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.