kind of succession argument, which itself is linguistically imprecise, because they were never under the jurisdiction in the first place.

i believe this would be novel, and i'm not entirely certain how to do it. nor does this argument apply in most of canada, which was ceded in some way or another. there are also potential risks in requesting this much sovereignty - if they were to win it, they might wish they hadn't. but, there are some legal avenues here around the issue of sovereignty, in that particular area of british columbia, because there's not really a good argument that the federal government really has any jurisdiction, in the first place.

nafta was not a free trade agreement.

proof:

not
a
free
trade
agreement

qed.

but, the reason it wasn't a free trade agreement is because the tariffs had already been slowly broken down, starting with the gatt. what the mcdonald commission called for was a standardization agreement. what nafta really is is an investors' rights agreement.

so, nafta doesn't have anything to do with tariffs, and signing a new nafta isn't going to strengthen or loosen existing tariffs. that's the fundamental point the left tried to get across in the 80s - this has nothing to do with free trade. we need to separate these ideas in our heads.

the new nafta will not act as a counter-balance to rising american protectionist rhetoric, or the policy likely to come out of it.

and, how long did canada have to wait for a loosening of tariffs under the last round of american protectionism?

well, reciprocity ended in 1866, arguably as a consequence of the civil war - and this was arguably a push factor in confederation, to get an understanding of how important trade with the united states is for canada.

the gatt was 1947.

the auto pact was 1965.

the fta was 1988.

it could be a very long while before the situation reverses; we shouldn't assume this is in the short run. that is not evidence-based thinking, it is wishful projection.

is it unfair that we have to scramble to adjust and restructure as a consequence of decisions made in a different country?

is it undemocratic?

sure.

and, that's what the anti-nafta protesters (the elder trudeau, included) were trying to point out, in the 80s and 90s - this agreement will make us completely reliant on the united states, for better or worse. we initially experienced this for the better. now, what was predicted has come to fruition: our minimal economic sovereignty is forcing us to suffer the effects of reliance, when america goes through periods of mismanagement.

getting to the root cause means reconstructing a measure of that sovereignty, and that is going to require a canada-first agenda in building canadian owned industry that is focused primarily on the domestic market.

it's not a contradiction, it's strictly causal.

and, if they are going to break the rules, we need to, too.

trudeau had to deflect from ford's suggestion that the recent plant closures were due to carbon taxes, but there's no more logic in tying it to the tariffs - the cars were simply not selling well.

i am not a trade liberalization fundamentalist; i think there is a place for tariffs and quotas. my opposition to trump's threat to use tariffs was not ideological, but practical: i doubted that trump had the tactical understanding and cognitive ability to use tariffs intelligently. tariffs are hard. and, because the united states and canada have comparable labour standards, ricardo's arguments are applicable: reciprocity makes a lot of sense across the great lakes.

that said, tariffs against mexico and china are in both the american and the canadian national interest. so, as it was previously, the situation is essentially a mess.

but, we need to be realistic.

donald trump is not going to remove the tariffs.

do we have leverage in congress? it's not likely - the democrats tend to be more protectionist at the congressional level, and they're ultimately accountable to voters that are even less sophisticated than trump is.

these tariffs will probably be there for at least six more years, and trudeau standing there and promising he'll have them lifted is equivalent to a union boss standing over a closed factory and promising to bring the jobs back. it's delusional.

rather than resist change and fight to turn back the clocks, canada has to adapt to the new reality, which is going to require federal dollars to build canadian industry that is focused on domestic consumption first, and new markets second.

and, this is not terrible, as it will make us more competitive and our industries more secure, when the next president (or the president after that) eliminates the tariffs.

the prime minister should be looking forwards, not backwards. but, this is consistent with him, isn't it?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tariffs-canada-us-trudeau-trump-congress-1.4938329

so, dubya is now orphaned.

just like uncounted thousands of children in iraq.

that's a shame.

you don't really believe this, do you?

if you really wanted to know what would happen if you put marshmallows in a vacuum, you would eject conan* o'brien's head into space.

*ted kennedy is dead, so conan ipso facto becomes the punchline of all of his own jokes.

you can't underestimate how toxic the stuff is.

https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/yw57pb/smoke-one-cigarette-a-day

https://www.ronitbaras.com/emotional-intelligence/personal-development/bully-parents/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/peaceful-parenting/201103/calling-all-parents-stop-bullying-start-teaching

we need to stop coddling smokers.

and, demeaning somebody for blowing toxic chemicals into your home is not "bullying" somebody, it's a form of self-defense - the bully is the person that refuses to refrain from engaging in behaviour that is seriously damaging to your health, despite repeated demands and explanations.

what i did was correct - both legally and morally. and, while i acknowledge that our society's values around second-hand smoke are currently disappointingly backwards, i am confident that i will be exonerated by history. i had no choice but to take action to protect myself from behaviour that was seriously damaging to my physical, mental and emotional health.

there is simply no excuse to smoke when you're asked not to, and any tactic imaginable is justifiable to protect the only meaningful thing we own, which is our health.

this is child abuse, and the man should be charged for it. worse, what it teaches this child is that bullying people is ok. and, then you wonder why she acts out.

this kind of "parenting: is the cause of this sort of behaviour, not a solution to it.

i mean, with a dad like this, it's easy to see why the kid treats others with a lack of respect, isn't it? that's exactly what she's been taught to do - and exactly what she's being taught to do, here.

please raise your voice to help put this child in a foster home where this asshole can no longer harm her.

notice anything about this picture?

rachel looks a little lonely.

it's ok - she'll be gone soon, too. replacement: fat white male.

canada: where fat, white men make all the decisions.*

*note that one of the fat, white men (the one in charge of roughly half of the population) didn't want to participate because the agenda didn't cater strongly enough to the interests of fat, white men. namely, i believe that the itinerary did not include a barbeque.

the frustrating thing is that, as we import american views towards guns, we also seem to be importing an american political spectrum around gun control, and that's something that should be resisted as strongly as anything else.

in the united states, you get the choice between a conservative party (the democrats) and a nihilist party (the republicans). the republicans are, of course, the historical american liberal party - not the democrats. but, in some kind of bizarre ode to nietszche, american liberalism collapsed into depravity in the middle part of the last century, leaving americans with this mirage that the democrats are some kind of liberal party, which has no basis in reality, not in the past and not today. so, when the democrats push what it is actually a right-wing approach to gun control, americans have nothing to contrast it with besides the pro-nra nihilism of the republican party, which of course grew out of the constitutional right to bear arms - a very liberal idea.

in canada, we're supposed to have a broader spectrum. liberals have historically supported things like gun registries (which was the original response to the montreal massacre), while pushing back against strict gun control - which is, by definition, illiberal. and, we're supposed to have a party on the left that argues for things like social policies and poverty reduction - that understands the need to get to root causes. that's all in flux, right now.

so, let's recall.

