i am republishing everything temporarily in order to use mirroring software to pull it down. i expect this post to be taken down within 24-48 hours. i would request you refrain from unwanted moderation in that time frame, so i can take my site down from here and upload somewhere that cares more about speech rights and less about conservative value systems.
monday, august 1, 2022
if you're curious, i tend to stay inside during holidays like this one, especially in the summer, because obnoxious people tend to congregate outside, and the roads are full of stoned drivers. i'd rather avoid the kind of people that go out places on days like this.
windsor is actually generally emptied out on long weekends. the older people tend to find cottages to go to, while the younger people go to detroit or potentially even toronto. it's a ghost town.
but, nowadays, i'm more concerned about bicycle safety, and the potheads are both dangerous in terms of slow reaction times and gross to drive by. so, i'd rather stay inside until they go away.
0:47
i've been prescribed ssris and have never taken them. i've always argued that it does not make sense to diagnose me as hormone deficient without being able to test for it.
that's right - they can't test for it; it's on the other side of the blood-brain barrier. they have to guess that you have a chemical problem by observing your behaviour, which is methodological quackery. it's utter pseudo-science.
that said, this study is also flawed, as they are testing for relics, which is an unreliable method. the whole point is that you can't test for it.
i'd be ecstatic if they could test for it, so i could get some kind of answer, but the fact is that they can't. i think it's crazy to take a diagnosis like that on faith, which is what you're really doing when you start popping those pills.
2:37
it certainly makes sense that anybody with a serotonin deficiency would have a reduced ability to experience the hormonal reaction we label "happiness", although their absolute abilities are less important than their relative perspectives. so, if somebody is serotonin deficient then it is reasonable to think they might be depressed.
the logic breaks down when trying to diagnose it in the opposite direction - that somebody that is experiencing a feeling of depression, based on their relative perspective, therefore must have a serotonin deficiency. diagnosing and treating a hormonal deficiency without empirically testing for it is irresponsible, and the inability to test for it makes the theory unfalsifiable.
how many people have a serotonin deficiency? the truth is probably not very many, many fewer than are diagnosed with it, without any sort of testing to confirm it.
it follows that the idea is probably legitimate, but that probably 90%+ of people diagnosed with it don't actually have it.
11:00
"you think that because you’re in a wheelchair, you’re above the law" - surete du quebec officer
15:11
the media and their "experts", again. as usual, this is utter bullshit.
the inflation is being caused by external factors outside of the control of local actors, but the recession is largely a result of the rate hikes, which should have no actual effect on inflation. this outcome was predictable - continuing inflation, along with a slow down in growth. stagflation.
so, the upcoming recession will be mostly a result of the rate hikes, and the worse it will be will be determined by the depth of the hikes. the inflation will continue, because the rate hikes have nothing to do with it.
the correct response to a recession is stimulus spending, and there is no reason it should not be effective. however, returning to some kind of economic logic may be difficult after so many months of media brainwashing with such right-wing monetarist nonsense.
reference:
"could canada follow the u.s.’s economic decline? here’s what experts say ", global news, july 29, 2022
22:43
they should have left interest rates low and printed more money to compensate for it.
inflation is not about the money supply, and debt is a make believe abstraction in the modern economy. so, i have no concerns about printing more and more and more and more money into perpetuity, so long as we don't let the credit rating fall too far. you will find no sympathy from me, if you want to reduce the money supply - i think you're a fool. but, if the result of hiking interest rates is a recession - and it will be - then they will need to print money in response, anyways.
so, we just ended up with an ineffective rate hike - a cash grab by the ruling class.
think it through, conservatives. if you can...
22:51
can you find me any kind of conventional economic guidance that argues you should contract the money supply in the face a looming recession?
it's absurdity.
but, they've got you so confused, you don't even know what the words you're using mean, anymore. and, it's ka-ching for the investor class, before you can even get through the glossary in a futile attempt to defend yourself.
22:56
something was here, but the retard editor deleted it
you're better off just not having money.
trust me.
it eliminates a lot of stress and produces a lot of levity.
22:59
tuesday, august 2, 2022
i just want to dwell on this line from the cited taney case a little.
The English possessions in America were not claimed by right of conquest but by right of discovery.
the focus is on the discovery part. but, as i've been trying to point out, the more substantive legal part of this is the conquest part. somebody can correct me if i'm wrong, but, given that taney is disingenuously misquoting marshall, i believe this is the first time that discovery is substituted for settlement or conquest, which was the american precedent up until this time (and which actually remains the precedent in canada, where there is no legal basis for the concept of discovery, which does not appear in our case law.).
you will note that this makes it very clear that nobody thought the land was empty, that such arguments are still to come in the future. i'm not going to look into this, but that's an interesting research question - what 19th or 20th century american legal theorist invented the idea that america was empty upon being discovered?
no, what taney is doing is substituting discovery for settlement, and then using the invented idea of discovery to argue against the precedent of conquest. this allows him to essentially make up a new precedent out of nothing. worse, he seems to have gotten away with it with minimal historical scrutiny, which is instead being misdirected at justice marshall (who was actually standing up for them, repeatedly).
but, it is the idea of conquest that taney wishes to denounce most forcefully, and he does so:
The grant to the Duke of York, therefore, was not of lands won by the sword; nor were the government or laws he was authorized to establish intended for a conquered people.
taney is acknowledging the existing precedent here, and explicitly denying the conquest, as he fully understands the ramifications of such a thing - that the indians would need to be allowed to govern themselves, if they were conquered. that could never be allowed. but, the land was clearly not empty when it was settled, and such an argument could not be taken seriously, so therefore it was discovered, instead. taney's nefarious redefinition is given a gift by marshall's abstract language, which is subtle enough to be easily co-opted.
as mentioned previously, the indigenous peoples could never admit to being conquered, due to a fatal arrogance that left them unable to reason properly. they just couldn't lower themselves to it, and they've suffered greatly for it. they would have been far better off had they admitted it.
by the 1840s, though, the american right had realized that it was in their benefit to deny them the rights of conquered peoples, and that option has not been truly available, since. even as at late a date as 1840, a federal policy of recognizing the indigenous peoples as conquered - if they would adhere to it - could have done a great deal to save indigenous culture.
so, it would be helpful to shift the discourse. discovery is an idea with no historical basis; european law is about conquest. refocusing on the correct legal questions could help resolve a lot of problems. as it is, debates over discovery are not going to help anybody, as they don't have any legal meaning and don't lead to any policy outcome.
0:12
the term terra nullius has been better deconstructed than the court ruling.
first use was when, do you think? 1510? 1530? 1200?
it appears to be a neologism first used in 1819.
again: i'm not looking into it, but i wouldn't be surprised if the first application of "terra nullius" to north america didn't occur until the 20th century. so, everything about this doctrine is complete bullshit.
i did look into this a little the other day, and it was amerigo vespucci - whose given name gives us america - that first realized columbus didn't land in india. it is for that reason that the earliest maps of the area actually say america on them, although there was an overlapping period where the latin term used translated to "unknown land", rather than "empty land".
3:01
terra nullius was actually first used in australia in 1835.
so, how did it get from there to a badly pieced together understanding of american judicial history? you figure that out - but dates are probably late 19th and early 20th century.
so, this is actually a relatively recent mythology.
3:07
if you're curious, i took a course in indigenous law (it was a third year course) when studying canadian constitutional law at carleton in 2013. i did a lot of original research in relation to the course, not all of it appreciated, but i am not entirely self-taught on this issue.
i have no discernible academic background in any subtopic of history, but i consider myself unusually well read on the topic.
3:34
i have taken one course on byzantine history, which was in 2005 or 2006.
i would have liked to take more history classes when i was in school, actually, but i didn't like the way they were taught. history is a topic that i actually think is better self-taught, as kant had this totally backwards: all history is bullshit, and your professors are just walking, speaking biases. chances are that an honest reader is just going to get into an argument with a biased professor. that's not how it's supposed to be, but that's reality. so, you're better off doing your own research, and seeking to avoid the biases. if anything, my deconstruction here demonstrates the value of that.
you may very well walk into a history or law classroom and be taught about the doctrine of discovery as bedrock history and legal precedent, in 2022. that's very unfortunate, but it's also very real.
3:39
i would actually hope that most "experts" that have narrow, focused expertise realize what i'm posting here, and that i'm not breaking down real barriers. i would hope that that one resident scholar at any particular institution understands everything i've typed here, and i'm not reinventing any wheels.
but, people going through programs and taking more general courses are going to be taught this stuff, still, and it's very concerning that it's not being addressed - that the activism is insisting the doctrine be rescinded, rather than exploring the actual historical validity of it, and realizing that it's actually a myth.
3:43
to the unwanted editor.
you seem to want to put my language in scare quotes, and i'm constantly undoing it. fuck off. i really strongly reject the use of scare quotes.
i will only use quotes in the following manner:
- when i'm actually quoting or paraphrasing something
- ironically (like, "experts")
if i want a term to be technical, i will italicize it.
it's a style issue - and something i really don't like, as i find it too politically correct.
5:09
and, was the reconquista invented by franco?
that's a paddlin'.
no. that's ridiculous.
the reconquest of spain was a dominant concern of european monarchs for hundreds of years. writing it off as nationalist propaganda by franco is absolutely absurd.
5:38
bicycling while forbidden?
reference:
"exorcisms, violent discipline and other abuse alleged by former students of private sask. christian school", cbc news, aug 2, 2022
13:58
there's things that happen in modernity that are just absurd.
as i stated recently, levity is fundamental.
there's no other way to react.
i don't think that religious schools of any sort - private or public - ought to be tolerated. but, screwed up people keep insisting on it.
14:01
dear chinese military,
mrs. pelosi is a very stupid and very stubborn old woman. i am sure you understand the type, as i am sure they also exist in china.
i take it you will not overreact to an empty statement of childish defiance that few people in north america see the need for or understand the symbolism of. mrs. pelosi is performing for herself.
jessica
15:56
while there may be a sort of gut feeling of satisfaction in the death al-zawahiri, the truth is that al qaeda has been targeting other actors recently, and killing him might backfire if he's replaced with somebody more ambitious than he is.
al qaeda's alliances have always been confusing. so, it's an oddly timed piece of theatre, apparently meant as a distraction from what looks like a decisive russian offensive in ukraine.
