and, what about trudeau and his pdas?

i remember watching the swearing in ceremony and being a little taken aback by his insistence on categorically grabbing every cabinet minister - male or female - like he's the head linebacker, and they're all in for orientation. it was weird.

over the years, the process has changed a little. when joyce murray was sworn in last week, she seemed to expect it and kind of cringed as it was happening. i've seen other women just kind of stare him down as he approaches, and he at least seems to get the hint and tone it down. it should be obvious to the most passive observer that this isn't being taken well.

nobody has really said anything about it, though....not even in this mound of criticism about "fake feminism", as though that's a coherent concept - as though he's just trying to get laid, or something.

here's an interesting thought experiment, though: how would lucy flores (was she named by a palaeoanthropologist, or what? i bet her husband's name is hobbit erectus.) react if it was justin trudeau leaning in to get a whiff of her unwashed hair?

i'm not missing the point about consent. i understand that the issue is consent.

but, this has been going on for years in canada and nobody's said a peep. further, biden himself has been doing this for years, and it only seems to have generated a reaction when he turned 75. i wonder what his hair smells like, btw. you've seen grease, right?

regardless, i guess it just cycles the issue back to the point, doesn't it? it's about consent...

broadly speaking, recording a phone call is not illegal as long as one of the parties knows it is happening, although it is doubtful that any judge would admit it as evidence in much of any context. so, the purpose of the recording was clearly political, rather than legal - it indicates that she was intending from the start to use the issue as leverage in a scandal.

further, as noted, her role as attorney general (counsel to the government) introduces a set of responsibilities that is not present in the general population. while perhaps not technically illegal, i think there's a strong argument that she should lose her license over it.

but, broadly speaking, the way she has tried to present the issue is that this is really all about consent. the hypocrisy here is pretty awful.

can we get this rank opportunist out of the news, now? i think her 15 minutes are up.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5114032/recording-phone-calls-canada-laws/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014

this ought to completely enrage fiscal conservatives, but they are of course a bunch of hypocrites.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/2019/03/31/ford-plans-taxpayer-funded-tv-ad-blitz-opposing-trudeaus-carbon-tax.html

ok, so i've got july done - everything uploaded, everything downloaded and the journal nicely formatted, and in fact ready to print..

now, i need to figure out what i'm doing with the pdf file....

i've been thinking about this for a while regarding the isos, as well. when i get to permanently closing the aleph-discs, i'm actually going to want to put the iso up for sale somewhere. so, i need a kind of generalized bandcamp, willing to sell pdfs and isos along with flacs and cds.

i'm going to stop to eat, because i didn't eat yesterday. but when i get back, i'm going to need to figure that out...

one day, the master document will be completed and will need to be both offered in some kind of massive disc of everything, as well as standalone, but for now i'm going to be splitting it up into periods for the aleph discs and liner notes for each individual release. does a monthly or tri-yearly breakdown make sense in context?

for connecting periods like the summer of 2013, it might seem obvious, because it isn't really attached to any particular recording. the story in the july, 2013 pdf of hitchiking to windsor while my father is dying in ottawa will be relevant for pretty much all of the aleph discs, but may not end up in any specific liner note. but, once i get into the fall of 2013, the entries are going to be cut up in ways that are more specific to the recordings...except not really...

the music journal was initially meant to be pure documentation, but is now more of a broad narrative that is even crosslinked to vlogs of both studio time and adventures around the region. it really is it's own thing, and can stand alone outside of the music. but, i'm not sure i really want that...

i guess the choice i'll have is whether i want these documents to exist solely in the aleph disc, or whether i want them to be standalone - but i already know that i want them to be standalone.

ok.

they need to be cheap, and intended mostly for ease of reading; i don't intend to take the journal down, so this will always be available here for free. it's just that reading a blog like this is backwards. if i could reverse the ordering, i would - and i will, eventually, for the alephs. so it's here for free, but if you want to actually read the story, you want to read it in order, right? presenting them in monthly instalments will make them more digestible, and also keep the thing flowing.

ok.

so, i need to find the right kind of site to sell pdf files for a small fee, which is really just a donation box, right? one of the things i like about bandcamp is that it lets you increase the price; the sale price is actually a minimum suggestion, and there is no max. so, that's really what i want, here - the file will be $0.99 or something, and downloadable to your kinder or just your laptop, but it's really just an opportunity to throw money at me, if you want to.

alright. so, that's settled - the larger documents will be in the aleph discs, and the liner notes will be cut up accordingly, but a simple monthly digest will be available, as well. i'll just need to figure that out after i eat...

i'm not even shooting blanks.

i'm not shooting at all.

somebody that i've never met before, or don't remember meeting, is trying to contact me over facebook and send me pictures of her son. i initially informed her that she had the wrong person, and she initially seems to have accepted that. but, she keeps messaging me.

i could be getting trolled, or i could be being targeted via some kind of immigration scam. or, the person might be crazy. i dunno. i know i've blocked this person and hope to not hear from them again.

but, to set the record straight on this issue: it would actually be impossible. that is, i am physically incapable of producing sperm and have been for almost ten years.

there are a handful of blurry nights over the last five years, and i do suspect i was on the receiving end of an anal session over the course of at least one of them. but, whatever happened, i can assure you that i did not ejaculate - because i can't.

i can orgasm still, with a little effort, although i don't do so very often. but, there is no corresponding flow event - no ejaculate, no "cum". so, no clean-up. and, no evidence.

why is this?

because the testosterone suppressors - the anti-androgens - that i've been taking for roughly ten years have reduced my testosterone levels to nearly zero. this is a process called chemical castration, and what it means is that my testicles can no longer produce sperm because they aren't receiving the hormones that instruct them as to how to do that. as such, i cannot ejaculate.

this has been thoroughly tested and is repeatably demonstrable.

so, if somebody were to approach me about something that happened during the small handful of blackouts i've incurred since i moved here, i'd have to keep an open mind. i expect i'd be far more likely to have sex with a male than a female, but it doesn't make sense to speculate upon events you don't remember.

but, i can state with absolute certainty that no children could possibly be the result of any such misadventure, because i am physically incapable of impregnating anybody - it's impossible, and i could prove that in a court if i had to.

it's just so much style over substance, accompanied with rhetoric that is often intellectually lacking. the thing is that the latter is actually pretty normal for somebody of her age and experience; the disconnect is taking somebody that should be gaining life experience and thrusting them into a leadership role before they're ready to deal with it.

i'm still waiting for her to write some actual legislation, and am withholding judgement until i see it; in the end, i will judge her by her work, and will refrain from doing so until she presents some.

but, is she bad news for the party?

it's the other ones i'm more worried about.

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/436466-new-poll-more-americans-think-ocasio-cortez-is-bad-for-the

i don't have any reason to doubt lucy flores, either, especially considering that biden is known for pdas and he doesn't appear to be denying it, so much as he appears to be claiming that the interaction was so trivial to him that he does not remember it even happening at all.

and, it probably was trivial; where i may introduce some doubt is in questioning whether it really affected her to the extent she is claiming it did, and whether there is some danger in elevating a triviality to the level of rhetorical assault. when you politicize an issue to this extent, you are entering a space where you run the risk of trivializing the narratives of actual survivors of actual assault.

regardless, biden's reaction here needs to be to indicate that he understands that social roles are changing. given the triviality of the interaction, he has an opportunity here to demonstrate that he understands that, trivial or not, this is no longer acceptable behaviour in polite society. rather than acknowledge that there has been a cultural shift towards the assumption that all forms of affection require consent, he's digging in and asserting his innocence in intent. in the process, he's completely missing the point.

the reality is that it might not harm him in the primary, which is so disproportionately old. there is this misunderstanding in the media that the twittersphere represents the electorate, probably because virtually the entirety of the journalism profession exists so firmly within it. but, these hashtag movements really represent nearly immeasurable fragments of the population. the democratic primary is going to be dominated by wealthy white people older than 50, and they may not give a fuck about a peck on the head.