1) leftists seek to get at the root causes of crime. and, because most leftists are social liberals, they also reject authoritarian social policies. so, being a leftist means that you want to address gun violence by funding social programs, and fighting to eradicate poverty and social exclusion. the desired end point is a society where nobody wants a gun, anyways. that's the left. that's where i am. and, if you want people to voluntarily give their guns away because they just don't want them any more, that's where you are, too.

2) liberals uphold the capitalist status quo, but seek the establishment of regulatory bodies to curb what they consider to be destructive behaviour. so, they believe in the stock market - they just want to police it. and, they believe in corporate governance - they just want to regulate it. likewise, liberals support gun ownership, but want to pass what they see as reasonable restrictions to curb destructive behaviour. this is where the liberal party used to sit. so, if you find yourself in favour of gun rights, but want regulations around it, you're a liberal.

3) conservatives believe in law and order through the establishment of authoritarian laws, and the enforcement of hierarchical systems of control - and not just via law enforcement, but via religion and the media and etc. they want a system that operates from the top down. they believe in deterrence, in punishment, in retribution - in harsh justice. generally, they believe in god, and that the government acts on the command of god. a real conservative would argue that only the police should have guns, because that is their correct place in the hierarchy - everything in it's right place. regular people should only be given guns when they are conscripted for war time. so, a conservative would argue for very strict gun control, because it believes in a strictly ordered system. and, if that is what you want, you are a conservative.

4) then, there are the nihilists and relativists that just don't give a fuck. everything has a price. can i make money from guns? then i support guns! but, can i make more from gun control? then i support gun control. whatever. the modern republican party has darker undertones to it, but they ultimately have no actual political position on guns besides that which is most profitable to them. somebody like donald trump has no real position on this topic, other than the one that is most profitable in the short term.

i know that americans want to see this in black and white, and that's a problem. we've historically been better than that. and, we should be focusing more on getting americans to see the wider picture, not collapsing into their broken binary.

if we end up with the same choice between conservatism and nihilism/relativism, we will be on the path to becoming them - a tragedy we must avoid.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/vbj738/danforthshooting-toronto-wants-more-gun-control-will-it-work

what we should strive towards is a society where people don't want to own guns, not one where they're not allowed to.

listen.

i'm a libertarian/socialist - i don't like banning things. i like social programs, cultural revolutions, agit prop, community organizing, etc. and, i participated in english class, so i like it when people explain their answers, and back up their arguments. so, when your kid does something wrong, do you explain why it's wrong and why they shouldn't do it, or do you just order them not to "because"? that is the difference between a left-wing approach to guns, which gets to root causes and tries to alter attitudes and behaviours, and a right-wing approach to guns, which just orders you around - ironically, by gun point.

so, as a leftist, i have ideological problems with this authoritarian idea of banning anything at all.that's not liberalism. liberals don't ban things. conservatives ban things.

but, it's an empirical question as to whether it works or not, and it doesn't.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-control-was-the-answer-my-research-told-me-otherwise/2017/10/03/d33edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html

again: i have little opposition to this, but don't be surprised when it doesn't actually work.

you don't solve problems by passing decrees, you need to get to root causes. and, the root cause here is a creeping americanization in our culture that is increasingly glorifying gun use.

i mean, we just legalized marijuana because we realized that banning it doesn't work in reducing use, you need to get to root causes, instead. now, they want to ban guns? there's an incoherence in policy underlying this.

if you want to actually solve this problem - rather than work up your political base - you take a data-driven approach, not get trigger happy on authoritarian policies that don't work.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/12/06/trudeau-says-government-will-limit-access-to-handguns-assault-weapons-on-anniversary-of-ecole-polytechnique-shooting.html

so, i'll be planning to pick this back up on sunday and file the following things on monday or tuesday.

- civil case
- human rights complaint
- a court motion seeking the release of the original time-stamped document, as well as any local and network computer records documenting access of it locally or remotely. i will need to cite my previous statements as evidence that the audio was doctored and push the point as aggressively as possible (as i cannot allow them to present the audio as evidence that my statements are untrustworthy). if i cannot recover the original audio, i must create enough uncertainty around the sanctity of the altered audio to have it inadmissible. we'll see how good they are at this. they weren't very good at editing what i got, so i think this is an amateur job...

i'll need to make some calls in the morning, too.

right now, i'm going to get up and eat and do laundry.

yeah.

i need to keep pushing for the release, but i should assume, in the end, that i end up more likely to prove that the files have been altered - and are not useful for future court purposes - than i am to actual recover any original files.

see, now i have a problem i have to push to the end point that i can push it - i have stated that certain things happened in the court room, then purchased a transcript and received audio in order to demonstrate it, only to have it suggest otherwise. i claim i'm being given altered audio; it must be assumed that the transcriptionist was given the same thing. but, on it's face, this harms my credibility as a witness. and, it doesn't help that there are - unfounded - accusations of mental illness.

if they're going to change the audio, they're going to change the file stamps, and there's hacks to do it, so that's not even really what i'm looking for. i'm going to be looking for local computer logs - or network traffic, potentially. i don' know how or where this data is stored, and am probably unlikely to get access to that information, directly. but, if i show up in a court and make these accusations, they're going to have to take me seriously - and i'm going to have little choice but to push the point fairly aggressively, to maintain my own credibility.

this is why you shouldn't lie, kids.

