actually, i think this is the most humane approach possible.

one way or another, you have to remove these kids from the influence of their family.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/syria-isis-belgium-mothers-children-repatriate-samima-begum-a8801381.html

in the united states, you have independent bodies that create a systems of checks and balances on each other.

we don't have that in canada.

rather, we have a cabinet that works to reach consensus, and then acts in solidarity with itself.

Annex D  Cabinet Decision Making

The Cabinet is the political forum where Ministers reach a consensus and decide on issues. It is the setting in which they bring political and strategic considerations to bear on proposed ministerial and governmental actions. These considerations must necessarily reflect the views and concerns expressed by Canadians, caucus colleagues and other parliamentarians. Once a consensus is reached, Ministers can fulfill their collective responsibility to Parliament. This Annex addresses the main elements of the organization and conduct of decision making in the Cabinet.

D.1.  Basic Rules for Cabinet Business

A number of basic ground rules for the conduct of Cabinet business are essential to maintain Cabinet solidarity and enhance its practical effectiveness.

Decision making is led by the Prime Minister. Through the Cabinet and its committees, the Prime Minister provides Ministers with the principal forum in which they can resolve different perspectives. The Prime Minister organizes Cabinet and Cabinet committee decision making, determines the agenda for Cabinet business and chooses committee chairpersons to act on his or her behalf. The Privy Council Office is the Cabinet’s secretariat and administers the Cabinet decision-making process on behalf of the Prime Minister.

Cabinet government works through a process of compromise and consensus building, which culminates in a Cabinet decision. The Cabinet and Cabinet committees do not vote on issues before them. Rather, the Prime Minister (or committee chairperson) “calls” for the consensus after Ministers have expressed their views. As the Cabinet secretariat, the Privy Council Office records and communicates the decision.

Consultation among the Ministers, departments and portfolios involved must precede the submission of a proposal to the Cabinet by the responsible Minister or Ministers. Ministers must also consult caucus at an early opportunity on policy and expenditure proposals. Ministerial discussions in the Cabinet or Cabinet committee focus on the decisions required and provide Ministers with an opportunity to participate in and influence those decisions.

Ministers have the right to seek their colleagues’ consideration of proposals for government action in their area of responsibility. This is, of course, subject to the agenda set by the Prime Minister for government priorities. Cabinet committee agendas are set by the committee chairpersons acting on the Prime Minister’s behalf.

Confidences of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, more commonly referred to as “Cabinet confidences,” must be appropriately safeguarded from unauthorized disclosure or other compromise. The Cabinet’s collective decision-making process has traditionally been protected by the rule of confidentiality, which enhances Cabinet solidarity and collective ministerial responsibility. Confidentiality ensures that Ministers can frankly express their views before a final decision is made. The Prime Minister expects Ministers to announce policies only after Cabinet decisions are taken, in consultation with the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office.

Cabinet business is extensive, and Cabinet consensus at times is difficult to achieve. Given the limited time available to Ministers and the importance of clear decisions to government operations, Cabinet business must be conducted efficiently and according to accepted ground rules that are fully understood and respected. Cabinet discussion is not used to air introductory or preliminary discussions of issues. Deputy ministers are expected to ensure that other affected departments are adequately informed in advance and that coordination across portfolios is pursued, so that other Ministers are prepared for Cabinet discussion and government decisions are coherent and aligned with overall objectives. When departments directly involved differ on a matter, the dispute should not be referred to the Cabinet until all other means of resolving it have been exhausted.

https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2015/11/27/open-and-accountable-government#Cabinet_Decision_Making

i'm going to double down on the idea that the problem here is that the pmo doesn't seem to really understand our own system of government - and that, again, it seems to be viewing itself through some kind of american prism.

so, the pm is saying things like "the decision was solely up to the minister." - and that's actually wrong. maybe it's the way things are in the united states, but not in canada.

this isn't exactly an academic source, but it's not a controversial point, either:

Ministers are responsible for ensuring that the policies developed by the Cabinet are implemented in the departments.
(https://www.ourcommons.ca/About/Compendium/ParliamentaryFramework/c_d_executivebranchgovernmentcanada-e.htm)

that's what a minister does in canada. it's not an elected office, and it's not expected to act independently of the cabinet; what it's supposed to do, rather, is carry forward with decisions that are made, collectively, at the cabinet table.

what that means is that the cabinet actually had every right to tell the minister what to do here, if it was determined to be a matter of government policy, which i believe it clearly was - they passed a law specifically for this purpose, and had the clear policy objective of preventing economic harm.

so, i don't know where this discourse is even coming from - it's not in the canadian legal tradition to argue that the attorney-general is independent of the pmo.

moral posteuring and ethical signalling aside, what is clear at this point is that trudeau is running a weak pmo, and that his weakness could very well take him down from the inside.

this woman is still in caucus.

that's outrageous.

if the liberals made an error here, it's that they weren't firm enough - they should have turfed her right out of caucus, immediately, due to gross dereliction of duty.

i know the tory media is going to howl that the pm acted unethically, but i hardly think most people are going to walk down that path when presented with the evidence. there's no question that the liberals have managed this terribly, and in the process turned a non-issue into a headline. they should have acted decisively and firmly changed the channel; as it is, they let it fester and erupt. as it is now? let them have the investigation. it doesn't look like anything happened.

these people around trudeau - butts, telford, etc - have minimal legal training.

the actual problem here seems to be that they didn't seem to know what they were doing.

generally speaking, when you refuse to listen to your boss, you get fired.

i mean, my takeaway from reading the summary of the testimony is that her demotion was justified on the grounds of not upholding the interests of the government, which is what she is there to do. she's not elected as attorney-general; she works for the prime minister, at the prime minister's discretion. and, if she doesn't want to do her job, that's grounds for dismissal.

her claim that these discussions were inappropriate is actually completely wrong, in my view.

and, it's not clear why she would insist on not listening to her boss in a trivial case like this.

this is how the system works.

*shrug*.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wilson-raybould-testifies-justice-committee-1.5035219

so, why don't i criticize the russians?

because they rarely do things worth criticizing.

i mean, don't get me wrong - i wouldn't want to live in russia, not now and probably pretty much at no point in it's history. at right this moment, russia is struggling with population replacement, and pretty hostile to queer people as a consequence of it. the western media wants to blame this on putin, but it's primarily the church at the crux of it, and kind of a bottom-up problem - i might not face technical legal restrictions in most of russia, but i'd be in constant threat of being lynched, pretty much anywhere outside of downtown moscow. there's video footage of, like, queer-bashing mobs beating people up in the street. i think the smart analysis is that it's a reactionary movement against state restrictions on religion and probably generational, but how long it takes for russia to once again free itself from the effects of christianity is a hard thing to put bounds on.

i'm aware that i wouldn't be welcome there.

but, in terms of geopolitics, of strategic manipulation - it's the russians that are acting like a rational, humanitarian actor, here. it's the russians that are upholding international law. and, it's the americans that are acting like boorish mongoloids, drunk at the party, disinterested in any concept of law.

in theatre after theatre, it is simply the case that the russians are actually right and the americans are actually wrong - and the only argument that any american could come up with that isn't disingenuous is that might makes right, and self-interest defines what is correct, which is of course just an argument for nihilism and chaos.

i'm an anarchist, but i'm not a nihilist.

when the russians fuck up, i'll call them on it. but, they don't - so i don't.

and, hey, listen - i live across the river from detroit.

i know what a city looks like when it gets taken over by these kinds of attitudes.

at the end of the day, i hope that the employees of amazon are able to find somebody in congress that is willing to stand up for them.

you know, it seems like that kid in new york is going to be running against amazon in the next election, which may be a tough fight. she may have shot herself in the foot on this.

i'll just reassert the point that she hasn't produced any substantive policy at this point, making her more of a shit-disturber than anything else. and, what was the point of this, really? it seems like empty political rhetoric.

nobody doubts that bringing amazon in would create a lot of jobs. the argument against it is apparently that the wages are too low. but, how does sending the jobs somewhere else fix the thing? moving the jobs somewhere else doesn't improve wages or working conditions. the answer you'd expect from a socialist candidate is to fight for a higher minimum wage - not to tell the company to locate somewhere else. i mean, you'd think a real socialist firebrand would see the opportunity to organise that many workers in her district as a godsend. you'd think she'd be all over it. if you send the jobs to a district with a less progressive representation, you just decrease the chances of the workers getting a wage increase. it's consequently pretty harshly anti-worker...