the danger here is that biden ends up breeding the same kind of apathy that clinton did in the general.

but, will this move his poll numbers?

i doubt it.

what am i actually doing?

i'm putting this up here temporarily to get the idea across. this is the final document for 07/13, but it will likely only exist in this form in my notes. i'm toying with whether i want to put monthly files up for download, or if i want to do it by semester; i'll have an answer within a few days, at least.

this is actually going to be one of the shorter documents, as it is only a half month. for that reason, it's hard to argue this should be up as a download, unless it's half price, i guess. we'll find out what i do soon enough.

i need to sleep.

but, once edited for a 5x8 novella page size, the journal comes up to 220 pages. it was 125 pages in the full document, so that would suggest to me that i already have about 5000 pages of novella-sized pages to edit down. yeah. and, i still have a lot of writing to do..

that's just the music journal. the complete file would be more like 20,000 pages of novella sized paper, when edited accordingly. by the time this is done, it could be pushing 500,000 pages.

electronic publishing aside, this journal is eventually going to be the liner notes, as a continuous whole. so, i'll have my 10,000+ page document that acts as a continual liner note, from 1993 to whenever i expire. but, this will be spliced up into several hundred page entries that will be attached to each release in the discography.

when i finally catch up to the end of 2016/1996, i will upload a pdf file that is like this to the inri000 release, which will be complete - it will have the found journal, notes from the alter-reality in 1996 and notes from 2013-2016, when it was reworked and then permanently closes. these notes will be in this 5x8 format, to appear as though they are a novella. each subsequent release will receive a similar document.

what that means is that, in the end, each entry in the discography will come with what amounts to a book.

i hope that what i'm doing is a little more clear, if it wasn't.

for now, this is just getting filed away and zipped up.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O37lL_B_YvXpfytsooRdW_oxcrLfOLDu/view

ok.

so, i think i've posted all the way to the end of july - it took a lot longer than planned, but it is actually a lot of posts.

1) http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/07/
2)  http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/07/

the next step will be to consolidate and archive. that should be by the end of the night.

i am going to push forward through august, which should not be nearly as hairy, before i start on the corresponding alter-reality, dated to the summer of 1993.

the trudeau government's intent in it's policy - and this was broadcast during the last election campaign - is to act as a public relations arm for the oil industry. not only did the ndp say exactly the same thing, but they were actually more aggressive about it. while carrying through with certain environmental actions may be seen as bettering the public perception of the oil industry, the primary focus was always to act in the best interests of the oil sector.

so, that is the answer to your contradiction - it seems incoherent on it's face, but only until you realize what they're actually doing.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/03/29/BC-Climate-Leadership-Fundamental-Incoherence/

we're not talking about personal belief, here.

what we're talking about is power.

i think that this thinking about political restrictions on public employees maybe even clarifies the point.

what the law is saying - essentially - is that displaying religious symbols while in a position of power in the context of a secular society is an ad hoc declaration of a conflict of interest, and if the conflict cannot be resolved by voluntarily removing the symbols then the individual must excuse themselves from that position of power, as their judgement is unreliable in the presence of that conflict.

most of the legislation is defensible.

so, the government needs to get to work, make the argument and win the case.

otherwise, it's going to leave this cloud of doubt over something that should be seen as social progress.

there is in fact a proper precedent in canadian law - well tested - about the restriction of political activities by public employees.

so, for example, if you work for the government, you can't organize a protest against it. is that a restriction of expression? absolutely, perhaps. but, it is upheld by the need to ensure for neutrality in government - you can't have activists running public services.

this law is actually more lenient than the precedent would allow for, as the precedent bans all political expression, not just inside work but outside of it as well.

"What if I want to be a guidance counsellor? Or a principal? They’re telling me I can’t have career advancement if I wear a religious symbol,"

yes. that's correct; the society is telling you that it doesn't want people that insist on outward displays of faith to occupy positions of power.

people just keep restating this as though it's impossible, or absurd or something.

but, it is in fact the absolute foundational enlightenment principle of western society.

what i find baffling is that we've come to a point where such a large percentage of the population is baffled by what is supposed to be the principle of our own civilization - that there is in fact a separation between church and state. how did we get here? and how do we reverse it?

"...apparently what I have on my head is more important than what I am as a person and what I give to society.”

this is a false dilemma. the society is saying that what you have on your head represents a value system that modernity finds repugnant - the society is saying "we do not want people with your beliefs and values to occupy positions of power, because we are afraid that you may abuse them.".

and, it is in fact a simple test - if you are a muslim, for example, it is easy to prove that you don't believe in the hateful and oppressive aspects of your religion by removing your religious observances at work. otherwise, by wearing these symbols, you are broadcasting your support for a violent, oppressive system, while wielding power over other people.

the important issue here is not the rights of expression of employees - and there is nothing in the law that restricts this expression on an absolute basis. the important issue here is the rights of the people being serviced by the state, and namely their right to be free from religious authority. they can't find another teacher, or another jail guard. it is this accommodation that the state must be primarily concerned with.

i want to see the issue properly adjudicated because a proper ruling would actually legitimize the primary basis of it, even as it reigns in some excesses. by keeping it out of court, they're allowing reactionaries and conservatives to push all kinds of ignorance about it.

if you have a good argument, and the secularists do, then you should be able to support it in court. for the sake of secularism itself, they must end the cowardice and revoke the clause.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-mcgill-philosopher-adds-voice-to-chorus-of-criticism-against-bill-21/

why would they bring the kid back to parents this negligent?

the kid should be placed in foster care.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toddler-found-wandering-streets-in-downtown-toronto-reunited-with-parents-1.4357176

“We’re saying that when you come to work, when you exercise the power of the state, that you leave your religion at the door, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask in a secular society,”
i don't disagree with this.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/proposed-secularism-bill-would-force-singh-to-remove-turban-in-public-sector-gig-quebec-mna-1.4358767

"you put the limey in the coconut tree"

don't ask.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/richards-concussed-after-fall-from-coconut-tree-6102254.html

i bet the teachers in brunei are allowed to wear hijabs.

i understand that we are not in imminent threat of religious rule in quebec or in canada. but, complacency is a bad idea - this is not a joke, this is real.

brunei is not the only country with these kinds of laws, or the only country with a strong tourism industry that punishes people very harshly for trivial behaviour. it's not an isolated example. there is a pattern, here.

there is a large british military presence in brunei, tasked with protecting the royal family from it's own people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/world/asia/brunei-stoning-death.html

and, why is "religious freedom" a contradiction in terms?

because religion is identical to slavery - or, rather, because religion is a type of slavery. it follows that the idea of "freedom" exercised by the religious person is a kind of deluded stockholm syndrome, the illusion of freedom rather than the actuality of it.

if a religion dictates that a person must pray a certain number of times a day, or have a certain diet, or have sex in a certain way, or wear a type of clothing under threat of either imminent punishment or eternal damnation, who could possibly argue that obeying those dictates is "freedom" - or that interfering with them is the negation of it? any coherently thinking person should be able to see that it is the religion that is imposing a restriction on freedom, and that interfering with the ideology's grasp on the individual is breaking the chains of bondage.

this is not a new insight, either - it is classical in nature, going back to plato's allegory of the cave. these people only think they are free because they cannot see what freedom is, to the point that they recoil in fear when it is presented to them.

to argue for the observance of "religious freedom" out of "respect for believers" is consequently intellectually equivalent to arguing for the continuation of slavery in order to not perturb the slaves. it is in every way a backwards, regressive position that can almost never be justified, except perhaps in the realm of distant anthropology; about the only people left on this earth that deserve "religious freedom" are in the andaman islands - everybody else deserves to have the chains smashed, the cord cut, the delusions destroyed...