should i be posting this here? well, i may be giving them a heads up, but i think i'm better off documenting the point as best i can than i am holding my cards closely. i can make arguments for future purposes, but, in the end, i have little control over decisions made by the court, so there's not a lot of use in hiding my tactics - i will need to expose any plan before i can carry through with it. rather, i'm an advocate of open source software, and trust that the truth comes out in the end, if the process is as transparent as possible.

ok.

so, if i'm going to have to spend the next several months prying the information away from the judge, i'm going to file the civil case, first. that's the big money, anyways.

hey, that's what the city asked for...it's what the city's got...

and, i may have to just go ahead with the human rights complaint, regardless.

this isn't about the prosecutor. i don't care about the prosecutor, and i'm not attacking the court for discrimination. i think the court, itself, actually dealt with the situation well, and i'm disappointed that it's participating in a cover-up. they were never the target, here.

what i want are the statements coming from the complainant, as they were read to me by the prosecutor. i'm going after the audio because it's the source i know. and, that entire section of the audio has been completely erased. gone. kaput. if they're going to wipe the audio, i'm not going to get it in a foia...

it was a smoking gun. and, i'm going to continue to fight for it. but, it's not totally necessary to move the case forwards.

i'm currently pretty tired, so i'm going to take a nap. i'm going to clean a little, shower. i'm going to plan to put this all together next week.

the reality is that i have a very good argument that something is very wrong - i have multiple recollections close to the source, and can point to several things that i remember completely differently. releasing the audio on it's own doesn't help, when it's full of obvious splices and doesn't have a time stamp. if they were going to lie to me in the first place, right? it's still the same basic point - you have to something to hide or you don't.

but, this is why i'm not a lawyer - the system is corrupt to the core, and i didn't want anything to do with it.

yeah, i've got this opened up in cool edit and...

they picked the wrong person to try something like this on.

there's several obvious splices.

there's also a very strange false statement in the second recording that i do not remember and seems designed to throw a listener off.

what i'm going to need to do is carefully go through the audio and document things that i remember differently, at the specific points that i remember them differently - and use that as a reason to have the original files released.

it's not one or two things. it's a lot of things. and, as crazy as it sounds, it almost seems as though the scene was reconstructed - although i should point out that anybody with access to the files also has access to an essentially unlimited sample library of both the justice and all of the representatives speaking.

as of right now, i cannot know if the justice is aware of the release or not.

monday, probably.

what i want to see is an audio file with a date stamped to sept 25, 2018.

ok, so i've got the audio, and i'm still analyzing it, but i'm convinced it's been edited. people have imperfect memories, but there's certain things you remember clearly.

i initially only asked for the audio of the release/hearing, but they seemed insistent on giving me the audio of the day the charges were dropped, as well, so i bit. see, and the weird thing is that they seem to have edited the second day, as well, and in a way that is much more obvious - they seem to have cut an entire segment out of the audio, and i suspect that they even recorded over a part of it, then tried to hide the cut with an out of place gavel hit. while my memory is not aligning well with the audio for the first day, i can't pull out any obvious editing; the second day is a much less professional job, that could be potentially incriminating.

the thing is that i don't even know why they'd do that, but it suggests a deeper level of complicity, nonetheless.

they released it in the form of a pdf document, and you're supposed to listen to little segments of it, along with the court notes - but i was able to pull a continuous recording out of the temp files. this continuous recording is in wma. but, the documents indicate that the audio was stored in dcr format, which is apparently shockwave audio. i wouldn't imagine that the audio saves directly to dcr...

so, it seems like i'm going to have to go back and make a formal motion for the actual audio. i'm just not sure if i should call the rcmp or not, first.

the tory media is agitating for a scrap.

but, the reality is that quebeckers made an informed choice in electing this government, which is now carrying out a democratic mandate to reduce migration; this is the popular will. for trudeau to come out swinging would be horribly tone deaf, and no doubt just be shooting himself in the foot.

there are legal questions of jurisdiction under the constitution, as well as rights to be upheld. these arguments are best had in a court of law - and let us all agree, at least, that the rule of law should be upheld.

but, immigration is a public policy question and subject to the sovereign will, and that must be respected.

we might be better off trying to understand the root causes - policy failures- that produced the backlash in order to adjust, rather than aimlessly flail against a clear mandate.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebec-announces-reduced-immigration-targets-fuelling-tensions-with/

i remember being struck by this image when i first purchased this record, some time in the mid 90s.



athena is dead and buried.

the future is empirical.

so, i have removed all of the dtk posts that i found hidden away, up until mid-2016, which added another 100 pages to the master document.

i will need to clear out the hidden posts from the vlog profile, next - and that should be another couple of hundred pages, too.

i am tentatively going to be able to pick up the audio tomorrow afternoon, which should hopefully allow me to file the human rights complaint by the end of the week. i have still yet to see any documents, so we'll have to see what happens. i'm skeptical, and fully willing to file if i have to.

for now, it's the end of the day, and time to sleep.

https://mic.com/articles/191530/please-dont-come-to-africa-and-build-a-school-what-i-learned-from-a-unicef-relief-mission-in-chad#.FhpdiCA5t

africans should be building and administering their own schools.

and, it would be gracious for canada to lend them some money at a low interest rate - including loans to buy our lumber, if requested.

the spectrum is terrible.

but, that was the problem in the first place.

what sane person would say "please tax me and send my money to the other side of the world"?

that's nuts. it's bad enough that the managers are expropriating the labour, now the government wants to redirect money from my pension and my health care to people i'll never even meet?