...which i suspect was the actual point. base nimbyism aside, the actual driver probably had to do with district demographics, which was some kind of combination of the existing residents not wanting to get flooded with amazon workers and the representative not wanting to get flooded with voters that work for amazon.

it's hard to avoid her right now, and when that happens you know there's money afoot.

stated bluntly, i don't trust her, and think you shouldn't, either.

simply legalizing prostitution and shrugging it off is not a policy, it's a non-policy that will lead to immense amounts of human suffering.

and, this is a good demonstration of the difference between a socialist and a liberal, which is actually my point: a liberal may be content to leave it up to the coercive effects of the market and allow for the reduction of the prostitute to salaried wage work, whereas a socialist wants to eliminate the coercive root causes of most prostitution, thereby reducing it strictly to the realm of enthusiastic consent.

ok, so nobody knows where she stands on anything at all, because she just caters her positions to the polling. i'm still getting to know kamala, but some clarification is opening up: career politician with little if any conviction on much of anything. pay-to-play.

and, we're talking about prostitution...

you'd expect reason to frame the issue in terms of market theory, rather than in terms of human dignity, and i'm going to just throw that entire discourse in the trash bin - this is neither about supply nor is it about demand, but actually about economic opportunity. i'm not naive about this: there will always be women that would rather sell their bodies. it's easy money, and lots of people are lazy. they shouldn't be thrown in jail, but the system should be modified so that they're all that's left. if you want to use the language of market theory, adopting policies that restrict the supply by shifting labour out of the market would have the effect of increasing the price, which is the ideal end point. prostitution should only exist on the highest of scales, with the wealthiest of clients - and the most enthusiastic types of consent.

the best policies around prostitution have to do with social policies ensuring that women have access to affordable child care, to affordable housing, to education and to addictions services. women need to be given better options. the issue needs to be reframed in these terms, not reduced to a crass discussion about a market interaction.

and, i actually suspect she might agree with me if she'd get a little bit of conviction and take a stance.

https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/26/kamala-harris-sex-work-legal-fosta

i think this summarizes my position on the topic relatively well.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/essays/intersov.html

the thing that people aren't cluing into is that "reparations" is a kind of code word in competing contexts. if you walk into a church in south carolina, it means transferring wealth downwards, and one would expect sanders to support that. but, if you walk into a hockey rink in burlington and start taking about reparations, what it means to the people there is transferring wealth sideways based on racial characteristics, and nobody at all should support that.

i understand that components in the black community want a simple answer on it, but they're wrong to take that position - and rather than being pandered to, should be called out for taking a simplistic, binary position on race. warren, particularly, should be called out for pandering, here. sanders is right to ask for the term to be defined before he commits to a position that he doesn't just not support, but that has the potential to severely damage him with the kind of voters that are actually going to decide the election, at the end of the day.

i have a simple position on reparations, myself, although it means something different in canada, where the reparations are directed entirely at the indigenous population.

"yes, i have support for reparations. i call that support socialism."

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/26/reparations-bernie-sanders/

see, we've been through this with bernie on foreign policy before - he takes these positions that are factually dubious in the sense that he holds hands with the washington consensus most of the way down the path before stepping back on some point, and holding to it. in a sense, it's weasel words, but it's backwards - his weasel words are directed at the cfr, or whomever it is that is listening in. so, he's able to avoid what ought to be a lot of wrath.

then, the left starts yelling that he's repeating falsehoods, and he is, but did you notice that he's on cnn, guys? if you listen carefully, you realize that what he's doing is avoiding the hegemonic talking points, without directly contradicting them. so, the left is kind of missing the dog whistle. but, we're not trained for it.

and, then, after walking this tightrope over all of this propaganda, he comes up with the right actual policy, which is that maduro is not a dictator, it's up to the people of venezuela to determine their own future and intervention is wrong.

so, you have to give him like a B- or something because he came up with the right answer, in the end. meanwhile, the rest of the field is getting Fs and Ds. so, you curve him up to an A - even if you're a little unsure.

you just have to remember that noam chomsky isn't running for president, and bernie sanders is.

it's enough to me that he's not participating in the zombie apocalypse that has hit both washington and ottawa - he's demonstrating independent thought.

is there a kind of liberal that's all about free markets, supply management be damned?

sure.

and, are there more of them in the west than the east?

probably.

and, do they care much about muslim immigrants and their head scarves?

mostly not, probably, no.

also:
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/search?q=bernier

the greens did not run in this riding. so, it's not entirely clear if bernier's party hit the conservatives or liberals more.

in bc, you have the socred history - which is really what bernier is tapping into, right? and, it kind of splits through both bourgeois parties...

so, do the liberals win by default already, then?

not if the ndp collapse pushes the bloc over the brink.

so, they've just grown a beard to spite their face.

it is likely that history records this victory as a brutally pyrrhic one, but here we have it - jagmeet singh is entering parliament as the leader of the third party, on the same day that the liberals retake outremont.

the ndp had exactly zero seats in quebec for something like 70 years. but, people forget that the ndp vote came mostly from the bloc, who lost party status as a consequence of the ndp's surge in 2011. everything is suggestive of a bloc resurgence, right now, as the ndp roll up like a carpet.

they will probably lose party status in october, as they seek to rebrand themselves in a post-industrial economy as a right-leaning alternative for disaffected minority groups. whatever you think of this, it opens up a dramatic vacuum in the balance of power, as a large (if shrinking) voting block in canada slowly becomes disenfranchised.

if i'm right about what they're doing, the new ndp could very well win power within a decade, but the left is unlikely to be very supportive of their policy positions, when they do - it will be as a neo-liberal party in the image of the american democrats. and, this realignment i've been talking about for what is now a couple of years is going to need to find a new party to exist on the left, or risking forfeiting dominance to the right, as former ndp voters sign faustian deals with a conservative party that is just looking to take advantage of them. 

singh didn't create this and isn't fully at fault for it, but it's up to voters to adjust to what is unfolding in the way that is most in their own interests.

i always thought the ndp were better off entering into a coalition with the bloc than trying to displace them. but, we need to find a way to do some serious organizing in ontario.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-jagmeet-singh-wins-burnaby-south-by-election-clearing-leadership

"a luxury the country can no longer afford"

this rhetoric is coming from:

a) a thatcher-era tory minister talking about the destruction of the welfare state.
b) a gringrich-era republican talking about cuts to medicare and social security
c) a german banker arguing for austerity in the south
d) a twenty-first century american democrat talking about border security.

if the military was capable and intelligent, it would have interpreted the situation swiftly and acted quickly to rectify the problem.

but, the military is neither capable nor intelligent - it is corrupt and incompetent.

wait.

listen.

while the venezuelan military should have removed maduro by now, and only hasn't due to it's own stupidity and consequent inability to understand what is happening around it, there remains no other possible outcome.

when you're dealing with an irrational opponent, you sometimes have to give them extra time to figure it out. but, the stupidity of the actor doesn't alter the logic of the game, itself.

and, if the military does refuse to accept the evidence in front of it, cutting off oil sales will eventually lead to the uprising that the west is pretending is happening.

they could, in theory, launch a project to increase the agricultural base, and eliminate their reliance on imports, which is not necessary - the country has ample resources to feed itself. there is no evidence that this is going to happen. rather, accounts are going to dry up and knives are going to sharpen.

it would be another thing if venezuela was an actual socialist state, standing up against the empire, and willing to die for it's convictions. you could see that happen in cuba. but, in venezuela, that's just a lot of bullshit, and it's just a matter of time.

so, be patient. you're not a squirrel; stop acting like one.

just to be clear.

the carbon tax credit is $150 for the whole year. that is less than the cost of one month's worth of interest on the loan.

so, holding the credit will have absolutely no worthwhile effect on the outstanding debt.

but, could i use the $150? well, i'm pretty poor, so i certainly wouldn't turn it down.

it's perhaps reflective of the sitting government, though, to make an error like that.

you actually wouldn't expect the liberal bean counters to expose a disabled person to a collection agency like that - you would expect them to think that through and design it in such a way that they can't get at it. i have access to several credits for the precise reason that past liberal governments have legislated them this way, quite consciously.

but, this government is really very bourgeois in that sense. something that would have been thought through at the basic planning stage by any other liberal government probably never even crossed the mind of this one, which is really very narrowly focused on the upper middle class, without that historical reflex on the poor.

i was probably legitimately overlooked for the simple fact that i'm clearly of minimal concern. and, that's actually a policy shift.

and, no i don't expect the minister to tell me it's my own fault for being in debt, either. i'm disabled. it's crazy that i can't default - and i've tried. i expect it just never came up.

in theory, that means i'm being exposed to a carbon tax while more wealthy people are not. in practice, that probably isn't true, because so much of the food we buy here is imported. so, i'm not getting the transfer, but i'm not really paying the tax, either.

but, it's bad optics - and they should probably fix it.

i'm not wasting my time with it, though.

and, i don't know - i could get it, still.

so, i did my taxes and there was indeed a $154 tax credit worked into it. it's calculated at the very end of the process, so that essentially everybody gets a tax cut. if you have kids or dependents you can claim more, and if you live in a rural area you get an extra 10%. you then just subtract that from whatever you're owing.

my taxes are zero. so, instead of sending in a zero return, i get a $154.00 tax refund. i presume that will come in a lump sum.