and, that is not disrespect.

disrespect is smiling and nodding; disrespect is looking the other way, as people are exploited and taken advantage of.

this has little to do with the legislation, other than to point out the absurdity of the claim - there is no such thing as "religious freedom", but only emancipation from ignorance.

i previously wrote off religious communities refusing vaccination as "natural selection", but i was talking about a disease with a low mortality rate; i wasn't entirely serious. regardless, the point was that you need to quarantine them if they won't accept science, and you need to strenuously enforce it.

further, that was a comment directed at an entire community that lives in isolation from the outside world. i may abstractly support mandatory immunization, but there are limits of common sense - if a community is willing to barricade itself in the woods, and potentially even shoot at health workers, you at some point need to weigh whether it's worth bringing the army in, and it might be, but it probably isn't.

this is something else. in a situation like this, when the doctor is aware that a specific, individual child is at risk, and has actionable data to act upon, he is absolutely morally obligated to intervene with as much force as is necessary. children are not the property of their parents, and we share a collective responsibility to intervene when the parents are negligent or incompetent.

i support the actions of the doctor, here, and i hope the child is placed in permanent guardianship, so that this horrible woman cannot hurt it any more.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/armed-police-kick-down-door-to-remove-unvaccinated-2-year-old-with-a-fever-1.4356996

i just want to ask if you really support this argument or not.

so, if a teacher decided that she was going to show up to class dressed like a burlesque dancer, or in a bikini, would you think that's appropriate for a classroom because nobody can tell a female teacher what to wear?

not only is a school a workplace, but you're also dealing with.....it's not even the young kids i'm worried about, as they don't care, it's more the teenagers. i think we can all agree that there has to be some concept of "appropriate attire" in the classroom, and that teachers really can't just wear whatever they want, when they're at work.

so, once you establish that some set of guidelines is indeed reasonable, the real question is whether a prohibition on religious attire is really appropriate under those guidelines.

there's another curve ball to throw out there, too - while a niqab is obviously religious, there's a blurry line where a scarf just becomes a scarf. it's not clear to me that your average hijab is even really a religious symbol, at all.

but, this "you can't tell me what to wear at work" line is bullshit. clearly, we can, and we do, and we must continue to.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-29-2019-1.5076529/teacher-opposed-to-quebec-secularism-bill-says-she-should-be-able-to-choose-what-she-wears-1.5076530

as a teenager, i found media such as this to be compelling.

for the casual fans - i don't have a driver's license because i decided when i was 15 or so that i was going to boycott the oil industry. it was a purely ethical choice, at the time.

i really don't regret making that decision, even if it's been somewhat frustrating now and again; while it would be useful to rent a car or van when i need one, i remain entirely disinterested in car ownership for all of the same reasons.

so, i couldn't just drive myself from ottawa to windsor; i needed a driver.

so, i didn't make any calls today. i decided it wasn't worth it, and i'm better off waiting out whatever's wrong with the plugin until at least monday.

i was planning around today because i was hoping to get out to see sunsquabi for the third year in a row, but it's rainy and miserably cold out. i don't want to go dancing in a coat....

now that i have the documents, though, i'll have to plan for next week. i just need to find the right day to go over.

however, this was a good show the last two times i saw it, and i do expect that i'm missing out, tonight. with the weather the way it is, though, it's just not worth it....

https://sunsquabi.bandcamp.com/

so, you have to understand that the reason that the legislation is largely intended to ensure that people in power do not display religious symbols is that quebec is still suffering from the trauma imposed upon it by the catholic clergy, and memories of centuries of violence and abuse at their hands.

there is a reason for this, and i do not oppose it.

but, it needs to be subject to the proper judicial review.

i mean, maybe the context isn't clear.

there's a perception in quebec - and, as a leftist, i largely agree with this - that religion is fundamentally a tool of oppression that, if left to run amok, will capture government and enforce itself on the people through tyranny and violence. you would have to have some understanding of a historical event in quebec called the silent revolution in order to fully grasp where this is coming from. if you're standing there scratching your head in california or something, you won't really get it.

the silent - or quiet - revolution was a transformative event in quebec that people familiar with the region will be unsurprised to learn has it's own wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution

up until the 60s, quebec was an exceedingly closed, catholic society; it was like a latin american theocracy, practically run from a bunker in the vatican. i exaggerate only mildly. the church ran everything - the schools, the hospitals, the jails, all of the local governments and virtually everything else, on top of it. the catholic hegemony in quebec was violent, oppressive and widely despised by the people...

a long system of jeffersonian reform took place under liberal and pq governments that ended with quebec as the most left-leaning jurisdiction in north america, and quebeckers to this day remain traumatized by religious rule and pretty vigilant about ensuring a very strong separation of church and state.

so, this increase in muslim immigration has kind of triggered the society into creating a firewall to keep religion out of the state - not out of some kind of active attack on minority rights, but because quebeckers are keenly aware of what happens when you let religion into the state.

so, if you could imagine some bourgeois rights groups trying to make the argument that jesuits or nationalists should be allowed into the spanish government, you get the idea of what quebeckers are reacting against, and why they're not taking this seriously - they seem any confluence of religion in government as severely threatening, and for very good reason as they've experienced it.

let us hope that the rest of us are not so stupid as to allow their concerns to become prescient!

muslims are actually a privileged group in canada.

this is conservative and reactionary, and if we're going to have this debate on these terms, i am not going to take their side. this is not an attack on minority rights, but an attempt to remove certain violent systems of oppressive thinking from wielding power over people that are actually vulnerable.

nothing in the bill attacks anybody's rights to expression, it merely removes the ability to brandish religious ideology as a weapon over others.

the line that amnesty is taking, here, is right out of orwell.

the main idea of the ban is forward-thinking and progressive - it is a step forward and should be applauded.

the problem is that it is just that little bit too broad, and they aren't allowing the judiciary to clean it up. it also continues a bad legal precedent in quebec that really needs to be reversed.

the reactionaries will protest this until they die, but, in the long run, we will look back on this as trailblazing and ahead of it's time: the bill is the future, and i invite you to embrace it.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/03/29/groups-say-quebec-bill-on-religious-symbols-violates-minority-rights.html

ok, but in a situation like this, it's exactly because the majority of people support the clause that it shouldn't be invoked.

i don't think i need to explain this to anybody. the government will decide to be responsible or not. and, if it isn't, it invites revolt.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/religious-symbols-quebecers-back-ban-and-notwithstanding-clause-poll-says

just taking a flip through the bill, and the coverage around it, it would seem as though a law forcing somebody to remove their hijab before they can get on a bus would clearly be too much, whereas a law banning the display of religious symbols by counter employees at government service kiosks is really long overdue (i can go to a different grocery store if i don't want to deal with it, but i can't go to a different government), and a law banning the display of religious symbols by teachers would be in a grey area that a judge would really need to weigh in on.

it ought to be up to the courts to sort this through.

stop for a second.

do i think a ban on religious symbols by public employees would pass a constitutional test? well, it depends on how it's written.

there's this knee-jerk reaction "you shouldn't pass laws that tell people what to wear". well, in general, maybe - but, at work, that's called a dress code.

there's a very big difference between bringing in a social fashion police that tells people what they can and cannot wear in general and passing rules and regulations about what is seen as appropriate in the workplace.

and, are religious symbols appropriate in the workplace, if the workplace is the public sector? i'd frankly lean towards the perspective that, no, they really aren't appropriate in that scenario, and that if you really insist on literally wearing your beliefs on your sleeves then you have the choice to find another job.

now, this is really down to the details. as mentioned - i'd personally rather not have to deal with it when i'm accessing public services. but, the question of the constitutionality of the exact provisions in the law needs to be put before the judiciary.

so, without opposing the general thrust of the bill, i would call on the government to remove the notwithstanding clause, so that it can be determined what is too much and what isn't.