"but, that's small minded and..."

yeah, it's easy to say that when you were born into a fortune. if you were born with nothing, and have to work 20 hours a day to pay your mortgage, you might be a little less happy about the premise. and, no, you're not going to win an argument about an accounting identity. and, no it doesn't matter that it's not very much. and, yes these are the people you have to convince to vote for you.

again: i just don't understand why i have to point it out. even if he's going to live in a bubble, and i suppose it's unavoidable, this is the kind of thing that you pay people to tell you.

and, do we not have enough evidence in the last five years that somebody should be telling him that?

don't misunderstand me: i'd like to ship trudeau to mars. or at least california. but, this guy running the conservatives is a fringe idiot, and there's consequently not another option, until the ndp can get it's act together, or the ndp pushes a caucus revolt.

there's a reason that recent liberal governments have quietly let the foreign aid budget fall - it's not worth the political liability.

people care about the communities they live in - what they see in front of them, the poverty they experience.

they don't care about people in distant countries that they'll never meet, interact with or have to walk by on the way to work.

and, i don't know why this is difficult to get your head around; it's common sense.

you think spending money will make you more popular?

you're probably right. sadly.

but, you need to spend it here, not on the other side of the world.

and, if you survive this election, it is going to be solely due to the ndp's utter incompetence.

and, that's still not entirely clear. i don't think singh is electable. but, if the ndp can find a way to throw his upper class ass out of the party and put somebody pushing a left-populist message in place - a canadian bernie sanders - trudeau is in serious trouble.

and, he knows that, too.

bono can't vote for you, justin.

really.

i mean, do you want to lose an election over foreign aid?

really?

dumbass.

it's not a secret, ok.

the reason the government is making a big deal about foreign aid is because it thinks it's a vote winner. they don't care about kids in africa. at all. if they did, they'd go after the mining companies. they're operating on this warped, tory concept of canada as this christian country that's all about foreign missionary work - and that has never been anything but absolute bullshit.

if they're doing something because they think it's popular, and then they find out they're wrong, why wouldn't they reverse themselves on it? isn't that the rational, self-interested thing to do?

it's the stubbornness that i can't get my head around.

the old tory elite in this country needs to get it through their thick fucking heads.

this is not a christian country - this is a secular democracy.

canadians are not mulroney conservatives - they're pearsonian liberals.

and, these policies are unpopular.

and, what is the purpose of pretending otherwise? what is the use of tarring the policies of previous liberal governments as "populist", while pushing this fake plastic idiot in front of us, with a giant L on his forehead, and trying to trick us into thinking he's some kind of "progressive", when everybody with eyes and ears can see and hear that he represents the tory elite, and the upper class status quo?

every other country in the industrialized world has rejected these policies. by continuing to hold to them, we are simply asserting our own backwardsness.

we're the country that is holding to the past; we're the society that is refusing to change. it is trudeau that represents the forces of stagnation, here.

i think the liberals are going to get annihilated in the next election if they don't course correct. if trudeau wants to be mulroney 2.0, he's going to suffer the same fate.

and, the thing i can't figure out is what the point of it is, other than simple stubbornness.

and, i'll extend the scorn - trevor noah should be ashamed of himself for giving the kind of neo-liberal pinkwashing pushed by trudeau the time of day, and providing him a platform to push his phony messaging with.

he should have told the prime minister to fuck off.

i am a left-wing liberal, and i have a problem with paternalistic aid policies that piss away money into the black hole of african misery, while canadians and refugees starve and freeze together before our eyes on the streets.

this is not a coherent aid strategy - it is a cynical pr move. and, the prime minister should be called out for it.

from the left.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2018/12/04/conservatives-should-at-least-get-their-facts-right-when-they-attack-justin-trudeau.html

i'm all the way through 2014, now.

i know this is brutal, but i'm making progress.

the idea that cutting oil production in alberta will increase the price of canadian oil in american markets, specifically, is so economically backwards that it could have only come from a former harper government cabinet minister.

it's starting to look like rachel notley wants to run for prime minister. but, will the conservative party accept her nomination?

well, they're judge & jury, so why not make them executioner, too? if your name ends up on this list, they very well might be...

this is cruel & unusual punishment, at least until these people are convicted. you're supposed to be presumed innocent in this country.

they shouldn't be doing this, and should face legal action for doing so.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/ontario-police-force-begins-naming-shaming-accused-impaired-drivers-1.4203045

http://www.cwp-csp.ca/poverty/just-the-facts/

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/torontos-homeless-death-crisis-is-a-social-catastrophe

do canadians support foreign aid?

it's an empirical question, granted.

but, i think that the answer to the question relies on the premises underlying it. broadly speaking, i think the assumption underlying the idea of foreign aid is that canada is a wealthy country, and that it should share it's surplus of wealth with everybody else. whether canadians support foreign aid or not is going to largely depend on whether they think that this assumption is true or not.

see, this is also an empirical question, and what i see around me casts a lot of doubt on it. the reality is that our indigenous people are as impoverished as anybody else in the world. we have a very serious and rapidly growing homeless problem in our cities, both large and small. people are literally dying on the streets - from addiction, from exposure, from violence.

what i don't think canadians agree with is this kind of dogmatic, neo-liberal view that people born into oecd countries had their chance and if they fail then it's their own fault, so public funds should be extended to people that don't have the same opportunities. that is an elitist position that is not going to get much traction with many regular people, at all - primarily because we can mostly see through the premise. you'd have to be pretty sheltered to grow up in an advanced capitalist society, live through the coercive effects of market tyranny and class dominance and somehow conclude that the people that end up on the bottom somehow deserve it. you will no doubt find these kinds of people, but they're called nazis and are pretty rare outside of the upper echelons of power. capitalism produces a mass underclass; it's not some accident, it's by design. escaping that is a consequence of birthright and dumb luck.

what i think is relatively obvious is that any politician seeking to gain broader popular appeal by sending money out of the country is living in a kind of delusional bubble; it shouldn't be hard to understand why canadians are going to want to spend canadian tax dollars in canada, at least until we can solve the myriad of social problems in front of us.

i don't want to suggest that i think it's some kind of choice, because i don''t.

but, canada's moral obligations when it comes to infrastructure development are not in africa but in our own reserves. canada has absolutely no moral obligation to contribute to african infrastructure development whatsoever, nor does it owe africa reparations - our reparations belong to our indigenous groups. in a certain sense, it's a kind of colonialism and resource extraction, as we are continuing to export the country's wealth to people that have no legitimate claim to it.

nor is it in our self-interest to build schools for arab girls in north africa - which, i might add, is actually a very wealthy part of the world.

in a perfect world, that money would be coming from arab governments. we would consequently be better off lobbying them to set up their own systems, or otherwise funding political movements that have the intention to work towards democratic self-sufficiency.

put another way: i'd rather build school boards than build schools.

so, what to do today, then?

