all that's left to do in syria is sit there and pretend you haven't lost, and the longer you do it, the more likely you end up with a partition.

and, is that what the neo-cons want? a new south korea in syria, that's going to cost america billions of dollars, in a five hundred year occupation?

are they willing to lose the dardanelles over it?

it's just stubborn and stupid.

trump was right. and, lindsey graham should fuck off.

the best way to transition assad out was always to let him transition himself out, which is what he was trying to do in the first place; the thing that created this mess was an attempt at a syrian constitution, which was vehemently opposed by the saudis as an increase in democratization in the region.

that's right. that's the fucked up reality: this war was launched to prevent syria from transitioning to a democracy.

the russians don't want him there either, and will be helping him transition himself out as soon as the territorial integrity of the country is secure.

see, this is a good idea.

this is what we want.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/damascus-iraq-hit-isil-targets-syria-state-media-181230172409718.html

or, to put it another way: who the fuck cares what lindsay graham thinks, anyways?

the most important ally in the region is neither israel nor saudi arabia but turkey, and whatever delicate balance existed is now blown up - a flop would cement a turko-russian alliance.

and, the point was to prevent that.

you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

at this point, if trump flops on syria, it's as good as losing the turks altogether.

"but they don't uphold human rights"

like america does, right? what is this, grade two?

if you want to talk about a victory for putin, the dardanelles would be pretty swank. they've had their eye on that one for a while.

there is a deeper lesson here: we have an emperor with no clothes. but, whatever you think of the decision (and i've been clear that i support it.), you can't reverse this sort of thing.

i mean, what the fuck am i going to do in an office?

crunch numbers for the agriculture department? yeah. that sounds like it's not going to be horribly time-consuming, and numbingly boring.

solve equations for a bunch of fucking murderers at defense? yeah, that's not going to make me want to kill myself.

washing dishes is real, it's honest, it's something i can do without hating myself.

i know that people would kill to have the opportunities i've had, but it's not like i ever lied to anybody about it.

if you would have asked me at 17, i would have told you i'm never going to want to work full-time in an office, i'm never going to care about owning property, i'm never going to want a car, i'm never going to want a family - i'd rather work part-time as a dishwasher, and get more free time to work on art, or writing, or whatever my mind is interested in.

and, i heard the same stupid refrain, from everybody around me.

"but, you're young, you'll grow out of it."
"pretty sure i won't."
"you're throwing away opportunity, throwing away options."
"well, if somebody doesn't want something, and they throw that thing away, that means they're throwing away something that isn't of any value to them."

and, i'd get disappointed reactions, but what was the point of pretending otherwise? i'm not going to live somebody else's life, i'm going to live my own. and, it's up to others to move on if they don't like my choices.

but, i kept getting bribed - and i was given good offers, so i took them. and, i ended up with 13 years of schooling that i had almost no interest in.

now, here i am a few weeks shy of 38 and i'm still completely disinterested in working in an office, i still don't want to own property, i still don't want a car, and i still don't want a family; i'd still rather work part time as a dish-washer, and i'm not particularly interested in the opinions of any creditors that i never had any intention of gaining in the first place.

"but, it will hurt your credit rating."

yeah. pity. whatever.

i know - more disappointed looks. but, the root cause of the problem here is not my behaviour - i broadcast myself as clearly as a person can.

people made a choice not to listen, to project their own desires on to me rather than understand what mine were, and react.

if it comes down to it, i'm not going to end up in an office job - i'm going to end up washing dishes part-time.

if you don't fear islam, you're deeply ignorant of it - or just as scary as the religion, itself.

i have to post something like this every once in a while just to get the point across that the existing narrative is ridiculous. and, i was thinking about this the other day, when eating.

hitchens was wrong about iraq - because his assumptions were wrong. see, if saddam hussein were isis, though, he would have been right. so, the irony is that hitchens' argument for the 2003 invasion - while completely wrong, in context - is the perfect argument to use to justify the war against isis. and, it's even ironic that he didn't live to make the point. i'm sure he'd appreciate all of this.

what i'm getting at is that he didn't make an error in logic so much as he made an error in fact; if his perception of iraq under saddam hussein was rooted in reality, rather than american propaganda, he would have been absolutely correct. and, i can't know whether his arguments were just convenient or not, either - if he just thought it was a good excuse. if so, he should have known better, as it didn't take much foresight to realize that if you really did fear the rise of an isis-like group then keeping saddam in place was just about the best thing that could have been done to prevent it, and that creating all of that chaos in iraq was just about the worst thing you could imagine doing. this was certainly my argument in 2003 - that regime change via bliztkrieg from above in iraq was an insane idea. but, here is some more irony - the islamophobic and supposedly racist late hitchens may have simply given the arabs too much credit. once the bogeyman of saddam was removed, they would surely spontaneously generate into a secular pan-arabism, right? what leftist naivete is this, christopher?

in making his arguments, he often made a very salient point: that there is good reason to be afraid of islam. islam is of course a violent system of hetero-patriarchal domination, just like christianity. and, do we not all fear the christian right? so, what is islamophobia, then, if not a rational fear of totalitarianism? and, is it not every good leftist brit's responsibility to be in constant fear of a return to cromwellianism?

well?

see, and, for this reason i don't have any problem acknowledging that i am deeply fearful of islam, and would support just about anything to prevent it's continued growth. this is the fastest growing religion in the world, and thus is my most pertinent ideological foe, as a staunch atheist. it represents everything i am opposed to, and i seek to challenge it any way i possibly can. one must have a certain level of respect for their opponent, even if that respect is not particularly intellectual in nature, and with that respect is a healthy level of fear.

it would be daft to deny any of this.

but, it would be equally daft to deduce that a healthy fear of the continuing spread of islam as an ideological force implies some kind of racial bias against arabs, or turks, or iranians, or berbers, or pakistanis or any other group that professes this faith in statistically significant numbers, as bereft of any value as i claim that it is. there's simply no basis in the deduction; any such accusation is entirely baseless.

so, i will stand in support of islamophobia, even as i denounce racism against groups that statistically lean towards the religion of islam. i will stand in solidarity with the apostates, as i denounce the imams. there is no contradiction in this position - and it is even imperative that we recognize that there isn't, in order to inoculate ourselves from this religion's continuing influence and spread.

https://www.ranker.com/list/companies-in-the-united-states-that-use-prison-labor/genevieve-carlton

it's fitting enough, isn't it, as so many of the british forces killed in world war one to "save democracy" were legally unable to vote, due to not owning property.

https://corporatewatch.org/poppies-prison-labour-and-the-war-machine/

you realize that centipedes are carnivores, right?

so, if you have a population of centipedes in your basement, that means they have a food source. if there's no food, they'll die off or otherwise leave. and, they won't eat food scraps or toothpaste or bits of hair - centipedes need to have a population of live insects to feed on.

this is even the reason that centipedes are considered "beneficial" - they eat other insects.

and, one of their favourite foods is roaches.

so, it is true that you should not kill the centipedes - but it is also true that if you see centipedes frequently, then that means you probably have roaches, too, because that's what they're eating.

the basement i'm in now is actually surprisingly bug free. i saw one of those....i can't even remember what they're called. i'd never seen one before. maple bugs. boxelder, that's right. i've seen one centipede. i've seen a couple of spiders. no roaches, no ants, no earwigs, no termites.

the previous basement had just about everything - spiders, ants, centipedes, oriental roaches, earwigs and i even think i saw a scorpion, at one point.

i'm not an entomologist, but i did take biology through high school (and both the 101/102 in university), and i'd even say i have an interest in it, as demonstrated by the posts here. and, i don't you think you need a specialized degree to identify a roach.

some people are just really dirty liars, that's all.

i think i'm finally feeling a little better.

was that actually the quarterly stomach ache? is it now officially winter? i guess we'll find out.

it's not believable, though.

harper was a kind of ruthless nerd, a policy wonk that may have often been wrong but would be wrong with charts and figures; scheer is more of a return to the airheaded fundamentalism of a stockwell day, kind of a reform party throwback, and if you're going to rerun an election, it makes sense for that to be the one you try to rerun.

the problem is that the more you point out that andrew scheer is kind of like stockwell day, the more you draw attention to the reality that trudeau also has surface similarities. trudeau is not the right guy to run a campaign centred around the premise that the opposition is too intellectually feeble to govern.

but, scheer does not project the competence that harper did, and is consequently not scary in the same way. people don't seem to fear incompetence, so much as they fear competence - they seem to want to ridicule incompetence.

the truth is that this is a field of intellectual lightweights. i would not expect the same kind of modular, issues-driven campaign that you got out of a mulcair v harper; this is going to be an election about feelings, perceptions and other trivialities that mostly come out in the wash - and the dour leftists are going to be standing on the side, pointing out that they're basically the same.

i would like to see the liberals knocked down to a minority, which is what i wanted in the first place. so, they should be careful about my advice, this cycle. but, i'm not sure how well the ghost of harper is going to stick to scheer.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-says-it-s-worth-pointing-out-similarities-between-scheer-and-harper-1.4233769

remember: what i'm doing is building liner notes for the period discs.

it'll make sense when it's done.

i'm still oozy and still hacking but i'm wide awake, so i can either stare at the ceiling or try and do something.

and, what have i been doing?

well, i got some emails posted - it's of varying relevance, and i may revisit some of it. it's about half done.

the next step - and i didn't initially want to do this, but i'm not making much progress anyways so i'd might as well - is to sort through and organize my hard drive. i've had a brand new hard drive to install in this thing since the summer of 2017, i've just been putting it off until i get through what i'm doing. i think it's close enough to at least start preparing.

the drive i'm using in what was my backup laptop was initially in what was my main laptop; so, i took the drive from the newer laptop and put it into the older one. i did that when the newer laptop stopped booting (processor-related beeps, still not dealt with). i think that was in october of 2017? i can't remember. what happened is that i got a big order in, and had to put off the rebuild until i finished remastering everything. then, the rebuild got slowed down due to the marijuana, and now i'm behind an extra year.

i think i had decided that i would swap the new drive into the newer laptop when i had it ready to convert into a vlog editing machine, partly because i was intending to use the old recording pc as the new access point. that's right. and, this older laptop that i'm using now was going to be an effects processor, once i got a little recording interface for it. but, then the screen on this laptop collapsed, and i went from having three rooms to two, so i didn't need a third system, and the logic around the whole thing completely shifted - i decided i would use this laptop as an access point (until it dies.) because the lack of a screen makes t useless for anything else, and i'd set up the three pcs in the other room, all for recording - which i haven't done yet, at all.

and, i was just waiting for the rebuild to finish until i did...

i'm in mid-september. the hook-up is the end of november. so, i'm pretty close. and, i think it's getting close to time.

this is not a fast machine by modern standards - it takes a max of 4 gb of ram, with a weak dual core. it was a 2006 model that i got for cheap in 2010 on a refurbish. but, swapping the drive out will probably...

actually, you know what?

why don't i just reinstall?

yeah.

i'm just thinking...why waste the drive, really? the new drive is faster on paper, but if i think the machine is a little laggy, a reinstall could very well be just as good as a new drive. i mean, i guess we'll find out.

there's two of them sitting, that are much faster drives. but, what exactly does that mean on an older machine like this? i'm not sure it means much.

ok.

so, i'm going to file this information with the intent to push through the whole thing on final time. that's right - back to 2013 one last time. what's going to be coming up this time is stiff like pictures, word documents, etc that is dated from after july, 2013. and, in the process, i'll be able to file the information i need to get back to the alter-realty, from 1997-1999.

e-mail first.

and, when does this get done?

i don't know. i know i have to do it, and that when it's done, it's done.

i was experiencing nausea more or less all day yesterday, but it got really bad in the evening, and i ended up falling asleep. i've been in bed more or less ever since.

nausea could be caused by anything, but what i'm experiencing is consistent with the effects of second-hand smoke, as i've experienced them in the past.

i thought it was better, but it's not, and it seems like i'm going back to sleep.

there really is a lot of confidence in the market, and i've been pointing it out for months - people want to believe that the economy can ride without training wheels, that a free market economy is more than a naive abstraction, that government intervention is at the root of all problems, etc. and, of course, they want to believe that they can put money into a market and profit from it, regardless of what the fed is doing.

and, yes - democracy is a powerful force. if people could vote their portfolios up, you can be sure they would.