they still need to allow for judicial review, though.

it's fundamental to the legal structure of the country.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/should-the-crucifix-in-quebec-s-national-assembly-come-down-1.5076077

i'm more opposed to the use of the notwithstanding clause than i am to the legislation itself; i think this is an issue that the courts should be dealing with, as it is fundamentally about individual rights. by invoking the notwithstanding clause, the government is likely to turn people that are indifferent to this or are even potential allies into active opponents.

but, i've posted my views about this here, previously. i'm not actually opposed to a ban on religious symbols by public employees, but i would insist it be applied across the board - which would mean removing the crucifix from the assembly, as well. my sympathies here are not towards "religious freedom" (which i consider to be a contradiction in terms), but towards the right to avoid religion and towards secularism in government, in general. while private practice is a different issue, i don't think i should have to tolerate religious symbols being shoved in my face when i go to get my health card renewed - these are things that should be kept out of public spaces, so as to not infringe upon the rights of the non-believing.

but, these laws are of course tricky, and it is easy to get the balance of them wrong; something that is designed to protect the rights of non-believers should not too drastically infringe upon the rights of others. it is not likely that the legislature is going to find this balance without some back and forth from the judiciary.

so, i would call on legault and his party to remove the invocation of the clause from the legislation, and allow the courts to carry through with their constitutionally enshrined role in the process.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/secularism-quebec-bill-22-1.5076196

this is a more believable report, although the methodology is basically the same as the report i ripped apart yesterday, which just goes to show you that online polling essentially gives you whatever you design it to give you.

as per usual, i would temper any deep conclusions by pointing out that the movement is well within any reasonable concept of error....except there aren't any meaningful error bars. these "credibility intervals" are really screwy concepts.

the reason i'm posting this is that i think that the narrative here is more likely to turn out to be the right one, so long as the country doesn't find itself fished out by these fake tory polling firms and herded into quarters by the media. the liberals are at a dramatic disadvantage in terms of media control in canada, and they don't seem to be fully cognizant of it. this narrative is the idea of the liberals falling apart and leaking in every direction, while the conservatives hold their base.

and, look at the importance of the environment to voters - the top issue for everybody expect the right. way to go, canada. we should be proud of that, especially in comparison to the narrative in the united states. now, we just need to get it in serious motion.

there is a small liberal-tory swing in canada that i've argued hit it's maximum size in the 2004 election, when joe clark endorsed paul martin in order to thwart stephen harper. it's around 4-8%, depending on turnout (it's higher when turnout is low, as these are dedicated voters). but, these people are fundamentally red tories, and not liberals, and their support for the liberals rests very strongly on their opinion of the reigning conservative party - they essentially don't like the kind of social conservatism pushed by the reform party, and are willing to compromise with a fiscally responsible liberal party, if it is actually so. the liberals did not hit their maximum support levels in 2015, which is in the mid 40s, but they did seem to hit them in the polling that immediately followed. so, they eventually got the red tories on board. during this period, trudeau was cozying up to mulroney, and the liberals even put kim campbell in charge of the chief justice nomination, which remains utterly baffling to me. since then, the liberals have run large deficits and the conservatives have made a strong attempt to appear modern regarding the broader social treatment of women, at least. it is very hard for the liberals to maintain the red tory vote while they are in office. so long as scheer and his mps don't step in it - which they are historically prone to do - there is reason to think the conservatives should get some or most of that clark swing back. for the liberals to hold this, they need to present the conservatves as socially backwards, which has been the usual approach, but may run the risk of backfiring in a country with an increasingly powerful voting bloc of recent immigrants, who tend to be somewhat shockingly socially conservative in the canadian context, and especially so when it comes to women's rights, which are still somewhat exotic and novel in most of the world. so, the flip of this conservative strategy to hold the red tories is that the conservatives may actually be alienating their own religious values voters by relying strongly on this pretty face of modern female business normality. if canada's demographics are changing, and they are, this small swing in the middle may be turning itself on it's head. this is speculative; for now, if the tories are eating very slightly into liberal support, that is not surprising, as they are taking back their own, so to speak. but, there should be a brick wall there; while it is true that if it starts crumbling then the liberals are in huge trouble, i don't see any evidence of this happening or any reason to think that it is likely. and, the conservatives need to be aware of being exposed on their right flank.

speaking of which, i pointed out from the start that bernier struck me as more likely to eat into liberal support than conservative support, and if this is some kind of hare-brained stalking horse campaign then you shouldn't be surprised to see it backfire. the thing conservatives need to be concerned about is the development of some kind of coalition between evangelicals and muslims that wants to run against modernity, which has long been my fear around immigration - i don't want an influx of muslims to strengthen the political power of the evangelical right. if muslims were liberals or socialists, they wouldn't bother me; the fact is that they aren't, they're natural conservatives. by stoking fears of poor integration, bernier is actually running directly counter to this in ways that are more appealing to liberals than conservatives, and that tap into fears that exist on the left, rather than fears that exist on the right. i wouldn't consider it because i don't like his economic positions, but an economic libertarian that is skeptical about immigration and leans liberal on social policies would be likely to see bernier as the ideal protest vote. the data isn't here yet, but it is increasingly upholding my analysis - by siphoning out libertarians, the ppc is really just turning out to be yet another way to split the vote on the left.

so, if the more interesting question is where the liberal vote is scattering to, which is the question i've been asking for a while, then what is the answer? this poll makes some attempt to look into it, methodological flaws notwithstanding, and seems to suggest that it's just bleeding everywhere, equidistant - to the conservatives, the ndp, the greens, the bloc and the ppc in more or less equal amounts, and then to nowhere at all in the biggest amount. the conclusion is that we're tuning out on the liberals, rather than tuning in anywhere else.

this is both an opportunity for the other parties and a potential catastrophe, because if the situation holds then it is a recipe for a majority conservative government.

can somebody capture the country's imagination, stop the bleed and reverse the apathy? not the current slate of candidates, i don't think.

the best tactic is turfing trudeau, but we're running out of time.

http://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019.03.26-federal-release.pdf

i was able to fix the email access issue relatively easily, but i had better things to do tonight than troubleshoot google voice.

the last calls i was able to make successfully were the middle of last week. nothing has changed here, as far as i can remember.

well, i did get two calls out this afternoon by creating temporary profiles, so the system seems to work, but that approach isn't working any more. more strangely, i'm able to leave messages on my voice mail, so the problem seems to be data coming in.

i'll repeat: anybody on the other line could hear me, but i can't hear anything coming from the other side. all the audio on my machine seems to work, so there's something redirecting or otherwise breaking the stream.

i've tried creating new firefox profiles (which worked at first), i've tried wiping out cookies, i've tried calling from different email addresses, i've tried reinstalling sound cards and browsers and plugins and i even tried it fresh in a virtual machine - it's the same thing all around.

i'm left with one of three possibilities.

1) google is blocking me because it wants me to buy something. there's a 0% chance of that happening; if i have to, i'll download a softphone and use my did at voip.ms.
2) google updated the technology it uses to stream, and the firefox plugin no longer understands the protocol.
3) i'm getting throttled by somebody that thinks i'm trying to avoid being monitored.

listen.

do you know who i want to call, here? the police. in fact, the only people i've called in months are the police, because i have to deal with a mess created by a thug in uniform.

the reason i don't unblock the number is because i don't have one, and the reason i don't have one is that i have no reason to pay for one. i'm not evading anything, i'm just poor and cheap.

i do suspect that the technology probably switched over without warning and i'm going to have to change approaches. but, i've learned that these people are idiots that are incapable of simple reasoning; i would not put an attempt to jam me above them.

what i'm going to do is disconnect the modem for the night, shut the computer right down and try again in the morning.

i got my forms from the court house today, free of charge.

i'll have to make some calls in the morning. except...