16:02
evacuating donetsk is the right decision, and should have been done a long time ago.
16:03
the narrative around taiwan is bizarre.
taiwan may have at one point in time posed the prc some kind of threat, but it does not any longer, or not directly. the chinese have no reason to care about the island, except that it's overflowing with american weapons, a few miles from it's shore.
so, the narrative is about "protecting" taiwan by sending it weapons, but those weapons are strategic containment, and the issue is not about defense.
the only reason china would give taiwan a second thought is that all of the weapons there pose it such a threat. the more weapons sent, the more of a threat. so, it's a classic escalation scenario.
the united states will need to remove all or most of the weapons from the island if it seeks to actually diffuse the situation, in the face of chinese plans to move beyond the first island chain. this is an impossible position for the united states to hold.
what they're defending is a containment policy that must be loosened up on.
16:34
so, apparently, they've found the karen base - it's in los angeles.
16:49
wednesday, august 3, 2022
lauren boebert doesn't believe in the separation of church and state.
what church is it that she belongs to, that she thinks should have more influence over the state?
i'm going to guess it's the church of unrestrained capitalism.
she sounds very scary, but i don't think she can be taken seriously. if she was an actual christian (or a muslim), that would be a creepy thing to hear, but i don't think she's even actually a christian, and i don't think there's a church behind her words that poses any sort of credible threat to secularism in the united states.
there is a real threat of fake christians getting too much power, but what they're likely to actually do is cut taxes for the rich. if some cabal of actual christian extremists ever managed to steer themselves into power, they'd just bicker about dogma for four years, which is what jefferson was actually concerned about.
i don't want to downplay this - no elected official should be speaking like this. but, this is more stupid than scary, and i don't expect her future holds many open doors if she keeps talking like that - actual christians understand what the separation is about and largely support it.
2:26
she has apparently also suggested that if jesus had gun rights (before the invention of gun powder), then the romans couldn't have killed him.
she's obviously a little unclear about christian theology, and what the resurrection was supposed to be about, according to christian doctrine - which of course says that jesus was sent to die for the sins of humanity.
there's no value in dwelling on this. it's not the fake christians that are scary, it's the real ones, and they won't concern themselves with bullshit like that.
2:33
in a hypothetical reality of the sort, the romans would have obviously had much bigger guns.
but, any christian would realize that jesus could have defeated their weapons, if he actually wanted to. the point is that he was sent to die in a ritual sacrifice.
2:35
does lauren boebert mean the pope should be above the president, legally?
does she mean the queen of england should be in control of america?
or does she mean her pastor in nowheresville should have a veto over congress?
again: there's no serious christian group that would tolerate such idiocy. it's buffoonery.
2:38
if the reversal of roe has the result of restricting access to abortion, let us not forget that it is about states' rights, legally.
deep red kansas just voted to uphold abortion rights. i suspect they won't be the last state to do so.
2:45
do i think roman imperial law is more valid than papal "law"?
yes. by definition.
roman imperial law is actually law. i don't give a fuck what the pope says, and would not call any of it "law".
3:34
law is, by definition, secular.
3:35
in order for something to be a law it must either:
1) be passed by a secular, elected government or
2) be based on an existing precedent, as defined by a previous elected government.
if there's no democracy, there's no validity in the law.
3:38
there is no other source of law besides democracy.
3:38
in theory, religious ideas might be introduced via the democratic process, but they would gain legitimacy via democracy, and not via religious dictate.
there were some other weird typos that i think are unwanted edits (again, i don't seem to have any control over this, and the retard responsible for it doesn't want to go away, so all i can do is patiently reverse it when i find it - and make it clear to everybody that it's happening), so i've recombined the posts into a big post that corrects all of the unwanted edits. i'm also going to put this up in the article list.
the pope is a fascist dictator over an imaginary state - his words are legally meaningless.
3:41
why the idea of the doctrine of discovery should not be taught in law schools or history departments. like, at all.
so, i guess i got something done this weekend, after all. i wish i had made it out on monday for a ride, but i didn't.
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/p/why-idea-of-doctrine-of-discovery.html
don't edit this. fuck off.
if the language is offensive, it's intentional.
as previously, this should be read as a platonic dialogue or socratic discourse with myself. i'm asking myself a question and coming to an answer. so, i present questions, produce assumptions, make mistakes and correct myself. this is not a bad thing, it's how humans learn. i want to learn together, not present myself as a guru and tell you what to think. i have no interest in telling you what to do or think, or teaching you what's right or what isn't - i want you to teach yourself. but, we can do that together, too. do not look to me for guidance, as i do not want to provide it.
if you want a textbook, buy a textbook, don't read a blog. but, i hope i'm also presenting an example of why textbooks are often not the best way to learn things - when it comes to anything besides mathematics and the hardest of sciences, the textbooks are often wrong.
why the idea of the doctrine of discovery should not be taught in law schools or history departments. like, at all.
july 28, 2022
the doctrine of discovery is a revisionist concept invented by a nineteenth century american judge that has no historical application, whatsoever. it is a fanciful term that should be dropped from all usage entirely, not a policy to be rescinded or revoked.
the 1452 dum diversas that defined all further papal decrees on the matter was issued primarily in the context of the ending stages of the reconquista and the subsequent final liberation of the iberian peninsula from a long and brutally oppressive muslim occupation, and with an eye to the pending inevitable shift of the reconquista into northern africa and was consequently mostly targeted at north african muslims. this papal dictate was an explicit reaction to existing practices in the muslim realm that enslaved non-muslims. the pope dictated a rule that non-christians are to be enslaved in the christian realm in the same way that non-muslims were enslaved in the muslim realm. it had nothing to do with race. the language specifies "saracens and heathens". it was later used to justify the enslavement of non-christians in africa and the americas, and the specificity of the decree defines some of the odd counter-examples that occurred, like the fact that ethiopia was never colonized, because it was already christian. during the period of american slavery, slaves were frequently christianized to undo the legal justification for enslaving them, which is that they weren't christian.
in britain, after henry viii, which is essentially the entire british colonial period, the law governing how land was administered in the empire was actually derived from roman imperial law, and had nothing to do with any papal dictates. the legal discourse had to do with whether a land was conquered or settled. following the roman precedent, conquered peoples were to keep their own laws and customs, whereas settlers were to self-govern themselves by erecting a parliament, and enact their own laws. the fact that the indigenous peoples in canada would not admit to being conquered is what led to such a confusing mess of law, until the courts in canada de facto declared them conquered and began treating them as though they were.
the focus on this doctrine of discovery by the indigenous peoples themselves as something meaningful is reflective of the level of discourse around colonialism in canada, where the colonized group is too clueless to even define their own condition.
the doctrine of discovery never existed, was never referenced by any parliament or court in the british empire, had nothing to do with the colonization of canada and is of no consequence today, whatsoever.
14:21
the catalyst for the dum diversas was the fall of constantinople.
14:40
the puritan british colonists to the americas were of course very protestant and very anti-catholic.
for much of america's history, catholics have been a severely persecuted minority who have lacked basic democratic rights, like the ability to vote.
the idea that the pope had anything to do with the british colonization of the americas is utterly ridiculous, absurdly ignorant and historically nonsensical.
14:48
the reason that the catholic church was given control over the indigenous school system in canada had to do with it's power in quebec, which was a global backwater until the silent revolution. after the british conquest of new france (which the british considered to have also been a conquest of the indigenous peoples, although the indigenous peoples rejected this), the british allowed the quebecois to keep their laws and customs under the roman imperial law of conquest, which was what was actually in use. so, the conquered quebecois were allowed to retain their catholicism, their civil law and their language because they were conquered. nobody was ever able to get the idea of conquest being a tool to use to maintain indigenous cultures across to them, and they never understood the ramifications of it.
the americans did not follow roman imperial law in their conquest of louisiana (after the nominal purchase of it). they just forced everybody to adopt english laws and customs.
the catholic church was utilized as a tool of control by the protestant british aristocracy in canada, which allowed quebeckers to rise up the ranks within it due to the imperial precedent of self-rule. the people that created the indigenous school systems were a mix of catholic quebeckers and british tories that realized the utility of the catholic church as a tool of control over the subjugated quebeckers and then applied that control structure to the indigenous peoples in an attempt to assimilate them. the end goal of the british aristocracy was always to convert the indigenous peoples into taxable farmers. if not for this quirk of history, the catholic church would have certainly had no role to play in british colonialism in canada.
14:56
the british didn't give a fuck about what the pope thought.
like, c'mon.
this is grade seven history class, here.
14:59
it is, in fact, even likely that the actual reasoning underlying the 19th century court decision that invented the doctrine of discovery out of thin air was an anti-catholic bias in the court, and an attempt to blame the problem on catholics, rather than take responsibility for it.
15:06
past popes have already addressed the dum diversas.
but, the pope cannot retract or rescind the doctrine of discovery because it never existed in the first place.
15:08
did columbus or cabot or the rest of them ever make any suggestion that they'd found a "new land" or that it was "empty"?
the answer to these questions is that the claims are demonstrably false.
before 1492, most of the european ruling class (with the exception of an educated elite that did not include clergy) actually thought the world was flat. the term "terra nullius" does not appear anywhere until it was invented in the 19th century, but the premise that the pope wanted to split a world he thought was flat up is incoherent. there was an agreement in 1494 to split africa between spain and portugal that was later applied to south america.
columbus and cabot were both looking for asia, and not for empty land. columbus thought he landed in indonesia; cabot thought he landed in japan. neither thought the country was empty. columbus took back a lot of slaves, and it wasn't long before they found cities in mexico and peru. there is no coherence in the claim that they thought the land was empty.
the spread of western diseases that happened shortly after contact had a devastating effect on the indigenous people, and language of that sort started appearing after an estimated 70-95% of them died from various viruses, mostly smallpox. so, there was a time when the emptiness of the land would have been an empirical truth, but nobody cited this and it had nothing to do with the colonization.
what they were trying to do was find a way around the muslims, who had blocked the trade routes after the fall of constantinople, in order to get to india and china - which is why they called the indigenous peoples indians. they really thought they were in india!
it's really a question of just understanding the history, and realizing that the doctrine of discovery was invented wholecloth in the 19th century by an american judge.