so, how do you explain to people that have shown up, cash in hand, that this is simply a bad time to invest? they want to invest, dammit!

they should invest in a local charity, instead - if they're insistent on throwing their money away.

these swings are happening because the bubble is so deep that there's no concept of reality in sight. you can throw an anchor out from this market, and you won't hit anything. there's no reference point. it's lost in space.

and, i'm as interested as anybody else in the question of how long the power of delusional thinking can offset the empirical and quantitative reality of a shrinking money supply.

it might not be harmful, but i don't think that earth metals deserve the presumption of innocence. sorry.

it's better to err on the side of caution. and, what we know at this stage is that the assumption that your liver would be able to deal with it is wrong - you can't eject this, it builds up...

that said, the issue needs to be about harm reduction, not ban hammering. if you think or know you have a serious tumour, you need to weigh the risks - the tumour will almost certainly kill you, whereas the gadolinium is just an unknown. you're weighing a known known v a known unknown. i had the presence of mind to realize what was happening and stop and question it; what i found disturbing was the lack of interest in providing enough information to me to allow me to make a choice.

for me, i had little reason to think i had cancer, and consequently avoided a cat scan. what i was looking for was signs of broken or demented bones, not signs of tumour growth. the injection struck me as insane and irresponsible.

i haven't called a dentist yet, but that was the end conclusion, after seeing a neurologist in mid 2017.

i'm not saying you should reject this, necessarily. i'm saying you should think carefully about what you're doing before you do it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28361260

this is the ideal first step - the russians and turks need to talk this out without the americans wasting their time and interrupting them.

for all of the propaganda about putin & erdogan, the reality is that they are both rational actors and should be able to work out a compromise that does the following things:

1. recreates the internationally recognized syrian borders, which is what the russians want - a return to normalcy.
2. find some way to do something with what are, in fact, kurdish militant groups camped on the turkish border and that will certainly eventually threaten the turks if left to incubate. these groups are going to need to be given safe passage somewhere: to iraq, to iran or to...russia.

i'll throw a wild card out there: the jews never warmed to the idea of a homeland in russia, but they've long been convinced they're semitic and belong in the middle east (whether it's really true or not). the kurds are a caucasian-iranian group that has lived in the zagros mountains as refugees for centuries, with meaningful ethno-linguistic roots in largely uninhabited areas of russia. at some point in the distant past, the kurds migrated in from the steppes, and then, centuries later, found themselves in perpetual isolation when the iranians were expelled from mesopotamia by the arabs, eventually adopting their religion but never being fully accepted into the new culture. this area is historically not iranian, but where armenians and semites, and then great empires, fought wars against each other; it follows that the best that the kurds can really hope for is to be a part of an iranian province, as an independent kurdistan could never be more than a minor iran - a "west iran", if you will, but the arabs in iraq aren't inviting the ayatollah in, either, nor are the turks looking for partition. i don't think i've ever heard anybody say it, but it's not a crazy idea; an autonomous oblast in the urals is more sovereignty than they're ever likely to get in an area of the world that they're really not indigenous to.

so, as an independent kurdistan isn't a sustainable idea in the long run (it would just be a temporarily existent "west iran" - even if it lasted 100 years), there's really two serious outcomes here: a reconstruction of greater iran (including northern iraq and eastern turkey) or for the kurds to accept minority status within the countries of the region. neither option is anything close to kurdish sovereignty, which is really geopolitically impossible in this exact location.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-to-dispatch-high-level-team-to-russia-for-syria-talks-140046

the next couple of days are actually going to be the warmest weather we've had in windsor since mid-october, but it's also going to be raining, so i'm stuck in the house until monday at the earliest.

i'm going to put everything off until monday morning.

it's really amazing how people won't get their head around it - total denial, but it's really because we're so hopelessly colonized by christianity.

"santa isn't a german god. no. it's saint nicolaus."

right.

listen - you don't need to get into this argument about whether it's saturnalia or yule, because they're actually the same thing. the romans are thought to have separated from the celts around the la tene period, and moved south from switzerland into italy. that's right - the romans had a german ancestry, and were ultimately created in the same way they were destroyed. like a snake swallowing itself whole? i dunno. but, i know that it's very well understood that the indo-european religions were all essentially the same, so when we see romans and germans doing essentially the same ritual at essentially the same astrological event, deep into antiquity, the conclusion one ought to draw is that the traditions had a common origin.

and, this tradition is not historically related to christianity, to judaism or islam - but it is related to the eastern religions, one example being hinduism. and, to understand santa claus, this is the tradition we need to look most directly at - not christianity, but hinduism.

for, everybody knows that shiva enjoys a nice glass of milk, when presented.

think about what your kids are doing for a second when they leave out milk and cookies for santa. what they are doing is offering a gift to the german god odin at the solstice, in hopes of receiving something in return. and, it wasn't that long ago that this was done by adults, who took the whole thing very seriously - as hundreds of millions of hindus in india do, still, today.

a christian holiday? hardly. that's as pagan as pagan gets.

so, how did we get from a sombre gemanic ritual, which certainly included blood sacrifices, to an infantilized, benign action involving flying reindeer and cookies?

the christian colonization of northern europe.

i just want to address what might be a misperception about the amount of time i spend by myself. some people may point out that i don't have a family or friends to spend time with, and argue that this is some kind of bad thing. but, as is the case with most components of the society we live in, i'm actually largely in disagreement with the premise.

but, it's not just my politics, it's my personality, although the politics no doubt derive from the personality. introverts are not figments of the psychologist's imagination; we do exist. i will remind you that the reason i live on disability is due to social anxiety, meaning i'm even clinically diagnosed with preferring to avoid people, to the point that i'm being excused from having to work (for the time being). so, how would one really expect a heavily introverted anarchist with extreme social anxiety to spend the holidays?

i'm not interested in having a family, and i've never enjoyed spending time with friends. but, isn't that just something that losers say as an excuse? it really isn't.

of course, i grew up in a family, and it is true that my father is now dead, but everybody else is still alive - if hundreds of kilometres away. what you might not realize is that i wouldn't have spent the holidays with my family even when my father was alive, and they were right in front of me. when i lived on my own, i would routinely reject family get-togethers, because i didn't want to spend my leisure time with my family - i'd rather spend it reading, or listening to and/or writing music. there were some years where i was working 50 hour weeks, or deeply invested in school. to me, the holidays were a way to immerse myself in my own interests, not a way to get to know my family. i needed the alone time. my dad could get usually get me out for a few hours on one day, but i made sure they knew that was going to be the extent of it; i would be completely absent from any family life for 20 out of 21 days, and fully on my own prerogative. even when i lived at home, i was the kind of teenager and twenty-something that spent the holidays in my room with the door closed. parades of family members and family friends would come through without me opening the door for more than a few seconds to acknowledge them. or, often, i would come out of the bedroom only to eat, and go back in the moment my last bite was finished, probably even taking coffee or even dessert with me. in some cases, i may not have liked the specific individuals involved, but i was broadly simply more interested in pursuing my own individualistic interests than taking part in a family.

today, i look at the idea of starting my own family as a danger to avoid, rather than a future to plan for. even if i were to accidentally find a partner, i wouldn't want to be around their family. and, i have simply never enjoyed being around children. i would be as terribly disinterested as i've always been - i may even find myself needing to get out of the house to relieve the stress from dealing with so many people at once. it's not outside of the realm of possibility to imagine me taking off to go for a bike ride, or even have a beer, while my partner is stuck preparing food and dealing with kids that i don't have any interest in. the simple reality is that i'm honestly much happier reading by myself.

but, what about friends? if you hate family, don't you at least want friends?

you should probably think that through, as it doesn't make as much sense as you think it does, but, sure - i've had friends. i've been to christmas parties. and, it's actually always been the same thing - people bunched together talking about video games or tv shows that i don't know anything about, leaving me horribly bored and nursing my beer. so, you go through the motions of going to the party because you're supposed to, but you don't enjoy it, and you really wish you were somewhere else. i would often find myself drunk at christmas parties, simply because i didn't have any way to relate to the people that were supposed to be my friends. i know: find new friends, right? except that when you put a group of introverted nerds in a room together, they all ignore each other and read by themselves.

i don't think friendship is possible in a capitalist society, but i'll spare you that rant for now. the point i'm making is just that this idea that "friends and family are what's important" is not a universal value, and there are some people that would argue that individual pursuits are the highest pinnacle of achievement, rather than identifying as a part of a group.

i don't want to share these days with other people; i prefer and even need the time alone, to myself.

so, i guess that was a different type of head clear.

i'm trying to detox, and it's being obfuscated by whomever is upstairs smoking. what can i say? i can't sleep forever.

i forced myself to suffer through it today and got most of the email over 2016 pulled down this afternoon, so that will be my next posting update.

for right now, i'm very tired. unfortunately.

and, i'll need to make some calls tomorrow; whomever the drug addict upstairs is is just incentivizing me to sue.

seems like the market had a little too much kool aid.

it'll regret that in the morning.

silly season.

the israeli attacks on damascus are clearly an election ploy.

the russians are right to denounce them for it, but they should be more explicit about it.

and they shouldn't over react.

yet.

i've been clear repeatedly: i think the focus should be to go after businesses that use illegal labour, not to go after the labourers, themselves. the longstanding republican approach, which trump is just amplifying, is a type of supply-side economics: they argue that by controlling the supply of labour, they can reduce the demand for it. this is incoherent everywhere it is applied, but they do it all of the time...

what the policy should be focused on is reducing demand, not controlling the supply. what you need to do with this is to make sure that the laws that exist are enforced and that companies that hire illegal workers are severely prosecuted for it.

if the demand for cheap labour were to dry up, the movement across the border would stop, too.

that said, you can't expect a government to do that on it's own, because a government always operates in the interests of capital - unless a popular uprising exists. the pre-requisite to shutting down businesses that hire illegal workers is a strong workers movement. but, the unions have all been brought along side the interests of capital, so you don't get any meaningful action. and, sadly, the hierarchy is designed so that even unionized workers can take advantage of cheap strawberries.

so, instead of the necessary worker movement, you just get right-wing politicians taking advantage of the situation to gain votes to get into power.

the failure is at the worker level - workers need to organize to ensure that the standards they've fought for are actually being observed for everybody.

in the short term, forcing people to go through a checkpoint at least ensures we know they're here, which makes it easier to track employers that want to exploit them - and everybody else.

it's just another example of how the parties are realigning, though.

the republicans are in support of a wall to nowhere; it's the democrats that are rejecting the stimulus, by referring to a conservative fiscal ideology.

fwiw, i actually don't have an opinion on a border fence.

democrats are bizarrely fixated on the price. but, it's an infrastructure project, so it should pay for itself via multiplier effects; it should also create some long term employment around the administration of it. so, if you want to tell me that the reason you oppose the wall is because you're opposed to deficit spending, i'm not on your side on that at all - and every time i hear a democrat say something about how america can't afford the wall, i write them off as a conservative. on purely economic terms, it's a great idea, and i'm all for it.

now, if you want to talk about the humanitarian basis of it, that's something else. a "great wall of texas", if effective, would cut off legitimate refugee claims, even as it cuts down on economic migrants. and, yes - i would support a schengen agreement with the nafta partners in principle, but only on the premise that mexico can secure it's southern borders. once labour mobility is established across the trade zone, and the border is properly secured, then you can talk about extending it to the next leg, subject to the central american countries meeting certain conditions about labour standards. for right now, i would support attempts to limit the movement of economic migrants; the focus should be on helping them improve the conditions in their home countries.

everybody knows they're being used as ways to avoid obeying labour laws, which both exploits them and undercuts legal workers. there's nothing left-wing about housing them in a church for a few weeks, and then helping them get a job for half of the minimum wage, and no benefits - and if you think there is, you're just a useful idiot for capital. this doesn't improve working conditions, it doesn't build revolutionary potential, it doesn't do anything of value to the left at all - it just cements the existing system in place buy buying into calvinist ideas about work ethic, and perpetuating the lie that we call the "american dream". wide open borders don't help anybody except the bourgeois class.

it is for this reason that i remain skeptical that any meaningful barrier will be built - it is not in the interests of capital to erect a border barrier. the local food industries would have to pay people, all of a sudden. and, the elite couldn't buy their guatemalan house slaves any more. it would be a catastrophe.

but, the thing is that i'm not sure the narrative around the wall is realistic. putting aside the realities of the interests of capital, if we are to oppose the wall because it would prevent refugee claims, well, ok, but would a wall really do that? or would it act as a check point, thereby merely slowing down the process of admittance?

i think trump is imagining that the wall is just going to have a couple of soldiers patrolling it, as a complete separation between the two countries - that the wall will cut migration down to zero by making it impossible to get through. but, of course, this is delusional. these people will just appear at the border and make their claims, anyways. the difference is in increasing the ability to manage existing migration, rather than altering it, and is that particularly awful?

see, and this is really the crux of it - i've said before that i would oppose the wall on humanitarian grounds (rather than economic grounds. i would support it on economic grounds.), but the more i've thought it through, the less i think it really matters. so, i find myself without much of an opinion, because i don't imagine it would really make a lot of difference.

of course, i live in canada. the shut down affects me more than the wall does.

