maybe we could even take a step back and ask the more fundamental question: why is drug use even a problem in the first place?

why not just shrug the issue away? their lives belong to them. they can do what they want.

a christian might find that appalling. but, you see, i don't actually disagree at all - in theory, that is actually my perspective on the thing: people ought to be able to do what they want to their own bodies. sure. so, then, legalize it, right?

the problem arises when people do what they want to their own bodies, and then show up at a hospital asking for help. at that point, it's no longer about what they're doing to their own bodies, it's about what they're costing society. and, for me, that is what the problem with drug use actually is: the wasted resources that it costs society. and, with opiates particularly, there's not a way to use them that doesn't end up with the user in the hospital, wasting society's resources. we don't have to do this experiment over and over again. we know what the result is - and should consequently ban the use of the substances.

you'll notice that things like the sanctity of life, or the soul of the individual do not enter my reasoning at any step. i don't even reject them, in my reasoning. i just don't even consider them.

do you see how the difference really is religion?

i'll state this again, maybe a little more clearly this time.

as a social anarchist, my focus when it comes to drugs is about managing resources. i don't particularly care much about saving the lives of drug addicts, as i don't consider those lives to be very valuable. what i care about is minimizing the resources that society wastes on drug addicts, with the aim of redirecting those resources towards more valuable uses. while this may appear to be somewhat similar to the desires of a fiscal conservative on the surface, and i will admit to some common cause with fiscal conservatives at a very shallow policy level, it's really a drastically different perspective when analyzed in any level of detail. so, i will support the supervised injection sites (because it minimizes resources wasted treating drug addicts for hepatitis, and aids) while opposing any grand scheme to sink billions into a national prevention program. targeted schemes to save money (and therefore resources..), though, are a good idea - and i will likely support most of them, as they are articulated.

this is very different than a religious perspective, which has somehow ended up on the pseudo-left in this country, but really belongs to the right, which would be focused on saving the lives of each and every drug addict, in order to save their souls or something. i suspect that most people couldn't really explain why they want to save the lives of drug addicts; it's more of a feeling than a thought. but, if you are to attach it to any kind of thought, it would be a religious one. these people want to redirect large amounts of public resources into saving the lives of drug addicts, with little thought about the resource accounting that such a thing would necessitate, and little interest in whether these kinds of things are effective. they're frankly not likely to understand that saving drug addicts means losing cancer patients; they'll argue that this is a false choice, because they're imagining infinite resources, without really thinking about it.

anarchists are legitimately quite different than even marxists, who are nowadays actually pretty utopian. we seem like we don't fit in on the left. but, we're really what the actual left is. and, the difference is that we've moved past religion.

it really is religion that is the difference, here.

see, this is stupid though - those injection sites save the health care system billions by keeping down the spread of infectious diseases. a fiscal conservative ought to support the sites.

and, you can't help drug addicts. that's what the science says - there's nothing you can do, but let them go.

once in a while, they'll help themselves, and it won't matter what you did or didn't do to help them.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/04/20/tory-leader-doug-ford-says-hes-dead-against-safe-injection-sites.html

there's nothing "progressive" about decriminalizing drugs or prostitution - although the latter is potentially less of a problem, if enacted as an effect of full gender equality. to put it another way: once we have full gender equality, then we can start talking about legalizing prostitution. until then, legalized prostitution is inevitably going to take advantage of women for the financial benefit of men - and that is the simple fact of it, no matter how many fat bros want to argue otherwise.

with drugs, however, progress means getting past them, not getting used to them. giving up on the fight to get rid of drugs is cynicism of the highest order, it's not progress.

i'd support pharmacare.

but, where is the pressure to stop the pipelines and push forward on the transition off of carbon? this is a far more pressing concern than legalizing nihilistic and anti-social behaviour is.

it's a little worrying. the liberal party conventions of the past were always very left-leaning. this sounds more like it's a meeting place for the libertarian right.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/04/20/grassroots-liberals-pressure-trudeau-government-to-be-more-progressive.html

again: forum is consistently doing something in it's polling that i think needs to increase it's margin of error. it might just be the ivr system. i don't know. but, they seem to have a margin of error that's closer to 10% than 3%. i don't know why that is, it's just how the numbers tend to work out.

i don't think that the liberals got a bump from the budget, and i don't think it disappeared over the last week, or whatever it was. that would suggest that the voters are currently volatile, and i don't think that's true;  rather, i think that their polling methods are quite volatile, and that's really what you're seeing in their results, which tend to fluctuate all over the place.