i did my caulking this morning, and have a mild headache from it. i'm going to sleep for a few hours and get back to what i was doing, this evening.

the windows in here are poorly insulated, so i may have to get some of that plastic insulation. for now, i think i've succeeded in blocking off the actual drafts, which should keep the outside air away, at least.

well, i got them to admit the situation is "unusual".

apparently, she hasn't decided whether she wants to release the audio or not. i've presented no arguments to her, and am not clear what she's deliberating on, as a result.

they may be trying to prevent me from filing an order in order to avoid the paper trail, but that's not going to work. it's a messy snow/rain mix today, and will be cold in the morning, so they can expect me there tomorrow afternoon to file, if i don't get a response.

and, of course, if they deny without paper work, they can expect me to file, to get the documents required to appeal.

again: this is a foia. this is routine. and, what they're doing is consequently bullshit.

listen - in canada's constitution, religious freedom is listed as a type of speech right, which is very different than the rule in the united states, and there was no guarantee it was going to end up in there at all.

the liberals - chretien & trudeau - used it as a kind of bargaining chip. there was a lengthy debate about it, and it only end up in there after the fact, as a concession.

it was always an afterthought, and we could have very well ended up with a constitution that didn't mention it.

so, when i state that i wish it wasn't in there, that's not a position that is in any way divorced from recent canadian history.

well, no - they should take the crucifix down, too.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/zm9kkx/quebecs-incoming-premier-defends-banning-religious-symbols-but-leaving-cross-up

it's the people that don't accept it that should have been fired.

they should win a payout, and should use it to resettle.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-couple-alleges-discrimination-at-pincher-creek-emergency-services-1.4924224

my position on the hijab/niqab in the 2015 election was that the issue was unimportant, and nobody should care if somebody wants to wear a scarf to a ceremony or not. i've broadly held to the view that i don't believe in the fashion police, and that, while i do interpret the garments as oppressive, i am in favour of defeating religion by discourse rather than passing laws against it.

passing laws against religion tends to backfire; if you sincerely seek to abolish it, it is more tactical to take a different approach.

nowhere have i argued in favour of "religious freedom", and have rather argued rather explicitly against it - i would support a constitutional amendment to remove the concept altogether. my argument is that religion is inherently oppressive, and that "religious freedom" is consequently a contradiction in terms - akin to arguing for legalized slavery, under the argument that we should be free to sell our selves into bondage, if we decide to.

arguing in favour of progress and the increasing liberalization of society means arguing against religion at every turn, and most importantly against the flawed concept of religious identity. we are individuals - we are not defined by our tribe, or by the faith of the other members of our tribe.

so, those are my biases - i despise all religion and want it annihilated, but i understand the tactical error of attempting to do so with force, and i reject the concept of "religious freedom" as a logically incoherent blight on our system of laws, and on our constitutional framework that i would very much like to see removed.

put into this context, what does it mean to display a religious symbol in the specific situation of a government workplace?

well, i would reject the premise that an individual has some kind of inherent right to it as a part of some kind of group identity - fully realizing that the supreme court is unlikely to agree with me. yet, i would consider it draconian to install a fashion police. to me, these things kind of cancel each other out, and i consequently don't really want to approach the issue on this basis - i don't really have an answer that i'm willing to put any sort of conviction towards. i understand what the constitution says on this point, but i don't really like it, and i'd like to see it changed.

i'd rather ask you to consider a comparison to displaying the ten commandments in the courthouse, which i think is a more relevant precedent. to my knowledge, that isn't something that has really come up in canada - i don't think we have the kind of jurisprudence around the topic that exists in the deep south. i could be wrong. but, as a secularist and an atheist, i'm essentially confronted with the same problem when i walk up to a counter and speak with a person wearing a hijab as i am when i walk into a court room with the ten commandments hanging on the wall.

now, as it happens to be, i don't really care enough to make an issue of it. i'll admit that i don't really like dealing with cashiers or counter-people with hijabs, but there's lots of thing i don't like, and i don't go out and agitate for laws to be written.

but, i don't, personally, have any particular objection to telling people that if they have to display a religious symbol at work then they should seek employment in the private sector.

i don't expect s. (1) arguments to be successful in saving the law.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-religious-symbols-teacher-crop-poll-1.4921276

so, the first thing that needs to happen after singh loses a leadership review is that a rule needs to be passed that says you can't run for leader of the party unless you have a seat in parliament...

everybody knows he stole the leadership. and, while it is a sad reflection of the general disinterest in the federal ndp, the party should sue him for damages for what he did.

but, i have a tip if he wants to win the riding...

shave the beard.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/byelections-jagmeet-singh-liberals-1.4915391

ok, so i pulled another 100 pages (word doc pages) of comments down from youtube, that i didn't even know were there.

i think that clears me out to the end of 2014, but i think there are comments that are still hidden, too, so i don't know.

i need to eat and clean and stuff, and we'll have to see if i get back to it tonight or not.

we will know we're healing and moving forward as a society when hip-hop is broadly seen as gauche and passe and stupid.

my little creative space is about layering sounds into alien soundscapes for serious headphone listening on high grade equipment - it isn't pop music, it isn't trying to be pop music and it probably never will be.

i want to hear new viable forms of pop music, and i want to be inspired by them. but, it's not what i want to create, myself.

i'm making progress in what i'm doing. there should be some posts coming up, soon.

i will be the first person to acknowledge that the entire art form of music is in a terrible rut, and that it may not survive the onslaught of neo-liberalism - we may lose music as an art form altogether

but, hip-hop is a symptom of this and not a solution to it.

i would like to look at something past the rock era, and the obvious answer is in techno, but there's not a lot happening there, either - techno, itself, seems to have peaked in the 90s.

we're in a bad state. yeah.

hip hop's a reflection of it, not a path out of it.

i mean, do you really want me to analyze this shit as literature?

that's not even fair.

hip hop isn't music - it's some kind of half-literate "poetry", coming from a class and race perspective that i have no shared experiences with. so, it doesn't work on either level for me - if i want to read something, i'll pick something at a higher level, and if i want some music, it just doesn't fit the definition.

hip-hop is really designed to get ideas across to people that don't or can't read.