....but when you strip away all of the alarmism and reactionary propaganda from both sides, the most substantive analysis is probably simply that "it would be good for the economy".

i actually agree that seven is way too old for santa, and if your kids are still talking about santa at seven you should be ashamed of yourself, as a parent.

my parents tried to pull that shit on me too, but i didn't fall for it for a second. i was the kid that pointed out that we don't have a chimney, and the story doesn't even add up. flying reindeer? what?

but, what i'm more interested in here is this thing we say to kids.

"do you believe in santa?"

...because that is the same thing as asking "do you believe in odin?".

despite christian attempts at burying it, santa claus as we understand it is actually an example of how chistianity tended to absorb local elements everywhere it went. christianity is not only deeply syncretic at it's core, a stew of mystery religions and socratic philosophy, but was constantly changing as it colonized new areas. nothern europe (including england, the netherlands, scandinavia, northern france and germany) had a shared pantheon of indo-european gods that we refer to as 'germanic', with odin at the top of it. odin was not exactly zeus, and not exactly hermes (the etymology of the latin term german), and not exactly mercury, although he was certainly mercurial, taking the shape of talking birds, amongst other things. but, he was the main god.

if the germans were to sacrifice a prisoner of war, they would sacrifice him to odin.

so, does your child believe in odin? well, that's perhaps less the point. what i'm trying to point out is that the question of belief in the indigenous religions of northern europe is being infantilized by the ritual, in favour of the invading jewish doctrine.

odin is for kids - and they'll grow out of it.

and, what that really is is colonization.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/south-carolina-girl-7-who-spoke-to-trump-about-santa-says-she-still-believes

so, it's not just the fact that smoke is toxic that's a piss-off, it's the fact that it's so horribly desiccating.

i'm not interested in being mummified.

hot & humid > cold & dry > cold & humid > hot & dry.

so, i would prefer a climate like malaysia or brazil to a climate like california, or israel.

i keep pointing out that i would NOT like the weather in california, or the culture, or the people, or the constant threat of natural disaster. it is NOT in a list of places i'd consider moving to, or even visiting. sorry.

florida would be a lot better, if it weren't for the hurricanes and floods.

but, i'd be happier in denmark. or italy.

i'll write the letter for him.

mr assad,

as you know, the french have been occupying syria intermittently since 1099, with varying levels of competency and barbarity. you will recall that syria was a part of the roman empire, having passed into it as a part of the conquests and cessions of the former hellenic kingdoms. while we are well aware that we are not actually romans, we do speak a perverted form of latin, and we have long felt that is close enough to claim the legacy of the roman occupation. we thus feel entitled to this land.

yet, as it is no longer 1099, and international law has changed quite a bit since then, we do understand the necessity to request your permission to continue to occupy your country. we hope that you acknowledge our supremacy immediately.

thank you,
emmanuel macron

i mean, i don't know who let the french back into syria in the first place, but they're going to have to ask permission if they want to stay. the russians threw them out once, and they can throw them out again.

also, maybe macron can ride into syria on a white horse, right?

what a doofus.

we don't need to spend the next hundred years debating whether there was a kurdish genocide, do we?

this is, in truth, a good opportunity for erdogan to prove to the west that the turks are something more than illegitimate barbarians, that they are not merely an accident of history, sitting on a conquered european metropolis.

i know erdogan is saying a lot of mean things about the kurds, and it's not like he doesn't mean it.

but, i expect that he has some concept of his responsibilities, here.

some kind of order must be restored. but, he cannot give up on european integration entirely; if there is a slaughter in the region, he will pay for it. dearly.

i would expect all kinds of quasi-fascist headlines about turkish power stamping out the terrorists, and he may even get a bump in the polls from it. but, he will stop short of a massacre. as he must.

sorghum pasta, at least, seems to be available at bulk barn, and there's one around the corner from here.

there is some economy around sorghum breads, as a consequence of the gluten-free trend; sorghum appears to be the default grain used to avoid gluten. i have no reason to think i have an intolerance to gluten, but if these are the products i need to look into in order to dry and take advantage of the anti-oxidant properties of sorghum then so be it.

they appear to mostly be selling sorghum as a flat bread, though - and, ironically, i may have some difficulty digesting it, as a westerner. let's see what i can even find...

something else that isn't talked about is plums.

it makes sense - it's the dark colour.

the problem with blueberries is that they're expensive; adding a plum to the daily smoothie may be more economically feasible than anything else.

i should also see if i can switch to sorghum bagels and pasta.

so, yeah - if you're 45 years old and have already had three heart attacks, you should consider switching to nuts.

but, if you're 45 and in great health then you want to treat them as a rarity.

you have to understand that the literature around diet in the united states is largely about harm reduction; it assumes that you're hopelessly overweight and dangerously inactive, then tries to give you tips on how to adjust to it.

and, regarding the nuts.

yeah, it's true that eating a plate of nuts is better than eating a plate of cow. so, if the choice is between eating cow and eating nuts, you should pick nuts. it may follow that if you're starting from a point of terrible health, switching from cow to nuts might improve your health - and thereby lower your bad cholesterol. but, you don't want to extrapolate that into a claim that nuts are good for you, or lower cholesterol, in general - they're still high in fat, and somebody that is in good health to start with still wants to be careful with their consumption.

so, what i do right now is that i chop up tomatoes & peppers on the plate first, then put the pasta on top (followed by microwaved salami, caesar salad dressing, cheese, hot sauce, salt + pepper).

pepper itself is fairly powerful, apparently.

but, what i could be doing is putting some spices down with the tomatoes - basil, oregano & potentially parsley.

the nuts are another thing that looks good, but you'd be....nuts....to eat that much cholesterol. i've got my cholesterol very well under control; i don't want to be introducing something like that into my diet.

so, there's some tweaks for the next grocery run.

- blueberry juice instead of orange juice (if feasible). you can never get too much of it, but i think i get a lot of C from other sources - kiwis, strawberries, tomatoes.
- oregano, basil & parsley for pasta.

seems too easy...

still - it demonstrates that casual use of oregano is as worthwhile as a small glass of blueberry juice.

so, i should probably look into that.

see, how much oregano can you put on a plate of spaghetti?

does oregano actually weigh the same amount as marijuana? no, really - does it? because i know how much a gram of pot is. i don't know how much 100 grams of pot is...

could you put a half a gram of pot on your spaghetti? probably more like a quarter, right?

so, if the orac count of 100 g is 200,000, that's about 2000/g - which is an orac count of 500 in a meaningful serving.

on the other hand, a glass of blueberry juice is going to be about 400 g - which scales up to 1200 as an orac number.

so, that number seems impressive, but the actual reality is that you'd need to get used to using a lot of oregano to even compete with a glass of blueberry juice.

as an aside, one wonders what kind of orac count marijuana might have - so long as you're eating it, not smoking it.

it's kind of frustrating that so little of this is really edible, though.

i could potentially make some room for oregano on my pasta, as i grew up eating a lot of it.

pure blueberry juice is in the list. i don't see any other juice in it.

https://modernsurvivalblog.com/health/high-orac-value-antioxidant-foods-top-100/

just a pro-tip, though - if you're a spy, you shouldn't smoke.

it's kind of a dead giveaway.

the thing is that, as far as i can tell, it's not coming in through the windows.

so, who is up there? a cop?

as mentioned, i'm more interested in suing the cops for harassment and false arrest - and if it turns out they're spying on me, too, that's just another reason to sue them. unfortunately, as i can't secure the air quality in the unit, i don't expect to be here, long term - which is a shame, because i otherwise like the place. but, i learned that there's not really a solution in going after the owner, because the city doesn't offer much of a way out.

if it was as easy as suing the owner and then moving, i wouldn't have ended up here.

it's way better than before, but it's still not good enough.

i have a lot of work to do on this, and will have to get back to it on thursday.

and, how is the air quality in here?

the family that lives upstairs is apparently gone, but i'm convinced that there's somebody smoking upstairs, which is kind of giving me pause.

i dunno who's up there. but, it would be nice if they'd smoke somewhere else.

like hell, for example.

i also need to clarify something.

you shouldn't drink your smoothie down in a single gulp, you should slowly nurture it, like a glass of wine. the blender doesn't really destroy or modify much, but it does concentrate it, which can put some strain on your organs in terms of overloading.

so, people will tell you that you're better off eating an apple than slurping apple sauce, but that's only actually the case if you're eating the apple sauce too fast. if you eat the apple sauce at the same rate, it's not any worse.

one way to slow yourself down if you tend to eat too quickly is to make the smoothie a little thicker, so you can't really drink it. i use ice cream. yogurt might be effective - but don't trick yourself into thinking yogurt is better than ice cream.

it usually takes me 20-30 minutes to finish the smoothie, which is about the same amount of time that it would take to eat each component separately. that is what you want.

wait. didn't i write this article a few hours ago?

fuckers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-unexpected-pagan-origins-of-popular-christmas-traditions/

actually, i think that this might be a smart tactic.

they should drop thousands off at city hall, and see how the public reacts...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-unexpectedly-drops-off-hundreds-of-migrants-at-el-paso-bus-station-beto-orourke-veronica-escobar/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab4i

so, i've had some trouble finding two staples in my diet recently - fresh strawberries for my daily smoothies and orange juice, which i drink one tall glass of on most days - and it's led me to a little bit of tweaking.

there are several videos on my diet at my vlog site, which i suppose are now mostly here, too. and, i'll remind you that i look half of my age and have dangerously low cholesterol; i'm doing something right.

with the orange juice, it's actually a packaging thing. i'm used to buying tetrapacks, which are easy to transport in a school bag and fit compactly inside of a smallish fridge (and my fridges have been getting smaller since i moved from the first basement). there's been some kind of mass decision to switch to these awkward plastic bottles that don't stack well in a bag and don't fit well in a fridge. my initial workaround was to switch to apple juice, and if the intent of the oj is mostly to get a ton of C (and, i'm not anti-sugar. sugar is good for you.) it's not awful, but i was missing out on some fortified vitamins. as it happened to be, i couldn't find any apple juice, either, so i had to shop around, and ended up overpaying for some tropicana tetrapacks on sale. in the long run, i'm not going to be interested in paying for expensive tropicana orange juice, so i'm kind of in need of a shift if the manufacturers hold steady on their shift to these awkward containers. i don't know what they're thinking.

with the berries, they're just out of season, so i ended up getting some frozen strawberries instead, but i supplemented with some fresh blueberries, just because i wanted something fresh. so, my smoothies this month are going to be made of fresh bananas, fresh kiwis, frozen strawberries, fresh blueberries, cherry ice cream and vanilla soy. it was kind of a snap decision, based on some uneasiness around the frozen strawberries. my thinking was that the frozen strawberries are probably only half as good as the fresh ones, so i should get some fresh blueberries to compensate. was that clear thinking?

it seems to depend, and, in my case, probably not. my instincts were correct - fresh fruit is always preferable. but, given that i live in canada, and so much of the fruit gets shipped in from mexico or california, i'm not actually buying fresh fruit. the ideal would be to buy fruit made in local greenhouses, which is already rare, and i'm going to guess that the few greenhouses that do exist around here are mostly going to end up wasted on marijuana :(. you'd have to test to find out, but because i'm dealing with so much travel, there's some chance that the frozen fruit may actually be less bad.

that's less of a praise for frozen fruit and more of an indictment of our economy. what i'm actually thinking is that i'd rather move to a warmer climate in order to get fresher fruit.