...there's something very wrong going on with my gmail right now. i can't call out, and i'm getting a network error when i try to log in. are the cops trying to shut my phone down, or what?

it seems childish, frankly. but, i know i'm not dealing with the best or the brightest, here.

anyways. i tracked the initial issue down to something to do with my sound card, and was able to fix it by creating a new firefox profile. further, i can get into gmail using a deprecated browser, so this may be easier to fix than i think.

but, i've been through these kinds of things before - shadow bans on youtube, for example. somebody clearly wants to shut me down, and i don't know the exact reason why...

great idea.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/03/28/news/mike-layton-urging-toronto-reckon-climate-change

it's not just what trudeau said, it was the reaction by the party elite.

the best word to use is deplorable.

again: the overwhelmingly bourgeois nature of this government is on full display.

it's like that meme with the republicans laughing, "and then we told you it would trickle down.". but, what it really is is tory - this is the liberal party actually becoming the progressive conservative party, it is justin trudeau turning into brian mulroney.

liberals don't win elections because people really believe in them to the absolute core, they win elections because there's a careful calculation by the masses that, as bad as they may be, they're not as bad as the conservatives.

it's becoming harder and harder to make that argument.

i've been uncomfortable for some time about the government falling on a corruption scandal. but, a caucus revolt on the basis of the leader being far too bourgeois would be welcome.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2019/03/28/justin-trudeau-made-a-smug-remark-to-a-protester-its-hard-to-recover-from-that.html

i am not a politician, i don't care much about public opinion and i have no interest in running for office.

this is horribly wasteful and unnecessary and should be outright banned.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/travel-porter-airlines-now-offers-flights-from-toronto-to-muskoka-cottage-country-summer-billy-bishop

a few words about the russia report...

i actually really don't know the details, as i interpreted the thing as a distraction from the start and haven't bothered with it. and, it's not even the kind of drama i'd be interested in following for the fun of it; frankly, i find the whole thing terribly boring.

but, it must follow that i couldn't possibly think the findings of the commission are meaningful, given that i don't think the commission itself was genuine; if they had found him guilty, i wouldn't have taken it very seriously, either.

i was actually expecting a finding of guilt, given that my analysis of the situation is that it was intended as a cover-up. i have been pointing out since mid-2016 that i think that the american deep state stole the election for trump, but that it was less about being pro-trump and more about being anti-clinton. so, i immediately wrote off the russia thing as a way to cover that up. it made sense to me that the next step would be to remove trump and put pence in.

it might be that my entire analysis was wrong - although it sure looks predictive, in hindsight. why didn't they find him guilty, then? well, they may have changed their minds. they may have decided that trump is actually a useful puppet. they may be anxious about the democratic field. they may have questions about the electability of mike pence. they may have just punted until after the election. i don't know. and, it may become obvious over time, or it may be obscured forever.

i am surprised by the results of the report, though - not because i think there was actually collusion, but because the purpose of the investigation was clearly to take him down.

so, that was an unplanned for detour, and it seems like i've lost the day.

so be it.

but it's done....

i'm not surprised by this; it seems like pei is the exception, and probably because it's an island. alberta likely levels out in a month or two, too.

first, you have to take into account the "fad" aspect of it. i would bet that the actual reality is that a lot of people tried it and realized it's really not such a trip, after all.

second, from what i can tell it's simply too expensive.

if the premise was to legalize in order to fight organized crime - something i initially thought was just an excuse but am starting to believe the government might actually take seriously - then this was a solution seeking a problem. marijuana isn't addictive. what that means is that the cartels don't have time for it. i'm sure that some amount of pot moves with the cocaine and the meth and the heroin, but the overwhelming amount of marijuana in canada is produced and sold by mom + pop growers. until the system reflects this reality, legalization is going to be a flop.

but, at least the cops aren't bugging you if you're smoking in the park, right? well, except to write you a ticket.

Further Clarifications Surrounding My Gender Identity

While I initially suspected that my gender identity may have played a role in my mistreatment by the officer(s) in question due to the tone I was receiving from them around it, this is a difficult thing to argue in the absence of clear evidence. I am somewhat baffled by the continuation of this tone throughout the continuing investigation, to the point that the consistency really seems incriminating.

I have stated repeatedly that I am openly transgendered, and it has simply fallen upon deaf ears; even after repeated corrections, the review letter from the oiprd still uses masculine pronouns. This is something that I haven’t experienced from any other institution or body, in two cities in Ontario or in the state of Michigan. I initially began hormone therapy in 2002, so I actually have a lot of experience dealing with a wide sector of society; nobody else has insisted on misgendering after being corrected, not even christian laity, which at least have the decency to show respect for a stated preference, even if they believe in something else. This singular insistence by the various branches of the ontario police seems to be reflective of a regressive culture around queer identity that needs some kind of serious exposure; there is clearly something happening in the force, here, that isn’t happening anywhere else in society.

I am consequently in the position where I feel as though I need to prove that I am transgendered, which is rather unbecoming of a process such as this at such a late stage in history. I feel like we’ve been thrust backwards several decades...

So, what does it mean to be “openly transgendered”? As gender is fluid rather than rigid, and the science around it is still largely speculative, there is a great deal of impreciseness regarding the concept of gender identity. When I say that I am “openly transgendered”, what I mean to say is that I am both fully female identifying and presenting and yet not interested in hiding my birth sex - if forced to specify on a form, I would prefer to choose neither M nor F but T. So, I am transgendered, and I want you to know that; I don’t want to mislead you into thinking I have female genitalia, because I don’t.

That said, a transgendered person is a person that actively lives the life and identity of the gender nominally associated with the sex they were not born into. A transgendered person is not a crossdresser or drag queen, and is not a person with a sexual fetish for the opposite gender role - there is an active concept of living attached to it. Nor has any of this been considered a mental illness by western science at any point in my own conscious lifetime, which is a point I will get back to shortly.

A transgendered person undergoes a process called transition that arguably never truly ends but takes anywhere from two to five years to become convincing or “passable”. The central and most important part of this process is the replacement of testosterone with estrogen in the transgendered person’s body (if they are transitioning from male to female; it is the opposite replacement if the transition is the other way around), which both changes their physical and emotional states through the alteration of their body chemistry. If “male” and “female” have meaningful, scientific definitions, it has to do with the dominance of testosterone and estrogen as chemical regulators, rather than any precursor to it (such as chromosomal instructions) or any consequence of it (such as physical sex characteristics). So, if an individual has a body chemistry that is dominated by estrogen, they can be said to be “female”, and if they have a body chemistry dominated by testosterone they can be said to be “male”. Whatever else you’ve heard, that is the actual science of it - it’s all about dominant hormones. Transition may or may not also include plastic surgery, eventually leading up to an operation where one physical genitalia is converted into the other one.

I began my gender transition in March of 2002, and placed it in a paused state from late 2002 to mid 2010. During the pause, I experimented with natural sources of estrogen and testosterone suppression outside of the supervision of a medical professional. The cause of this pause was primarily financial. Since mid-2010, I have been on a medically supervised regimen of estrogen replacement, testosterone suppression and supplemental progesterone. Yearly blood tests since 2014 have consistently confirmed a near zero level of testosterone and levels of estrogen that are actually on the upper spectrum of normal female variability. I currently take 6 mg of estrogen a day, orally; this is roughly the same amount of estrogen as exists in an entire package of birth control pills.

Chemically and hormonally speaking, I am indiscernible from a biological female.

Such a consistent dosage of estrogen has also led to substantive breast growth. I am around a B or C cup; it comes up and down.

I am roughly 5’ 8” and 130 pounds, and of a slender but fit build.