16:21
why did the pope split africa between portugal and spain?
well, it's an oversimplification, but that's fine.
the reason is that two historical processes were coming to a conclusion at about the same time - the reconquista, which liberated spain from muslim occupation, and the fall of constantinople, which ended the empire in the east. the next stage of the reconquista was logically to reconquer north africa for the empire, but columbus upended that. standing in 1495, it would have been expected that it was a matter of time before the invading arabs were chased out of carthage, and the western mediterranean was placed back under roman rule. and, that did sort of happen, eventually, with the french conquest of northern africa. morocco also ended up as a client state of spain.
it was the fall of constantinople that forced europeans to try to find a way to sail to asia to get access to commodities. it was a matter of time, but that was the thing that sent europeans sailing west.
so, you have to place these papal dictates, notwithstanding fabrications of them by dishonest american jurists, in the context of the things they actually cared about, and america was not something they actually cared about.
16:55
july 30, 2022
this article attempts to define the "doctrine of discovery" (the historically revisionist term invented by an american judge in the 19th century to blame the catholic church for british imperialism, which was directed by precedents set by roman imperial law, and rejected any authority of the pope, whatsoever) as a 1493 papal bull and claims "scholars" support the idea, without referencing any. the only scholar cited in the article disputes the claim.
generally, when you read something like "scholars say" or "experts agree", it's because the opposite is true - they couldn't find a scholarly source to uphold the common sense or colloquial interpretation, so they just say "scholars agree!" rather than actually look into it, and debunk themselves. no article with such weasel words should ever be published, let alone taken seriously. this article published by the cbc is just the definition of bad journalism, truly.
in this case, as mentioned, it's worse than that - we're dealing with an understood fabrication of history, literal revisionism, that stems from a court ruling, and not from any history department. this idea is not scholarly in origin, it's juridical. judicial independence does not imply that the court can rewrite history, but that is exactly what has been attempted to be done, here.
what is this papal decree that is being referenced?
as mentioned, there was a papal bull in 1452 called the dum diversas that ordered the enslavement of "saracens and heathens". this was issued in the context of the fall of constantinople and the expected shift of the reconquista into northern africa, after the final expulsion of the muslims from occupied spain. i did not mention the romanus pontifex, which ordered the redistribution of property owned by saracens and heathens to christians, in the same dual context of the reconquista and the final fall of the eastern empire. you can read a little about the context of that here:
it is of the utmost historical value to point out that this policy of enslaving non-christians was identical to the policy in the muslim world (which had a caliph, which was similar to the pope) of enslaving non-muslims. the christian monarchs asked for this and received it, although they were already applying it before they asked, because they inherited the existing muslim slave networks. ask and ye shall receive.
to be clear: when the latins re-established control over spain, there were already slave trading networks coming from africa, as it was the northern terminus point of the gigantic muslim slave trade, which sent slaves from africa to the various points in the muslim (mostly arab) world and was nominally primarily about religion. the latins inherited these networks, as they retook control of the iberian peninsula. so, the latins went to the pope and said "we want to maintain the existing slave networks and for you to tell us this is ok". the pope complied, and the slave networks expanded, along with the re-establishment of latin control in the western mediterranean.
neither the portugese nor the spanish thought they discovered africa. that is ridiculous. the reason they wanted to go to africa is because they knew it was the source of gold and slaves that the arabs brought north into europe. they were following the trade networks that the muslims had set up hundreds of years earlier, and that they knew of because they lived at the northern terminus of them. they inherited the routes; they inherited the maps.
the reason the spaniards (primarily) ended up in central and south america is that they were looking for gold, and they found a large amount of it for relatively easy taking. this temporarily spared north africa from the consequences of reconquest, as there was more gold in the americas, which was simply easier to get.
this area was new to the romans, who launched several expeditions south, as explorers. it is reasonable to talk of nero's expedition to the source of the nile as being that of an explorer, or some of the expeditions through the sahara in the first centuries ce being expeditions of exploration. while the romans considered this region outside of their sphere, there was actually a roman settlement around lake chad (look at a map) for quite some time, as well as roman naval bases in western morocco, on the open atlantic. there were wars fought against the nubians, but they were largely defensive, as the romans considered the area too hot and humid for advanced civilization. the name used by 16th century european map-makers for the area around lake chad was the name given to it by the romans 1500 years earlier. so, there was nothing to discover - not after the roman explorations and certainly not after the well-established arab trade routes. you have to get south of nigeria before you get into unexplored (by greeks or romans) regions, at such a late date in history.
the closest thing you'll find to any sort of doctrine of discovery in real history is the following treaty between the kings of spain and portugal:
that was a secular treaty.
as explained in the article, the treaty was an amendment to the existing 1479 agreement, the treaty of alcacovas:
there was no understanding of the existence of the americas in 1479. the treaty was strictly about africa, in the context of the ending stages of the reconquista in spain, and it's inevitable shift into the liberation of north africa from muslim occupation.
in 1492, columbus sailed through the bahamas, past cuba and landed in haiti, and then brought back knowledge of the existence of a set of islands that he thought was the easternmost extent of indonesia, although even that wasn't exactly clear. the island chain columbus thought he had landed in is something similar to where the actual philippines is. columbus died in 1506, still insisting that he had landed in asia, which just demonstrates the lack of understanding of the geography. based on what was actually understood in 1493, it really cannot be said that columbus had discovered anything besides a few distant islands in the atlantic. it was another 20+ years before anybody really realized that there was a continent in the middle of the ocean separating europe and africa on one side from asia on the other, and that these weren't just islands.
so, while columbus had found some islands, that is all he had found, and when the portugese king demanded that sovereignty be handed over to portugal (by requesting review of the situation by the pope, who was expected to act as a mediator), it was in the context of having found another island chain to the west of the canaries and of cape verde.
what the pope actually says in his 1493 bull which is being cited as the doctrine of discovery is the following, and i paraphrase:
while it may be true that there is a 1479 treaty, and that treaty would give portugal control over land south of the canary islands, of which the new island chains lie, that treaty was constructed without knowledge of the new island chains. further, the treaty was intended to apply to africa, which these new islands are not a part of. i am concerned that you two christian nations may fight a war over this, which may give the muslims an opportunity to re-invade the iberian peninsula. i therefore forbid conflicts between christian nations, as it weakens us against the muslims. as spain already occupies this region, it will remain with spain, and portugal must not try to take that land by force. portugal will retain control over land south of the canaries, relative to a dividing line that runs west of the canaries, of which spain will have control, given that they have landed in these new islands first. spain and portugal are to draw up a new treaty that reflects this new declaration.
the portugese obeyed the ruling and sailed south to land in brazil. the history is blurry, but the southern tip of florida may not have been sighted until 1517. there was no attempt by spain to colonize eastern north america further north than florida, and there is consequently no relevance of this treaty north of florida, where the british and french established the colonies that founded the legal basis for canada and the united states (the united states purchased florida from spain in 1819 and conquered northern mexico in the mexican-american war of 1846-1848).
the first explorer relevant to french, british, american and canadian history (and therefore of the indigenous peoples in contact with them, in conflict with them and eventually under the jurisdiction of them) is not christopher coumbus but john cabot, an italian (like columbus) sent west by the british crown, who landed either in newfoundland or cape breton in the late 15th century, while columbus was still alive. cabot was looking for a passage to japan, and subsequent voyages tried to move northward from newfoundland around hudson's bay, before getting stuck in the ice. around 1508, the son of john cabot, sebastien, was the first european explorer to sail south from canada, and is thought to have made it as far south as chesapeake bay, although everybody knows that the first english settlement in the region was in jamestown, 100 years later.
henry VIII became king of england in 1509 and broke all allegiance to the papacy after he was ordered not to divorce one of his wives. so, while the very earliest voyages of the cabots were under papal supremacy, no english settlements were established in the united states or canada under the system of papal supremacy, and no papal dictates or declarations were ever accepted as law in any english colonial administration. as mentioned previously, the british empire - as an empire - governed itself using common law, by appealing to roman imperial precedents. while no imperial british jurist ever cited any papal bull, references to roman imperial laws, as best as they were understood, are frequently cited as precedent under stare decisis. judges under british imperialism, seeking to hold to common law, quite reasonably sought existing precedent in decisions made by roman administrators under their own imperial system.
the imperial precedent was actually quite clear, and repeatedly utilized by the british empire all over the world. some jurisdictions (like india and quebec) were allowed to keep their languages, laws and customs, if they were considered conquered. however, british setttlers in places like myanmar and eastern north america were allowed to govern themselves, if they built their own settlements and erected their own parliaments. this is 100% imperial precedent, with absolutely zero deference to the pope, and no interest in the utilization of christian morality as any sort of justification. frankly, the rulers of the british empire would not have cared much for what the christians thought.
the french landed in north america in the 1530s (under jacques cartier) and while they were under the system of papal supremacy, they did not consider the 1493 papal bull to be relevant. modern sources claim the papal bull was "ignored"; i don't think anybody in france would have considered it relevant as it was obviously intended to apply to africa and the islands off of it, so it's unlikely that it was ever even brought up to them. they likely never even had the chance to even ignore it. in 1493, the pope did not know north america existed, at all. while i have not done any sort of survey on the matter, i think it obvious that nobody in france ever cited this bull, and not because it would have undermined their claim but because it was obviously irrelevant. in fact, new france suffered under a level of disinterest by french monarchs, who saw it as an expensive annoyance, and slowly sold it off to other european actors. the french did, nonetheless, build monasteries and attempt to convert the locals to catholicism, partly because many of the earliest french settlements were burnt down by the indigenous peoples (so, the catholic church generally came first to christianize the savages, like they did in northern europe; the settlers then came after, once it was safe), but the earliest settlements were not established until the early 17th century. the french started in quebec city (1608) and explored the watersheds west, founding cities like green bay (1634), trois rivieres (1634), montreal (1642) and detroit (1701). they then moved south down the mississippi and founded new orleans (1718), before paddling back and founding cities like st louis. there was active francophone catholic missionary work done throughout this period in ways that simply did not occur in the british settlements.