...except that it might not, because i have a $70,000 student loan that i haven't made a payment on in ten years. they can't take rebates or sales tax credits, but because this comes up as a refund, they'll probably be able to take it. i was expecting it to come up as a rebate, like the gst does.

i've already explained to them that i'm disabled, but they didn't seem to understand.

i'm not going to protest the point, i'll let them look at the data and come to the conclusion on they're own. maybe seizing my $150 credit for a few years and realizing that's all i've got or ever will have will get the point across that they're wasting their time.

i just can't even imagine the premise of willingly forfeiting my time in such a foolish manner, at this point.

i haven't seen a commercial, hollywood style film in well over 15 years, but i highly doubt much has changed, except for the worse.

 that club in miami that is serving alcohol to minors like malia obama should obviously lose it's license.

we can have these debates from a distance, but it is ultimately up to the people to govern themselves, whatever you think of their structures. i think there's little doubt that some progress has been made in the region, especially if you compare it to the despotic regimes in the region, but the level of actual freedom for everybody in the society still no doubt pales to that that exists even in a half-secularized state like turkey, which is culturally responsible for where the kurds are coming from. as critical as people may be of turks or baathists, the kurds are a consequence both of the secular turkish state and of the movement towards secular nationalism in the arab world.

regardless, my position on the point is consistent: the kurds cannot expect protection from an imperial occupation that is illegal under international law. to begin with, they literally cannot expect it - the americans can literally not be trusted, in any serious way. second, the longer they rely on the cover of american imperialism, the more they become an imperial force, themselves - which is what we're seeing with their expansion to the south. the kurds are well out of their historical zone of occupation, which is particularly problematic given their history of complicity with genocide in the area. they need to pull back; if they don't, the comparisons to orwell's catalonia are going to become less relevant than the comparisons to animal farm, as they become little more than america's most recent group of occupying thugs.

but, when i say they cannot expect protection, that also means that they must defend themselves. what is an anarchist revolution under the protection of an imperial military force, but a colonial farce? what kind of statelessness is this?

i don't want to be too critical, because i understand that any progress in the region should be applauded. but, an honest analysis of the situation presents a set of rather cynical conclusions.

this is not a good reason to keep american troops in syria, in contravention of international law.

https://libcom.org/library/rojava-fraud-non-existent-social-revolution

hrmmn.

maybe i should convert to catholicism?

nah. the theology is still stupid.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/andrew-sullivan-the-vaticans-corruption-has-been-exposed.html

if all of these candidates are going to stand by an interventionist foreign policy, while refusing to support any kind of meaningful form of social democracy, why would i care if they lose to trump, in the end?

i pointed this out in 2016, and it's rung fairly true. if you put 100 issues down on the table, i might agree with hillary clinton over donald trump something like 53% of the time. but, i would take sanders over trump something more like 75% of the time, and sanders over a more traditional conservative candidate (like ted cruz) something like 95% of the time. i might lean a little right on immigration and free speech; nobody is this abstract political position of left or right. see, the twist is that if clinton were running against a cruz or a rubio, that more comfortable distance would open back up again: clinton beats the traditional right 70-30, while she runs against trump as a coin toss. and even a neo-liberal like harris or gillebrandt is likely to do a little better than clinton against trump - maybe you even get to 60%.

the differences where trump blurs the centre are to do with things like trade and foreign policy, although i also should be quick to point out that trump's position often doesn't match his rhetoric. he was also supposed to fund a massive infrastructure project, and hasn't. but, if i'm opposed to what we call "free trade", opposed to foreign intervention and in favour of public infrastructure, does that make me right-wing? hardly. it's the spectrum that's fucked up.

i think that biden presents the same basic problem as clinton, even when you adjust trump for his record. do i think biden would be better than trump? maybe 55% of the time, at most. warren might get 63 or something - and not due to her positions on financial regulation, which i actually think are naive, but due to a slightly better foreign policy. and, these faceless, milquetoast neo-liberal senators - harris, booker, klobuchar, gillebrand, etc - are just going to land somewhere in between, around 60.

but, bernie is still a dominantly preferable candidate, even if i don't agree with everything he says.

so, save your guilt trip about trump winning for the partisan circle jerks. if some non-bernie candidate wins, the fact is that i'm probably going to be pretty rigorously opposed to most of their policy positions, and not able to articulate much of a benefit of them winning.

the greens probably need to look beyond jill stein, and how much rhetorical support i give them is going to depend on who and how they run. but, you should expect me to line up behind a green candidate before you expect me to support another neo-liberal, corporatist democrat.

i had no issue in a plea deal.

i was aggressively demanding disclosure and forcefully pushing for a thorough trial.

in a sense, i'm even disappointed that i didn't get the opportunity to rip the police department apart in a court of law...

the actual issue at hand here is a police force with an anti-queer bias here in windsor, and i expect to hold them accountable for it.

and, i will repeat the facts in the case i'm dealing with, tersely.

1) in september, i was arrested (illegally - that is, without a warrant on a charge where one is required in canada) in my home for harassment for repeatedly applying to an ad for housing. all communication in the matter was with a corporation. the person i was communicating with used the screen name of "ryan", and i had no other clues as to their gender. i have never met this person or even seen a picture of them, and would not be able to identify him or her (the person's gender actually remains unclear to me) if put in a room with them.

2) communication in the matter was strictly related to the question of housing availability. no other matters were discussed, whatsoever.

3) i am readying litigation against this person for discrimination in housing, and expect to win a cash settlement in the matter. broadly speaking, litigation in the matter is likely to drag on for several years, on my own initiative.

4) charges were dropped in november, upon the realization that the officer did not collect the electronic communication that the case was reliant upon. i actually have most of the electronic communication in question and will be using it in the civil proceedings against the complainant. i intended to go to trial, with the intent of the judge dismissing the charges as ridiculous - if the communication were to be placed in front of a judge and correctly analysed, i am confident that it would be determined to not remotely fit any definition of harassment. as it is, the policing was too incompetent to even collect it - and, as such, no warrant for arrest could have possibly been granted, if applied for.

5) there is consequently an ongoing investigation into the conduct of the officer that i am expecting this week. i believe the officer acted primarily out of a transphobic bias, and the issue was interconnected with arguments i was having with tenants in the building regarding my right to not be invaded by their second-hand marijuana smoke, or otherwise disturbed by their drug or alcohol habits.

6) i would actually like the officer charged with harassment, as i am the only victim in the situation, at hand.

7) upon completion of the investigation into the conduct of the officer, i will be launching a substantive charter challenge for a massive infringement of my constitutional rights, which is the only remaining legal issue at hand.

if it isn't obvious - and it should be - i'll state clearly that i don't work for bernie sanders, i don't speak on his behalf and i am not a surrogate of his. i am not only not a member of the democratic party, but would consider myself a staunch opponent of it. i am an independent and anarchist-identifying political analyst in a different country. and, while i would like to see bernie win, the legitimacy and independence of my blog is my primary concern, not his campaign.

and, i don't care if i offend his opponents, or even his followers, for that matter. you can expect harsh and brutal - but honest - language from this space.

what i will say is that if the democrats don't want to be attacked for running morally corrupt, corporatist candidates then they should defeat them at the ballot box; if they are going to run these kinds of candidates, they should expect them to receive the kind of criticism that they deserve to receive.

so, if kamala harris is going to push for morally depraved policies then i'm going to call her a morally depraved candidate, and tell her to alter her policies if she doesn't like the criticism.

and, if that makes you sad then find a box of kleenexes and cry it up - i don't give a fuck.

bernie is actually overstepping his bounds on this point - he has no right to police other people's language and should apologize for it.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/431328-sanders-writes-internal-memo-warning-against-bullying-and-harassment-on-his

they're probably waiting for the federal election.

there's a chance the conservatives could roll it back if they win. or, they may be trying to steal the thunder.

i don't smoke very often - it's been nine months since i last smoked a joint (on purpose), and i've been completely straight-edged over that period, as well. no cigarettes, even. just a lot of coffee. i pointed out from the start that i was going to be more excited about dispensaries opening up in detroit, because the only time i like to do drugs is at concerts, and that's where the concerts are. so, being able to go to detroit and buy something on the way to the show is very emancipating, but buying pot in canada has never had the same kind of appeal.

if i lived in a different city, it would be different, of course.

so, i should be more upset about this than i am.

i'm going to warn people not to buy online, though. you're probably setting yourself up for something.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/london-region-may-be-shut-out-of-first-phase-of-ontarios-new-marijuana-dispensary-plan

i haven't been paying any attention to this at all.

what a joke.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/despite-council-support-slim-odds-windsor-gets-a-pot-store-in-2019

are they going after cuba next?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/05/venezuela-capitalist-success-not-socialist-failure/

this is the vice president of venezuela, who would be next in succession, should maduro resign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delcy_Rodr%C3%ADguez

now, if maduro were to resign, then whomever is next in the line of succession would take over until the next scheduled election - it wouldn't trigger an election.