I have not undergone any plastic surgery, be it sexual reassignment or otherwise. The requirements for sexual reassignment in Ontario are expensive and onerous, to the point that I’ve mostly decided against it; I just don’t want to spend my remaining years in and out of hospitals, or travelling between cities. There are years long wait lists and a coerced requirement to relocate to Toronto; it’s really a broken and badly underfunded system that needs to be drastically rethought and radically decentralized. If the process were easier, I would have already had it done by now. At this point I have not been sexually active for many years, and do not expect I would become sexually active again after surgery, so it strikes me as a large waste of time. However, I have made some active attempts to have my testicles removed in order to reduce my dose of testosterone suppressors, in order to alleviate stress on my liver. While I would undergo an orchiectomy immediately if I could, I have been unable to find a doctor willing to perform this procedure in Windsor. I feel that this reflects poorly on the local specialists, as it is putting continuing strain on my liver that could be easily relieved by a routine surgical procedure; it is really against their hippocratic oath to deny this request, in this context, and appeals to religious faith are really beyond lacking but rather specious. Yet, the truth is as it is - I cannot have the procedure performed if nobody is willing to do it and have not had the time to pursue the option further. I mention it only to point out that some effort towards surgery has been made on my behalf, even if full reassignment is too much of a bureaucratic mess for me to seriously contemplate.

As I wasn’t given the opportunity to freshen myself up before I got arrested, and I was living in a disgusting situation that was terrible for both my skin and my hair, the mug shot that exists of me is rather unflattering. I am consequently attaching the following picture of me, taken in mid-2017.

While everybody looks nicer in makeup, that is much closer to what I actually look like and present myself as on a daily basis - openly transgendered, but fully female identifying and fully female presenting as well.

While I haven’t previously presented this kind of argument - and, in 17 years, no other institution in any other sector of society has ever required that I do so -  I have made the point clearly enough, to no apparent response. Why is that, exactly? I actually think that answering this question will get to the root of the mistreatment I received, as I appear to have been essentially treated as a potential sex offender. Worse, the tone of the department seems to be upholding the premise of discrimination on this basis as something that is in the public interest, and this really needs to be corrected and reversed.

If I were to answer the question of “why are they doing this?” precisely, it seems to be that they think their case relies on it. That is, they seem to think that relenting on the point and acknowledging my identity as clearly female by any empirical criteria will act as an admission of guilt to the question of discrimination. Instead, they’re aggressively asserting my identity as masculine, to justify the arrest. Yet, this is exactly the point I’m trying to draw attention to - it is a literal statement of discrimination in policing. The argument - and this is never stated explicitly, but is ever so more clearly between the lines as things unfold - is that the reason I was potentially a threat to this woman was that I was a male presenting myself in a female identity, that is that my transgendered identity was just a front for some kind of latent male criminality, which is just a statement of discrimination directed at trans people. There was absolutely no evidence of any intent to pose any harm to this woman, and absolutely no evidence of any criminality in my past, but there does appear to have been a lot of suspicion around my gender identity being some kind of trojan horse attack method. The justice seems to have instantly recognized this, as it is the first thing she mentioned at my release hearing. Not having much experience at being arrested over trivialities, it took me some time to realize the depth of this intuition. If i were to answer the question of “why were you arrested?” today, i would have to provide the answer “i was arrested for being queer”.

So, it seems like the more I draw attention to the discrimination underlying the arrest, the more the police want to assert my identity as male in order to justify it; all i’m getting in return to my claims of discrimination is more discrimination, to try and justify the already existing discrimination. So, there is apparently a fundamental lack of understanding here. This really speaks to more than corruption, but points to a culture in the force that needs adjustment.

The last thing that I want to point out, and this may not be distinct from the broader narrative, is that I dispute an aspect of the report. I haven’t really had the opportunity to bring this up yet, but I guess I need to, now. It says in the report that I preferred to be patted down or searched by a male officer. In fact, what I stated was that I didn’t have a preference as to how I would be sexually assaulted by the officers, and in context it’s hard to describe the situation using different language. Further, I was in fact patted down and searched by a female officer, not a male one, indicating that I was in fact identified as female by the people involved in the arrest. While occam’s razor initially suggested to me that this was glossed over by the officers due to laziness, I now suspect it may have been a part of the overall insistence on presenting me as male to justify the arrest and advance the case.

I would appreciate it if further communications with me would address this issue accordingly by gendering me properly. Further, after so clear a clarification as this, which i repeat has been unnecessary in any other context, the court that will no doubt eventually receive this case ought to have little recourse but to view any further correspondence from the police that genders me incorrectly as confirmation of a continuing process of discriminatory treatment. This is baffling enough, to me, as it is.

so, i got a response on the review for request - they are in fact going to review the report presented by the windsor police.

if i understand correctly, this review is done by a panel appointed by the director. it is at least independent of the police, itself.

i need to spend the morning gathering evidence to send to them.

regarding the rebuild, i made it to the end of july 29th before i crashed yesterday. i'd like to be a little more productive today; we'll see.

and, i still need to make these calls. this morning, probably.

it is true that elizabeth warren has a lot of really bad, out-of-date ideas and largely opposes the forward-thinking legislation brought forward by the left of the party.

it's a lot of quantity, but not much quality.

next.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/26/media-coverage-vs-reality-democratic-primary-race/

this is called natural selection.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47715169

ok, not literally.

but, the ones that die still deserve darwin awards.

i would support any legislation that forces mandatory vaccination, but in the meantime there should be active measures taken to quarantine them.

to be clear on this point: rachel notley is considerably less evil than jason kenney, but there are not many people that can compete with mr. kenney in terms of diabolical intent. i complain a lot about the restricted spectrum in the united states, but alberta's spectrum may actually be the worst in the hemisphere; albertan voters are really being forced to choose between a lesser catastrophe, more so than even a lesser evil. it's just an absolutely depressing array of options.

the polls suggest that notley has little chance of competing with a newly unified right and that kenney really needs to just shut up in order to be elected in a landslide. so, why is he out there promoting stupid bullshit like this when he doesn't have to be?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ucp-leader-jason-kenney-defends-allowing-parental-notification-if-child-joins-gsa-1.5072253

the polls are bad. very bad. but, if notley has any chance at all, it may be in kenney's incompetence overpowering his insanity, and in his megalomaniacal instincts overpowering whatever deficit of good sense is lurking in his depraved mind. he's laid his cards down when he didn't have to.

do albertans really want to elect doug ford?

and, where is the outrage from liberals on this topic, anyways? this is exactly the kind of hateful extremism that the charter exists to stamp out. the premise of weaponizing human rights legislation against a marginalized group is beyond orwellian doublethink - it is evil. and, it must be resisted as strenuously as possible.

there's currently no reason to think the ndp have much of any chance in the upcoming election - unless kenney effectively talks his way out of power.

so, let him speak.

and, listen carefully, alberta. are you sure you want this?

i don't have any way of knowing whether this leaked information about the supreme court nomination is actually true or not, and i was in fact highly critical of the selection of kim campbell to head the committee at the time, but i think it alters the narrative in the right way, and it is consistent with the existing messaging from the pmo, which has consistently tried to steer the conversation in the direction of the view that the assisted dying legislation was seen as particularly problematic.

there's continuation here, rather than a break in narratives. and, it would really be nice to see the media more strenuously question the minister's questionable performance, rather than (i think absurdly.) treat the question as out of bounds.

but, the media dances to the beat of it's own drum.

i'm sorry, but there's no excuse to use a term like homo erectus at this late a stage in history. i don't know if the palaeoanthropologist responsible for this was just too aloof to realize what the fuck he was doing or if he a sophomoric sense of humour, but it really must be stricken from the record.

use ergaster or antecessor or something.

anything.

please.

listen, there's going to be posts from like 2004.