the long franco-british conflict started in europe with the norman conquest of england (1066), which was the second roman conquest of britain, and which left england as a possession of a french landholder of partial viking descent which also had possessions in france. the franco-british wars in north america were a part of this thousand year struggle which ended with the entente cordiale of 1904. standing on the other side of world war one, world war two, nato and the cold war, it's easy to forget just how long and how vicious this war between england and france really was, through it's various phases of wars over competing interests by landholders and conflicts over ideology during the revolutionary period. the struggle for hegemony in north america between england and france was a small part of this massive, generations-long conflict and ended in 1763 with the british empire in sole control over the eastern part of the north american continent, for however short an amount of time.
the french backed the colonies in the american revolution of 1776, in a hope that they'd regain some control over the regions they had lost, which led to a partition of the british empire in north america in 1783 into separatist and loyalist factions, with the loyalists in the north (called british north america, and later canada) and the separatists in the south (called the united colonies, or united states of america). not long after, there was a revolution in france itself, which severely restricted the power of the catholic church in france, 250 years after henry VIII. today, france has some of the world's strongest rules restricting church power and influence within the state.
in quebec, the catholic church became the source of quebecois identity, after british hegemony became undisputed. as mentioned, the existing imperial precedent was to allow conquered peoples to retain their customs, so the quebecois clung to catholicism in the face of their poverty and general social exclusion from polite society, although the british aristocracy did allow for self-rule, as that was the existing imperial precedent. as a result of this catholic dominance under british hegemony, quebec became an impoverished backwater, full of backwards peoples with primitive social views - not unlike today's arkansas or mississippi, or mexico, for that matter. the british understood the role of the catholic church in pacifying quebeckers, and attempted to utilize these catholic schools (which the quebecois themselves insisted upon.) as a model in pacifying the indigenous populations, who were notoriously restless. in a conscious act of assimilation, the british took the existing catholic school system in quebec, which was even then rife with abuses and human rights violations, and expanded it to the indigenous populations, in an attempt to emulate the results. it is worth noting that the british ran similar schools for the catholic irish in ireland and later in canada, as well. the result was the same kind of sexual abuses in indigenous school systems that are seen in catholic school systems everywhere, including ireland and quebec and latin america, as well as africa and australia. this is the reason the catholic church ran the indigenous schools in canada, which is very isolated from columbus and very isolated from british imperial law.
quebec underwent a silent revolution in the 1950s and 1960s where it successfully liberated itself from catholic oppression, largely by looking towards the french revolution for inspiration and guidance. the indigenous peoples in canada are still struggling to define how they will emerge from catholic oppression, or what a post-catholic canadian indigenous identity actually looks like.
as canadians and americans, our legal traditions do not come from the bible, from the papacy or from spain. while many of the earliest british and french settlers to north america were religious fundamentalists, and they enacted horrible laws in their settlements, these settlements and laws did not survive the establishment of british imperial hegemony. our laws are not christian in origin, but derived from the english common law (except in quebec, where the civil law is napoleonic). our judicial system is not driven and never was driven by christian dogma, but was based on the stare decisis of the common law, which saw decisions made in imperial rome as the proper precedent to follow and paid no deference, whatsoever, to the pope and his specious decrees.
so, it is interesting that this revisionist idea of a doctrine of discovery requires deference to the most colonial christian myths to make sense of. in truth, only the samuel alitos and clarence thomases of the world could take such a thing seriously.
we live in a secular state and our laws are secular in origin. insisting otherwise is really simple base ignorance of basic history.
if you meet a "scholar" that wants to argue otherwise, ask them to send me an email about it.
reference:
"why pope francis may be hesitant to rescind the doctrine of discovery", cbc news, july 30, 2022
19:35
there was a proclamation by the british monarch in 1763, at the conclusion of the seven years war (or french and indian war) that declared all land west of a dividing line to be "indian territory". this decree has been much misunderstood since. what was the king's intent?
yeah, i think i get it, now.
the king wanted a monopoly on the purchase of land, to prevent any settlers from holding what is called allodial title. to this day, the federal government of the united states considers itself the sole owner of almost all land in the united states, and the crown of britain owns almost all land in canada, which is to be administered by the federal government. yes, legally speaking, the queen owns your house, if you live in canada. the almost sole exception in canada is the nisg'aa agreement; in the united states, there's a handful of allodial title indigenous areas in the plains states, and in new mexico. indigenous title is not considered allodial in canada - it's a special category of fee simple. fee simple is the modern evolution of a fiefdom, a plot of land granted to a title holder by the king (or state) in exchange for a property tax. allodial title holders pay no property tax, because they actually own the land.
the function of the proclamation was to decree that all land west of the appalachians will eventually be purchased by the king, which is a weird kind of land grab. the actual content of the proclamation is a ban on settler purchases of land from the indigenous sellers; only the king was allowed to buy land from the indigenous peoples. so, while it doesn't transfer ownership directly to the king, it's an algorithm for the eventual total transfer of all land in north america to the crown, and that is a process that is actually still ongoing in canada (most of bc is still not under treaty).
while the proclamation was intended to prevent settlers from buying land from the indigenous peoples - and pissed the settlers off enough that it was a major cause of the revolution, even if it didn't result in a reversal of the policy - it also follows the spirit of the existing imperial precedent. it certainly doesn't derive from the doctrine of discovery, even if it looks a little similar on paper. i've pointed out a few times that the existing imperial precedent has a difficult application in canada, because the indigenous peoples never utilized land ownership in the same way that europeans did. tribes may have had agreements about common hunting lands, but they considered the idea of owning land to be ridiculous. like, they would mock the europeans for it - they thought it was crazy, bonkers, looney tunes. so, they couldn't define whether they were conquered or not in their own cultural language, and they didn't put up any resistance to settlements on their land, until the europeans started putting up fences, which they found to be baffling. that made it easy for the settlers to build houses, which created property that they sought to self-govern, which meant the precedent was that the parliament becomes supreme, even as the indigenous peoples are still living and hunting on the land being settled. the existing british imperial law had no precedent as to how to deal with these people that didn't accept land ownership, that allowed for foreign settlers to settle their land, that refused to acknowledge they were conquered and just assumed co-existence was obvious. we made no sense to them, and they made no sense to us.
so, eventually, after grappling with it for centuries, the court had to de facto declare they were conquered, but they could never phrase it like that, and you won't see that language utilized.
the issues that have been historically put before the court in relation to indigenous peoples in the british empire and canada have had to do with what rights that they have within the imperial law framework and the much newer canadian constitutional law framework, and the 1763 proclamation is fundamental to that - not any papal decree. if you want a legal framework to substitute for the 1493 papal bull in canada, it is the 1763 proclamation, which was clearly derived from the roman imperial law and not from any papal dictate. our courts have already modified this, and rather dramatically.
20:46
(note: i hadn't read the case, yet. i was faced with a contradiction between what i knew about the british imperial law of the time, which was substantive, and what the secondary sources were telling me about american colonial law, which i knew and still know less about. i was trying to resolve that contradiction. this is deductive, based on the secondary sources, which are very bad and do not accurately convey the content of the 1823 ruling. i correct myself in subsequent posts.)
so, the 1823 case reintroduces the 1763 proclamation into the american jurisprudence via case law. that case - which uses this stupid term, doctrine of discovery - goes through this specious historical revisionism, and in the end just restates the 1763 proclamation, almost verbatim - only the state can buy land from the indigenous peoples.
so, why didn't the court just cite the proclamation, then? because it's 1823, and the court is ruling on a land transfer in post-revolutionary america. had the court cited the decree of king george III, they might have been hung - if not tarred and feathered. there'd be pitchforks running through town, in no time.
so, instead, the court ran off a pile of nonsense and blamed it all on the pope - when the ruling is in actual fact an application of the proclamation, nearly verbatim.
needless to say, england did not "retain" the 1493 bull, which was never intended to apply to it, and which it wouldn't give a fuck about, even if it did. but, for the court to entirely extinguish any concept of allodial title, it needed a scapegoat, and that scapegoat was the catholic church.
a neat trick is that the 1823 ruling doesn't even have anything to do with indigenous rights. the real significance of the ruling is the denial of the right to buy property, for the colonists. i mean, the language of the ruling is that you can't sell, but the value of the ruling is that you can't buy, and the outcome is that you can't own. that's just as george III wanted it.
when later theorists cite this specious doctrine of discovery, they're really citing the proclamation, as there never was a doctrine and there certainly was a proclamation.
i'm going to put call out for this to be corrected.
22:41
those who want the pope to rescind the doctrine of discovery (which never actually existed) should really be calling for the queen to retract the 1763 proclamation (which is what the 1823 case is actually based on).
22:45
what we've done in canada is not retract the proclamation, but run it through an orwellian filter, so that it now means the opposite of what it did, previously.
23:20
in fact, the ruling does mention the proclamation, but only in passing:
can we get some rational analysis of this, please?
i mean, c'mon.
papal bulls in post-revolutionary america, designed to explain colonial british policy? what a steaming heap of bullshit.
23:31
i mean, the ruling is legally correct: the 1763 proclamation ought to have been in force, it's just sovereignty passed from the crown to the state.
it's the historical discussion around it, the justification for it, that is utter revisionist hogwash.
23:33
i should make something clear, though.
whatever one thinks of the 1823 ruling, the implication by activists is that they can reverse the precedent by having the pope retract the doctrine. that is, the indigenous activists seem to think that the dictatorial papal decrees are some kind of higher law, and that the secular courts are bound to obey the papal fiat. that would upset a lot of americans, if it were true. again: samuel alito may be the only person on the planet willing to take that idea seriously.
this point needs to be as clear as day: even if it were true that the american precedent is in some way derived from the papal dictate (a clam that is simply wrong), it would not follow that reversing the papal dictate would alter the case law.
overturning this precedent - insofar as it exists in the united states. it is not legally meaningful in canada. - is not dependent on decisions made by the pope, and words by the pope (thankfully) have no legal relevance in the secular courts of either country on this continent.
i actually get the impression that a large number of indigenous people think that these european actors - the pope, the queen - have some greater level of influence than being empty spokespeople that perform formalistic duties as relics of the past. it's baffling.