they just had one.

the opposition boycotted it...

socialist dictator.

it's a bizarre abuse of language - a contradiction in terms, in fact. for, if you are a socialist, you cannot be a dictator, and if you are a dictator you cannot be a socialist. so, which is it? is he a socialist or is he a dictator?

in fact, maduro is neither a socialist, nor is he a dictator. maduro is an elected representative of the people, in a system with a broken opposition that doesn't appear to be interested in democracy. and, venezuela is a capitalist economy - albeit with a few social programs.

there's more socialism in denmark or mexico, or even in quebec, than there is in venezuela.

but trump needs a straw man to tear down, and the corporatists in the democratic party seem keen to let him have it.

but, let us not forget the truth that, elected as he may be in the context of a system as broken as the venezuelan's is, maduro is also completely incompetent. the man is a high school drop out. socialism does not mean idiocracy; a re-evaluation of the division of labour doesn't imply the elevation of ignorance. chavez was stupid to elevate him to power, but perhaps the point was that he was seen as too impotent to threaten him.

and, i, for one, am not any more on side with any kind of fawning support of maduro than i am with an invasion to overthrow him. my position here is non-intervention out of principle, not out of solidarity. my solidarity is with the peasants, who will be fucked over by whatever happens.

and, i actually agree that he should probably step down - due to the clarity of his own incompetence. but, that's not my choice.

and, to be as clear as possible - venezuela is not currently and never was a socialist country. it was at most a mixed economy, with a state-run oil sector. but, you couldn't even really call it "state capitalism". it's just as capitalist as anywhere else.

if the country had actually embraced socialism, it wouldn't have destroyed it's own agriculture sector, or become reliant on imports of food by crowding out the rest of the economy.

socialism is a worker-run economy, and there is no sign of that in venezuela. at all.

so, it's an absurd red herring for ignorant buffoons to squabble over and not a serious debate to engage with. these right-wing idiots pushing this kind of stupidity should just be laughed out of the room.

in the trump era, it's easy to forget that bernie almost certainly doesn't post his own tweets. he has a staff to do that for him...

whether the problem is duss or not, i agree that there's an issue here that needs to be attended to.

that said, he just stated a few days ago that he doesn't think maduro is a dictator and is apprehensive about the motives in american involvement. so, i'm going to wait to let him clarify himself before i join the chorus: this may be more about a rogue staffer than a swing towards american imperialism.

if you dissect the statement, there are some truths and half-truths to it. it is true that there is a humanitarian crisis in venezuela, and that the government has mismanaged the situation. it is also true that the sanctions have exacerbated a situation of poor management. and, while i haven't looked into it very deeply, i've seen this situation before: the security forces are probably reacting to provocateurs, who are inciting them into violence to generate headlines. then, cnn will run a story about some protestors being shot, but will forget to mention that they were lighting cop cars on fire.

the worrying thing about the statement from sanders' account is in it's urging to accept a humanitarian convoy that is clearly a propaganda ploy. it is that specific point that he needs to clarify.

the position that harris is taking is contemptible. the right thing to do is get out of the way and let the venezuelan people govern themselves, not interfere in the borders of sovereign nations. kamala harris seems to have a very warped concept of morality.

but, i wouldn't expect sanders to take a pro-maduro position, either - nor has blumenthal. and, while i'm a fan of roger waters, he's been known to rely on questionable information in the way he forms his opinions. i think abby martin's primary concern is likely to be international law.

the reality is that there is no contradiction between rejecting american intervention in the region and criticizing maduro's handling of the economy in venezuela. you don't have to embrace maduro to criticize trump. bernie is good at this and knows how to navigate it. but, see, the fact that i know that indicates that he doesn't have a lot of space to start spouting bullshit, either.

i don't have a twitter account, fwiw. i've pointed that out here, repeatedly.

https://www.rt.com/usa/452276-bernie-sanders-venezuela-regime-change/

i actually think that democrats need to stop pretending that it's important to win primaries in deep red states like south carolina.

bernie shouldn't completely abandon the state - he should make a nominal effort to show up and compete. but, his strategy should be to get out of the way and let the other candidates split the vote.

the reality is that losing south carolina, as he no doubt will, will not matter a whole lot, in the end. what matters is making sure that no other candidate runs up the score, there.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/bernie-sanders-already-repeating-some-crucial-2016-mistakes

if there was an acceptable younger candidate available today, we would just support that younger candidate.

it's not clear to me why we should put faith in the universe to produce a better candidate in the next 6 years.

and, if we are in the same position four years from now, the same logic will hold: sanders will still remain the candidate, by default.

i lean in the opposite direction: i think they should abolish term limits.

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/22/bernie-sanders-2020-one-term-pledge/

what i actually called for, and it was years ago now, was a manhattan project for the environment - and if it is a successful transition, that is more what it will actually look like.

but, it's maybe not as effective marketing as a "green new deal".

even if the green new deal ends up written in manhattan....

well, bolton told you that the invasion route was via columbia, didn't he?

so, is assad a dictator or not?

i'm not running for office, so i don't have to pander. and, the fact is that it's a ridiculously ignorant way to frame the situation. i'm going to tell you the story the way i understand it, which may have more detail than any existing candidates are actually even aware of.

in terms of actual technical power, yes - assad is at the top of a hierarchy. but, so is the queen of england, and nobody actually cares what she says. assad is more like a constitutional monarch than an actual dictator - a powerless figurehead, thrust into power by accident. the real power is in the hands of the military, and currently even actually in the hands of the kremlin.

syria is under a military dictatorship, and has been for a long time. on the death of his father, who was an actual dictator (i think he even had a moustache), power was supposed to pass to assad's brother, who had been groomed for the position for many years. as the remaining assad was actually assumed to be out of the succession, he ended up in england, where he became an optometrist.

that's right: assad is actually an eye doctor. he didn't spend his youth studying machievelli, he spent it studying biology. he has a phd, and had a practice in london.

but, by circumstance, he found himself in power - sort of. he was a pawn of the generals from the start, making few decisions and projecting little influence. but, being back from england, with an english-born wife, he actually kind of had a thing for democracy. as a consequence, his focus on his return has not been to consolidate power, but to abolish it; assad's sole goal as the monarch of syria for years has been to prepare a path to step down. he actually put a constitution up to a referendum in 2012.

so, not only does he not actually have any real power as a head of state, but he's trying to get out of being the head of state altogether. i'm not sure if anybody's really explained it to him recently, but last i heard, he actually wanted to go back to his practice in london. some dictator, right?

the saudis of course have a hate-on for anything resembling democracy, and created havoc in the country in order to try to stop it from happening. had that not happened, he'd no doubt be back in london, tending to his practice. as it is, he's stuck in a complicated conflict that he has little influence over.

my guess is that putin thinks he's an imbecile that is incapable of governing.

see, this is the case i thought wilson-raybould was moved out over.

brison resigned over apparent favouritism regarding an old money ship-building contract. was there any pressure put on the former minister to drop charges in this investigation, as well? that's what i initially deduced was the case, anyways....

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-norman-trudeau-wernick-butts-1.5029737

there we go - that's what i want to see.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/civilians-take-arms-chase-islamist-rebels-town-northern-hama-videos/

While Bayaral is a marginal figure in Turkey, Kirchner warned that his statement demonstrated that the government’s pious base exerted “bottom-up pressure against [a secular] way of life without having to impose legal constraints.”

yeah, he needs some bottom-up pressure, alright.

i think this guy needs to spend a few nights with a nice boy, myself.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/beardless-men-look-like-girls-provoke-gay-thoughts-says-muslim-preacher/

remember: the s-300s are not the s-400s, which have been such an important (if unreported) factor in the iranian nuclear talks. and, the russians seem just as willing to sell them to the saudis, too.

we don't know how well the syrians are going to use them. we don't know how well the israelis will react to them. we just know that it's a substantive deterrent, once the syrians actually activate them.

they say they're close. we'll see what happens.

i think the russians are focusing more on the election, myself. the israeli military has been pushing back on netanyahu re:iran for years and may be getting fed up with him...

