listen: i don't care much for bernier's broader economic positions. i'm a strong supporter of supply management, and my primary vote driver is climate policy.

but, conservative voters are true believers. they don't swing.

the parties that bernier are going to potentially hurt are the liberals and the ndp, but particularly the liberals, as ndp voters tend to be far more economically socialist.

the type of voter that bernier is going to appeal to is a libertarian liberal, and there are in fact quite a few of them up here. you saw that in the recent by-elections in bc. that 2-3% that he's running at is coming directly at trudeau's expense.

the liberals don't seem to understand that.

...because they're stupid people. it's just more evidence.

i understand that gantz is not much better than netanyahu, but i'd openly support satan if i thought he could get the guy out of office, at this point.

and, i'm not a satanist, i'm an atheist.

the israeli spectrum is complicated, and i don't know the ins and outs. i know the generalities. so, i understand that it may be hard for gantz to form a coalition - and that he may even need to rely on the arabs.

but, that would be a big step forward, i think. remember: i support a one-state solution, with equal rights.

this could all collapse into a grand coalition, which would probably be a caretaker government. but, let's hope it works out.

but, i've asked this before.

could all of you so-called liberals (pfft.) that want to stand up for "religious freedom" in the context of bill 21 please write me an essay explaining your views on publicly displaying the ten commandments in courthouses or in schools?

thanks.

maybe another way to look at the differences between bill 21 and the ban on face coverings at citizenship ceremonies is to ask yourself what kind of voter is likely to be attracted to the different policies, and realize that there's a standard right-left divide at play, even in a basic liberal v conservative concept of the separation of church and state.

so, i called the citizenship ceremony "trivial", which would be more of a standard leftist position. conservatives may not think such a thing is trivial, because they're all into pledges and oaths and shit. they care about flags and they stand for anthems and the whole thing; symbolic gestures are important to them. i don't give a fuck about any of that - imagine there's no countries. and, no religion, too. so, conservatives may see a valid role for the state to play here, while leftists mostly wouldn't think this is very important, even if they don't like the actual garments very much.

when you introduce the question of power, you change the scenario. and, i hate foucault, actually. but, when you bring in the power dynamic, you're now entering an arena where liberals and leftists tend to want to enforce a firewall of separation and conservatives want to uphold state institutions. so, leftists don't want the ten commandments at the courthouse or in the schools, and we wouldn't want other religious symbols, like niqabs, on display, either; conservatives may argue that such things are foundational and cultural and should be preserved.

by reducing the issue to identity, or "racism", you're just cutting the actual substance out of the debate. it's both a strawman and a red herring and a pejorative. but, it's the level of discourse we should really expect.

is it a ballot issue? i don't want it to be this cycle - i want to vote for climate action, and the sitting government's lack of meaningful movement on it. the political configuration to make it a ballot issue isn't in front of me. in another scenario, i could see it as a wedge issue, and i could see it as a swing ballot issue, absolutely.

if faced with a choice between two parties with similar climate change platforms, i would vote for the party that supports bill 21, not the one that opposes it.

i don't think that children should be exposed to religion.

at all.

so, that was another unexpected crash. i guess i didn't sleep well this weekend, as i was fighting the coughs and headaches.

somebody at the bus station suggested i was going to catch a cold because i was wearing a tank top. we didn't have a discussion about the germ theory of disease, or the subtleties involved in immune system response during periods of wet weather, but i knew i'd have to actually catch a virus to actually get sick, and i suppose, in the end, that i did. fluky guess.

i do feel better.

but, i'm going to wait until tonight to get started on this.

i know. but, i want to get these files up, first.

but, expect this: these tory media commentators are just going to write off support for the bill as <affleck> they're racist! </affleck>. it's a dumb position, taken by dumb people that don't want to actually grapple with the actual issue.

then, when the contradictions add up, they'll say that people don't understand what they're voting for - when the truth is that they don't understand the issue.

bill 21 is not about attacking people that look different, and it's not about race. it's about preventing our children from being exposed to the evils of organized religion, and otherwise keeping religious people out of positions of power.

also, conflating the niqab ban with bill 21 is a false equivalency, and you'd only make it if you didn't really understand what bill 21 is actually about - if you think it's just state-sponsored discrimination, and the whole argument is just some kind of an excuse, or something. you'd have to swallow the bullshit, ignorant line from jagmeet singh about it being about "looking different".

that's not what it's about at all.

i opposed the niqab ban, because who cares? but, you'll note that, in opposing the niqab ban, i also supported the right to dress as spiderman or wear garbage bags over your head to the citizenship ceremony. i wasn't standing with muslims on the grounds of upholding a religious right, i was pointing out the stupidity of legislating the fashion police at a ceremony of trivial significance. and, i would still oppose the niqab ban, because who cares?