but, i ended up doing some cursory research on blueberries and decided i should really make a place for them. it's not like i didn't know about blueberries - i knew. trust me; i knew. it's just that they're not the easiest thing to work in to a diet. i've avoided both blueberries and raspberries in smoothies because they kind of don't blend well - the blueberries are too fibrous, and the raspberries get those little seeds stuck in the blend. i decided some time ago that sticking with strawberries (and tomatoes. i eat a lot of tomatoes.) was good enough, and i think the results speak for themselves. but, i'm revisiting that - i want a place for the blueberry in my life. i want daily intake.

what i'm thinking is that i might want to look at some blueberry juice as a replacement for some orange juice, if i can find it in a pure blend - not concentrate, not flavoured, but 100% actual juice. that could be the way around the packaging problem.

as mentioned, i'm not anti-sugar, but i do kind of wish that orange juice was more than just C, too. so, this kind of solves two problems.

and, will there still be a place for orange juice? oj is something i've been keen on since i was a kid. but, i dunno. if blueberry juice is superior - and it is - why would i stick with the inferior choice? shouldn't i always choose blueberry over orange?

i don't know if this is available or economical, but i'm going to look.

for now, the blueberries are just adding a little tart to the smoothie. i wouldn't say it's enough of a taste difference to make a decision around, although it's hard to downplay the health benefits.

just one more thing.

christmas actually isn't about jesus. i've been beating around the manger, but haven't come out and said it.

the puritans completely rejected christmas as a pagan holiday, and the earliest christians didn't celebrate it at all. it's really not a christian holiday, it's an appropriated solar feast.

so, it's less that the "christmas is about jesus" types are annoying, although they are, and more that they're actually wrong.

but, christians are usually wrong, aren't they?

we're also in an extreme solar minimum, remember.

i understand that this is a lot of 'splainin' for one volcano. i'm not trying to explain this specific volcano, so much as i'm trying to present it as representative of a broader pattern.

so, maybe it's evil republicans killing heathens at christmas. or, maybe it's the sun. i dunno.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003ESASP.535..393S

i can't shake this grogginess, but i'm not suffering through it, i'm going back to sleep.

the calendar was a little off, granted.

but, yes - we've made it through another revolution.

that's as worth celebrating as anything else. so, enjoy your mead.

just don't waste my time with bullshit.

so, i mean...

it makes some good amount of sense to worship the sun, in an abstract manner, even as you realize that you're better off trying to understand it using science than influence it using chants. the sun created us, and will ultimately destroy us. it is the source of all life on the planet. if there's something in our experience that is like a god, it is not an ethereal force or something we've projected as a reflection of our own existence, but the star right in front of us.

the ancients were primitive, but not irrational.

rather, it is the child-like anti-intellectualism that we've inherited from dark age religions like christianity and islam that doesn't make any sense.

there's these people that will tell you that the perfection of the universe is a strong argument for creation, and the general approach has usually been to concede the point and argue for incremental change as an equally valid - but superior - naturalistic explanation.

i'm not on board with that. i'm willing to challenge the premise. most people have terrible eyesight, we've got spiders eating their mates before they can reproduce, and we've got an earth wobbling around that demonstrates no understanding of aerodynamics at all. it's a circular argument, rooted in classical assumptions, producing a kind of conformation bias on observation. a closer examination demonstrates that there are contradictions everywhere in nature.

and, one may even point out that there's a full moon and the solstice happening at the same time, which is just producing that much more stress....

remember: gravity destroys everything in the end.

resistance is futile.

"The more destructive earthquakes of magnitude 5.0–6.0 appear to be significantly impacted by solar activity. The phase of the seismic frequency enhancement is concentrated on or near the winter solstice,"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11589-013-0023-2

you have to remember that the earth never knows where the turn is - it thinks it's moving in a straight line. well, relative to the curvature in space, of course. i know i shouldn't anthropomorphize celestial bodies, especially not on christmas, but the point is that the rotation isn't graceful, or planned out like you would imagine if you were running a race track - the earth is passed out at the wheel. it's nothing like the perfect circle you see in these newtonian diagrams, it's an elongated oval.

so, it's more like that all of the momentum of the earth is pushing directly forward, as though the earth is falling away from the sun (even as it is being propelled forward by it), until it gets to the point where it nearly escapes, and then gets thrown back the other way, like a boomerang.

a boomerang. imagine a boomerang returning back whence it came. that's the earth at the solstice...

so, it's not hard to imagine how these fractures in the crust may end up dealing with stress from that, especially near the equator.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-astronomical-tidal-forces-trigger-earthquakes/

that tsunami in bangladesh happened around christmas too, didn't it?

there are going to be conspiracy theories. i just want to get in before them...

it is not completely outside of the realm of possibility that some evil coalition of republicans in the pentagon is getting off on beating down the heathens at the solstice; earthquake technology would be about the same thing as volcano technology, it is not hard to imagine how it might function and it would need to be tested. i neither offer any proof of this, nor do i think it particularly likely, but it cannot be ruled out a priori - this is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, that ought to be explored.

i more just want to point out that there's actually a naturalistic explanation, surrounding the solstice, as the gravitational forces on the earth are experiencing a kind of whiplash around this date. yearly. hey, it's not that different than the milankovitch theory. and, while tidal drag is not the mainstream consensus as the mechanism of tectonic activity, people tend not to realize that we actually don't have a good mechanistic theory at all (what we know about subduction is mostly observational, not causal - we don't have anything close to a predictive model on tectonic activity), and that tidal drag was actually the mechanism initially proposed by alfred wegener. i have to have this argument once in a while with these neckbeards that think they're debunking astrology; tidal drag is actually an existing research question, and it does have some promising potential.

the idea would be that the reason this happened in about the same place at about the same time of year is that the earth went through about the same fluctuations in the gravitational field, leading to about the same fracture in the crust.

and, i think it's important to recognize on christmas just how dangerously in motion we really are, being flung around this star, wobbling, in constant threat of being pulled apart and flung out into the galaxy....

you could do a calculation and try and determine how likely it is that it's a coincidence; i won't bother.  i might say something about how the universe doesn't give a fuck about your ratios - as evidenced by the inevitable contradiction, and then use that to undermine the model. but, perhaps the more cogent observation is that it isn't a coincidence at all - that there's physics here to unravel.

fuck your god.

but happy solstice.

yeah.

the problem is you told them to stop printing money, donald.

i don't own any stocks. but, if you want to reverse this, a return to quantitative easing is required.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-fed-only-problem-our-economy-has-2018-12-1027831518

it's the time of the year to enjoy some of the classics.

so, i forgot that most bourgeois and government things are closed this week.

i don't have any problems with acknowledging the solstice, but aren't we all a little too old for christmas? isn't the society too old for christmas? the culture? aren't we beyond this? can't we all grow up a little?

we have this weird holiday in canada called "boxing day", so i won't be able to make any calls until thursday. but, i'm planning on kind of pivoting on thursday morning, too.

i've been sleeping for the better part of the last week; outside of a grocery run on saturday morning, i've barely been awake since wednesday, except to eat. i kind of want to get back to rebuilding, but i'm still having a hard time staying awake.

i want to be clear on the point about my father's estate. i was offered the role of executor, but turned it down, as i expected to be on long term disability. in ontario, the government either seizes assets or throws you off disability, and on a certain level i actually agree - if you can effectively execute an estate, you're not very disabled. i don't know exactly what the will says. but, the agreement we came to was not designed to exclude me, but rather to get around the government in a way that would ensure i wasn't excluded, because he couldn't leave me money directly.

my father didn't like my politics, but he's one of the few people that understood them, because he had so much exposure, and such an opportunity to do so - and you can imagine that a moderately conservative parent would have these kinds of arguments about finances and employment with their anarchist child, so long as the level of discourse can remain respectful, and it usually did. he wanted me to embrace a normal life of capitalist excess, and found it frustrating that i refused to, but i think i got through to him well enough that he understood that i wanted a way out of all of that, rather than the thing itself...

and, i would still rather get a disability check than go after my step-mother or sister regarding mismanagement or broken promises. i don't want my dead father's money. i want a guaranteed income. but, i have to adjust to what the state is doing, whether i like it or not.

he didn't have millions of dollars to leave me; i'm sure he would have, if he did. what he could do is what he did - he sat me down with my stepmother and had her agree to wire me "gifts" on a regular basis. it's a henson trust in theory, without the actual trust. and, maybe i was naive to believe her, and maybe he was naive to suggest it, but there wasn't another reasonable option - i was not able to work, and am still not able to work, and could consequently not accept the magnitude of funds on offer without losing access to required long term benefits.

as mentioned: i don't expect anything has been probated, yet. i'll find out near the end of the week.

see, the american media calls these people "political prisoners", but the truth is that they're mostly fundamentalist jihadist extremists that would shoot you on the street for belonging to the wrong cult, or eating the wrong thing, or having sex with the wrong person.

to be clear: this is a sensationalist report that may very well essentially be bullshit designed to influence donald trump. as journalism, it's pretty lacking. it's not unbelievable, though.

but, had the outcome been the other way, there'd be just as many - probably many more - dead secularists executed in poorly run jails for breaking sharia law, and some of these people would be the executioners.

it's the nature of this kind of a war - a lot of people are going to die. you need to look at it like this: at the end day, there's little comparison in terms of death counts, when you compare the secular and religious regimes. if what the post is saying is even true, this is a brutal means to an end, but the end is worth striving for.

you can't stamp out religion with force. but, sometimes, there's little option but to try....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria-bodies/

something else i may be able to try is to sue the estate to pay down my student loan, as i have plenty of evidence, in form of emails, of promises to do so. i would essentially be setting myself up as a creditor, which gets around any technical issues of inheritance. and, that may mean suing somebody directly.

as mentioned: my understanding is that everything was in her name anyways, so there wasn't even much of anything to transfer. i have not been informed of any kind of probate process, nor have i been informed of the opening of any kind of estate, leading me to believe that the will was joint, and won't execute until she dies.

but, it's long past due that i actually see it.

see, i think i'm dealing with something like this:

https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/wills-trusts/joint-wills-married-couples.html

i don't know for sure.

i need to see it...

frankly, i'd be better off waiting 20 years, anyways. and, i'm still not certain that i can't argue my way into another disability term....

"you don't call your family on christmas?"

no.

they're horrible assholes.

what i am is a white sheep in a very dirty family...

but, let's...

i wasn't, like, disinherited, or cut out, or anything - it was just not the right way to support me. and, that created a fiduciary responsibility to the people involved, which has been horribly broken.

if i have to go down that path, it's going to really harm their financial standing. but, i can hardly be faulted for not caring. at all.

i mean, it's kind of the explanation to this, right?

who makes a promise to their dying husband to be a fiduciary to his disabled child, only to break it five days later, besides a psychopath on the autism spectrum?

and, it's kind of a constant in her behaviour. for years, i thought she was horribly immoral; in hindsight, she might actually just not be fully capable of really understanding what she's even doing. it's this inability to give a fuck; it's clinical, clearly, but it seems like something is missing rather than that something is off balance.

if we're going to go through this, it would be better for her to give me the rest of the $500/month up front. as i say - that $50,000 number has been bandied around. maybe, we cut it off there. i dunno.

i would imagine the joint estate was probably worth around $500,000, and that she probably contributed at least 60% of it. i know that most of their wealth was tied into property, but i don't know how much debt they had. they lived above their means.

i wouldn't expect that he got any insurance money for brain cancer beyond what could be claimed directly.

i don't know exactly how old she is, but she's actually a few years older than he would have been. by now, she's in her mid to late 60s.

a complicating factor is that i believe she was placed on leave and forced into early retirement due to a mental illness. i kind of deduced she was probably bipolar, but it was never clearly explained to me. when i was younger, i was told she has an "imbalance"; the last couple of years of his life, he just called her retarded. he was constantly apologizing for her...