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/syrian-military-nearly-ready-to-use-s-300-system-source/

i'm staunchly disappointed - if not particularly surprised - by trump's decision to keep troops in syria, and hope that it doesn't - but fully expect that it will - lead to rising tensions with regional powers in the region.

unlike russia and turkey and iran, the united states has no legitimate presence in the region and should leave the territory of the sovereign state of syria immediately.

well, if the judge sentenced him to 4.5 years and he's served it (including time awaiting trial) then you have to let him out. you can't just hold him indefinitely for no cause.

i mean, i'm not suggesting indefinite incarceration - i'm just insisting we actually enforce our laws.

if he was sentenced and did his time, that's an example of the system working, not an example of it failing.

that said, i would hope that this person is properly monitored for the foreseeable future, and that any further attempts to engage in terrorist activity are met with increasingly steep penalties.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4986036/canadian-tried-join-terror-group-syria-released-parole-despite-high-risk-public-safety/?utm_source=Other&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014

this is horrifically undemocratic - the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a country like iran, not the united states of america.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4987115/donald-trump-new-jersey-ballot/?utm_source=Other&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014

"but, i read about foucault in a course on marxism at university."

and, how much did you pay to join the book club at that bourgeois institution?

you didn't even get a membership card, did you?

universities are good places to learn about engineering; marxism, not so much.

identity politics as we understand them come from a french writer named foucault, who wrote widely about "hegemony" from this kind of depraved position. there's no deficit of criticism of foucault's writings from the left, most notably by habermas and chomsky, who both saw him as morally depraved. near the end of his life, he ended up supporting the iranian revolution, on the grounds that it would introduce a concept of moral purity in a collapse of capitalism; and, in this bizarre embrace of the most violent tendencies of fundamentalist islam, you can see his interest in what he called "hegemony" - the source of what we call "identity politics" was obsessed with the brutal application of hierarchy and power. one wonders if he might have tortured cats, as a child.

we don't have to wonder where this came from, though, as it's easy enough to trace.

the france of foucault's time was still a function of the revolution, so a substantial amount of his writing was created within it's context. any student of the french revolution is introduced to edmund burke, by necessity. speaking personally, i would have little interest in burke otherwise, but have read quite a bit of it due to his position in a lengthy series of arguments. you can't avoid him if you want to..

burke is otherwise known in england as the "father of modern conservatism" for creating a system where everybody knows his and her place, in an elaborate hierarchy with the church at the top and the peasants at the bottom. in burke's system, people are wholly defined by characteristics such as age, race, gender, place of birth and, of course, class. burke also wrote in favour of the american revolution (even while opposing the french one), but that is not important, right now.

what foucault actually did is take burke's system and flip it over on itself, before eventually subsuming his own politics within it. his entire concept of hegemony is fundamentally burkean in concept, to the point of being a logical conclusion.

now, people will argue that he was dismantling it, but that doesn't actually hold up - not any more than the arguments in favour of identity politics hold up today. he completely accepted burke's world view, then tried to find ways to subvert it - but always disingenuously, because he had that morbid attraction to authoritarianism, to hierarchy, to the enforcement of naked power with a blunt object.

the left has always seen through this, but liberalism picked it up at some point, and now we have this monster we have to slay before it gets out of hand. the iranian revolution may be an extreme analogy, but it is nonetheless where this goes if left completely unchecked.

i understand that he's trying to stir the pot, but this is a case of your enemy's enemy being your friend - because the people trying to make an issue out of this are also stirring the pot, in a way that is incredibly damaging to the left.

i should point out the obvious, if rarely stated, truth: identity politics is not in any way left-wing, and attaching it to the left is completely wrong, if done with so much glee by the right. identity politics is a subset of neo-liberalism, and for that reason you will see these arguments come from the centre, and not the left. i have argued repeatedly that foucault was actually a conservative, that his system was fundamentally burkean and that his followers belong on the right. it is only a function of the strange political spectrum in the united states that these ideas could be associated with the left, but, as mentioned, they are truly not - they are a part of the neo-liberal consensus, upheld by the trudeaus and clintons of the world and denounced by socialists and anarchists of all sorts.

this is actually an article by a liberal, who is criticizing a conservative ideology, which is in turn attacking sanders, who in this case is being a liberal. sanders' statements are pretty boilerplate, in the intersection of the left with liberalism, but inherently liberal in concept - we are all equal before the law, perhaps because we are equal before god and perhaps just because we like it better that way. as mentioned, you won't find many people on the left that will break with liberalism when it comes to ideas of race. the left mostly disagrees with liberalism on questions of economics.

i actually think that the democrats really need a moment of self-reflection around this, because the position they are adopting is not one of liberalism but one of hierarchy and racial privilege, merely flipped over and placed on it's head. is it the case that so many people in america think they're entitled to wealth or privileged due to their upbringing? the media would tell you it is; i don't think the data quite supports that. but, the party seems to want people to believe it, whether it currently is or isn't true.

the sanders campaign is probably going to want to retreat from these kinds of arguments. i actually think that this is not just wrong but dangerous - that liberals and leftists have to get together on this and win the debate.

sanders is completely right, and anybody suggesting otherwise should be roundly denounced and ripped apart over it.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/20/bernie-sanders-left-2020-225190

netanyahu is a horrifically corrupt war criminal that needed to go cycles ago.

there is no need to write another essay lamenting the death of the israeli left.

but, it is perhaps telling that he appears to be being pushed out by the military.

hrmmmn.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-election-coalition-1.5028403

i guess this is what making america great again is really all about.

i'm going to flip this around. if bernie throws away the facts on this and embraces the twilight zone alter-reality being promoted by the state department, it's grounds to declare he's completely lost it and look at a third party.

people are arguing that he can't separate himself from the field, but he's still the only candidate that's come out in favour of most of his signature policies. and, despite the dropped jaws in the washington consensus, this is one of his signature policies.

again: this is a feature. it's not a bug. and, if the people of florida wants to vote for an illegal coup in a foreign country, and think that it's a ballot issue that overpowers more pressing concerns, then they should be roundly condemned for it. the democrats can't be bending over to right-wing reactionaries like this.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/21/bernie-sanders-venezuela-maduro-1179636

yeah, that's exactly what the planet needs - more money for obsolete technology.

that infrastructure money was supposed to go towards carbon transition not to "help families get to work".

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-announces-up-to-86-5-million-for-halifax-expressway-1.4306314

the data on this is actually pretty startling - many american baby boomers will outlive their children, partly because they're able to afford better health care. the united states is not just heading into a gerontocracy, but one where a generation, maybe two, is going to end up lost to irrelevancy.

just a reality check on this. these are some of the most powerful people running the country, not just now but for the next 4-8 years.

nancy pelosi - 78
donald trump - 72
joe biden - 76
chuck schumer - 68
bernie sanders - 77
elizabeth warren - 69
hillary clinton - 71
mitch mcconnell - 77
chuck grassley - 85
wilbur ross - 81
william barr - 68
sonny perdue - 72
rick perry - 68
john kerry - 75
dianne feinstein - 85
mitt romney - 71

there's then a bunch of people in their 50s - pence, mnuchin, etc. these are the last boomers, but they're still boomers.

if we accept that the baby boom was from 1945-1965, and we give the last boomers until their 80s before they step down or die in office, that means we're not looking at a shift in power until 2045-2050 - when the oldest millennials start to retire.

it's not that the power to turf these people isn't there, but there doesn't seem to be much of a will to do it. and, both parties want to reward seniority. so long as these people want these jobs, they're going to be hard to get rid of.

everybody knew gen x was going to get skipped and squeezed. but, i'm not sure anybody saw this coming.

we can always hope they die before they get old, right?

there are lots of concrete ways that this manifests itself. one example is drug prices.

it is apparently now common practice to import generics from canada, which is actually completely insane if you understand how the system works. drug prices in the united states are ridiculous, granted. but, canada is actually the second most expensive oecd country, and it is largely the consequence of the american market.

the united states has essentially no meaningful regulation on drug prices, which is completely absurd.

in canada, what we do is take the oecd average. so, if you want to buy a drug in canada, the price is calculated by adding up the prices in all of the other oecd countries and then dividing it by the number of countries. if you have a situation where the drug is 100x more expensive in the united states - a random if round number, but hardly an absurd exaggeration - then this dramatically skews the average, which actually inflates the price.

for america to try and fix this by importing canadian drugs is to provide a very minor discount on a problem of their own making. if they would simply regulate their industry, prices would come down on both sides of the border.

so, if sanders wins and brings in pharmacare, canadian drug prices will come down dramatically. who can say we don't have an interest in this?

i'm going to repeat something i've said several times over the last three years.

i think that most americans are, in fact, aware that canada has a single-payer healthcare system, and that canadians are deeply protective of it. what americans may be less of aware of is the fact that it is constantly under threat by corporate interests that want to open up a market. the people of ontario are currently in particularly grave danger of losing our health care, despite whatever kind of riots may erupt as a result of it.

and, the biggest threat to our healthcare system is the fact that it exists in such close proximity to such a massive, open market. as there are americans that look north for inspiration about coverage, there are predatory capitalists in canada that look south for a more exploitative model - as well as corporate interests to the south that would like to open up the market.

don't misunderstand me; i'm an altruist. i want to see my american cousins get better results for their dollar - sure. but, my dominant interest is that i am keenly aware that the best way to protect the system in my country is to help abolish the market that exists over the border, and that the system in canada will never be safe until the system in america evolves. this is an example of how altruism is reciprocal, of how the best way to help yourself is sometimes actually to help others.

it is for that reason that sanders is likely to be the only acceptable candidate in the field, and that i have a direct interest in helping him win.

