you don't understand.

that cop was doing his job. you're just not clear on what his job is. these kinds of intimidation tactics are designed to control the herd into submission to authority by setting an example of brutality. it's a mafia tactic.

people need to see this, but they also need to understand that it's not a bad apple and it's not an accident. it's entirely by design, created by a system that sees the populace as a type of domesticated animal that needs to be controlled by brute force.

now, shut up and go buy something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkJJXUI_Oq4

up until recently, canada's relations with cuba (especially during the trudeau and chretien years, but even under mulroney) haven't been well-characterized as being an american cheerleader. canada was actually trying to act as an intermediate, and no doubt did in ways we don't really know about. there was of course a lot of opposition to this from segments of the canadian right. there was a minor fiasco up here when castro flew in to act as a pallbearer for trudeau's funeral, with the then recently more aggressive canadian right using it as an opportunity to attack the then ruling liberals as being soft on communist dictators. relations between trudeau and reagan were famously strained due to this sort of thinking, not just with castro but with communism in general. there's a trudeau biography (i can't remember the name of it) that explains that reagan was convinced that trudeau was a communist sympathizer and didn't want to share intelligence with him. it's a sort of open secret that reagan pushed trudeau out of office for exactly this reason.

certainly, canada buckled to a lot of pressure. but, there was an active policy of internationalism and multipolarity in canadian foreign policy throughout the last quarter of the last century, to the point that it felt like it was a part of the canadian national identity. this certainly extended to cuba.

but things have changed here a whole over the last decade. it's not just the change of political leadership, but also the increasing power of canadian resource companies - both in africa and central america.

it's also widely understood in canada that our government is stuck supporting the drug war due to american pressure, not due to ideological agreement. chretien considered legalization of marijuana to be a legacy project. it's understood that it didn't happen because the americans wouldn't allow it. and it's an open secret that bush (or the reaganite bush advisers) pushed him out for similar reasons.

that's not to distract from the point. it's just not a fair characterization of canada between 1965 and 2005 to suggest that they were out to isolate cuba and support the drug war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1GSLoP76a4

you mentioned you didn't get a browser. that's what would kill this.

i still run a pIII-500 with 640 mb of ram and a 17 gb hd (it was sold with windows 98 on it, in 1999) as a multimedia pc in my living room. all this thing has to do is

1) connect to an external drive with mp3s and send that signal out to a stereo.
2) connect to youtube so i can watch something as i eat.

it's running a stripped down n-lite version of xp with all the services off. the boot-up is slow, but if i was just to pop around the desktop like you are here it would be every bit as fast as that. anything beyond 500 mhz is far from a crappy machine. windows has historically just been awful with memory management.

a linux install on my or your machine would take better advantage of the hardware and i have little doubt that 8 would be just as snappy on my 500, if it would install without giving me an error. it can run word fine. it can play local videos without a hassle. etc. really, just about anything you'd need it for...

...except browsing with more than one tab, but that has more to do with bad design from browsers and web page admins that just throw memory out the window and expect people to run silly specs to compensate for it...

so, we've heard a lot about wolf-coyote hybrids, and how a new species is developing. this is interesting to me because i think it's an overlooked mechanism that describes rapid evolutionary change, as it is driven by habitat change, as it is driven by climate change - in a way that is substantial enough to resolve the gould-dawkins debate. if you don't know what i'm talking about it, don't worry about it. just realize that hybridization is more common than your grade 10 science teacher would have you know.

maybe you heard something about polar bears and grizzly bears, too.

it turns out that the felines in the area also hybridizing. see, there's an underlying theory hidden here that hasn't been written...

http://www.nrri.umn.edu/lynx/information/hybrid.html

one of the things that i like about this re-understanding of the evolution of species is that it suggests that when related species that had been speciated through allopatric means recombine they often react not by competing for similar resources but by co-operating, sharing resources and ultimately combining into new species.

i'm not a naturalist. i'm not tied to "natural behaviour", or see how understanding "how nature works" ought to provide any useful insight into building societies. however, that has interesting ramifications for those that do think in those terms.

"He's afraid of invasion eventually,'' Chretien said. "We discussed that, and I don't think the Americans have the intention of invading Cuba more than they have the intention of invading Canada.''

chretien has this strange way with words, that allows him to carefully state things that would otherwise be off limits. that's a shared interest, now, isn't it? but stated dismissively, to seem like it's crazy talk....when it of course isn't.

i've previously described him as an autistic yoda. enigmatic words of wisdom...

one deals with an existential threat by managing it. it's a subtle difference. regardless, if the american position is to "play ball" with whomever ends up in power, then it would have to apply equally to the results of saudi interests. it doesn't work out to a serious rift, either way.

i think what we saw a few months ago was the saudis throwing a temper tantrum for not getting what they wanted. the sanctions have not been eased. the united states has not asserted a more independent policy. the saudis have not been sent a message. the policy has not been altered. the differences do not constitute a rift; the saudis are merely being unreasonably demanding, and making a fuss about it.

the saudis do not need to blackmail the americans to stop them from being critical of their human rights abuses. rather, one would need to blackmail the americans in order for them to begin to talk like that! one only expects the americans to use that language to accomplish some military aim. rather, the united states has nothing to lose and everything to gain from an autocratic government in the region, and would recreate the status quo if it were to collapse.

it's been imperial british policy to install dictators in strategic areas for a very long time.