but, i support bill 21 because it's an entirely different concern. this is something we should care about, because we're talking about exposing our children to cults, here. when we leave our kids in state care, we should be confident that they won't be exposed to anybody's religious beliefs. we can't do that when the teachers are so brainwashed by some superstitious nonsense that they can't even take off their scarves.

so, don't conflate this. don't think there's overlap. don't think the motives are the same.

the only place in the country that really opposes the bill is right-wing, rural christian alberta.

see, it's not just an issue in quebec, either. i'm not on the fence this election - i've already decided that i will not be voting for the liberals. but, if i was, a commitment by trudeau to fight the issue in court, or even a refusal to commit to not doing it, would lead me towards refraining from voting for him.

there's two reasons for this.

the first is that i support quebec's sovereignty rights, in this case. people forget that national unity isn't just an issue in quebec, it's one that resonates throughout the country. i'm not a quebcois identity voter or something, but, whether it was because of the way i was raised by a french canadian father or just because they're by far the most left-leaning place in north america, i tend to be on quebec's side more often than not. there's a lot of ontarians (and manitobans. and easterners.) like me that will essentially stand in solidarity with quebeckers from a distance. on the other hand, in alberta, you can win an election by attacking quebec.

one of the reasons i refrained from voting ndp in 2015 was their stance on quebec sovereignty. the liberals are usually the better national unity option here. but, as has generally been the case with trudeau, he's flipping that issue on it's head, and taking the side of the party's historical opponents.

the second is that i'm one of the 40+% of ontarians that would actually vote in favour of such a ban in this province should it be put up for a referendum. i'm just actually in support of the law.

so, don't think it's just quebeckers that trudeau needs to worry about in coming out shooting against this law. it could cost him the election.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/09/16/bill-21-pushed-to-forefront-of-federal-election-talk-in-quebec.html

i'm compressing the last pile in the batch of 75 records that makes up periods 1 and 2. they'll come up tonight.

so, it's finally time to refocus. do i have time? well, i have no real deadlines. so, let's get at it.

i had an unexpected crash this morning, and now i am getting distracted.

i've spent the last few days uploading everything to youtube as 128 kbps mp3s. why am i doing this? well, why did i do it in the first place?

i took everything down because i wasn't getting any traffic to the bandcamp site, but i was operating under a different mindset. i know that people think they're going to make money via ad revenue, but there's two problems with this: (1) i'm never going to do that because i'm an independent artist going for a niche market (i.e. i don't write pop music, and don't want to) and (2) even if i could potentially generate that kind of traffic, i wouldn't want to ruin the art with ads.

i mean, think through what we're talking about. i'm putting up music on the internet, and expecting to get paid by letting people sprinkle ads into the recording. that's disgusting as a business model in general, and impossible when you consider that i write lengthy, conceptual records. i routinely write 30-50 minute tracks, or track suites. i don't want any fucking ads in there!

so, the intent was to subvert the thing - they've got this all backwards. i don't want to make money by letting people ruin my art with their ads. fuck them. rather, i want to use youtube as an advertising platform, in itself. there were two ways i did this, initially: (1) via trying to commandeer the comments section and (2) via posting samples to the youtube site, with the intent to direct traffic to bandcamp.

then, they shadow-banned me, so nobody could see my comments. and, traffic from the samples demonstrated itself as a waste of time. so, i shut the site down.

since then, i've been struggling to organize all of this data (while fighting legal battles and trying to find smoke-free housing), but i've finally got a handle on it, so it's time to switch over.

there's still almost 300 subscribers at the deathtokoalas/koala central command site. that's down from around 340 at it's maximum point. but, those 340 people were useless to me because they weren't buying records. part of the time out was to let them drift off. yet, there's still 300 of them there....

i've been planning on this for a while; it was the completion of inri000 in the journal that triggered me to do it, and they're coming up in the order they were finished (over 2013-20118).

am i going to go back to posting? maybe. not in the same way, i don't think - it drew attention to myself, but it didn't work in building a fan base. i think i want to be a little more sincere, moving forwards. regardless, it's time to rebuild that advertising archive at youtube.

but, let's be clear: the videos are ads. they're not a product. the product is at bandcamp. so, they're up at 128 kbps, as teasers, and you can stream them all you want - but they don't sound great, and they can't. buy the record...

and, yes, i'd like to give this stuff away for free. i mean, i do work for free - let's not pretend that i don't. but, i don't want to get a job. i don't want this to be a hobby. this is labour, this is work, this is full-time employment. i need a paywall...