23:49
actually, let me backtrack slightly, as i've now read the actual ruling, directly.
the ruling (https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep021/usrep021543/usrep021543.pdf) actually doesn't say what the supposed analysis of the ruling claims it says. i'm a canadian, remember - this isn't of any relevance to the laws in this country, so i've had no reason to read it, i've just relied on the secondary sources to provide a cursory analysis. we have the 1763 proclamation as the fundamental basis of our law, here, which it should be clear is what my analysis is based on. american rulings from 1823 are of no force here, so why would i read them?
what the ruling actually says is this:
Virginia, particularly, within whose chartered
limits the land in controversy lay, passed an act,
in the year 1779, declaring her " exclusive right
of pre-emption from the Indians, of all the lands
within the limits of her own chartered territory,
and that no person or persons whatsoever, have,
or ever had, a right to purchase any lands within the
same,'from any Indian nation, except only persons
duly authorized to make such purchase; formerly
for the use and benefit of the colony, and lately
for the Commonwealth." The act then proceeds
to annul all deeds made by Indians to individuals,
for the private use of the purchasers.
Without ascribing to this act the power of annulling
vested rights, or admitting it to countervail the
testimony furnished by the marginal note
opposite to the title of the law, forbidding purchases
from the Indians, in the revisals of the Virginia
statutes, stating that law to be repealed, it may
safely be considered as an unequivocal affirmance,
on the part of Virginia, of the broad principle
which had always been maintained, that the exclusive
right to purchase from the Indians resided
in the government.
so, the ruling is based on a 1779 law that is derived from the 1763 proclamation.
he then correctly applies the law of conquest, from it's existing precedent in british imperial law:
Conquest gives a title which the Courts
of the conqueror cannot deny, whatever the private
and speculative opinions of individuals may
be, respecting the original justice of the claim
which has been successfully asserted. The British government,
which was then our government,
and whose rights have passed to the United States,
asserted a title to all the lands occupied by Indians,
within the chartered limits of the British colonies.
It asserted also a limited sovereignty over them,
and the exclusive right of extinguishing the title
which occupancy gave to them. These claims
have been maintained and established as far west
as the river Mississippi, by the sword. The title
to a vast portion of the lands we now hold, originates
in them. It is not for the Courts of this
country to question the validity of this title, or to
sustain one which is incompatible with it.
this "doctrine of discovery" is therefore actually a "doctrine of conquest", described further in vaguely hobbesian language (he does go on after that). it is not discovering the tribe that confers sovereignty over them, but conquering them that does. that is roman imperial law.
he continues discussing the imperial precedent:
Frequent and bloody wars, in which the whites
were not always the aggressors, unavoidably
ensued. European policy, numbers, and skill,
prevailed. As the white population advanced,
that of the Indians necessarily receded. The
country in the immediate neighbourhood of
agriculturists became unfit for them. The game fled
into thicker and more unbroken forests, and the
Indians followed. The soil, to which the crown
originally claimed title, being no longer occupied
by its ancient inhabitants, was parcelled out according
to the will of the sovereign power, and
taken possession of by persons who claimed immediately
from the crown, or mediately, through
its grantees or deputies.
That law which regulates, and ought to regulate
in general, the relations between the conqueror
and conquered, was incapable of application to a
people Under such circumstances. The resort to
some new and different rule, better adapted to the
actual state of things, was unavoidable. Every
rule which can be suggested will be found to be
attended with great difficulty.
However extravagant the pretension of converting
the discovery of an inhabited country into
conquest may appear; if the principle has been
asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained;
if a country has been. acquired and held
under it; if the property of the great mass of the
community originates in it, it becomes the law of
the laud, and cannot be questioned, So, too, with
respect to the concomitant principle, that the Indian
inhabitants are to be considered merely as
occupants, to be protected, indeed, while in peace,
in the possession of their lands, but to be deemed
incapable of transferring the absolute title to
others. However this restriction may be opposed
to natural right, and to the usages of civilized nations,
yet, if it be indispensable to that system
under which the country has been settled, and be
adapted to the actual condition of the two people,
it may, perhaps, be supported by reason, and certainly
cannot be rejected by Courts of justice
so, the legislature is dominant because the land was settled after it was conquered. total imperial law. absolutely correct.
-----
inserted:
in re-reading this a few days later, i'm having difficulty remembering what the point i was trying to make in quoting the last three paragraphs was, other than that marshall is sticking to the imperial precedent in discussing conquering v settling land and not introducing the question of discovery (as i understood it when typing this, initially). reading the quote, now, i'm left feeling unsettled, in that it introduces questions i don't address and that, in hindsight, should be. i'm concluding that i think i was too brief, and that i think i intentionally avoided the subtlety of the ruling, at the time of writing. i just wanted to show that the imperial precedent was the issue in marshall's ruling without getting bogged down by the language. doubling back, i don't want to be accused of misquoting marshall, given how this discourse unravels. i want to elaborate on this point to ensure i properly address as many of marshall's points as are contextual. i can only partially address marshall's ruling, in total; marshall's ruling is quite complex.
for right now, i want to acknowledge that marshall does introduce the need to look past the imperial precedent by questioning the existing dichotomy, and that i don't want to gloss over that. i pointed out in my previous comments that the roman imperial precedent was hard to apply to the indigenous peoples in north america, and it turns out marshall realized that even in 1823, and states as much verbatim. if the indigenous peoples of eastern north america were conquered, they were not conquered in the same way that the french were, or even in the same way that the aztecs were. yet, it is clearly difficult to talk about settling a land when it is understood that there are people living there, which nobody disputes, now or then.
what marshall does, and it might be disingenuous, is suggest that the indigenous peoples abandoned the land, which introduces the law of settlement as the correct precedent. we know that disease ravaged the indigenous peoples, but, even so, that seems less than honest. the indigenous peoples were at the least chased away.
it's useful to recall that the imperial precedent at one point applied to germanic peoples, who would have been spoken of by roman administrators in ways that are similar to the way that the indigenous peoples are being spoken of, here. the celts had settlements that were conquered, even if caesar's treatment of them was unlawful, even relevant to the rather swashbuckling imperial precedent - what caesar did was genocide, even relative to roman law. but, the germans did not have settlements; all of the ancient german cities were built by the romans, who looked down upon the germans as barbarians and frequently enslaved them, even when the germans were slaughtering roman legions in retaliation (as per the varian disaster in the battle of teutoberg forest). what i'm getting at is that the roman imperial precedent is actually a good precedent, and not merely a tradition - the british were quite like the romans, and the indigenous peoples were quite like the germans. stare decisis makes good sense, here.
so, the romans could not have conquered the germans like they did the carthaginians or the greeks or the celts, and they instead applied the law of settlement to germany, even as the germans sat outside the limes, collecting coins - and plotting revenge. remember that the germans eventually win this struggle.
but, the romans did not discover the germans, and their settlement on german land did not come from discovery; the romans fought hard to conquer bits of swamp and forest, and erected their camps in hostile territory. that comparison may have evaded marshall at the time, but he nonetheless comes to the right solution - that the law of settlement applies, when the people being conquered cannot be absorbed, and the laws of the conquering people become paramount, in the settlements enacted on the conquered land.
the point is that this is not a discussion of discovery, it is a grappling with how to work through the imperial precedent in a situation where the application is not crystal clear - and that it is in fact quite clear that he's weighing the two sides of the precedent, in discussing whether the indigenous peoples were conquered or the land was settled.
----
and, then he does defer to the proclamation, after all:
The authority of this proclamation, so far as it
respected this continent, has never been denied,
and the titles it gave to lands have always been
sustained in our Courts.
he then spills a few pages of ink on upholding the proclamation, much to my surprise; based on the analysis in the secondary sources, i surely thought he was trying to get around it. nope.
so, my analysis is (oddly) actually completely correct, as it would be expected to be, as i actually know what i'm talking about, and i feel like i just tore down a straw man erected by the secondary sources.
there is, in fact, no substantive reference to the 1493 papal bull in this ruling, at all. so, i don't know where that idea came from, but it's not in the ruling. i should consequently direct my ire at the secondary sources, and not at the ruling, itself. the ruling is actually entirely consistent with my informed analysis, and not at all consistent with the colloquial reading, which bafflingly seems to be taught in american law schools.
i apologize for not checking the source before debunking it, but my degree is in canadian constitutional law, and my knowledge of american jurisprudence (post-1776) is total dabbling. that should actually be obvious.
there is a one line reference to the kings of portugal and spain, but it is strictly cursory and is not presented as any sort of legal precedent in the ruling, and for good reason - that would be utter nonsense.
so, that opens the question - who is the actual author of the revisionist doctrine of discovery? it is not justice marshall, whose ruling is perfectly cromulant, relative to the existing british imperial law of the time.
0:41
justice marshall does not bring up the concept of discovery to justify the settlement of an already populated land (he correctly utilizes the law of conquest for that purpose), but rather brings up the idea of discovery as a "right" that excludes other european powers from negotiating with the indigenous people that exist on the land that is discovered. only the discoverer of a land may negotiate with the indigenous people that inhabit it. this is an articulation of a "sphere of influence", or an "exclusive economic zone". historically, it refers primarily to france's broad claims over the centre of the continent, and the idea that the indigenous peoples were allies, rather than subjects, of the french king. the indigenous peoples did not realize that being labelled "not conquered" gave them less rights than being labelled "conquered" under the existing imperial legal precedent.
this claim is clearly delusional:
It was a right which all asserted for themselves, and to assertion of which, by others, all assented.
i mean, that's bonkers. totally wrong.
but, he's nowhere presenting discovery as a right of settlement - he explicitly presents conquest for that reason. discovery gives the european power rights over other european powers (or so he claims...), it doesn't give the european power ownership over the land, or at least not until it's conquered.
so, what he's articulating is a kind of "shotgun" system. if britain calls shotgun on the eastern seaboard, the dutch and swedes cannot claim it for themselves. but, there is no inherent right of settlement, or not until the land is conquered, first.
the ruling was clearly misinterpreted on purpose. who is responsible for that?
1:04
now, an indigenous person might reasonably challenge the idea of the right of conquest being a law. that sounds more like an absence of law than an application of it. that might be a reasonable critique of imperial law, but it would have no basis in law, or at least no basis in the law of the time. international law, as we understand it, is almost entirely post-nuremberg. the contemporary international order is radically different from british and roman imperial law, or at least it is on paper; today, planning and executing an offensive war is considered illegal, whereas that formed the basis of the law of conquest in the era of empire. we can be critical of imperial law, but we shouldn't be revisionist about it. understanding old legal principles means avoiding anachronisms.
if indigenous activists are looking to the pope to try to find some higher source of law than imperial law, that is an error in the context of anything resembling modern european law, and especially in the context of british imperial law. the pope has no special place in this legal system, post-reformation (which is the entirety of the colonial context). in fact, the higher law is that religious axioms are to be excluded from consideration - it is the separation of church and state.
so, i mean, you can sympathize with this, if you'd like. you can argue it seems wrong, and some people might feel your pain. none of that changes the legalities of the issue.
i want to know who made this up. it's post-1823.