"it's 2004. why are we still arguing about climate change?"

i've been doing that as long as i can remember. sorry.

no, really.

assad should go to town with this.

or maybe i just miss gadaffi, who had such a good sense of humour about these things.

if i were syria, i would react by signing a declaration recognizing guantanamo bay as a part of cuba.

i think it's rather clear to anybody with a cursory understanding of the situation that israel's occupation of the region is in fact illegal under international law, which is the appropriate arbiter, here.

the fancy and whim of this naked emperor should really be addressed with little regard at all.

of what relevance is donald trump's opinion regarding the legitimate sovereign power in the golan heights?

again: you just need to sit vladimir down for tea and explain the idea of manifest destiny to him. then, the monroe doctrine will make sense.

it's just a silly misunderstanding, that's all.

so, i slept more this weekend than i wanted to. i think i figured something out, though.

it seems like that woman's voice upstairs belongs to grandma; that buddy's mom is staying there, either for the long term or the short term. my initial thought - that there was a kid up there smoking all of the time - appears to have been somewhat wrong; rather, it seems like it's his mom that sits up there all day chain smoking. this remains purely speculative; i still don't really know what's happening.

that said, while i'm actually getting some reinforcement that he doesn't smoke, it seems like his mother may be smoking a few different things, in the house.

it might be useful to try and get a better idea of what's happening; if her stay is limited then i'm better off waiting it out, but if she's here in the long term, i'm going to need to find a way out.

would i be liable for some compensation on that? well, it comes down to the lease obligation - we signed a non-smoking agreement, and it seems like he moved his smoking mother in shortly afterwards, thereby breaking the lease. i'm not sure something like this has really been tested, but i'm willing to be the person that tests it if it comes to it.

so, i've been tired, and that is probably why. and, i think i'm still tired....

i have at least organized all of the remaining july posts. it turns out that there was over 200 pages of emails and messenger conversations to put in order; that is something that should almost disappear by the middle of 2013, although it will pick back up again in the alter-reality after 2011. there's roughly another 100 pages to post...

i'm going to get through this first, and then make some calls tomorrow morning.

if this guy wins, i'm going to be merciless.

the problem with religion in politics - and the reason it needs to be so vigorously opposed - is not the right-wing social polices, although these are a symptom of the problem. the real problem is the broken epistemology, the insistence on faith over reason. so, removing the hate from the religion doesn't really solve anything, even if it looks a little nicer on the surface, so long as you''re still presenting a world view rooted in belief rather than in evidence.

a politician needs to be driven by the scientific method. as the role and purpose of the office of the president is largely to analyse evidence, a faith-based epistemology is fundamentally incompatible with the role of the office holder. concerns about the sillier parts of christian eschatology and theology aside, that is why this is disqualifying - it is a position that requires a very strong attention to empirical fact, not one where you should be guided by conversations you have with some schizophrenic projection of yourself, in the form of an imaginary friend.

i mean, if you're going to make me choose between supporting a real christian, somebody that actually believes in this pile of obvious bullshit, and a fake christian that is just reciting lies for profit, i'm going to pick the fake christian as the lesser evil every single time.

does this mayor pete think jesus is coming back soon, or what? 'cause there's a button in reach, and if he does then i don't want him anywhere near it.

there's a point in the restricted spectrum where nihilism actually becomes the lesser evil, when compared to conservatism.

there's just no way.

yes, i'm in canada. but, if the democrats run a fucking minister, i'm going to campaign for fucking trump.

being an ordained minister needs to be outright disqualifying. period.

it's 2019.

at this stage in history, why can't the united states find and support an openly atheist candidate with acceptable social policies for president?

yuck.

no thanks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pete-buttigieg-has-broken-through-the-noise-on-community-and-religion/2019/03/24/8fc72084-4ce0-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html

the russians would obviously really rather that the israelis simply stop bombing syria under bullshit pretences.

the election is when, the 7th?

if netanyahu is removed and the new leadership is less retarded, it might not be necessary to start shooting down planes that are only there for political theatre in the first place.

the syrians/russians will need to respond at some point, israel cannot keep doing this, but a shift in power is a better response than an escalation of violence; waiting netanyahu out (and perhaps helping him find the exit) is the preferable strategy, here.

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Syrians-are-practicing-with-the-S-300-will-they-ever-use-it-Report-584563

this is a discussion that has no relevance, interest or meaning to me, other than to reinforce the point i've been making about this government being almost uniquely bourgeois, relative to recent governments in canada, even conservative ones.

the liberal party has essentially become an aristocracy at this point, run by fifty or sixty year old trust fund kids. they've been swinging right for years, granted, but i didn't really see this coming.

they're totally out of touch with the working class voters that they've historically relied heavily upon. worse, they don't seem to really care, instead falling back into tired arguments about "winners and losers" - as though trudeau or morneau are people that have earned a thing in their lives....

when you strip away the gloss, you see the same basic thing in this government that we're seeing in the trump administration, except that it's been sort of obscured, somehow. yet, with every new piece of legislation, it's increasingly clear that this neo-trudeau government is really just a bunch of useless aristocrats writing laws that exist solely for their own benefit.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5076924/analysis-finance-minister-bill-morneau-homebuyers-housing-affordability/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=Outbrain&utm_campaign=2015

beta o'rourke actually reminds me a little bit of a young george w. bush.

so, i'm posting to july, 2013 and the posting may be a little heavy because there's some context around the hitchhiking that i need to build.

again: this is final. i want to be comprehensive.

i just want to clarify a comment i made about how islam being the most hateful and dangerous ideology in existence today is an empirical question.

you'll note that i made the comment in the context of an attack in new zealand, and that i typed it from canada. so, citing american statistics is disingenuous; this neither happened in the united states, nor am i an american. there was no reason to think this comment was intended in a domestic american context; it was  rather obviously intended in a global context.

this article (which links to a report) puts the situation into a global context:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/12/05/deadliest-terrorist-groups-in-the-world/#62f5c99b2b3e

compare the following two statements:

"Of the 18,814 deaths caused by terrorists around the world last year, well over half were due to the actions of just four groups: Islamic State, the Taliban, Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram."

"In Western Europe and North America, far-right extremists are a growing threat. In 2017, they carried out 59 attacks which killed 17 people. Most of the incidents were carried out by individuals motivated by extreme white nationalist or anti-Muslim beliefs."

9407+ to 17. those are numbers that make the israeli army seem amateur. it's not even a coherent comparison. while it is true that many of those 10,000 people were of non-caucasian descent, and my comments about resistance notwithstanding, the very narrow question of islam being the most violent ideology in existence today (with the exception of capitalism) and the assertion of that being an empirical question is really not controversial, and if you insist it is then you're just fucking brainwashed.

but, we can talk about domestic american attacks too, if you want. you just need to control for population sizes.

i'm not going to cite this, but these are some statements, some of which i know are true and some of which i'm assuming are true:

1) the target audience for hip-hop and rap music in the united is majority white. that is, the majority of hip-hop records and concert tickets are sold to white people.
2) the largest market share for hummus in the united states is white men of european descent.
3) more chinese food is purchased by white woman than by asian women.
4) the largest ethnic group of japanese speakers in the united states is of european descent.
5) english is more widely spoken amongst american blacks than any indigenous african language.
6) spanish is more widely spoken amongst americans of indigenous background than any indigenous native american language.
7) most practitioners of yoga in the united states are white.

i think i'm making my point clear, which is simply that muslims only make up a small amount of the american population. if the population is 70% white european and 3% muslim, you'd expect there to be more white europeans doing just about anything, including buying things and engaging in behaviours that we often associate with muslims. so, if it turns out that the largest buyers of falafels in the united states are drunk white men, there is no useful information in the statistic, other than that there's 20x more white people than muslims.

so, if the fact is that there are more shootings by white people in a majority white country, that is not surprising. there would no doubt be more outreach programs by white people, too - because white people are majorities in most scenarios.

all things aside, then, the base assumption by a non-racist person would be that the number of attacks should be roughly proportional to the size of the population. if the data is measured and it turns out that this proportionality assumption is proven false, it is at that point that you need to identify a specific population as requiring intervention.

and, what do we have?