so, yes - i'm always going to seek some kind of new music. but, it has to be music.

and, i'm never going to care about hip-hop.

george hw bush was one of the most evil human beings that our species has ever produced.

i wish there was a hell for him to rot in.

that is all.

is ollie still kicking, or did he get bushwacked in the end?

these delusional obituaries make me fucking sick.

it's not the interest rates, it's the easing. until they go back to easing, the long term direction is going to be downwards.

i must have eaten something that was rotten or something, because i've been unable to stay awake since thursday afternoon. i guess i'll give it another shot.

i need to find a way to increase the dosage on my testosterone suppressors, as i've been suffering through some spikes, and don't like it. i've just been double dosing in response. the strain on my liver may be contributing to the tiredness.

and, i need to cauk the windows up, as the pollution outside is very gross, and may be contributing to my inability to stay awake, too.

otherwise, i'm going to try to get a little bit of work done today.

i'll need to call the courthouse on monday to see if the justice is sitting or not. but, it seems like i'm going to have to go to the courthouse and make the accusations, on the record, to her face.

it's very simple: if the court has something to hide, they refuse to release the audio. otherwise, they release the audio in the name of transparency. i should have access to this audio under a basic foia under the privacy act. there's not another argument: they have something to hide and don't want me to see it, or they don't and want to prove that they don't.

nor can they get out of this by getting the justice to verify the transcript, although i think they might try. what that does is incriminate the justice. the transcript is wrong, and if the justice claims otherwise, that proves she's in on it.

we can do this the easy way or the hard way, kind of thing. but, the audio will get released, eventually.

i meant to go in yesterday, but i became very tired in the afternoon and have been sleeping for most of the last 20 hours. and, i'm about to go back to sleep....

i called in today trying to find the local administrative justice of the peace, and the person on the phone told me things that i don't think are true. what do you do when people insist on lying to your face because they think they can get away with it?

there's this culture that exists at the court house that treats self-represented parties as second-class applicants that don't know what they're doing. and, i'm learning that this is systemic - they'll just keep spinning me around in circles, because they think they can.

so, i'm expecting that they're just going to tell me it was denied without any kind of paper trail and think they can get away with that. but, if i don't get a court order, i'm just going to file the appeal without one - and they'll have to answer for their behaviour in appeals court, or to the rcmp.

they said she's away this week. so, that means she'll be in next week, and i'll present myself to the court if i have to - if merely to get the documents required for an appeal.

this is a slush fund and the opposition should be focusing on auditing it, as there's a good opportunity here to catch some conservative ministers with their hands in the cookie jar.

the question as to whether it will be effective or not does not dignify a response.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-climate-change-plan-ontario-1.4922475

Statement of Disagreement For GO# WI 2014-45185

    I must once again state that this file ought to be destroyed, as this should not have happened. I am more confident that I will be able to destroy this file, but I realize that it might take some time, so I would like to amend this rebuttal to the file until I can succeed in having it removed from my record.

    As with the other files on my record, everything about this is ridiculous. In order to get to a proper understanding of how this file was created, one first needs to have a discussion about my mother, and it is difficult to know where to start on that one...

    I do not have a meaningful relationship with my mother, and I never have. When I was a young child, my mother was generally either in and out of treatment centres for alcohol and heroin abuse or actively abusing alcohol and heroin and would frequently disappear without notice for months at a time, often leaving my grandmother to scramble to take care of me. My grandmother is in fact the primary maternal figure in my life, not my mother. Through grade school, I was lucky enough to have an active father that would take custody of me for up to five days a week in order to get me out of a frequently abusive situation at home, as my mother would become very violent when under the influence of alcohol. When I was home, her schedule often seemed designed to avoid me - she would sleep in until I had left for school, leave in the afternoon when I was gone and come home late at night when i was asleep, often under the influence of something or other. I was 13 years old when I moved in with my father, and have barely spoken to her since; I could count the number of times I spoke with my mother between 1994 and 2014 on one hand. She has continued to struggle with addiction throughout this period.

    My mother also has a myriad of mental health issues, including depression or schizophrenia, and I do not know whether they are the cause or a consequence of her drug use.

    Facebook is a strange thing, as it connects distant family members together, as well as strangers that barely knew each other at some point in the distant past. I would hardly suggest that I reconnected with my mother over facebook, but I was not so cold as to deny her friend request, either. I can’t know how she reacted with the pictures and writings on the screen in front of her, almost all of which were not directed at her, but, at the time of this report, my relationship with my mother could at best be described by referring to her as a “facebook friend” - and little else. This woman is essentially a stranger to me.

    While I acknowledge that I have rationally approached the question of suicide at many points in my life, I deny that I was suffering from depression as a result of my father’s death, which occurred almost a year previously. I was definitely over it; it wasn’t even on my mind. The period in question was in fact one of the happiest and most productive periods of my life, as moving away to windsor allowed me the space to be able to work through a great deal of the art that I had been sitting on for many years previously. As I do not have a relationship with my mother, she is completely incapable of expressing an informed opinion on whether or not I have had suicidal thoughts in the past, and could not have known whether my posts were characteristic of a pattern of behaviour or not. The fact is that I actually have a deep interest in existentialist philosophy, and am generally going to approach issues of life and death within the context of a rational understanding of the futility of existence. Death is not something to fear or prolong, but an inevitability that must be embraced. As we will all die, accepting agency in the right to decide when is the highest form of freedom imaginable. Had my mother known anything about me at all, she would not have been agitated by seeing me discuss death in open, rational terms, as I have done so frequently for all of my life.

    The exact reason that my mother called the windsor police from her home in ottawa and sent officers to my house to speak to me is that i posted the following link to facebook:

    www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/julian-baggini-suicide-can-be-a-rational-choice-1912358.html

Any sane person can see that this is a fairly tame op-ed in a leading uk newspaper, and that it is discussing an important then contemporary political concern. And I will answer the question - yes, suicide can be a rational choice. Since that time, assisted suicide has even been legalized in this country.