1:24
in fact, in 1832, justice marshall over-ruled a lower court decision and declared the cherokee were sovereign.
i'm going to sort through this, but, as justice marshall seems to have understood imperial law, i promise you he argues they weren't conquered.
1:32
right.
so,
1) the doctrine of discovery means that only the english can negotiate with the cherokee. that's what he said in johnson v mcintosh, and he's properly applying it, here.
2) the doctrine of discovery does not allow for an inherent right of conquest.
3) the charters of the colonies allow for defense, but not for conquest. the colonies therefore have no legal basis in which to invoke a conquest.
4) the 1763 proclamation declares cherokee territory outside of colonial administration, so it would need to be conquered to be brought under the force of colonial law.
5) the treaty between the united states and the cherokees implicitly recognizes cherokee sovereignty. so, there can be no naivete, here.
6) the boundaries of cherokee territory are well understood and there is no pretending otherwise.
so, the marshall court has clearly indicated that the doctrine of discovery does not allow for the right to extinguish rights, without an intervening conquest - and that there is no legality to conquest, in the context of the charter granted to the colonies. but, if conquest happens by the declaration of the congress, it must be upheld, regardless.
this is entirely consistent with imperial law, and bears no resemblance to the discourse in the secondary sources, which actually cite the lower court ruling, which was overturned.
1:52
i bet this "doctrine of discovery" actually dates to the roll back of civil rights after the reconstruction, doesn't it?
1:54
just briefly.
in canadian law, the general rule is that the proclamation gives the crown the exclusive right to purchase land from the indigenous peoples, which is similar to this doctrine of discovery, as it is properly understood, but is not derived from it. while you might see the odd reference in canadian law by way of analogy, the canadian case law tends to avoid referencing the american case law, and instead derives itself strictly from the proclamation. this is partly why i was able to derive the earlier american law by citing much later canadian precedents. so, it is not correct to argue that canadian case law is any way derived from the doctrine, even if there is that surface analogy, once you correctly understand the doctrine as a sphere of economic influence that is separate from the law of conquest.
so, in canada, the proclamation gives the crown the exclusive right to purchase land, but allodial title exists until it is extinguished via purchase. once the allodial title is extinguished (in the form of a treaty), indigenous title can be claimed if the indigenous community can establish continual use. what that means is that if indigenous peoples are using the land, and they have remained in use of the land through the years (as they have in parts of atlantic canada), then they have special and inherent rights granted to them under the constitution, despite the crown having ownership of the land. title is extinguished by treaty, but it is replaced by constitutional rights, if there is continual land use.
allodial title is retained in canada only by the tribes or nations that have not signed treaties, which are mostly in bc (including the tribe dealing with a pipeline through their territory). the nisga'a agreement was supposed to act as a model, but movement has largely stalled. canada is really in contravention of any sort of law, imperial or domestic or international, in it's continued occupation of british columbia - and that is what it is, an illegal occupation.
these marshall court decisions use anachronistic language, but are really largely consistent with canadian law.
2:36
this is an up to date map. most aren't.
the official position is that quebec was conquered, which is entirely legal from a european context, but doesn't give the mohawks and other groups there any answers. that is an issue that needs to be dealt with. the southern labrador region may be being worked on, i think. newfoundland's indigenous population - the beothuk - was exterminated via disease. bc is simply under illegal occupation.
3:01
i seem to have little problem accepting the law of conquest.
it's the law of the old world. when the normans showed up in france, nobody asked if it was morally right if they seized a section of land - they just took it. according to legend, alexander was a pupil of aristotle, the greatest moral zealot of all time, and he was out there conquering the whole fucking world.
what's sort of weird is that we do feel some need to justify this. i'm not entirely sure why.
it's certainly enlightened for the conquering power to attempt to treat the conquered peoples with equality, but that's actually relatively rare throughout history. we can hold ourselves to higher standards, but we have to be real, too.
so, it may seem like an absence of law, granted, but if we're standing in european courts, we ought to be using european laws, and the harsh reality is that conquest is historically lawful in europe, in asia and in the middle east, as well.
3:15
we can try to be more civilized moving forwards, sure. but, trying to apply a post-nuremberg reality to 16th century europe is beyond anachronistic, it's kind of crazy.
i mean, if you think the colonization was bad, try living through france in world war one. right?
3:18
europeans didn't apply just laws to each other, nor did any other group of people on earth. it's not reasonable to expect them to treat others better than they treated each other, or than anybody else treated anybody else.
the court system is based on precedent, and the court rulings of the past were consequently rooted in ideas that are even older. it's useful to put the law in context - i support stare decisis, don't misunderstand me.
but, if you are morally aghast at the rulings of the past, you just need to look forwards and argue for better rulings. there's some progress there, surely. but, i don't think it's helpful to condemn people in less advanced times for being less advanced. it was a universal condition, truly.
3:22
i still want to figure this out, but i need to stop to eat.
3:26
this opinion by a justice taney is the earliest opinion i can find that reverses the precedent set by justice marshall, although it erroneously cites it:
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar_case?case=18306627545409107013&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
The English possessions in America were not claimed by right of conquest but by right of discovery.
that is Martin v. Lessee of Waddell, 41 US 367 - Supreme Court 1842 and is a direct reversal of the precedent in johnson v mcintosh.
let me try to follow that backwards. if i cannot find an earlier source, there's the answer.
it still doesn't answer the question as to who built the mythology up, but i suppose it must have been a 19th century textbook.
4:17
justice taney was nominated by andrew jackson, who famously ignored justice marshall when he expelled the cherokees to oklahoma in the event known as the "trail of tears".
4:22
justice taney was also responsible for dred scott.
it's starting to make sense.
4:22
and, taney was also catholic.
ok.
let me put these pieces together.
4:24
yeah.
taney cites the following:
"If the discovery be made and possession taken under the authority of an existing government which is acknowledged by the emigrants, it is supposed to be equally well settled that the discovery is made for the benefit of the whole nation; and the vacant soil is to be disposed of by that organ of the government which has the constitutional power to dispose of the national dominions; by that organ, in which all territory is vested by law. According to the theory of the British constitution all vacant lands are vested in the crown as representing the nation, and the exclusive power to grant them is admitted to reside in the crown, as a branch of the royal prerogative. It has been already shown that this principle was as fully recognised in America as in the island of Great Britain."
that is absolutely valid law and, if read literally, is not very controversial. if you were to apply that to an uninhabited island in the arctic ocean or the south pacific, nobody would think much of it.
but, was north america uninhabited?
marshall, in fact, takes exception to that claim, and taney is quoting him way out of context. the section quoted is the precursor to a much longer discussion, where marshall repeatedly acknowledges that the indigenous people own the land and have all kinds of rights associated with that ownership, although he also defers to the authority of the monarch or the parliament. the question of what power falls to the monarch and what power falls to the legislature is a very old one in british law, and still exists in the united states (with the president as elected king), where it no longer exists in britain or canada. for taney to cite this small bit of marshall in this manner is a strong tip-off - taney does not intend to interface with the subtleties and rights balancing in marshall's ruling, but wishes to declare a clear ideological decree that eliminates the rights of the indigenous people, which the crown did not intend to do and which the earlier court decisions attempted to prevent.
so, i am confident that i have my author, here - it is justice taney who is the disingenuous jurist and not justice marshall, and it is all the worse, in truth, because he's actually overturning what was a relatively forward thinking precedent and establishing a much less well thought out one.
given that i understand the general outline of american history from 1840 to 1890, i can guess how this turns out and i'm going to step back and leave it there.
the doctrine of discovery, as it is cited today, is a dishonest misquote of justice marshall, nefariously constructed by his successor, justice taney, to eliminate the rights that the previous court had tried to balance.
4:54
this is so perplexing to people.
but the right answer is provided by weber: the state is the entity with a monopoly on violence. might makes right.
we consider this uncontroversial in every other historical context, but find it baffling in relation to european colonialism, like the mongols and arabs and persians and romans never existed.
this is what i'm perplexed about.
5:33
july 31, 2022
i want to clarify what the proclamation - and johnson v mcintosh, which is just an interpretation of the proclamation - does and does not say.
so, a common analysis is to criticize the ruling by arguing that the doctrine of discovery says that the indigenous people can't sell their land because they never owned it because it was discovered. that's not even close to being correct.
what the proclamation is about is buying land, rather than selling it. it may be valid to criticize the king of england for thinking he can tell the indigenous peoples who to sell to, but the question of whether the king of england has the right to order his subjects not to buy a commodity from a seller or not is a question for english law to work out, through the mechanisms of english law, and one the indigenous people should have little say over. if looked at carefully, the proclamation is really a set of sanctions against the indians, in that it forbids english subjects from buying their land, much as current sanctions exist against buying commodities from russia or iran. the reality is that those sanctions were then adopted, in tact, by the various state parliaments, who certainly have always had jurisdictions over such matters.
the case at hand had to do with an overlapping parcel - supposedly. there's some question about that, apparently. - but it's worthwhile to conduct a thought experiment - what would have been the correct ruling if the lands didn't overlap? would the court have accepted the purchase of indigenous land by the settlers?
the answer is that it would not have, because the application of the proclamation (via it's adoption by the state legislatures) means that the settlers weren't allowed to buy it. the sale would be nullified and the land would be returned to the indigenous owner, until such a time would come as they would opt to sell it to the state, instead.
it does follow that the law here doesn't have anything to do with telling the indigenous people what they can sell, nor does it deny indigenous ownership of the land - it's about forbidding settlers from buying, because the king (and then the state) expects a monopoly on allodial title under it's jurisdiction.
what the doctrine of discovery then asserts, in functional terms, is that the king of france can't buy indian land in areas claimed by the king of england, because the english have exclusive economic rights. again: this is about buying, it's not about selling.
the court is actually pretty clear that the indians own the land - before it is sold - and have the right to put terms on the sale. but, only the king can buy it!
so, i hope that clarifies the actual precedent set by the marshall court, as it derives from the proclamation, and which is actually still law in canada, as canada did not adopt the disingenuous reading by that evil bastard, justice taney.
i would agree with activists arguing that taney's precedent should be reversed and marshall's should be re-established, but i think that has already been done, and i think the issue is largely dealt with. there is no more indian land in the united states that might be sold to france (or britain), so the doctrine of discovery, as it was articulated by marshall (rather than misinterpreted by taney), no longer has any functional relevance in the united states. in canada, there is land that is not under treaty that the indigenous peoples might in theory sell to the chinese (or the americans), but i don't think that's a serious concern.