"i'm sorry that she smashed your guitar. what do you want me to tell you? she's retarded."

and, frankly, i think it might have been closest to the truth - she may be on the autism spectrum. so, what do you do when you have an autistic person with a fiduciary duty over somebody with a stress disorder, who refuses to carry it out?

it's a messy situation. clearly. so, it would be easier if i could just get the odsp check. sadly, that's closing down as a reality....

but, i don't know what kind of retirement income she gets, or how much of that money she can claim as necessary for her own retirement.

i may end up suing my sister, instead.

we'll see what i'm able to learn - i'll need to call the lawyer first, and then the court house.

but, via the agreement, and as of right now, my step-mother owes me $32500 + interest, and counting - and if i have to, i'll sue her for it.

time's up.

i'm also going to need to look into my father's will, or lack thereof.

i was supposed to get a $500/month check for the foreseeable future, which would give me $6000/year in gifts, which is the maximum amount under the law to maintain benefits. that was the plan, here. we set up an agreement days before he died....and then she just didn't follow through with it.

iirc, she said it wasn't binding because he was half-retarded. the second part was true (after three invasive brain surgeries), but the first part wasn't, as what was set up was a fiduciary duty - it was her agreement that was important, not his.

i probably should have asked for a copy; it didn't cross my mind that she'd bail. i was planning a move, dealing with my father's death...it was just something that didn't cross my mind. but, in hindsight, it should have crossed my mind....

i haven't pursued anything because i don't expect that the dollar figures are worth pursuing. i was told for years that everything would be left in her name, with the assumption that she would fairly distribute it - up to her discretion. and, the same thing was true the other way, although she doesn't have any children. but, how much money is available here, given that she could have another 20-30 years ahead of her?

the number $50,000 has been thrown around a little, and the fact is that that's not a lot of cash.

if i had 50 years left in 2013, i'd have needed to be looking at dollar figures around $1000000 to make any kind of action worthwhile, and that didn't strike me as likely at all. $50,000 is only going to buy me 4 or 5 years. i'd be better off staying on odsp, and biding my time to make a legal case when i'm 55.

but, the situation has now changed - it now makes sense to figure out what i should have got, and sue for it. and, given that i'm not aware of any probate process, and was not informed if one did exist, i may have an argument to reopen it - or at least to sue for unjust enrichment.

i'll repeat: my understanding is that the entire estate went to my step-mother. a $500/month check for an unlimited period is basically exactly what i wanted, and i wouldn't have had much use for a lump sum much less than $1000000, which is probably completely unrealistic. so, it seemed like a waste of time.

but, i don't know, really - i need to see what the will actually says, and what my options are around it.

and, is assad a war criminal?

well, i think it's not really his fault - he was fighting a war thrust upon him by outside forces, using obsolete technology as a result of decades of sanctions. we wouldn't sell him modern weapons, then we condemned him for defending himself using what he had.

he's done some awful things, but the responsibility for it is largely with the saudis.

self-defence is a strong legal argument. you could get him for manslaughter, perhaps. but, it would be hard to convict him of war crimes, i think.

that said, i do agree that he needs to be phased out - not because of what he did but because of what is inevitable. i've made this argument here, repeatedly: if you leave the regime in place (and assad himself is of least concern, it's the generals that need to be removed) then there is no future but retaliation - the syrians will go after the saudis as soon as they can, to avenge what has been done to them. and, who can blame them for that?

and, yes - i'm in favour of regime change in saudi arabia, but not at the hands of bashar al-assad, or his generals.

this conflict is so complex and confusing that it has got everybody spun around and supporting things they normally wouldn't, in terms of hard to work out lesser evils. everything is a least-harm calculation. there's no right answer.

but, an imperialist occupation that is illegal under international law is not much of a way forward to building an autonomous worker-run society, and any thinking that it ever was was delusional on it's face to begin with.

the kurds should really be grateful that the americans aren't actively trying to destroy them, which is what they normally do in this scenario.

whatever one thinks of rojava, they should have seen an american withdrawal coming. lessons for the revolution; it's cliched, but it's the blunt truth. it's not like they had much of a choice, but they should have known from the start that they were eventually going to need to defend themselves.

there's not a contradiction in supporting some kind of kurdish self-determination inside syria, and supporting an american withdrawal - for the same reason that there's not a contradiction in supporting the withdrawal, and leaving the remaining fighting up to the russians.

the bottom line is that i don't think it's reasonable to call for american imperialism to protect anarchists in a fictional kurdistan. it's a nice idea; it's not very rooted in reality.

yeah. i'm detoxing and everything, sure. but, i'm exceedingly uneasy about using a mail order service to buy marijuana, as there is still a good chance that this is an elaborate sting operation.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/privacy-commissioner-cannabis-sales-1.4952025

despite all this attempted do-gooding by these liberal/christian activist groups, the fact of the matter is that they don't understand us any better than we understand them.

and, something else - i think if you talk to syrians, they're going to tell you that they don't want to be refugees, and they don't want to come to america, and deal with a massive culture shock.

they want to go home, and live in their own culture, amongst their own people.

syria is a russian satellite.

so, does pulling out help the russians? well, it should help the russians reassert order in their satellite state, if that's what you mean to say, sure.

i'm hardly on the side of some military plan that wants to destabilize the russians. i want peace and stability, and the russians are a better ally than america is, right now, to that end.

it has been the case for some time now that the russians are the grown-ups in the room.

trump is saving face, and that's fine.

it is true that isis is degraded. yes. and, it is worth celebrating. these were bad guys, and they're gone.

but, the point was not to take out isis - it was to take out assad....

the thing is that this wasn't a noble goal, and nobody should be upset that it didn't work. it was foolish, and smart people knew from the start that this was the inevitable end point.

i can't know whether trump understands what he's doing, but he's doing the right thing, regardless.

and, i really need to be clear about this - i'm not taking a pro-trump position. i'm actually taking a pro-putin position. the russians are the force of stability, here. they're the ones articulating the side i'm on, here.

woahwoahwoahwoahwoah.

ok.

so, is isis completely destroyed? i don't think anybody said that. so, is there going to be further fighting? i would count on it. but, that's not the point.

the left side of the news media is making it seem like it's just a few hundred advisors leaving, and it's not such a big change. but, they're missing the context on the board. the united states is currently involved in an illegal occupation of northeastern syria. the fact that the americans are sitting there on this territory is placing the situation in a kind of suspended animation, because nobody wants to attack the americans - even if the turks using scary words, and the russians like to play chicken.

you'd be fucking retarded to start a war with the united states, and that is not a statement that requires an argument.

so, when the americans abandon this illegal occupation, it will allow the various actors - mostly the turks and russians - to come in and try and re-establish a concept of syrian sovereignty. and, of course the americans want to see the turks and russians get into a fight about this, and they very well might, but the basic point is that the strategy failed, so what's the point in continuing on with it?

so, sure, there's going to be some more insurgencies. but, shouldn't that be up to syria and iraq to deal with, with the help of their allies and protectors - the russians, the iranians? why is it america's responsibility to beat down militants in countries it has hostile relationships with? wasn't the whole point of this supposed to be to build the iraqi security forces up?

might america have to come back? sure. but, that's not a reason to stay. and, i do agree with the basic assessment that you can't stamp this out with force - but i need to add that you can't stamp it out with a set of social programs, either. this idea that this is about inequality is absolute rubbish. what you need to do is resolve the various proxy conflicts, which is probably impossible. but, the major proxy wars are all being fought against the saudis. so, realizing that as long as the saudis remain this basket case dictatorship that wants to re-establish a caliphate, the wars will continue means that taking out the saudis is a necessity for any meaningful peace in the region.

so, yes - there's still going to be an isis, but the idea is that the forces in the region should be able to contain it, from here. american policy in syria has now officially failed. and, the strategy consequently needs to shift.

i'll have to call about the motion on monday.

i have no idea when this specific justice sits again.

so, that was not what i intended or expected to happen - i just slept for 20 hours straight, and i'm still not sure that i'm awake, yet.

i feel hungover. it's unpleasant.

i dunno.

i'll remind you that i haven't touched any kind of intoxicant since the end of may. i want to be "detoxing" right now after all the second-hand marijuana smoke from the summer - and, maybe i am. but, i'm having a really hard time staying awake, and i don't actually know why.

so, i had a few hours to blow this morning, and i used it to file about 100 posts in the fall of 2016 that had already been timestamped. that was just mindless data entry.

i'm not filing today, but i AM going to call and get the information i need.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-pipeline-approvals-in-canada.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-republican-plan-to-convert.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-ubiquity-of-junk-economics.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-idea-that-pipelines-can-be.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-possibility-of-toll-booths.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-reports-of-demise-of-nafta.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-death-of-fidel-castro.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-recounts-in-wisconsin.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/whenever-i-hear-somebody-call-somebody.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-tactically-to-need-to-save.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-supreme-congressional.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-trumps-obvious-eventual.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-request-to-suspend-critical.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-krugmans-take-on-supposed.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-primary-reason-that-i-endorsed.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-right-libertarian-fantasy.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-push-back-on-requirement.html

there's another anniversary coming up for me.

it's been three years since i quit smoking.

it's been harder than i expected, because the society hasn't allowed me to really live smoke-free. i've moved twice, and i'm not sill not sure that i've found an acceptable living situation. do i want to spend the rest of my life trying to avoid second-hand smoke? is it even worth it?

what i can say about that is that you get to a point where you just don't want to be around it any more. at first, it's a process of self-control; eventually, you become utterly revolted by it. as difficult as quitting has been, relapsing is simply not an appealing option to me. i can't even sit in the same room as a smoker, any more. i'm just utterly disgusted by it.

as mentioned: the caulking made a large difference, and i still don't know if second-hand smoke from upstairs or outside is a partial cause of the lingering congestion i'm experiencing. i should make some progress on better understanding that this upcoming week. but, a big motive in the litigation i'm launching is in trying to generate enough income to move into a non-smoking building.

it's weird. i've spent the vast majority of my life very poor, and this is really the first push factor i've ever had to get out of poverty. i don't care about sex or status or wealth and never did, but i just can't handle living in close proximity to heavy smokers any more.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-polling-situation-going.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-idea-that-clinton-is-lock.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-estate-tax-hike-as-bad.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-state-department-is-clueless-united.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2018/04/pulling-out-of-syria-is-right-thing-to.html

i actually think trump had a mandate to withdraw from syria, and look forward to an isolationist defense minister.

isis were bad guys and needed to die. but, this is otherwise really long overdue.

and, i'm again left asking the democrats: are you really going to oppose a troop withdrawal, just because trump proposed it? really? after everything that happened since 2003?

are we really that easily manipulated?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/jim-mattis-defense-secretary-retires-trump

"i turned on the news and they were talking about bear markets, and so i said to myself - the russians know no bounds in their hacking, do they?"

bear market?

fuck, the russians have even hacked the nasdaq.

when will it end?

i don't have a lot of interest in the saga of that cfo we arrested, but we can't be treating this like it's a hostage stand-off. the woman is being detained legally as a part of an extradition request.

trudeau should respond with a travel warning, not with concessions.

i'm not ready to make these calls yet, today.

i'm making a very serious accusation, and i have to do it, but i'm not ready to do it, today. this is going to be painful, and i realize it.

tomorrow, maybe.

i'm still sleeping...maybe not really wanting to get up...

how far can it go, then?

well, it was at something like 10,000 when obama started printing money.

but, it depends on what policy exists. if money continues to be destroyed, it will keep falling.

it would be better to abolish capitalism altogether, and eliminate debt along with currency.

but, so long as we have currency and capitalism, we should seek to maximize indebtedness in order to redistribute wealth. eliminating debt just means trickling the wealth up, and making the poor poorer.

call it a contradiction if you want, but it's really in your head; it's not a contradiction, at all, it's just a recognition that the economy is a creation of human hands, and not something that exists out there, somewhere, in the wild.

money is debt. so, sharing wealth means creating debt, and eliminating debt means destroying wealth. that's reality. deal with it.

the rate increase isn't a cause, it's a signal. it's a warning signal that a bomb is about to drop, not the bomb itself. the bomb itself is the elimination of debt.

debt and wealth are the same thing.

but, conservatives have never understood this, which is why they shouldn't be allowed near the economy.

the market is the debt.

no debt = no market.

do you understand?

so, you're upset about the market crashing.

but, i thought you wanted to get rid of the debt?

i'm going to get to the end of this and find out it was the russians that altered the audio, right?

meaning it was csis...

so, what about the civil case, then?

well, i think there's two things i want to look at with this. i want to get the response from the fingerprint destruction request, and i want the report from the opird. i half expect that i may have to take both decisions to court. but, in a sense, that's the point.

i have a timeline around this. but, let me look into exactly how i'd start this off. i know i need to file something in superior court, but is it just a motion, or do i need to file supporting documents? what are the timelines? where do i make the argument that i was arrested without probable cause, exactly, and who decides?

i expect i'll put this off until next month, but let me look into it more closely.