So, what happened here, then? Well, I can tell you what happened - my mother was drunk and, in a shitfaced haze, went into a paranoid episode and freaked out over a perfectly rational post that somebody that she does not know well made on their facebook profile. The person having a mental health episode at the time was not myself but my mother. Unfortunately, the cops ended up at my place rather than hers and I’m the one that ended up affected by it.

How can this happen? If somebody calls in on a crime, the officers do not go directly to that person’s house, but conduct an investigation to determine if it is warranted, and then present that information to a justice of the peace. Who gives this unit the authority to just act on information without any sort of investigation? The most cursory investigation into my mother’s mental health would have exposed an individual that can barely tie her own shoes, should be place under a legal guardianship and should not be able to file a police report without it being signed off upon by that guardian. Now, as a consequence of her own mental health problems, I have a difficult file in my records that I need to react to, and waste a lot of time getting destroyed. This should not have happened - the COAST team should have been required to obtain a warrant before coming to speak to me.

So, the premise underlying the call was false. While I had been posting about suicide, I was not actively suicidal in any way, nor was I depressed, nor was I at all thinking about my father. I was actually very happy at the time, if somewhat worried about the possibility that the very happy situation I was in might be in jeopardy due to an upcoming odsp renewal process.

Now, regarding the officers...

I’m just going to be blunt: it was clear to me at the time that the officers i spoke to did not have the intellectual capacity or raw intelligence to follow any discussion i was initiating about existential philosophy, or the freedom of defining existence within any kind of self-defined purpose. The officers appeared to be lost in the doldrums of a christian worldview, fully attached to the sacramental concept of existence and the sanctity of the protestant work ethic. They were simply incapable of comprehending any concept of meaning that transcended the boring old school-work-marriage-kids-retirement cycle. So, we were not talking with each other but past each other. Reading it from a distance in 2018, this part of the report does not surprise me; the officer displayed a very religious and childlike concept of existence when I spoke with her, and this is fully reflected in the report.

What I do find surprising is the presence of several aspects of the report that are simply invented out of nothing.

It is stated in the report that I was seeking some kind of medication and would commit suicide if I did not receive it. That is not something that I stated to the officer, nor is it something that has any basis in reality. I am not able to even contemplate what kind of medication it is that she might have been referring to. It is true that I take a combination of anti-androgens, progesterones and estrogens for the purposes of gender transition, but I do not take any other medication, never have taken any other medication and frankly would not want to take any other medication, either. Given the history I had with my mother growing up, I am actually a very strong advocate of sober living and live a largely straight-edge lifestyle; not only was I not seeking medication at that time, but I would have forcefully rejected any prescriptions forced upon me by mental health professionals. So, again - where does such an absurd statement come from?

I’m left with little option but to deduce that the officer simply didn’t understand the arguments that I was making to her, which were about making a rational choice to cease to exist in the case that my odsp was denied. It is absolutely true that I was undergoing some anxiety around the question of the renewal, and had resolved to exercise my right to kill myself should i not have my odsp renewed, but i insist that my reaction was entirely rational, relative to my own set of personal axiomatic beliefs. This is a statement from my notes at the time, where I generate the logic of suicide as a rational reaction if my odsp gets denied:

1) it does not appear as though i am going to have my disability renewed.
2) therefore, i will be unable to pay rent.
3) therefore, i will lose my studio. again.
4) i have nowhere else to store my studio.
5) therefore, i will have no way to save my studio if i am unable to pay rent to house it.
6) humans need a purpose to continue to exist and whither away without one. i have categorically rejected most accepted purposes for existence as not interesting (children, "career", partner, family, etc.). the one purpose i have is recording.
7) therefore, losing my studio would also be losing my purpose to exist.
8) therefore, i would no longer have a will to exist.
9) therefore, suicide will become desirable.

So, what i was saying was that if my odsp gets denied then i would decide to kill myself; you will note that this is equivalent to stating that i have no plans to kill myself, so long as my odsp gets renewed. What right would anyone - my mother, the windsor coast team or anybody else - have to interfere in such a rational decision making process?

So, i don’t know where the claim that my suicidal thoughts were based around getting a prescription were coming from, other than the officer’s inability to follow the argument - which is really no surprise, as it was obvious at the time that she really wasn’t following the argument.

Likewise, I was not awaiting the results of a meeting with Dr. Bordoff; while I had spoken to him recently, I did not schedule a follow-up and have not spoken to him since. Rather, I needed to renew my odsp documents by september, and had resolved to move to the rational end of ceasing to exist should i fail in accomplishing the task. The officer simply didn’t understand what was said to her.

The officer states in the report that I am fully capable of working. That is an original diagnosis based on her intuition; several doctors have told me otherwise. Thankfully, her diagnosis is not particularly relevant,; her credentials to diagnose are somewhat lacking.

I made the following posts to facebook after the officers left:

==

lol.

some cops showed up today to talk about my suicidal facebook messages. but, the context in the messages is very clear - i'm not currently suicidal. such an autonomous decision is dependent upon the outcome of the odsp evaluation in september. i was posting to prepare others for the eventuality. further, while i'm fairly certain of the outcome, i'm actually holding out hope that it will be extended. how can i be suicidal if i'm mutedly optimistic about the future, and merely planning for the worst case should it actualize?

i've already posted my logic.

it's always interesting explaining my coldly rational, detached perspective to people that seem to think they have the ability to magically project their desires onto reality.

but, you're giving up too soon! you're young!

it's not a question of giving up. that's a subjective perspective. i'm about analyzing data and coming to objective conclusions. my attitude doesn't affect the data, which clearly demonstrates that my chances of finding employment are exceedingly low. it has nothing to do with how i feel, it's just what the data states.

but, you haven't tried.

sure i have. that's how i built up my data set. why try further when the data projects a high probability of failure? it would be *this* behaviour that would be insane.

but that was in ottawa.

the conditions here are worse than in ottawa. that's why i moved here. it follows that i should spend even less time trying here.

you're just focusing on numbers and statistics, you just need to think positively and...

no. i need to focus on data. your arguments are not convincing, because you're not challenging the data, you're merely asking me to ignore it in favour of magical thinking.