14:42
the doctrine of discovery as articulated by marshall, and misinterpreted by taney, is not law in canada, as the united states was not a part of the british empire at the time, even if it has been referenced by means of analogy.
but, what would happen if the indigenous peoples in bc decided to sell a parcel of land to china? they're not under treaty. there's nothing stopping them, except the use of force.
that is the doctrine of discovery, as articulated by marshall - that canada has an exclusive economic right over the area, and the chinese need to respect that claim and not attempt to buy land directly from the indigenous peoples. he claims that that doctrine was always respected, which is demonstrably false, but it's what he's trying to establish.
in canada, the proclamation is still law and we would consequently not recognize the validity of chinese attempts to buy land from the indigenous peoples that exist in the area we've claimed as under our economic sphere of influence. that's our law. that's relevant to us.
the chinese might decide to ignore it, as the spanish might have decided to ignore it, but that never happened.
i hope what marshall actually meant is now clear.
14:54
aug 2, 2022
i just want to dwell on this line from the cited taney case a little.
The English possessions in America were not claimed by right of conquest but by right of discovery.
the focus is on the discovery part. but, as i've been trying to point out, the more substantive legal part of this is the conquest part. somebody can correct me if i'm wrong, but, given that taney is disingenuously misquoting marshall, i believe this is the first time that discovery is substituted for settlement or conquest, which was the american precedent up until this time (and which actually remains the precedent in canada, where there is no legal basis for the concept of discovery, which does not appear in our case law.).
you will note that this makes it very clear that nobody thought the land was empty, that such arguments are still to come in the future. i'm not going to look into this, but that's an interesting research question - what 19th or 20th century american legal theorist invented the idea that america was empty upon being discovered?
no, what taney is doing is substituting discovery for settlement, and then using the invented idea of discovery to argue against the precedent of conquest. this allows him to essentially make up a new precedent out of nothing. worse, he seems to have gotten away with it with minimal historical scrutiny, which is instead being misdirected at justice marshall (who was actually standing up for them, repeatedly).
but, it is the idea of conquest that taney wishes to denounce most forcefully, and he does so:
The grant to the Duke of York, therefore, was not of lands won by the sword; nor were the government or laws he was authorized to establish intended for a conquered people.
taney is acknowledging the existing precedent here, and explicitly denying the conquest, as he fully understands the ramifications of such a thing - that the indians would need to be allowed to govern themselves, if they were conquered. that could never be allowed. but, the land was clearly not empty when it was settled, and such an argument could not be taken seriously, so therefore it was discovered, instead. taney's nefarious redefinition is given a gift by marshall's abstract language, which is subtle enough to be easily co-opted.
as mentioned previously, the indigenous peoples could never admit to being conquered, due to a fatal arrogance that left them unable to reason properly. they just couldn't lower themselves to it, and they've suffered greatly for it. they would have been far better off had they admitted it.
by the 1840s, though, the american right had realized that it was in their benefit to deny them the rights of conquered peoples, and that option has not been truly available, since. even as at late a date as 1840, a federal policy of recognizing the indigenous peoples as conquered - if they would adhere to it - could have done a great deal to save indigenous culture.
so, it would be helpful to shift the discourse. discovery is an idea with no historical basis; european law is about conquest. refocusing on the correct legal questions could help resolve a lot of problems. as it is, debates over discovery are not going to help anybody, as they don't have any legal meaning and don't lead to any policy outcome.
0:12
the term terra nullius has been better deconstructed than the court ruling.
first use was when, do you think? 1510? 1530? 1200?
it appears to be a neologism first used in 1819.
again: i'm not looking into it, but i wouldn't be surprised if the first application of "terra nullius" to north america didn't occur until the 20th century. so, everything about this doctrine is complete bullshit.
i did look into this a little the other day, and it was amerigo vespucci - whose given name gives us america - that first realized columbus didn't land in india. it is for that reason that the earliest maps of the area actually say america on them, although there was an overlapping period where the latin term used translated to "unknown land", rather than "empty land".
3:01
terra nullius was actually first used in australia in 1835.
so, how did it get from there to a badly pieced together understanding of american judicial history? you figure that out - but dates are probably late 19th and early 20th century.
so, this is actually a relatively recent mythology.
3:07
i would actually hope that most "experts" that have narrow, focused expertise realize what i'm posting here, and that i'm not breaking down real barriers. i would hope that that one resident scholar at any particular institution understands everything i've typed here, and i'm not reinventing any wheels.
but, people going through programs and taking more general courses are going to be taught this stuff, still, and it's very concerning that it's not being addressed - that the activism is insisting the doctrine be rescinded, rather than exploring the actual historical validity of it, and realizing that it's actually a myth.
3:43
5:31
turns out that's a 12,000+ word essay.
5:33
that should not be legal, that's feudalism.
we need some serious land reform in our society.
reference:
"'a new phenomenon': big investors eye canada's home market, remax president says", cbc news, aug 3, 2022
10:22
i'm going to provide a different suggestion.
high risk people that are going to end up in the icu if they catch the latest variant of the common cold because their immune systems suck need to stop going to the casino to spend their pensions.
i don't really quite understand why the vulnerable are not taking this seriously, and putting themselves in high risk situations, at this point. how much more information do you require in order to make a non-stupid decision?
this government, perhaps aided by federal support, is going to inevitably suggest private care to fix the problem, which is entirely irrational, and which will just make the problem worse. this is the crisis they've been waiting for. if you're at high risk, don't give them the opportunity by straining resources by behaving stupidly - stay inside.
almost none of the people at risk of covid complications can afford to pay out of pocket. they're just going to die, if it comes to that.
your vaccine will not save you in any remote way at this point, if it was ever going to, and the society will not be stopped for your benefit, once again. you need to change your lifestyle, and if you don't then you're going to die.
reference:
"ontario health minister says no easy way to stop er and icu closures", toronto star, aug 2, 2022
11:41
it is true that we're not going to reverse climate change by grounding trudeau's jet, but it is also true that this is the kind of specious wastefulness that needs to stop. the prime minister should really not have access to a private jet of this sort at all. this is the kind of behaviour that needs to end on a broader scale if we're to actually transition off of carbon.
the conservative press likes gotcha stories like this that make liberals look like hypocrites, and it often results in juvenile politics with no useful end goal. but, they're right about this. the problem will only be fixed by systemic changes, but we need to each make personal decisions that reduce our carbon footprint, and trudeau is not doing that, because he thinks he's above the law.
it's really another example of the breakdown in the rule of law under trudeau, who doesn't think the rules apply to him.
so, these types of stories are usually pointless. but, this time, they're right - this is unnecessary and trudeau needs to change his behaviour.
reference:
"in one month, trudeau used enough fuel to power a trucker convoy", national post, aug 3, 2022
12:00
the prime minister's use of publicly funded military aircraft should be strictly restricted to travelling to foreign events where he is to represent the government.
he should not be flying around the country on public money in publicly owned aircraft to attend campaign events. that should be against the law.
12:03
thursday, august 4, 2022
does the chinese claim over taiwan have the same level of historical legitimacy that the russian claim over ukraine has?
the answer is that it doesn't. in fact, the chinese have stronger claims to tibet and xinjiang than they do to taiwan, but it's not because of the government in exile. i consider the chinese claim in xinjiang to be quite strong and historically absolutely correct. tibet is blurrier. but, taiwan is just wrong.
the position broadcast by the chinese is that taiwan is an integral part of china and always has been, which is just bluntly not true. now, as stated previously, the chinese are actually concerned - with good reason - about the american military build-up on the island, but let's look at the propaganda and sort through it. when you understand the history, you understand the actual concern, and how history might repeat itself.
the indigenous taiwanese are actually an austronesian-speaking people, related to the polynesians that live on the islands that cover the broad expanse of the pacific ocean. chinese history from as far back as we know it always treated taiwan as outside of china, insofar as it was discussed at all, as it was populated by non-chinese people, and the chinese were very nationalistic and insular insofar as who and what they considered as of themselves. taiwan was not a part of any historical chinese empire, and in fact was even very lightly populated, with people the chinese would have seen as savages. so, when the portugese arrived in the 16th century, they actually found a stone age hunter-gatherer population of polynesians on the island, as they did in the other pacific islands, and almost no sign of chinese settlement. the indigenous taiwanese were apparently hostile to all outsiders, perhaps as a memory of past attempts by chinese or japanese settlers to settle the island. it was for that reason that europeans (with guns and cannons) were able to take control of the island fairly easily and use it as a base in which to harass the chinese from - the chinese were not settled on the island and did not consider it as a part of china.
the chinese did not even have a name for taiwan. it's nearly totally absent from the well-kept records.
chinese settlement of the island only occurred during the era of european colonialism, which led to a counter-exploration by the chinese, and trading settlements set up in indonesia to trade with the europeans away from the chinese mainland. there was a longstanding belief in china that contact with outside civilizations would be bad for china, so they frequently banned trade with outsiders. the first time that china took control of taiwan was in a war against the dutch, in the very late 17th century, and it was actually with the intent of driving out the dutch. it is only from this point that the chinese colonization of taiwan begins. so, you see what the historical narrative is - while taiwan is not a historical part of china, the pattern is that westerners (or enemies of china, more broadly) keep setting up bases in taiwan, and the chinese have consequently developed a policy of taking control of the island, which is otherwise a dangerous foreign military base very close to it's shores.
the indigenous people of taiwan were overwhelmed by chinese settlement after that and today make up a very tiny percentage of the island's population. there was an attempt at self-rule in 1895, but it was by a blend of europeanized indigenous taiwanese and did not last a year.