so, i need to make some calls today about the motion to release the audio, and will be waiting to file the human rights complaint until i am certain as to whether i can get solid audio released or not. and, i need to look into starting the civil rights case at least.

it's deductive reasoning v empiricism yet again, right?

math v science.

you start with math - you have to. but, you correct it as you build evidence.

and, i have a lot of wheels to reinvent...

can i be faulted for trusting the court house to get me unmodified audio on request?

a priori? no, probably not. that's a reasonable thing to rely on, if you don't know better.

but, in hindsight? i don't want to even use the word naive - it's not naive. it's just not a deep enough level of cynicism.

so, this isn't a logic error, it's a deficit of experience. i learn quickly :).

it's kind of recursive.

i'm suing for damages relating to arresting me in order to prevent me from suing for damages. had she not had me arrested, i would be in one of those scenarios where i could win a suit, but not be liable for anything - or i'd get $1 or something. being discriminated against isn't necessarily a reason to get an award, i have to prove that the discrimination actually cost me something. but, because she foolishly had me arrested without any sort of cause, it opens her up to liability.

i should be able to file this anyways, sure.

but, i've already made the mistake of putting words to paper without getting the evidence first. it's more of a question of what i end up filing - if i can get the unmodified audio released, i'll be able to insert the smoking gun; if i can't get this audio, i'll need to remove any references to it in what i file.

i don't have much experience at this. so, i'm going to make some mistakes. what's important is that i learn from them, and don't repeat them. and, there's a lesson here - don't rely on the honesty of others to get the data to you, make sure you have the evidence before you start using it.

no. i need to wait for the human rights thing.

i'm essentially suing for damages for filing a false report - i mean, that's where the actual financial award exists. it's a civil case. so, i should get all of the evidence, first. 

yeah, i'm going to have to call to figure out when this particular justice sits, next, and also to figure out how the audio is stored.

i'm requesting that the audio be released in it's "original, unmodified form with proper time stamps and complete metadata". i'm also requesting permission to analyse the data to determined it's authenticity, which is actually against the law to do without permission.

i don't expect that the justice will know what that means, and i'm not certain i do yet, either. it seems like there's multiple channels in the audio, so what i'll need to know is how it's recorded. is it mixed together at once? are the audio streams stored in separate files?

i know how this stuff woks, obviously - i can have a very technical conversation about this. and, i'll need to have it before i get to the justice, so that i understand exactly what i'm asking for.

the next thing i'm going to look at is the human rights forms.

so, what happened?

i'm still not sure what this pepper smell is, but i think it's making me sleepy.

suspected sources:

1) the pepper in my spice cabinet. occam's razor, right? i just don't know why it smells like pepper on the other side of the apartment, though.
2) i drink large amounts of very powerful coffee which is brewed frequently and transported all around. it partly adds up, as the coffee maker smells like it. but, the coffee maker is also beside the spice cabinet.
3) pollution from outside, but i can't find anybody talking about peppery-smelling pollution, so i don't know what it is.
4) smoke or something else from upstairs. cologne, maybe?
5) dry air from the heaters. but, it doesn't seem so dry in here, really.

i should be able to rule a few things out next week.

whatever is, it seems to be of least concern overnight and pick up in the morning, and it has knocked me out two days in a row, now.

i woke up in the afternoon on tuesday to a set of questions related to the ongoing investigation of the officer, got a start on it, ate, crashed again, and finished writing them an essay in the morning. i then slept all day wednesday, again, i suspect due to this peppery smell, got up to eat in the evening, and crashed yet again. i'm still feeling woozy.....a combination of chest congestion and eye strain....

am i just sick? i guess it's possible, but there seems to be a cause and effect.

i'm going to try and get the motion ready for the day. i wanted to file it in the afternoon, but that may need to wait until next week if i can't get the energy to get up.

it would be ridiculous to make a prediction.

but, what i'd like to see is a liberal minority, with the greens holding the balance of power.

so, what are the tactics?

as always, the conservatives have to split the vote, somehow. they'll probably get less than 35%.

the liberals need to find a way to prevent vote splitting on the left, while holding enough moderates to keep the conservatives down. but, the primary fight is always to their left, not their right.

the ndp may want to give up altogether - and, in fact, a large number of incumbents are not running. the ndp are not even seeking the balance of power, right now - they're in a fight for party status, this election.

and, the greens need to be finding a way to build a broader tent on the left, to take advantage of the ndp's decline. if the liberals can be reduced to a minority, however small, they have some chance at gaining the balance, this election. five or six seats in bc could be all they need, if there's enough of a bloc surge in quebec.

has much changed? i don't think so.

the conservatives are still at 33% - the same place they were at in 2013. they have a base, and that base is immoveable, but they're demonstrating zero to negative growth.

so, where did all the support for trudeau go? the truth is that it was never really there in the first place.

if you looked at polling in august or even september of 2015, it would have said essentially the same thing - that the conservatives have a solid base in the low 30s, that the liberals have a base around 25%, that the ndp & greens have a smaller base, and that everybody else is vaguely left, but non-committal.

that huge undecided vote isn't completely undecided, and undecided isn't even the best way to describe it. that swing is not positioned in the centre, or unsure of whether it wants to support the liberals or conservatives. that swing is actually to the left of the liberal party, and both finding itself unhappy with the liberals and disappointed with the ndp.

in the end, it could go back to the liberals - if scheer is scary enough and the ndp is hopeless enough. but, i pointed out near the end of 2015 that the greens seemed poised to displace the ndp as the default option on the left, and that may actually be playing itself out.

the liberals are not really in an election against the conservatives, or even against the ndp, who may be decimated, but increasingly against the greens.

and, they should keep an eye on the bloc, too. those numbers in quebec are rather awful.

i keep pointing to mulroney, who lost the west to reform and quebec to the bloc. trudeau may be losing the west to the greens and quebec to the bloc.

and, the ndp might seriously be done.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/12/19/trudeau-approval-rating-poll_a_23622710/

narrative of events for investigation of the officer

so, what i'm going to do is tell you the entire story, as i remember it, from the start, as i have not yet had the opportunity to do so. i believe that the criminality of the officer's behaviour should become apparent as the story unfolds. i'm ccing the opird as a witness, as i indicated i would. any and all documents that i feel are appropriate have been attached. i apologize to the opird for the presence of any duplicate documentation.

i moved into the building at 851 tuscarora on dec 1, 2017 and almost immediately noticed that i was sleeping a lot more, but did not tie this to the effects of my downstairs neighbour's marijuana addiction until the beginning of the new year. near the end of february, i realized that i could not continue to live in a situation where i was breathing in so much second-hand marijuana smoke as it was affecting my mental and physical health, and would need to figure something out - i would either need to have this tenant evicted for smoking too much, or have the building renovated so it didn't affect me or find a way to move. after the other approaches resulted in dead-ends, i eventually had to sue my landlord for negligence to get out of the lease, as she refused to address or really even acknowledge the seriousness of the problem; canlii documentation of the relevant order, swt-16361-18, is attached. the issue around the marijuana smoke is important both because it defines the initial contact i had with the officer and because it explains why i was trying to move out of the building. i initially had some difficulty finding a low-income drug-free living situation in this city, but i did eventually succeed in moving out of the building at 851 tuscarora; i do not live at this location any longer.

so, my first contact with the officer was related to this conflict over second-hand marijuana smoke with the tenant below me. i initially called the police to investigate the situation at 22:33:05 on mar 23, 2018; they did not arrive until very early in the morning, and informed me that the tenant below me had not answered the door, see CP WI 2018-225525 (not attached). so, i called a second time at 20:05:34 on mar 24, 2018 (in fact, i had called several times in the afternoon and was refused service by the dispatcher), and had two officers arrive at 20:22, officer muntino being one of them - see CP WI 2018-22757 (not attached). as i do not have a cell phone, and the building does not have a ringer, i had to go downstairs to meet the officers and let them into the building.

the first thing that officer muntino did was notice that the entire building smelled like marijuana (which is true.) and insinuate that i was uncool for not using the drug like everybody else in the building was, completely ignoring the concerns i was having about exposure, regarding my mental and physical health. he didn’t seem to think that chronic, unwanted exposure to second-hand marijuana smoke was any kind of a serious issue, or that i had any rights to complain about the situation. after explaining to him that i was seeking to document the situation for civil reasons, and that what i was looking for was simply a report of some sort to use in court, he agreed to speak to the tenant, and came back to my apartment a few minutes later, where he told me that the tenant agreed to smoke outside in the future (she didn’t.), and then continued to insult me for being a loser because i don’t do drugs, and for being openly queer; the messaging was crystal clear - my concerns were not valid, because i’m not a cool drug user, like the tenant downstairs, and nobody likes queer people, anyways. he then left, and i hoped i would not need to see him again.

i made the following posts to my blog on the afternoon of mar 25, 2018:

Sunday, March 25, 2018

the reason i was thinking about sarah last night was that i had to call the cops, not once but twice. i was supposed to write this up a little, but the smoke has been so thick in here that i've been having trouble staying awake since i finally crashed on saturday morning...

i think i'm awake, now.

the cops think i'm wasting their time, but i don't remotely agree. libertarians might present arguments about legalization leading to less policing, but this is a guess - and i'm not sure an evidence-based analysis would uphold it. regardless, that has nothing to do with the reasons marijuana is being legalized, here. the government has been clear that the purpose of legalization is to reduce use - especially amongst youth - and not to promote wider use.

the government of canada recognizes that recreational marijuana use is a substantive health problem and is adjusting it's approach to the drug in order to reduce use. nothing in the changes to the laws sanctions or promotes consensual drug use, or ignores the damages created by second-hand smoke - especially to those that do not consent to be influenced by it.

if you think otherwise, you need to educate yourself on what is actually happening.

and, i don't expect it to be legalized, anyways.

if somebody put drugs in my drink that would be a reason to call the cops, right? so, why is it different if somebody put drugs in my air supply?

if somebody was burning paint thinner in the apartment downstairs, that would be a reason to call the cops, right? so, why is it different if somebody is burning marijuana?

we have these irrational ideas attached to consumption. but, if somebody makes a choice to burn any other carcinogenic chemical inside, we reference their choice in the matter as a legal concept called mens rea. that's all i'm getting out of this - that they're making the choice to pollute the air and make me sick, i.e. they're not doing it by accident and are consequently liable for the consequences.

but, drug addicts see themselves at the centre of the universe. they think everything is about them. no; this is about me, this is about my air, this is about my rights.

i was able to get the cops out here late on friday night and early on saturday night, so there will be two reports for me to reference to the landlord. the tenants eventually promised to smoke outside; we'll see if they do or not. evidence right now is sketchy. i'll make the foia request for data tomorrow.

i'll also be getting the hospital records from the times i went in for observation.

the cops kept telling me to call the landlord, but they appear to have gotten the process backwards. the cops are right that there's little they can do, and i understand that, but a warning from the cops is actually less of an escalation than a formal complaint. so, if i'm going to be doing this proportionately and fairly, i need to call the cops in to talk to them before i agitate for eviction. and, if they change their habits to smoking outside, then that request will have worked - they will have saved themselves from eviction, even if what that means is giving them more time to find a different place.

if they don't change their habits, i'll be able to present evidence to the landlord that the police officer identified the smell of marijuana, that the tenant admitted to smoking inside the unit (!) and that there is consequently grounds for eviction, due to illegal behaviour on the premises of the property.
at 17:22

the language the cop used was "nice".

it was,

i talked to the tenant downstairs, and she seems really nice.

the cop then underhandedly implied i was a fag for trying to throw her out, rather than trying to get to know her. and, he was absolutely right, although i'd reject the implication that there's something wrong with that.

a lot of people of either gender are going to interpret a 30-something curvy pothead as "hot", and i don't doubt this. but, everything about what's happening is utterly revolting to me.

this is not my type, and never was.

i'm not likely to date anybody of either gender again, but i'd be more likely to go for an underweight straight-edge vegan than a pothead that looks like a stripper. insofar as i am attracted to women, or ever was, i definitely have always preferred the modern yoga body to the traditional hour-glass...

i'm actually just likely to interpret curvy women as overweight. that whole culture around large asses is just gross, to me, and i've always felt the same way about large breasts.

but, regardless, i wouldn't date a pothead. it would have been easier to stomach when i was a smoker, but now that i'm not, it's really a non-starter. it's just not a quality i'd want out of somebody i'm spending a lot of time with...
at 18:41

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
ADDICTION IS AGENCY
at 20:18