and, what if your handpicked, black, progressive female candidate eclipses you?

that's fine.

i pointed out previously that in order for the left to win the primary in the states, they have to sweep the midwest and find a way to split the south. if bernie is the guy, so be it.

that said, bernie may want to be seriously considering the idea of a black running mate as a compromise/consolation - and don't look too badly into that. i'm just inherently cynical. so, frame it as a way to reach out, then. if this is a serious tactic, you should get the candidate running early.

so, let's say that bernie talks nina turner into running, for example. the way this would work is that she'd run strong in the south, with the intent of taking votes away from kamala harris particularly - and even a 5% swing could be decisive. then, when he wins by sweeping the midwest and splitting the south, he offers her a spot on the ticket, which is a concession because she got x% of the vote.

it doesn't have to be nina turner, of course, although she's kind of ideal for the task.

i'm just trying to throw some tactical ideas out there that are dialectical in nature. bernie wants to run as a uniter, and that's fine, in fact it's great, but it means finding smart ways to split the field and unite it at the same time.

so, if you know you have to split the south to win, and you realize that the way you fix that in the end is to offer a space on the ticket, then you get your candidate out there early. that way, you can accomplish your task, while getting the candidate you want, in the end.

are they the same character?

i don't know.

the first iteration - this one - is clearly a gay man breaking it to an obsessed female. he's sorry, and probably honestly so.

the second is about an evil bastard that apologizes disingenuously in order to get what he wants.

it would be a good story, in some sense, to explore the life of a character over the course of a fifteen year time span, caught apologizing in these very different contexts.

they should hook the leak up to brian pallister's kitchen sink.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/nearly-40-train-crude-oil-cars-carrying-crude-oil-derail-in-manitoba-st-lazare

“We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age,” Mr. Sanders said. “I think we have got to try to move us toward a nondiscriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for.”

this is a feature, not a bug.

my initial reaction to claims of a placental mammal going extinct in australia due to climate change was that australia doesn't have indigenous placental mammals, and humans must have introduced them.

frankly, i don't want to shed too many tears for dead rats.

but, it turns out that there are two kinds of placental mammals that were introduced to australia before humans, namely bats and a few species of rodents. or, that is the thinking, anyways.

i wonder, though, how a rat would have found it's way from new guinea to australia, short of a land bridge - which, while not entirely outlandish (water levels would have been lower in glacial periods), belies the fact that the continent does not have any other placental species. we have learned the hard way that placentals tend to outcompete marsupials for spaces in the same niches.

so, how did these placentals get there, exactly?

a bat could have flown. granted.

but, maybe we ought to spin this around: is the introduction of placental rodents to australia in the last five million years actually evidence that ergaster made it that far south?

i don't like rats; i mentioned that. but, justice, to me, means keeping australia as a safe homeland for marsupials and monotremes.

placentals out of australia! placentals go home.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rodents_of_Australia#Old_%22Endemics%22_*

age is an issue because it implies an increasing likelihood towards senility. for that reason alone, you can't brush off "ageism" the way you'd brush off racism or sexism - age does matter, if only on the extremes.

i'm less concerned about dole or mccain as precedent and more concerned about reagan, who it is well understood began to lose it near the end of his term - and was eventually officially diagnosed with alzheimers.

we're talking about an extremely important job, here, that can't tolerate any kind of mental slowness. i would consequently actually support a constitutional amendment to put an age limit somewhere around 75 - which is where mandatory retirement kicks in on the canadian supreme court.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/will-age-be-an-issue-in-the-2020-presidential-race.html

i just want to add an after thought to this bernie sanders running again thing.

i pointed out that the left may be looking forward to 2024, and that if an acceptable candidate doesn't present itself then bernie becomes the option by default - as a protest against the democratic party. that said, the best tactic may be helping bernie build a movement, anyways.

you also have to keep in mind that trump is, himself, also an old man. if the argument is that it's irresponsible to support a candidate at such an advanced age, that may be blunted by the reality that there isn't another choice.

so, if there is no viable candidate anyways, there is no harm in focusing solely on the future; while bernie himself may never enter the promised land, he might help lead us there.

trudeau actually took a walk in the snow just a few hours ago.

that's why there's snow angels in the yard.

what i'm going to say is this.

i want a younger candidate, and will jump on one if i can find one. but, if i can't, i'm going to end up supporting him, by default. and, i've always supported fringe candidates like kucinich or nader, so don't be surprised if i can't find anybody i'm willing to support in the democratic field, either.

but, frankly? it's starting to look like the left needs to plan for 2024. i may stick with sanders in the end, but if i do it will likely be as a protest vote.

if a younger candidate does appear, i'm going to expect bernie to step back, too.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bernie-sanders-2020-bid-1.5024206

so, this is comical.

but, keeping in mind that the toronto star is considered to be the closest thing that we have to english-language, liberal-leaning msm in this country, it demonstrates the power that this company has, here - and the factors underlying the situation.

the rest of the media is right-leaning and all over this. the toronto star is supposed to come to the pmo's aide; instead, it's throwing them under the bus to save the impugned reputation of the corporation in question.

as mentioned: they need to create a major distraction. firing gerald butts wasn't it.

https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2019/02/19/david-olive-the-snc-lavalin-scandal-lies-entirely-with-the-trudeau-government.html

what.

the.

fuck.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/report-trump-rushing-sell-saudi-arabia-nuclear-technology-190219181918317.html

do you have to go to jewish media to get some sanity on the topic?

fuck.

https://www.jpost.com/International/Outrage-in-Syria-Iraq-as-ISIS-members-treated-as-celebrities-in-west-581103

"material support to a terrorist group" is not a new concept under british common law, either - it comes directly from the idea of "aiding and abetting" a criminal, which is well established and not very controversial.

i mean, this is ridiculous.

we are governed by complete idiots.

i don't agree.

there is a law against providing material support to a terrorist group, and these women should be prosecuted under it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/19/isil-brides-cannot-prosecuted-simply-going-syria-met-chief-admits/

the stock market is just another casino - it's not a reflection of the economy, it's just a venue for people to gamble their savings. it goes up and down based on random trivialities that have little - and usually nothing - to do with the performance of the actual companies.

if investors want the market to go up, it goes up. nothing else really matters. it's just supply and demand, really.

nothing except one thing, that is. the one law it has to obey, whether it likes it or not, is that money has to exist before it can be traded. so, when you suck money out of the economy - which is what the feds are doing - then you necessarily suck money out of the markets at the same time. if a lag exists between a contraction in the market and an application of this policy, a bubble is created.

now, there's no rule that says this bubble has to burst, other than that people have to move their money around at some point. what ends up happening is that people have to sell their investments to pay for other things. this drives the price down. but, so long as people don't sell, so long as they find some other way to make up for the shortfall of the monetary contraction, the bubble floats off into space...

why did we see a crash around christmas, then? because people were reassessing their finances at the end of the year. they may have been selling stocks to raise money for christmas presents, vacations, etc. now, they're sitting at home, leaving their investments alone like they've been told to.

but, all the feds have been doing for years now is sucking money out of the economy, so the underlying cause of the last correction is just building up on itself.

i don't know when it starts to crash again. people don't seem to want to sell...they seem to have a lot of faith in this system, and that's hard to shake.

but, the monetary contraction is a vicious force, and it can't be undone by positive thinking.

it's a matter of time before it happens - and expect carnage when it clicks in.

what the market is demonstrating is that it doesn't exist in any sort of connection to any kind of economic reality. that's not news to anybody, despite the extended length of this continuing period of absolute delusion.

i am not changing my analysis of the situation: the bubble is simply getting more exaggerated, and it is still due to crash by over 10,000 points at any moment.

the cause of this imminent crash will be the monetary policies put in place by the republicans, specifically a contraction of the balance sheet. and, the only way to reverse it will be to print more money.

you simply can't destroy money and expand the economy at the same time. the longer that investors delude themselves to this fact by playing with these make believe numbers, the harder the crash ends up in the end.

see, it's not just the snc-lavalin thing that just happened.

the party also just fired john mccallum, and broke with a historical foreign policy in venezuela. the cabinet shift was caused by the resignation of scott brison. these are big, paradigmatic changes in the liberal party.

to have gerald butts - a richelieu type character - walk out like this is either a forceful reversal, or the next step in a process.

i've been calling for the former and will be ecstatic if i was heeded, through whatever ether or zeitgeist i'm communicating through. but, i actually suspect it's the latter - that this is a palace coup spearheaded by the party's right, which wants to put chrystia freeland in power.

we'll find out soon.

the resignation of gerald butts is a major change in the canadian political landscape, heading into the 2019 election. while he appears to be taking the fall for the snc-lavelin scandal, i suspect that this is actually somewhat of a smokescreen for a shift in policy direction.

