i'll tell you this, though: they were run over by a train, and were tied to the tracks when it happened.

so, it didn't appear to be accidental.

so, that's my father's mother's parents that were killed in a mob hit when she was very small. her given last name is....zito. yeah. i just know stories, i've never done the research.

my father's father's parents were a white woman from quebec and a dark-skinned man of unknown ancestry that nobody has pictures of and nobody remembers - but appears to have been indigenous, african and jewish.

welcome to canada.

what i've stated repeatedly is that my father would have identified as french or italian. but, he knew he had a more complex background. he's told me stories about kids asking him what tribe he was from when he was playing shinny and, clueless, he would say "italian".

i was just told i was french on his side, and i never really thought about it until i got out of high school - although other people certainly felt the need to think about it for me, and i did get a fair amount of stares and comments that it took me a long time to really figure out.

i know that my paternal grandmother was adopted, and the story is that her parents were killed in a mob hit. there may have been a mixed jewish-italian romance at the heart of it. these are just stories. but, the kind of unstated, understood fact about my grandfather's father is that he wasn't around, and nobody really knows.

and, listen - i'm not a damn jew.

or, at least, i'm not a member of the jewish faith. and, i know. i wrote the damn post.

i don't know my father's ethnicity with certainty, and i have reasons to suspect some near eastern heritage, but he wasn't a damn jew, either.

and, his father wasn't, either. nor was his mother. catholics, the lot of them.

i don't know, when you go back further than that, and i suspect that my paternal great-grandfather may have been the identity politics unicorn of a hebrew-african-indigenous mix. further, if he did have some african in him, it was probably from, like madagascar, because he has a rare, austronesian blood type. the only other way to make sense of the blood type is through some kind of inuit background.

i should probably take the damn test.

but, the fact is that i've never been in a synagogue in my life, and i doubt that my father ever had been, and i doubt that his father ever had been, either.

in ontario, it's 42%. in favour.

that's more than governing parties usually get.

yeah.

they did a poll, and 45% of british columbians support the religious symbols ban in quebec. that's the highest for any province outside of quebec.

the more you know, huh?

do i think that similar legislation could ever pass in other provinces?

i'm not aware of any movement for it.

i'm going to guess that the calculation at the federal level amongst all of the parties is that, while it may gain passive support with passive voters, it's not worth whipping up the opposition. it's one of those things where you might get 51% of passive voters to passively support it, but that 15% that is going to strongly oppose it is going to cause a havoc, when they do. it's a loud, vocal opposition - and it's not worth the headache, especially given that i don't think that any of the sitting leaders have any particular conviction for it. trudeau is an empty vessel, and to an extent it doesn't really matter what he thinks, as a person.

quebec has a weird spectrum that is at the root of this as a political issue. in provinces like ontario and manitoba that maintain the traditional 3 + 1 or 3 + 2 canadian spectrum (that is liberal, conservative, ndp and a usual fourth, sometimes fifth, party), the same calculation as exists at the federal level is probably dominant, but in the provinces that have less stable spectrums, one could see it coming up as a potential issue.

the province with the highest incidence of non-belief in canada is not ontario or quebec but british columbia. could the bc liberals support something like this? alberta is perhaps too conservative to talk about something like this, but saskatchewan is a more interesting test case. these are places where a secular left could use it as a wedge issue against a pseudo-left party that is embracing tory multiculturalism as a core identity. how many atheist asians in bc would support this?

i think you'd have to see it in a second or third province before the liberals in ontario took it seriously - and i would expect both the ndp and the conservatives to strenuously oppose it, here. it would have to be the liberals, if it were to happen at all.

i couldn't really imagine it gaining traction anywhere in the united states, but america is a much more religious country. canada is more european, in that sense.

i'm not making predictions, i'm just thinking out loud. but, i do have a feeling that it's a policy that we're going to see more of, not less of.

let's hope we don't have to talk about this again, now.

i mean, i say this over and over again: i'm in total solidarity with the apostates.

i'm not just saying that.

i really mean it.

i'll march with them.

like, when i bump into an arab at a gay beer having a beer, i don't generally have to worry too much about them trying to crucify me.

in general.

they're cool.

thanks.

but, i want to talk about something important this election, please.

and, i always have to say this, because people get easily confused: it is very important for the secular left to realize (if perhaps not necessary to actually state.) that, as we are shifting our primary opponents from christianity to islam as a result of existing and projected shifts in demographic, that we do not make the mistake of assuming that people from specific backgrounds hold specific beliefs.

not all arabs are sunnis. there are plenty of arab atheists, and they should be embraced as any other atheist would be.

not all persians are shias. there are plenty of godless iranians, and they should be embraced as any other heathen would be.

and, further it's important to be proportionate, too. crescent earrings are not niqabs, and not everybody that you meet that calls themselves a muslim wants to round up the apostates and burn them. you have to be sure to properly interpolate what you see in front of you.

but, as atheists, we need to get used to the fact that we're going to be struggling less and less against christians and more and more against muslims, as the proportion and power of them wanes and shifts - until, in the end, they just merge.

i mean, that is the future of canada - an overwhelmingly secular society, where muslims are the most populous religious minority and christianity has been largely discarded.

that means that, as atheists, we need to start changing the goal posts. we need to re-evaluate who our opponents are.

but, it doesn't mean that we're under imminent threat of sharia law - or, at least, it doesn't, if we remain vigilant against it.

the facts are pretty clear that we're on the path towards a majority atheist electorate, now, within a couple of cycles.

there is admittedly a threat to this that comes from overwhelmingly high levels of right-leaning recent immigrants, and it's something that atheists need to take seriously, but so long as we're vigilant about it and conscious enough about pushing for real integration - which the bill in quebec is an example of - it's something we should be able to handily overcome and convincingly defeat.