=======

so, this was my first experience with officer muntino. while i got the report out of him that i wanted to get, he made it clear that he thought there was something wrong with me for trying to evict this woman rather than trying to have sex with her - that he thought i was a loser because i don’t do drugs or have sex with women, and my concerns were consequently entirely invalid. the interaction really exuded toxic masculinity on every possible level. but, this was not the first time i’d been insulted for being openly queer, and i got what i wanted, so i didn’t really think twice about it.

i didn’t get around to filing the foia request until june; the attached documents were released to me on june 20th. the attached civil case was heard on july 5th. a second issue involving officer muntino occurred on july 8th, regarding a situation that started in may and began to escalate over the month of june.

while i suspect that these concerns are not unrelated to each other, i have no direct evidence to present to demonstrate that they are, but would rather request that the department look into the matter to see what kind of communication existed between officer montino, the landlord at 851 tuscarora (ina sanford / lakewind enterprises) and the complainant on july 8th (hilda currie). the period to look for communication between these parties would be from may 1st to july 31st. i am asking the department to look into this because i would not expect to be successful in a foia request of this nature, but i may need to try one if i have to appeal to get charges laid. based on what i could see happening outside of my window, it seemed as though some co-ordination was occurring, but actionable evidence in the case would need to be in the form of a record of communication between the conspirators. my belief is that the landlord was aware that she had lost the case on july 5th, and may have colluded with the neighbour to try and have me arrested as retaliation.

regardless of any co-ordination that did or did not exist, officer muntino did appear at my door a second time on the afternoon of july 8th.  what follows is the statement of disagreement that i attached to the occurrence (go # wi 2018-56622, not attached, as i received it via disclosure) on nov 28th, via a mfippa request, and may or may not be updated in the system as of dec 19th. this statement of disagreement goes over the context of the call and narrates the officer’s first (dubious) attempt to arrest me for harassment, in hypothesized retaliation for the civil action.

=======

Statement of Disagreement In regards to GO# WI 2018-56622

To begin with, let me state clearly that I would prefer to have this record completely destroyed. I am aware that the complainant in this matter had made repeated calls to the police, and had been told repeatedly that I was not in breach of any law. She had in fact threatened me with arrest on multiple occasions, all of them completely absurd. Eventually, her persistence in calling me in produced this (absurd) report, but the world does not operate on the fox news axiom that a lie, when repeated, becomes true. She was wrong the first thirty times that she called in, and she was wrong on this day, as well. Ironically, it is this persistence in trying to get me charged that better qualifies as harassment than anything described in the report - and it is a matter of your own records to verify that repeated calls on the topic were made, after she was told that nothing would be done.

However, I understand that my legal rights regarding amending the report relate primarily to my own privacy, and that it is only my right to reply that i have any real ability to exercise. That said, there is a point where the facts are overwhelming enough to justify the destruction of a report of this nature on moral grounds - that is, there is a point where the force must admit it is wrong and do the right thing in destroying a report that should have never been written. I have no legal argument in forcing the police to destroy the file, but I hope that drawing attention to how wrong it is produces the obvious, correct and logical conclusion: this report should not have been written, and because it shouldn’t have been written, it should be destroyed.

There are some factual errors in the report. The officers were not dispatched to “843 marentte av”, which appears to be a typo on top of an error, but rather to 843 tuscarora - the structure directly below the one i lived in at the time, 851 tuscarora. The nature of the report makes it clear that the call was coming from my neighbour, and the presumed error of “843 Marentette” is too far away for the person to be my neighbour. Further, I distinctly recall having a conversation with an officer that i later learned is PC Montino-Yong - a name that suspiciously does not appear on the report I received, some time after filing an OPIRD complaint against him (E-201809161252432765). The second officer on the call was a white male, whose name I am not aware of.

    I dispute that any photographs of this woman were taken while she was planting flowers, nor does this woman have a gardening habit, nor is there a flowerbed in the yard she was sitting in, which is not hers but a common area in an apartment complex - something that could be verified rather easily, if the address on file were correct. Is that why the address was corrupted? While I do have some footage of her watering what appear to be illegal marijuana plants in potted containers near the beginning of July, 2018, any statements that claim that she was being filmed while “planting flowers” are absolutely false. In fact, this woman was not gardening in her backyard at all, but rather sitting in the common area of an apartment complex and drinking large amounts of alcohol, while chain smoking both cigarettes and marijuana. And, I have the photographic and video evidence required to demonstrate this, if required.

As any photographs or videos that were taken were in the common area of an apartment complex, this individual has no right to privacy in the matter. There is absolutely nothing illegal whatsoever about filming a person in a public place, whether they consent to it or not.


This is a sample of the footage that was taken, and it doesn’t seem much like “gardening” to me - it’s rather some people sitting in the common area of an apartment complex, while drinking alcohol and chain smoking.

(deleted.jpg)
   
And, what is the reason I was filming her?

Well, as I retain these records, we could consult them - and we may still. My stay at 851 Tuscarora has since ended, but it was extremely unpleasant due to the presence of a habitual marijuana addict directly below me. Due to the fact that the flooring was substandard, the second hand smoke in the apartment made the apartment uninhabitable. I even tested positive for thc from it, which is quite difficult to do from second-hand exposure. I ended up suing my landlord over this, and won an escape from the lease. The court reference is SWT-16361-18.

As I was stuck living in a perpetual hotbox, I had no option but to leave my windows open more or less 24/7 to attempt to get some air flowing into the unit. Unfortunately,  a chain-smoking, alcoholic neighbour then moved in next door, around the beginning of may, and decided to enforce her habit directly into my air supply.

I asked this woman to move repeatedly, and all she did was swear at me. I have this documented quite thoroughly. So, what does a person do in this situation? If I were to close the window, I’d be dealing with the effects of unwanted inebriation from one neighbour’s drug habit, and if I were to keep the windows open I’d have to deal with the consequences of a chain smoking alcoholic setting up directly in the air supply. The only option I had was to get this woman out of my air supply.

One will note that every human rights document ever written has a right to fresh air, while the supreme court has stated on numerous occasions that a right to smoke does not exist.  I should have had a legal mechanism to get this woman out of my air supply beyond simply getting up and moving. It is my own rights that were being infringed upon.

As a non-smoker in windsor, I had some previous experience with pushing back against smokers. I knew that bylaw couldn’t do anything because it’s not a public building. I knew that the anti-smoking unit upholds an unfortunately restrictive concept of ‘common area’ that doesn’t include a common backyard. In situations like this, judicial remedies must be sought, and a situation must consequently be created in order to put the issue before a judge. If a specific law would force a person to endure the catastrophic health effects of second-hand smoke then that law ought to be struck down as unconstitutional. Further, a great deal of rather nasty behaviour could no doubt be justified under grounds of free speech, if it is intended to protect a person’s health from the consequences of smoke inhalation. And, I decided that this was a fight worth having, for the benefit of the greater society - that there ought to be something I could do about this.

A project like this needs to begin simply and then escalate. To begin with, what I wanted was for an officer to come to the scene and ask the woman to smoke somewhere else, and hoped that would be enough. Yet, as the existing statute is insufficient to protect me from the effects of second-hand smoke, I had no grounds to call the officer. Rather, I had to push back in the hopes that she would call the officers, and we could then have some kind of mediation service that would end in her agreeing to not smoke in my window, as any sane person can see is quite reasonable.

So, I decided that if this woman was going to sit beside my window and blow smoke into it then she would have to listen to very loud noises while she did it, and hoped that this would act as a disincentive towards smoking in this area. If she got up and moved, the problem would be solved. And, surely, any sane person can understand that loud music is less damaging, disruptive, harassing and harmful than second-hand smoke! This is not even a comparison - it was weak, as far as retaliation is concerned. Yet, I was ultimately acting not out of retaliation but with an intent to get an officer on the scene to mediate. If that did not work, the next step would be to continue to agitate until the situation could be put before a judge, with the hope that a legal battle would end in a judicial ruling that would stand up for my right to fresh air and force this woman to smoke somewhere else - via a restraining order or something else.
   
As intended, several noise complaints were then filed over june and july, and the police appeared at my door several times, as can be checked in the record. I was transparent with the officers that appeared - this woman refused to smoke somewhere else, and if she insisted on blowing smoke in my window then i would need to create a situation out of it, because there is no existing statute to apply to stand up for my rights. And, she was asked to smoke somewhere else by the first several officers that appeared at the door, who seemed to understand that there was a delicate rights balance at play, she was infringing in my space and there was a relatively simple solution at hand - she could move a few feet away from the window. It was not until this Montino-Yong character appeared on the scene that this completely extra-legal idea that she has some kind of right to smoke in my window entered into the discourse.

Despite repeated requests by several officers, she simply refused to smoke somewhere else - and kept calling me in on noise complaints. How long can that go on for before somebody can be charged with harassment? Is continually positioning yourself beside somebody’s window and blowing smoke into it despite being asked to move repeatedly and chased off with harsh noise not the most textbook example of harassment possible? Is the second-hand smoke not a reason for me to fear for my safety? The issue seemed as though it had to go before a judge...

So, I initially started taking footage of this woman smoking - in a public space, beside my window - for the purposes of producing evidence for a court battle that would hopefully force her out of the space. I intended to document when, where and how much smoke she was producing, and the effect it was having on me. This is completely legal in every way; if she did not want to be filmed while smoking in public near my window, she had the choice to smoke somewhere else, or not at all.

After a while, I gave up on the noise as a tactic. While it initially worked in chasing her off, she eventually refused to move. It was apparently very important to her to continue to smoke in my window, even with the noise, and even after I made it abundantly clear that this was making me sick. Further, the noise was bothering some of the other tenants. On top of that, the officers seemed unwilling to send the issue to a judge because they apparently couldn’t generate any evidence. So, I moved to plan B, which was to try and have her charged with creating a common nuisance.

Common nuisance
•    180 (1) Every one who commits a common nuisance and thereby
o    (a) endangers the lives, safety or health of the public, or
o    (b) causes physical injury to any person,
is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
•    Definition
(2) For the purposes of this section, every one commits a common nuisance who does an unlawful act or fails to discharge a legal duty and thereby
o    (a) endangers the lives, safety, health, property or comfort of the public; or
o    (b) obstructs the public in the exercise or enjoyment of any right that is common to all the subjects of Her Majesty in Canada.
•    R.S., c. C-34, s. 176.

While charging smokers with causing a nuisance would be admittedly novel, it is difficult at this stage in history to understand how anybody could deny that blowing smoke into somebody’s window is endangering their health, and I was getting to the end of my patience. She had at this point been asked to move repeatedly by several officers. She actually was causing a nuisance. And, I frankly think it would have been a positive precedent, should it have succeeded.

So, I decided that I would continue to film her smoking near my window and refusing to move on request in order to build a case against her for causing a common nuisance.

It was under these circumstances that the officers arrived at my door on July 8th. I feel it is worthwhile to point out that I actually have footage on this day of myself informing the neighbour that she had no right to privacy in a common area, and that she called the police anyways. When the police arrived at my door, I was indeed quite hostile - as I was the one being harassed - and demanded that she be immediately charged with harassment, for repeatedly smoking beside my window, despite repeated requests by myself and by other officers to move.  The officers refused to press charges. When questioned as to why I was filming, I informed the officer that I was seeking to gather evidence for a nuisance charge to bring before a justice of the peace, as they would not file charges themselves. Officer Montino-Yong responded to this request by telling me that there was no such thing as criminal nuisance. I informed him that he was wrong, and it was s. 180 of the criminal code. He responded by telling me that he’s a police officer and he knows better; I told him I have a legal background, and I know better than to trust an officer’s understanding of the law. The second officer agreed with Montino-Yong, but it appeared to be disingenuous, in order to avoid the perception of a misinformed officer - he wanted to uphold the authority of the officer, even though he was wrong. Everything about this situation was disturbing and pathetic to me, from the officer’s misunderstanding of the law to the premise of being charged for harassing a nuisance smoker that was making me sick, so I told the officers point blank: it is not illegal to film in a public space, and I will be continuing to collect evidence to bring before the justice, if you won’t press charges, yourselves. I then firmly closed the door and told them to get lost, which was my right, as I was not under arrest, and clearly explained that my actions were not against the law.

I was arrested several weeks later on an unrelated charge of harassment in no less of a ridiculous scenario, and believe that these issues together actually constitute a pattern of police harassment. As of Nov, 2018, there is an ongoing OPIRD report into the behaviour of officer Montino-Yong.