i've been stating for months - years - that the party needs to flex it's muscles, and change it's policy direction, before trudeau leads them so far to the right that they end up politically irrelevant. i don't think that anybody actually voted for justin trudeau. when you strip away the layers of nostalgia for his father, of partisan liberal support, of stolen ndp positions (all of which have been abandoned) and of anti-harperism, the only thing that trudeau was actually running on as an individual was marijuana, relegating his political base to fickle first-time voters. and, now we're making major shifts in foreign policy that are undoing the party's legacy, and really flipping their branding over.

recent polling suggests the liberals are in fact in trouble. and, why wouldn't they be? we voted harper out with disdain, only for him to reappear in a prom dress.

but, it's not entirely clear yet which side of the argument won this debate. and, that is what we're going to figure out in the upcoming days and weeks: was butts pushed out by the party's old guard, which is trying to take control of a sinking ship, or was he a victim of his own success - purged by a party that wants to realign itself on the right.

so, i've now got all of those boxes properly organized and put away. there's one stack of cds and one box of books left out for easy access, which is very specifically books and cds from the period up to mid-1997, which is the next period i'll be working on in the alter-reality.

the last run through the main pc (i keep calling it that, but it is now merely the 32-bit box) is now done, as well. this included a final browse through the directory structure for loose files, as well as an attempt to undelete any files sitting on the drive.

and, in the process, i found something i thought i had lost - a file called archive.pst, dated to late 2011. it was hiding in the virtual machine, and had to be brought back using a file recovery utility. this might be my missing email. or, it might be corrupted beyond readability. i'll find out over the next few days.

i found a few other large psts as well, with dcxx file names, indicating they're likely unreadable. we'll find out...

that means i'm back to the email process this week.

there's two things left to do before i can get back to sitting on the laptop and organizing files for the rebuild. i want to run the same file recovery process on my old quantum fireball, in the hopes that i can find some old thunderbird boxes. i suspect they're there; the question is if they're readable. i'm also still running an undelete process on two relatively old hard drives that don't have vista/7 drivers and can only be read from inside xp, but that i can't get my 32-bit box to read, either (because i broke the plug and play on purpose). so, this is running on the 90s laptop - and is slow. it's getting there.

a day or two, tops. i think.

i also took the opportunity to do some organizing and general cleaning. i can't remember how i described this basement apartment; i know there are neither pictures nor video up yet, which is quite conscious. but, it's organized in such a way that there are two bedroom-like enclaves (with sliding doors that are kept always open), but no dining room or eat-in kitchen (there is of course a kitchen, with the luxury of laundry in it, and a bathroom). the way i have it set up is that i'm using one of these enclaves as a bedroom and the other as a dining/living room, then using the main area as a studio. something you'll note is that the only thing i actually do in the "living" room is eat - i spend almost all of my time in my bedroom or in the studio. i guess this is a function of the fact that i neither watch tv nor have any friends. my "living room" is really the studio. i think i was over this a few times last year - the actual functions of the spaces i need are to sleep/type/read, to record and to eat. so, i need three rooms, organized in some capacity. the last basement had four rooms, with the fourth being a big eat-in kitchen, but i didn't actually use it for anything other than to store garbage; i ate in the living room. the smoky apartment had two rooms, and i consequently found it a little cramped, as i had to force everything into one space. three is a better number, here - even if the total floor space is technically somewhat smaller (it's a negligible difference).

for the last several months, i've just had everything piled into the other room, waiting for it to be cleaned - loose plastic recyclables, receipts, user manuals, books, cds, bills, documents, old school work, etc. i've finally got all of this cleaned up and organized, which has converted the area into an actual liveable space. the studio is still messy, but it is at least in order - although i need to caution that it could be a while before i get back into there. even keeping in mind that i will need to catch up in the alter-reality before i get back to working on the discography, the material from 2003-2004 is actually entirely completed (a rarity in my discography), meaning the next projects to reconstruct actually date to late 2004 and early 2005. the next major project i'm going to be actually working on is a matlab project, and is going to be about programming, rather than recording - i'm going to be writing an entire record using mathematics and physical modelling. i've got about 15 minutes to start with and a handful of loose ideas to base sounds around. expect this to be exceedingly abstract. i may even use it as an excuse to finally get into reaktor or whatever passes for it nowadays; the point is that i'm not going to be getting back to actual note-based music composition until i delve well more than a year back into the discography.

i'm still hesitant about planning around this basement, but my best option may be to wait for a spot in a subsidized building. the air quality comes up and down, but seems to be workable so long as the fan is on. i've done a few extra caulking layers and think i've reached the endpoint of what i can do with that. i still just can't figure out if there's a teenager upstairs smoking, or the air in the neighbourhood is just bad, all around...and, if i can figure out the answer to this, i'll be able to plan the future a little better.

i think i can get a few shelves, regardless - one for cds and one for books. the plan will be to fill these shelves as i work through the alter-reality. i don't need to commit to this basement long-term to spend $40-50 on some relevant general utility shelving. but, i'll need to wait until the spring before i start thinking about hauling shelves around; that's fine, it'll be a few weeks, at least, before i get there. i'm not building custom shelves like i wanted to in the other space, and am glad i didn't.

i think the primary concern once i get these files aligned is actually going to be fixing the broken laptop, one way or the other. i bought parts for it, only to have the processor finally fry. if i can't find a way to bring it back, i'm hoping i can find a cheap replacement and swap out the parts. this is an hp pavillion that was manufactured in the 2010-2012 period. you'd think i could find a replacement that can take similar parts for less than $200, and that's fine - i still have cash my grandmother gave me for that explicit purpose. the price has just come down since then. i'll be using such a laptop - with 8 gb of ram - as a video editing machine, kept offline, and connected to one of  the other machines via a local network. i'll have to transfer the files to the internet gateway via some kind of flash device.

so, that's my update for the last few days - i'm kind of turning a corner on some things, and getting closer to getting back to the rebuild. so long as things unfold as planned, this will be worth it in the long run.

now, regarding these court cases...

still no response from the cops. this was day 108 of the 120-day statutory period. they're running out of time. so, i sent them a note.

i'm still waiting for the privacy commissioner, but will give them until the end of the month.

the file destruction request, on the other hand, is something i'm getting impatient about - i should have heard a response by now and will need to get on the phone shortly.

i'm waiting for the report from the cops before i decide on what to do regarding the court audio. you have to understand that i could sue this woman and win, then never see the cash, so i'm better off suing the cops under a charter breach. but, the thing is that there's no time frame on a charter case, and about a year-long time frame regarding a human rights case. so, i can wait for the cops to drag the charter case out, but i can't wait for them to drag the human rights case out.

if it starts to look like the cops are just stalling - and it's getting close to that point - then i'm going to have to move forward on the human rights case. but, if i get a good report, i might skip it.

the point is that i'm waiting for the report before i make my next move, whatever it is.

and, in fact, the lawsuit is even more frivolous than i thought, because the president isn't even authorizing new funds, but redirecting them.

what trump is actually doing in his executive order is redirecting funds from the drug war to the border wall. the lawsuit is claiming that this is a presidential usurpation of the public purse; but, these funds are already allocated. so, their argument is actually even technically wrong.

i don't actually think that the courts would have had the jurisdiction if what they were saying was even true. but, as it is, what they're saying isn't even true in the first place...

the congress should be able to block this without the use of the courts, and it clearly has the numbers to do it, based on the bill that necessitated it. if they're serious, they'll invoke their own authority, which is a proper constitutional use of power.

the only constitutional crisis here is the potential use of judicial overreach to overturn executive power. but, the judiciary will excuse itself; if it does not, that is where the problem lays.

yeah. this is a political stunt, not a serious legal argument.

as mentioned, they didn't file it in san francisco by accident. the rubber-stamp kangaroo court there will follow party dictates and send it up to the next level. the democrats can always rely on an easy injunction using this method, as they control this particular court.

but, this argument stands exactly zero chance of working in the long run.

the real question is as follows: why aren't the democrats launching a judicial review? was a deal made around politicizing the issue in a hopeless court battle as a face-saving mechanism?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/politics/national-emergency-lawsuits-trump.html

have these professors been living on a different planet, or what?

the opposition has been boycotting elections in the country for years, creating a facade of illegitimacy that all evidence suggests is unwarranted. their tactic is as follows:

1. boycott the election
2. after the opposition refuses to participate, and the results are skewed, claim the election is rigged.
3. ????????????
4. profit.

i guess the academy is filling in the third step, here. but, it is entirely unclear why the opposition would observe this election, when it has refused to observe the last batch of them.

the solution to this problem is not in calling any kind of election. i've stated this point more than once: the message the world should be sending to the opposition is that if you don't want to take part in the election then you don't get a say in governing.

and, the solution can be nothing more or less than forcing everybody to wait until the next scheduled election.

there is a difference between ochlocracy and democracy. look it up.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/proposal-to-end-the-crisis-in-venezuela

yeah.

that's the idea.