"According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, "of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent). The total number of fatalities is about the same for far right wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists over the approximately 15-year period (106 and 119, respectively)."
 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States)

according to the 2016 census, 73% of americans are white. i know that it's easy to look at the numbers and say "73% of terrorists are white, so it's clearly the bigger problem", but this is methodologically incorrect; rather, if the number was less than 73%, we would conclude that white people are under-represented in the terrorism statistics, and unusually pacifist. i know that this is a weird discussion, but you have to qualify the data properly if you want to throw it around. i think it's only counter-intuitive until i point it out; it should make sense once i have.

muslims, on the other hand, are nowhere near 27% of the population, and are consequently clearly over-represented in the sample. this would suggest that the muslim population is at need for some dramatic intervention.

worse, if you look at total casualties, it would suggest muslims were responsible for 53% of terrorism deaths in the united states over the last 15 years - which is not only a dramatic over-representation, but bafflingly an actual majority; the percentage of muslims in the united states is less than 2%, and a lot closer to 1%. 15 years ago, it may have been closer to 0.5%. if such a small percentage of people is responsible for a majority of terrorism-related deaths in the country, there is clearly grounds for serious intervention into that population.

i hope i've clarified my point.

i may have misunderstood the chronology.

it seemed as though the americans decided to pull out of syria and redeploy to venezuela, in a strategic re-evaluation of which oil field is more valuable. i stated things liked "if the americans want maduro gone, they'll blockade the oil, and watch the military take over in five minutes". while the americans have tried some sanctions, they have been slow to take effect and are arguably harming themselves more than anybody else, as they are not actually preventing venezuela from exporting the oil. really, all they did was give the russians an opportunity to walk in.

but, that would suggest this process started around christmas.

and, it may be that the russians actually made the first move, here; perhaps the muted american response is a consequence of their hands being tied.

it would be one thing if we were talking about korea or iran, but for the americans to be unable to act in south america due to strategic russian dominance is a major shift in the balance of world power.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/12/11/nuclear-capable-russian-bombers-land-in-venezuela.html

i can state with clarity that he knew that she was going to cut me out against his will, and can point out clear actions that he took to try and prevent it, which ultimately didn't work.

what's unclear is whether i had or have any real legal recourse to challenge it, and whether there was enough money on the table for it to be worthwhile to do so.

i think i'm better off on odsp, but if i get thrown off i'll have to crunch the numbers and work it out.

so, the way this is going to work until i can catch back up is that i'll need to sort through all of these files, organize them properly, and then post them all at once. this first batch of files is going to be fairly quick, as i'm just sorting through some email; i didn't start posting to youtube until around christmas, and i've already posted most of the facebook posts.

something's bugging me, though.

a few days before my father died, he gave me a coat. now, i didn't really think much of this coat, but his side of the family - his mother, his brother and his sister - all thought it was important that i take the coat. so, i took the damned coat. if there was some traditional reasoning behind this, it slipped beyond me both then and now - but if this is my family, and they're carrying through with some tradition, is it not their own responsibility to explain it to me? so, i accepted the gift, but did not attach any meaning to it, and was not told i should have done so, either.

a few days after he died, my sister and my stepmother became frantic about recovering this coat. i have the email record of this, and in hindsight it's fairly curious. why was it so important to get this coat back? it was just a coat...

at the time, my concern was about the use-value of the commodity. i had been spending a lot of time with anarchists and i was really just concerning myself with who would best utilize the coat, as a coat. i figured i might have a use for it as a fall jacket (in hindsight, i think that i would not have and don't at all regret losing the coat, as a commodity), and reasoned that they had the financial ability to purchase another coat, if they so insisted. yet, they continued to demand the return of this coat. i eventually wrote up a kind of sardonic response, asking them to weigh the importance of this coat with other concerns, and they still insisted on the return of the coat. further, some of the language they used produces some further questions.

he was trying to get something across to me, near the end. he even told me that he thought my step-mother was trying to kill him, but.....he was terminal at that point, and on a large amount of drugs (including opiates). even if he was right, he may have been better off.

i didn't have a lot of options at the time. i was on disability, and trying to find a way to get thousands of dollars worth of gear out of my dead father's garage before my step-mother lit it on fire - and i knew from experience that my time window was very short. i am neither exaggerating nor fibbing when i tell you she would have just discarded it without a second thought. when i was young, i was told she was bipolar, but i believe her diagnosis was eventually changed to asperger's; the woman seemed chemically incapable of empathy, and simply did not give a fuck. she seems to have already removed most of his personal belongings from the house within days of his death. that is what we're dealing with - after fifteen years of marriage, his stuff was in the trash within hours, and it's not malicious, it's pathological. i was aware that i was getting ripped off, but it seemed a secondary concern, and i decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

to be clear: i realized this wasn't happening properly, i just decided it wasn't worth it. there would have been some insurance money, but the estate would have been joint and there would have been a lot of debt. after splitting it up a few ways, i don't think i would have ended up with much.

my status as an odsp recipient also drastically restricted my legal rights, and will continue to so long as i remain on it. in the end, i'd rather a steady disability check than a small chunk of cash - and that's the choice i really made.

but, i wonder. was there something in the pocket of that jacket?

i'll never know, really. but, i'll need to call the court house about that probate, eventually.

this will no doubt be taken down relatively shortly.

there was recently some closure on one of the most compelling stories of the rock era.

jimi's tribute to his biggest influence remains the most fitting eulogy to the man who was arguably the most important guitarist the world has ever seen. it's unfortunate that his family still won't allow his music to be streamed on the internet - but we can hear the man's own interpretation of the track that was written to mourn his own death.

in the end, dick dale outlived jimi hendrix by nearly 50 years.

but, he's not still here, anymore.

the world is changing.

again: a left-wing approach towards reducing gun violence lies in addressing the attitudes underlying gun culture, not in ban hammering gun ownership.

and, gun control is, at it's core, just a type of reaganomics: it is based in the logic of supply-side economics.

the spectrum that exists right now is not left or right; there is no organized left anywhere in the anglosphere.

you can choose between conservatives that want to enforce gun control or nihilists that don't give a fuck - your choices are between the right and the extreme right.

again, people don't know their left from right.

gun control is not a liberal or left-wing approach to addressing gun violence, but rather the most right-wing, conservative and authoritarian approach in the list of options.

leftists understand that social problems are not a consequence of supply and demand, but ultimately rooted in the way we're socialized to adopt certain attitudes and perspectives. as gun violence is a social problem, it's solution lies in the adoption of social programs to change how we think about guns, as well as in how we interpret each other.

conservatives think we need more laws and rules to keep us in order; leftists think we need a social revolution to change how we think.

while leftists may consequently oppose or support gun control for other reasons, the argument that gun control reduces violence is entirely disqualifying on the left of the spectrum - it is a statement of total, utter conservatism, and marks anybody repeating it as existing firmly on the right of the spectrum.

i've made my views crystal clear on this over a long period: i do not oppose gun control because i don't like being around guns anyways, but i firmly reject the conservative narrative around gun control as a causal effect on violence.

ok, so now that they've carried through with a policy that no expert in the field thinks will have any effect on gun violence at all, i wish them luck at a careful evaluation of the actual root causes of violence in their society.

banning things makes authoritarians and sheeple feel safe, but it doesn't solve anything: it doesn't solve for addiction, it doesn't solve for prostitution and it won't solve for gun violence, either.

i don't oppose these bans, i'm just insistent that they don't work. all evidence-based research suggests that the focus and resources would be better spent on finding ways to address the toxic effects of heteropatriarchy and aggressive masculinity - of which islam is a dominant contributing problem - as well as on better identifying mental health issues in socially isolated young men.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/03/20/new-zealand-bans-semi-automatic-and-assault-rifles-6-days-after-mass-shooting_a_23697256/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_referrer=recirculation