As I had been threatened with arrest for harassment, I then made several calls to the windsor police, to attempt to press charges for a common nuisance. The officer on the phone confirmed that a common nuisance is in the code, thankfully, but I was told that it would be difficult to press charges without establishing intent. So, I resolved to continue documenting the smoking, to generate a pattern that demonstrated intent.

I then posted the following three posts to my blog:

===

i just had some cops show up and try to tell me there's no such thing as nuisance under the law.

the reality is that cops generally have no idea what the law says.
at 12:40

i don't have time to prosecute a nuisance charge. but, i'm collecting evidence in case i have to.

i will defend myself on free speech grounds, if attacked.

and, i will retaliate with a criminal nuisance charge, arguing that somebody that is wilfully blowing smoke into my air supply - despite being asked not to repeatedly - is negligently endangering m health.

i will not act first. i don't have time. i'm leaving as soon as possible.  but, i will retaliate accordingly.
at 13:23

i am absolutely willing to prosecute a smoker under nuisance laws.

are you going to argue that she's not endangering my health?

what year is it?

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-180.html
at 13:26

===

That said, I still did not want to send this woman to jail, I simply wanted her to smoke somewhere else. So, I attempted to contact 311 as a last resort before trying to have her charged.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jessica murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2018 17:20:49 -0400
Subject: nuisance complaint
To: 311@citywindsor.ca

i'm having a really hard time with a neighbour that's just intent on
creating air pollution and simply doesn't care - even thinks she has
some kind of right to pollution, and is just flatly hostile to anybody
suggesting otherwise. so, if i can gain some kind of victory in
getting her to smoke away from the window, she turns the barbeque on,
just to piss me off. as i believe that her behaviour is malicious, i'm
ultimately looking to have her criminally charged with nuisance, but i
need some help in getting there.

the basic crux of the problem is that she's an alcoholic, and when
somebody is constantly drunk, they just don't care. so, when she moved
in, she started chain smoking outside my window; when i asked her to
smoke somewhere else, she just drunkenly swore at me, tolf me she'll
smoke where she wants and accused me of "using big words". i've had
officers (which she called on noise complaints related to creating
disincentives to smoke a foot from my window) ask her to move, and she
still doesn't listen. there's basically no way to reason with her -
she's going to smoke where she wants, when she wants and no matter
what anybody says to her. so, the only solution is to charge her with
nuisance and drag her away.

today, after i got a second officer to get her to move after she
called in on me a second time, she retaliated by using an open
charcoal bbq in her yard. this is creating large plumes of very dirty
smoke that is a clear health hazard to anybody around. now, i'll note
that she has a clean-burning bbq, which she has used up until this
point. so, it's clear that she's using this dirty charcoal bbq with
the clear purpose of pissing me off - behaviour clearly indicative of
somebody intent on creating a nuisance. i called the fire department,
and they said the bbq is legal (i'm not so sure - it seems like an
open flame to me, and this is more of an issue of non-enforcement.).
but, my issue is less about the fire code and more about the smoke.

is there something i can do about this?

no amount of debate or discussion is going to have any effect. i need
something harsh & swift.

my next step is going to the justice of the peace and getting her
criminally charged.

j

====

i received the following reply:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: 311 <311@citywindsor.ca>
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2018 14:54:27 +0000
Subject: RE: nuisance complaint
To: jessica murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>

Good morning,

The City does not have any involvement with what is considered a "nuisance" neighbour.  You have addressed all the issues with the appropriate contacts (Police for criminal activity, Fire for open air burning) but if nothing is found to be illegal in nature, than it may be something you have to pursue on your own through a lawyer or small claims court for any damages.

Thank you for contacting 311.

Regards,


Rose | 311 Call Centre Team

Call Centre
400 City Hall Square | Suite 410 | Windsor, ON | N9A 7K6
(519)-255-CITY (2489) | 1-877-RING-311 (746-4311)
www.citywindsor.ca

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed.  The message may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and exempt from disclosure under applicable law.  If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by email at 311@citywindsor.ca .
Thank you.

===

and, i replied with this

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jessica murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2018 11:10:08 -0400
Subject: Re: nuisance complaint
To: 311 <311@citywindsor.ca>

nuisance itself is a crime under the criminal code, s 180 (1).

and, there is no use in suing a belligerent drunk on welfare for chain
smoking a foot from your window, and refusing to move. she has nothing to
take away from her.

i feel that this is an issue that the city *should* deal with: this is
fundamentally an air quality complaint, which should be dealt with through
bylaws. the right thing to do here is to fine this woman and keep doing it
until she stops behaving in such an anti-social fashion.

but, if i have to go in front of the justice of the peace and file charges
myself due to inaction by the city and by the police, then so be it.

the courts, at least, understand the severity of smoke issues. it's just a
shame that it takes somebody with a doctorate to get a basic handle on
simple science.

so, let it be stated here that my desperation is a consequence of your
inaction - and if this woman ends up going to jail for smoking on her
porch, or having to spend the next months or years fighting to stay out of
jail on nuisance charges related to smoking on her porch, it is because the
city would not step in and provide for a more appropriate remedy and more
reasonable means of conflict resolution.

let that sit on your conscience.

j

===

After this occurrence, I made a very clear attempt to communicate to this woman that if she did not stop blowing smoke into my window then I would try very hard to ensure she was charged with a common nuisance, once I moved away. She eventually relented and decided to smoke on the other side of the building. I was happy with this compromise, if baffled that it took so much effort to produce it, and decided against pursuing charges.

I will leave the wisdom of that decision in the hands of law enforcement, however skeptical i am of their abilities.

=========

so, that was my second interaction with the officer. you will notice that there is a commonality, here, of the officer standing up for smokers, to the point of badly misinterpreting the law to do so. once again, the officer broadcast the perspective that my concerns were invalid because i’m uncool. two occurrences, however, is not yet a pattern - a pattern needs three examples.

the court order around the marijuana smoke came down on aug 1st, giving me two months to plan a move. i learned in this process that it is very difficult to find low-income, drug-free housing in windsor, and i consequently found myself increasingly desperate to find a way out of the absolutely terrible situation that i was in.

the third issue with officer muntino began on sept 12th, and is previously documented by me in the opird complaint:

Summary of complaint
Please note formatting has been stripped for preview purposes - original intact
this officer has threatened me with arrest for a non-crime on two occasions. the first occurrence occurred by phone, and i have a recording of it. the officer called me at 3:56 am - that is almost 4:00 in the morning - on sept 12, and threatened to arrest me for repeatedly responding to an online ad. the number that the officer called me from was (removed). i txted a response to this number, and was told it is not an officer's number. it must have been a friend or partner's number, i suppose. i do have the recording of the officer identifying himself and can email it somewhere. i explained that my behaviour - repeatedly responding to an online ad for an apartment - is not harassment under the criminal code, and not only would i not stop, but i am preparing a human rights case against the landlord, for discriminating against me on enumerated grounds. the second occurrence happened at roughly 12:00 pm on sept 16th. two officers showed up at my door (the other was a white male officer and said nothing during the encounter), and this "constable mancino" threatened me with arrest a second time if i did not stop responding to the ad. i asked the officer to explain what harassment under the law is, and he failed to do so in a correct manner. he seemed to believe that harassment is merely annoying somebody, rather than threatening to harm them. of course, if that were true, then telemarketing would be against the law, and the jails would be full of call centre agents. it's just wrong. after determining that the officer did not understand the law, i told him i didn't have time for this, encouraged him to launch a report if he wanted to and went to close the door. he then put his foot in the door, preventing me from doing so. i informed him that he does not have a warrant, and yet he still refused to move his foot. he did eventually move his foot after i asked him to several times. he then threatened to arrest me if i reply to the ad again - not if i conduct in threatening or harassing behaviour, but if i merely reply to the ad. on his way out, i asked him for his badge number and he refused to give it to me. he started with "184" and then said he already gave it to me, which he did not. even if he had already given it to me, that would not be a reason to not give it to me again. when a citizen asks for a badge number, an officer should state it slowly and repeatedly if necessary. this officer may have been acting out of bias regarding my gender identity, as i am openly transgendered, but i cannot state that for certain. regardless, he should not have called me at 4:00 am from an unofficial police number that may or may not have belonged to his friend or partner, he should not have threatened me with arrest without understanding the nature of the law, he should not have prevented me from closing the door without a warrant and he should have given me his badge number when i asked. i would suggest that this particular officer has a superiority complex, is unreformable and should probably look for a different line of work.

=====

i have little to add to this, but i can re-articulate the point about what the officer said. when the officer appeared at my door, i had already received the voice message, and had already been dubiously threatened with arrest by him in july, so it was already clear to me that the officer had a poor understanding of harassment. i consequently asked him point blank to define harassment. i am forced to paraphrase, but if it were a play it might be something like this:

officer: if you don’t stop replying to the ad, i’m going to charge you with harassment.
me: can you define harassment for me?
officer: harassment is when you repeatedly behave in a manner that annoys somebody, after being told not to.
me: ok. right. i don’t have time for this...file a report if you want....

as mentioned, i then went to close the door, and the officer physically prevented me from doing so, repeating again that he’ll arrest me if i continue to reply, and refusing to give me his badge number when asked.

and, after that, i felt i had no choice but to disobey the officer, regardless of anything else, as i refuse to live in a society where people with guns can bang on your door and tell you to stop being annoying. if that were reality, it would be a policed state, and a policed state is something that’s worth fighting against. generating evidence for the human rights complaint - which is ongoing - became secondary to standing up to police intimidation. freedom is not something you can put on a shelf and forget about; rights need to be exercised, or they are lost. so, there’s a point where you have to disobey the officer simply for the sake of it, and hold him accountable if the intimidation persists, and that is where i was at with this, and where we are with this today.

and, i was in fact arrested for criminal harassment, without further warning, and by other officers, on sept 24th and then released on sept 25th. basic disclosure was not provided until oct 22nd. a request for detailed disclosure was made on oct 24th. the charges were dropped on nov 14th, under the admission that no evidence was ever collected by officer muntino, and the arrest was entirely unwarranted.

again: i cannot attach disclosure documents, but i would encourage you to look up the file:

1) case: regina v parent, jason
2) information no 18-2187
3) occurrence no 18-77979

i would reiterate that the premise that applying for an ad in good faith could ever be harassing behaviour is completely preposterous, and that the idea that any officer could have me arrested for such a thing is so outlandish that occam’s razor demands a simpler explanation. given my history with this officer - now documented in some detail - i believe it is far more likely that he was behaving out of malice, and simply taking advantage of the situation to finally throw me in jail, as he had already threatened to do, and to satisfy some kind of ego trip or something.

i have not filed a disagreement for this occurrence because i’ve applied for a file destruction, instead.

but, when i told the officer to go ahead and file a report, it was with the assumption that he would seek a warrant, as he is required to do under the law. criminal harassment is an indictable offence, so he would need probable cause before he could make an arrest without a warrant, which is outlandish to even define, in context. in the police report, the justification presented is that i was “unpredictable”, which is both unsupported by any evidence (my behaviour was actually entirely predictable - i replied to the ad in exactly the same way every time it was reposted), and the literal negation of probable cause - rather than present an argument that i posed a defined, credible threat to this person, which is necessary to make an arrest, the officer argued that there wasn’t a defined, credible threat at all, by claiming i was “unpredictable”, and then in a feat of incredible orwellian logic, presented that as probable cause.

in fact, i have no criminal record, and there was no reason to suspect any sort of threat at all. so, there was no probable cause, whatsoever.

in the absence of any probable cause, and without a warrant, the arrest was completely illegal. at most, i should have been provided with a summons to appear. thankfully, the justice realized that and had me released on recognizance.

so, to recap, what we have here is a pattern of harassing behaviour that included insulting me for not doing drugs, insulting me for my gender expression and sexuality, insulting me for not smoking cigarettes, threatening me with arrest on dubious or frivolous charges related to standing up for my own rights, filing false reports, clear intimidation on the behalf of a powerful landlord and finally illegally arresting me on an indictable offence without a warrant and without probable cause - all in an apparent attempt to enforce some kind of vigilante justice on me for daring to stand up for my rights, as a non-smoker.

with cops like this, why do we have jails at all?

charges should be filed, and the officer should be removed from the force.