*frown*

i tried to explain it, but they didn't get it. they did, however, convince me to allow a nurse to come later today to talk to me.

btw: the correct mathematical argument against my data-driven deductions is to question whether employment data is dependent. if each process is independent of the next, my conclusions collapse.

i think there is some argument for this. in fact, it even follows that if each process is independent then the probability of eventually finding a job approaches one (because any non-zero probability implies at least one success in infinitely many trials).

however, i'm convinced that the challenges are related to personal character traits, which makes each trial dependent on the last.

==

    A second report exists, GO# WI 2015-19702. I would just like to point out in this space that I am and always have been an entirely independent artist, and that I am not and never have been interested in getting a record contract from anybody in Toronto. I operate with a very strongly DIY ethic. Everything I do is done from the ground up, entirely by myself - and I feel the art would suffer if it were any other way. I do not know who made the suggestion that I wanted a record contract from somebody in Toronto, but it is both wholly inaccurate and entirely contradictory to my goals and purposes as an artist; it is completely ridiculous, and has no basis in fact, whatsoever.

yeah, if the justice wasn't there, they should have sent me to a bureaucrat called the "local administrative justice of the peace".

i'll call ahead before i go, and see if i can actually get this person on the phone.

the civil case against the cops is fairly straight forward, so long as i can get an accurate timeline. it doesn't even matter if they lie in their reports, i just need the information in the right order, and they've already given me enough that they can't fake it. see, the action against the cops follows given that they didn't have any evidence, which is what i need to show. the question is whether i can convince a judge that it's worth a payout or not.

the discrimination suit is far more subtle and requires a specific reading of the charges. i need to actually gather evidence for this one....and they can slow me down quite a bit if they choose to...and, i could lose in the end, as well.

it might not be very smart on their behalf, though - they may end up successfully protecting somebody that really should be liable for what she did, at the cost of a very large payout through the force. this isn't a frivolous suit: this woman put me in jail to stop me from suing her by filing a questionable report, and should be liable for it. do the cops exist to protect wealthy landowners? don't answer that. but, if they slow me down enough that i'm liable for costs when i do sue her, it may no longer be worth my effort.

the more lucrative prize is of course suing the cops.

so, rather than fight this pyrrhic struggle, they really ought to throw her under the bus.

but, we'll see what happens.

i wish i didn't pass out yesterday afternoon, because i didn't get to test my new light bulbs last night.

the j-type bulbs are exactly what i wanted, and the spotlights haven't arrived yet. but, it turns out the big bulb i wanted to replace is a par38 rather than a par20, so the spotlight is a little smaller than i expected. that said, i think it's actually more what i want - it's 9 watts and runs at 7000K. the par 38s tend to run at higher wattages and lower temperatures, and cost twice as much. this also has a 60 degree beam angle, which the led par 38s don't often have. if i'm still here the next time this comes up, maybe i'll make a different choice, but, for now, the par 20 seems like the more efficient choice.

the thing is that it's in a kind of a recess, so i just wish it was an inch longer to let the beam out all of the way. i should be able to get an extender for a few dollars, and that's probably the better option. they say the 9w replaces a 50w and i'd need upwards of 30 w to replace the 175 w, but i actually don't see much of a difference when compared. so, why would i want to pay 3x as much for a bulb that uses 3x as much energy if i can't tell the difference, anyways? the fact that the thing i got is a spotlight seems to be more important than the total wattage on the heat lamp.

what happened yesterday? well, i'm not sure yet.

i amended the file i posted on yesterday morning, and gave the cops the fingerprint destruction request directly. then, i went to get the cd and go home, but they told me that they can't release the audio without a court order, and i essentially fell over when i got home, as i hadn't slept in too long. it's a little odd that they'd take my money and give me a blank audio and then tell me at the end "oh, sorry, you needed a court order, so we shouldn't have done that. and, the judge is gone this week."

and, do i need a court order? well, i got some mixed signals on it. i was aware that it appeared as though i did, and initially intended to leave an application at the counter with an essay request that would go to a judge and then come back, but nobody said anything about it, so i just went with it. i wasn't technically in a criminal trial. does that matter? i'll have to look at the statute a little more carefully.

but, i actually was expecting them to send it to a judge, and was actually surprised when they didn't.

i will need to go back in today, one way or another. so, i'm going to add a second and maybe third statement of disagreement, once i have a better understanding of what i can and can't do regarding the audio.

i'm at a bottleneck with the audio; i need it in order to file the discrimination lawsuit. if i need to go to superior court to get it, so be it. but, note that i don't need the transcript for the civil suit, so if i get stuck waiting for it, that's going to force me to pivot towards suing the cops, first.

the things i need to sue the cops are going to be available through a long list of foias, and i'm far more comfortable launching the case and then getting the judge to release the information after.

what a fucking retard.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-news-conference-1.4924199

but, i mean, if we want to be fair, we could also build a new russian school too, right?

we could get name it the dmitri medvedev school of perpetual shiny happiness, and get chrystia freeland to do the groundbreaking.

i guess everybody forgot about laurentian.

i'm just saying.

there's lots of schools in toronto as it is, and i'm not sure french is the most obvious choice in terms of funding a linguistically focused university. this is from wikipedia:

English	1,375,900	50.9
Cantonese	114,670	4.2
Mandarin	111,405	4.1
Tagalog (Filipino)	83,230	3.1
Spanish	72,850	2.7
Italian	62,640	2.3
Portuguese	59,355	2.2
Tamil	57,535	2.1
Farsi	49,185	1.8
Urdu	37,420	1.4
Russian	36,145	1.3
French	35,440	1.3

while the province's initial colonial heritage is indeed largely french, it isn't exactly a widely spoken language in the english city of york. new york? no, i guess that one was taken, right? but, then, literally by the americans, so the british no longer had a new york, let alone an old new amsterdam. new new york is...you know, if they had typewriters back then, it could have worked.

new new york. new (new york). well, we have all of this punctuation, why not use it?

montreal, detroit, sudbury, cornwall...these were french settlements. toronto, ottawa, kingston were not.

i know that doug ford is not making a market argument, he's trying to rev up his base. but, it is actually probably true that a french university in downtown toronto would be poorly attended and lose a lot of money.

it's maybe a better idea to point out that laurentian could maybe use a bit of help in climbing a little up the rankings.