with everything considered - the no doubt large undecided vote, along with the inherent tory bias in phone polling - i have little reason to think that the tories are running higher than the mid 30s. it would be useful if they published undecideds and hang-ups, but they can stand on their record in not doing so, in the end. at least, if they tell me the undecideds i can explain why they're not as wrong as they might appear; if they don't tell me the undecideds, i have to just point out that it's unclear how many people are undecided.

but, i will say this again: firming ndp support in ontario is the thing that the liberals need to be most concerned about. and, their current tactics of mimicking the ndp are predictably going to backfire on them. any rational voter, right now, is just going to see the liberals as ndp-lite, and opt to vote for the real thing, instead.

The causes of earthquakes in eastern Canada are not well understood. 

ok.

i guess the plate must be splitting somewhere, but note that the great lakes are thought to be glacial...

http://www.seismescanada.rncan.gc.ca/zones/eastcan-en.php

i would like to see the liberal party convention make a public apology for letting the country down.

we've seen this before.

at the time, the media said all of the same things it's saying now.

we do lived in a post-truth society: and western media are the biggest liars.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-un/u-n-has-testimony-that-syrian-rebels-used-sarin-gas-investigator-idUSBRE94409Z20130505

i have no idea who is responsible for the attacks, because there hasn't been an investigation. how could i know who is responsible, without reading an investigation, first?

am i supposed to take nikki haley at her word? what a fucking joke.

but, past precedent would suggest that the most likely culprit - as it has been in the past - is american-backed rebels, looking to generate the kind of reaction from trump that is being broadcast on western media (even though the president really took advantage of the situation to push his own interests, and did not actually come to anybody's defence at all).

listen.

this is the right way that you approach this.

then, once the report is released, two things can happen:

1) it can be critiqued, to determine flaws and exaggerations. peer review.
2) action can be taken, where deemed appropriate.

the world can't be allowing the united states to go around bombing people based on gut instincts, and colloquialized applications of terms from probability theory - as disingenuous as that may even be, in the precise example.

can i see your hypothesis testing, ms. may? no? k. didn't think so.

i'm not even going to say the bombing shouldn't have happened, as that would be just as bad as jumping to the conclusion that it ought to have. the problem here is a lack of due process - and this is absolutely necessary to establish, in context.

the united nations doesn't appear to be working any more, and i don't have specific suggestions as to approaches or paths to reform, but we need to find a way to re-establish process. the world cannot be a macrocosm of the wild west; there must be a sheriff in town.

as far as i can tell, the only major western politician that has reacted intelligently to this is jeremy corbyn.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/13/47-groups-urge-un-secretary-general-act-syria

the smell tonight - and this isn't the first time - is overwhelming levels of garlic.

this is actually leading me back to meth; maybe they are smoking outside, but i can smell their armpits from here, kind of thing. meth users are known to smell like garlic - like, not from the smoke, but from the body odour.

nobody eats garlicy meals for hours straight. i guess somebody could have left something out, but it's happened repeatedly.

somebody could have terrible gas, and i could be smelling it over and over again. it's actually quite plausible.

it could be another distraction tactic - burning garlic so i can't smell the pot.

but, the reality is that all evidence points towards this building being some kind of meth centre - either through production, or through massive use.

is there some possibility that all of the potheads around me are smoking laced pot and don't know it? well, three months ago i'd have told you that the premise of meth-laced marijuana is crazy talk. you'll find it with pcp from time to time, unfortunately - it's unpleasant; you deal with it. but, meth? this isn't real, right?

maybe it is.

i may never figure out what the truth is around this. i've got clues, and i can put them together, but getting some kind of confirmation is going to be almost impossible. and, i'm no doubt just scratching the surface of something.

i don't need or even want to know, frankly.

but the clearer the meth connection gets, the more i want out.

it's possible that somebody just needs to shower more frequently. but, it's really one thing after another...

i need to be clear: i don't know if these leaves are being burned or cooked with.

i noticed a mild cheesy smell, as well.

it could be some kind of chili.

like i say: if the pot smell goes away, we'll deal with this as it is. i doubt that happens.

i don't care what your witch-doctor says.

smoke is never good for you.

ever.

"burn bay leaves in the house and see what happens after ten minutes"

i'm going to ask for an x-ray of your lungs, and observe that you're coughing your ass off.

smoke is smoke.

so, stop burning shit inside...it's all the same cancer-causing smut...

tobacco. marijuana. sage. now, bay leaves. it's all the same thing.