https://www.burnabynow.com/conservative-leader-says-trudeau-will-hike-carbon-tax-if-he-wins-vote-in-2019-1.23570227

you want democracy in syria?

great.

then your single biggest advocate inside the country is bashar al-assad, who may in the end end up dying for it.

those of us with memories better than those of your average gerbil will recall that the reason we're in this mess in the first place is that the saudis were trying to stop the syrians from moving to a constitutional republic.

what the media refers to as a "civil war" in syria has always been a foreign backed invasion to stop the country from moving towards democracy. i have to repeat this point when i make it: what the americans have been doing in syria is not spreading democracy, but rather helping the saudis to stamp it out before it spreads.

i don't know how the americans walk this back, in the end. they're still talking about assad as a dictator, even while he's openly planning a democratic transition. i suppose they'll probably claim the elections are rigged.

so, when you hear talk of these opposition groups demanding that the constitution be altered as a pre-condition, you have to put it in context. syria just fought a brutal war to save a constitution that was passed less than ten years ago.

all of these people can't have died for nothing.

https://en.unesco.org/creativity/policy-monitoring-platform/syrias-new-constitution

i don't actually know what i want to be when i grow up, yet.

i would not be particularly upset if the kurds just killed them on the spot.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/islamic-state-isis-baghuz-trump-calls-on-european-allies-to-take-800-fighters-captured-in-syria

almost done with this, i just have to separate the initial list up to 2003 into periods one and period two.

i'll be writing reviews for new releases from 1997-1999 over the upcoming months, then putting those releases on the shelves. and, i'm actually thinking that the down period over 1997 may give me an excuse to do some writing on some older media i have, just to be comprehensive.

slowly...

and, something happened when i went back to school in '08 - i stopped spending money on cds, and started downloading music. so, i've got a terrabyte of mp3s since then, and very few physical discs. there's a few left, not many....

at some point, i'll want to rectify that. there's certain things - la dispute, 65daysofstatic, son lux, screaming females - that belong on the shelf. but, it could be a while longer, still.

i decided i wouldn't review anything without buying it, so that's the limitation i'm getting around.

but, that gets me in order, anyways. and, i'm about to pass out.

so, here's the list from late 2006 to mid 2008, which, with the last list, corresponds to the time i was out of school.

i didn't have a clean compare algorithm, here, i had to sort through, and i no doubt missed a few. i don't have snapshots after 2007. but, i'll catch them in the end - they're there.

i'm all over the place, here.

up to june, 2008

a silver mt. zion	pretty little lightning paw	2004	cst	030	30:16	9
	13 blues for thirteen moons	2008	cst	051	59:04	0
acid mothers temple & the melting paraiso ufo	nam myo ho ren ge kyo	2007	ace fu	047	65:16	5
adrian belew	side two	2005	sanctuary	755	33:13	2
	side three	2006	sanctuary	777	38:45	9
allan holdsworth	atavachron	1986	2064	36:44	3
animal collective	hollinndagain	2002	paw tracks	12	41:33	5
	feels	2005	splinter	11	51:48	0
aphex twin	girl/boy	1996	warp	wap-78	15:25	5
	richard d. james album	1996		warp-43	32:43	0
autechre	incunabula	1993	warp	0017	78:03	3
	amber	1994		0025	74:25	2
	chiastic slide	1997		0049	69:51	0
	lp5	1998		0066	73:16	1
	ep 7.1	1999		ep7	29:32	3
	ep 7.2	1999		ep7	30:45	0
	peel session 2	2000		9150	29:30	3
	confield	2001			74:00	4
	gantz graf	2002		9256	19:17	1
	draft 7.30	2003		0111	62:47	3
	untilted	2005		0180	69:49	2
between the buried and me	alaska	2005	victory	262	53:54	10
	colors	2007		351	64:12	7
bjork	medulla	2004	62 984	45:46	2
black sabbath	paranoid	1970	warner brothers	27 327	42:11	8
brian eno	(no pussyfooting)	1973	eg	1-02	39:44	0
	evening star	1975		1-03	47:34	1
	music for films	1978		1-05	41:04	1
can	tago mago	1971	mute	9273	73:30	0
	ege bamyasi	1972		9274	40:11	1
carlos santana	blues for salvador	1987	columbia	40875	45:09	3
claude debussy	nocturnes	1899	phillips	11 433	26:57	0
	la mer	1905		11 433	24:09	1
cocteau twins	blue bell knoll	1988	4ad/vertigo	36 484	35:16	3
cop shoot cop	release	1994	interscope	92 424	50:30	3
cornershop	when i was born for the 7th time	1997	warner bros	46 576	54:18	3
david bowie	tin machine	1989	91 990	56:49	9
django reinhardt	jazz in paris vol. 13	1939	emarcy	59 854	51:02	3
do make say think	you, you're a history in rust	2007	045	48:29	3
einstuerzende neubauten	perpetuum mobile	2004	mute (time-warner)	9-237		2
fennesz	venice	2004	touch	53		3
fuck buttons	street horrrsing	2008	atpr	028		0
genesis	genesis	1983				7
henryk gorecki	string quartets 1 and 2	1988 / 1991	nonesuch	79319		3
hindu love gods	s/t	1990	giant	24406		5
hrsta	ghosts will come ahd kiss our eyes	2007	cst	48		3
iron butterfly	in-a-gadda-da-vida	1968	atco	20217	90 392	8
john bayless	bach meets the beatles	1984	pro-arte	211		8
jello biafra & the melvins	sieg howdy!	2005	alternative tentacles	350		2
john zorn	duras:duchamp	1997				3
	xu feng	2000				0
	naninani II	2004	tzadik	250		2
john mclaughlin	molom	1995				3
john tavener	the protecting veil	1996				3
jonny greenwood	bodysongs	2002	emi	95147		2
king crimson	beat	1981				2
	three of a perfect pair	1984				1
kingdom shore	...and all the dogs to shark					3
kronos quartet	black angels	1990	nonesuch/elektra	79242		4
	howl, usa	1997	elektra/nonesuch	79372		4
lamb	fear of fours	1999	mercury	58 821		3
led zeppelin	led zeppelin	1969	atlantic	82632		4
ludwig van beethoven	symphony no. 5 (opus #67)	1808	sb2k	63266		0
	symphony no. 6 (opus #68)	1808	sb2k	63266		1
	symphony no. 7 (opus #92)	1813	pilz	067		1
	symphony no. 8 (opus #93)	1814	sb2k	63266		2
mammatus	mammatus	2006	holy mountain	17974		1
	the coast explodes	2007	holy mountain	8516		1
meat beat manifesto	subliminal sandwich	1996	nothing (universal)	90 069		2
	hello friends	2001	shadow	097		4
	at the center	2005	thirsty ear	57 159		2
meg lee chin	junkies and snakes	2000	invisible	176		5
mike keneally	hat.	1992	exowax	promo		1
	boil that dist speck	1994	exowax	promo		1
	sluggo	1997	immune	018		1
miles davis	'round about midnight	1957	columbia			2
moebius & plank	rastakraut pasta	1980				3
	material	1981				3
mr. bungle	mr. bungle	1990				3
my bloody valentine	isn't anything	1988				1
	loveless	1991				0
nine inch nails	year zero	2007				2
	ghosts	2008				2
pelican	city of echoes	2005	hydra head	124		3
philip glass	passages	1990				0
	kundun	1997	nonesuch	79460		2
pink floyd	the division bell	1994				2
plaid	double figure	2001	warp	084		2
red hot chili peppers	mother's milk	1989	columbial	13 892		2
	bloodsugarsexmagik	1991	warner brothers	45 448		0
robert fripp	(no pussyfooting)	1973	eg	1-02	39:44	0
	evening star	1975		1-03	47:34	1
set fire to flames	sings reign rebuilder	2002	alien8	130701		6
skerik	syncopated taint septet	2003	ryko	16 039		1
sonic youth	the whitey album	1988				3
steve reich	electric counterpoint	1987	nonesuch (time-warner)	79 176		1
	different trains	1988	nonesuch (time-warner)	79 176		3
the chicago underground trio	flamethrower	2000	delmark	521		2
the fall	cheetham hill	1997	receiver	247		3
the grassy knoll	III	1998	nettwerk	30127		2
the jimi hendrix experience	axis: bold as love	1967	track			0
the white stripes	get behind me satan	2005	v2 (bmg)	27 256		2
trans am	red line	2000	thrill jockey	087		2
turing machine	a new machine for living	2000	jade tree	92258		2
various artists	dgc rarities vol 1	1994	dgc	24704		5
	natural born killers	1994	nothing/interscope	92460		2
	song of the silent land	2004	constellation	cstcomp2		4
wendy carlos	clockwork orange original score	1972	east side	81362		3
xiu xiu	women as lovers	2008	kill rock stars	484		3
xtc	homespun	1999	tvt	3320		3
yellowjackets	priceless jazz collection	1998	grbd	9893		3