i try very hard to avoid being alarmist about immigration, while sticking to the facts the best i can. the facts are that high levels of low-income immigration into the urban cores where i live hurts low income people by straining the social system, and you can choose to blame that on underfunding or on immigration, but the basic fact of the matter holds itself steady - it creates a higher level of competition amongst people that are already having a hard time competing, and you'd only deny that if you're ignorant or stupid. people in the suburbs or in rural areas are more likely to be wealthy and consequently less likely to be affected by the increasing competition, even if they're more like likely to be christians. in the long run, we should expect christians and muslims to form an alliance with each other, because they're basically the same.

but, the facts are also that the power of atheism in the very near future should absolutely dwarf that of muslims. we might live in a country with 20% muslims within a generation or two - and that's a big change. but, such a society would also have 60% atheists.

so, i know who my biggest threats are, and i know what i need to be wary of. the sitting government is certainly moving in the wrong direction, on this, without question. but, i'm far more excited about the coming atheist supermajority than i am worried about the eclipse of christianity by islam.

we're going to win, it's going to be ok.

i mean, it's a trick right out of orwell to suggest that rejecting a regression to medievalism is "conservatism" because it's pushing back against change, while supporting a societal regression is liberal because it's promoting "change".

and, i don't think that orwell invented the term reactionaryism.

we could just use a little bit of help, rather than hindrance, in our goal of heathenizing the immigrants by governments that claim to be liberal, that's all.

it may take a change of titular power, but, in the end, the liberal party will support this bill, and the conservative party will oppose it.

no, it isn't, and tory media talking heads like john ibbitson can fuck right off for trying to make it one.

the party leaders need to be clear that this is a local issue that is intrinsically tied to quebecois self-determination, and the federal government has no role to play in interfering, before or after the election.

but, as a non-quebecker, the blunt, basic truth is that the election is too important to waste on a triviality that only exists inside of quebec. i don't fucking care, one way or the other.

the rest of the country has more important things to concern itself with.

worse, i'm flat out sick of muslims being at the centre of the political discourse. they're a small, privileged minority in this country and should not receive such a disproportionately high amount of space in the discussion. they're over-represented just about everywhere. we're a secular society that upholds liberal concepts of law, and we're going to get more secular and more liberal, if we can find a way to grapple with the demographic bulge and convert them all to heathenism. the discourse should better reflect it.

atheists intend to win this fight, you know.

again: i think they should have let the court clean it up. but, i don't think the basic purpose of the law is unconstitutional, and the reality is that you have to take an exceedingly conservative view of the constitution to think that it is, a view that may be popular in the institutions but has minimal support in actual case law.

i'd rather talk about the recent ruling on assisted suicide.

and, i insist this election be about anything else.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-quebecs-religious-symbols-ban-a-major-issue-in-federal-election/

so, there's an election in canada, and this is an issue: what's the correct take on the new nafta? is this better or worse?

it's not obvious...

i followed the discussions relatively closely up to a point, and then i more or less tuned out entirely, and there's a series of reasons for it. one of the more embarrassing things to have to deal with during the process was realizing that canada was taking an explicitly pro-investor position on the deal, while trump was legitimately pushing for workers' rights. trudeau is several degrees to the right of trump on this issue; trudeau isn't even a corporatist democrat like obama, he's more of a market conservative like elizabeth warren or paul ryan. like, you couldn't even get one of those trademark platitudes out of trudeau on the issue - he was strictly, 100% concerned about the rights of canadian investors. that's the actual reason he tried to build a common front with mexico - his dominant interest was insuring that the investor class didn't take a hit.

on the issue of environmental and labour standards, trump did come through on this, even if he had to cut trudeau out of the discussion and make the deal directly with mexico. enforcement is always another question, but at least the text of the deal is better for workers, on it's face.

i would have liked to completely abolish chapter 19, as it has done nothing but harm for workers on both sides of the border. unfortunately, our government - interested solely in the rights of investors - refused to sign on unless it was included. that this position was insisted upon by a liberal government is to our great shame and national embarrassment.

so, i'm standing over here on the far left and that's twice that i agree with trump on free trade and disagree with trudeau.

yes, it's going to give the pharmaceuticals more patent rights for a specific class of new drugs, but if we can bring in pharmacare then we can socialize the cost of it. so, it's a different discussion up here. i may oppose it in principle, but i'm more in support of pharmacare than i am in opposition to intellectual property rights, so it's the former i'd rather focus on (and the best way to do that is to reduce the liberals to a minority and then let them take credit for it as a vote-buying scheme, not to elect an ndp government that is going to see it die in committee). might a spike in costs actually help piss people off?

there's some opening up of the dairy market that was probably unnecessary, but that's not sustainable in the long run. quebec will start a civil war before it gives up supply management. and, what consultation was there with quebec, who has not signed our constitution? they may even just ignore the agreement.

trade experts claim it'll probably be a wash, in terms of gdp, with the united states benefiting slightly at the expense of canada and mexico. i can't blame them for that. i have to blame my own government for that.

so, i almost want to suggest separating apathy over the deal from opposition to my own government around it. i neither see a reason to oppose the deal any more strenuously than i already opposed it, nor a reason to ease up on my existing strenuous opposition. so, i'm still of the opinion that we need to renegotiate nafta, and i'm still likely to vote for people arguing for a renegotiation of nafta. in that sense, the whole thing was really just a stupid waste of time. but, the process badly exposed both the deep incompetence of justin trudeau and the deep incompetence of his team, particularly the incompetence of chrystia freeland, who i would really like to see lose her seat in this election.

so, given that abolition is not an option and the choice is between the old nafta and the new nafta, do you support this or not?

i don't think there's a clear answer. you need to look at it closely and figure out what your self-interests are.