rather, the japanese took control of the island in the late 19th century, at the conclusion of one of the many sino-japanese wars. while the japanese never controlled the island before that, there is a reasonable argument that it is actually the terminus point of the ryuku island chain, which has historically been a part of japan. i don't think that is quite right, myself.
rather, i think that taiwan is actually best seen as the northernmost island in the philippines, as it is with the indigenous filipinos that the taiwanese share a language and a culture.
however, it's worth pointing out that taiwan was actually one of the industrial centres of the japanese empire, and was fundamental to it's manufacturing capacity in world war two, which in asia began many years earlier than 1939. large amounts of the weapons used to destroy china were manufactured in taiwan.
what happened to china during the imperial period of japanese hegemony in eastern asia is incredibly complex, but i've long argued that china, as a historical entity, ceased to meaningfully exist. what mao created in it's aftermath was truly not a continuation of past chinese states but something different altogether - it was a mega state that combined multiple chinese and non-chinese cultures into a new entity that was centralized in the heartland of eastern china. taiwan, as had been true through most of history, did not end up under the control of the eastern chinese bureaucracy, but rather passed to american control, as a part of america's conquest of japan. so, taiwan ended up under american military occupation as a result of the surrender of japan, as it had been in the japanese empire since 1895 and was not seen as a part of china. remnants of the very short lived chinese democracy movement of decades earlier (which never held real power) arrived in taiwan after that, and were organized into an american military colony, much as the old dutch outpost had been organized. the chinese are now looking to expel the american military base, as they were previously successful in expelling the harassing dutch colonial presence, and for broadly the same reasons.
taiwan's claim to being a democracy, like the other american-occupied states in the region, is rather tenuous. like south korea and the philipines, taiwan has usually been a military dictatorship, since world war two. the question as to whether the democracy on the island is stable or not is open, but it is at least as tenuous a claim as that in ukraine - probably a more tenuous one.
so, i don't want to cast judgement on actions that have not yet occurred, but china does not have the historical claims in taiwan that russia does in ukraine, and an invasion of taiwan will not have the same grounding in history. to the extent that taiwan has been a part of china, it has been as a short-lived colony of china, and not as an integral part of it's historical core region. while taiwan is best considered the northernmost island of the philippines, that argument does not have a historical basis, and is potentially even novel. so, tawan is best left independent.
however.
the question of whether china has legitimate defensive interests in holding taiwan is more grounded, and it has driven western colonies from the island before. that may be justification enough, but not if the people on the island are hostile to it.
that is the biggest difference between taiwan and ukraine - while most of southern and eastern ukraine sees itself as russian and welcomes a return to russia, taiwan is not historically chinese and all evidence i've seen suggests that the inhabitants (as a mix of han, japanese and european colonists with a dwindling indigenous substratum) would prefer to remain outside of china.
i understand that the united states has a one china policy, but it is historically incoherent and should be revisited. the united states, via it's conquest of japan, has as good a claim to the island as china does.
that doesn't mean that pelosi's decision to go to taiwan isn't stupid, or that she shouldn't be condemned for it. such shallow displays of self-congratulatory narcissism are not worth it.
4:03
what we call china is really "north china", and it has always held the south in contempt, always seem them as uncivilized and backwards.
4:06
Together, four of the biggest energy firms - Exxon, Chevron, Shell and TotalEnergies - earned nearly $51bn in the most recent quarter - almost double what they made in the same period last year.
when profits double, the inflation is price-gouging.
as usual, the smarmy market theorists with their broken models are totally wrong and the leftists they look down their noses at, with their superior economic theories, are entirely correct.
4:41
so, let's get the rates back down and let's tax the oil companies to fund stimulus checks, before we go into a fucking recession.
4:42
if you can point me to some gas station that's out of gas due to insufficient supply, let me know.
4:44
my replacement inverter came in and it's doing exactly the same thing.
at least this inverter wasn't smothered in tape, but it came unpackaged (that was expected) and it's not the model number i ordered. i think it would be interchangeable, but the fact that they sent me a different part than i ordered provides me with little confidence that the part is functioning. this was a spare taken out of a pile, and i think it doesn't work. at this point, i have no way of knowing whether or not the inverter is broken, but i strongly suspect it.
so, i think i have three broken inverters and a good screen, but i want to test the inverters to be sure. i think i would need a known good screen, which i don't have; there's no use in buying a new screen if the inverters are all broken, that won't fix it. but, if it is the inverter, what i'm learning is that finding a spare part might be difficult. this is technology that may be unfixable. that pisses me off.
i wonder if i can call around the stores in town and see if i can find a known good inverter from somebody that has for sure tested it.
7:20
i'm really sure i just need the $10 part.
but i can't find the part for sale here, and i've been shipped two broken ones from asia, both probably from disassembled laptops. what next?
7:22
ok.
so, what i did wrong with the chromebook was that i set the bios to rw mode and should have actually flashed it completely. it seemed obvious that the issue was basically a bios problem, but the answer was a lot easier than i thought.
i have booted my other chromebook to the arch install. now, let's see if i can figure that out or not.
i learned in that process that restoring the os from backup will wipe out the nag screen, so i'm going to give that a try on this device, as well.
i'm a windows xp nerd, and i'm comfortable working with operating systems, but i have little actual experience with linux. so, this is going to be a learning process.
the only extra step i did after restoring the machine was running the mr chromebox script and picking option 2.
so, let me try to install arch. this can't be too difficult, right?
8:01
so, i got it to boot into xfce, but it doesn't want to connect to the network.
i'm going to do it again and take closer notes, as there will be a tutorial, in the end.
but, i'm concluding that this will work, even if there's a few kinks.
17:50
friday, august 5, 2022
there's this weird narrative in the right-wing press about a "worker shortage".
if you allow capital to define the terms, they will always seek a larger workforce to reduce the cost of labour. capital will never argue there are enough labourers.
but, there may be something to the idea that we have an inefficient labour market - a skilled worker shortage and a recession are not mutually exclusive concepts, and when they coexist in the same maerket, that's the result of an inefficient immigration system, which is the argument i've been making the whole time.
the result is overpopulation, too many total workers and too few specific workers all at the same time because the system didn't try to focus immigration on what was required in the economy and instead just let everybody in. while the problem may have been caused by poor policy planning at the federal level, what it means is that the provincial government should be running training programs to give the unemployed the skills to fill the existing openings, rather than relying on more immigration and contributing further to the overpopulation.
a recession is obviously a more defining narrative, but it's important to stress the fact that these concepts are not contradictions of each other. i don't really care about capital, or what capital wants; fuck capital. this space will not exist to address the frustrations of the poor capitalist class, and it's lack of labour to exploit.
but, the state should understand the problem clearly if it is functioning well, and should be focusing on training to address it.
reference:
"canada lost 31,000 jobs last month, the second straight monthly decline", cbc news, aug 5, 2022
11:30
capital always wants workers to compete against each other, because it destroys their collective bargaining potential. all surplus value - what capitalists call "profit" - is stolen, is theft, from the working class.
the more workers, the less it costs for capital to buy those workers, and the more surplus value can be extracted from them. so, capital will always seek to maximize the size of the working class.
one of the great challenges in socialist theory is trying to figure out how to explain to workers that this competition is damaging to them, and why it is that capital attempts to force them to compete against each other for jobs rather than work together to increase wages. workers tend to be naive, and find the idea that their bosses are literally exploiting value from them to be counter-intuitive. the boss is a nice guy; he comes to the picnics, he acts like he's their friend. he's not a backstabbing criminal! is he?
training programs are the preferred way to deal with an inefficient labour market in a socialist economy.
i would call on the ford government to take the opportunity to address this "worker shortage" they've been whining and complaining about by creating training programs for laid off and fired workers in what is likely to be a long and deep recession created by central bank mismanagement in foolishly hiking rates, and that we're already in.
11:51
what we're seeing is a slight acceleration of the economy that everybody has long predicted would follow from peak oil. the smart money is that we're already passed peak oil, but it is imminent if we have not passed it.
we will all blame something. while i insist that the rate increase was a mistake, and will draw direct causal links between the recession and the rate hikes, the broader truth is that this is a recession (and it might be a depression.) caused by a refusal to adapt to the end of oil, before it's consequences began being felt.
i have argued that we should have put this off by expanding the money supply, but that would merely buy us time to adapt - which we're not doing. if we were to use the time, it would be a worthwhile policy. if we're just putting it off, as we are, we're perhaps better off being forced to learn the hard way.
we have to "get it", though.
no - fiscal stimulus is not responsible for inflation, and increasing fiscal stimulus is not going to produce inflation. that's not even a debunked theory, it's just a badly articulated total mythology, created by reaganite demagogues in the 80s. only very stupid people believe that.
we're in a down cycle, and the government should be spending money to adjust to it, but it should be targeting the money very explicitly on carbon transition. on top of that, doubling or tripling the carbon tax via an explicit redistribution mechanism would be a good way to get stimulus out while discouraging investment into the carbon economy.
12:36
we're in a recession.
the narrative needs to be about stimulus, now - that's what responsible governments do during recessions.
12:43
is it the position of jean coutou that it's stores are comfortable denying access to medication, if there are no staff on hand to tend to patients?
if it was a private office, that would be one thing - the office could decide it holds to whatever values, and the patient can go elsewhere. but, this is a big company. there should be standardization; if jean coutou insists on hiring pharmacists with religious beliefs, however specious and arbitrary, that interfere with their job functions, it should ensure that there is somebody else on hand to perform the duty, instead.
i think jean coutou ought to have the right to fire this employee for not doing his job and i strongly, strongly oppose the section of the charter that would force them to provide compensation. i would like to remove that section from the charter. full stop.
but, so long as it is there, and so long as it protects religious bigotry from proper accountability, i would call on jean coutou to clarify it's position on the matter: does it think this outcome, where a patient can walk into it's store and not get access to medication due to the arbitrary religious opinion of the employee on staff, is acceptable?
if that's the case, perhaps quebeckers need to boycott jean coutou.
if not, i would expect that jean coutou is offering some compensation for this woman.
reference:
"quebec woman speaks out after pharmacist denies her morning-after pill due to his religious beliefs", cbc news, aug 5, 2022
23:12
if i were jean coutou, i would take steps to immediately delicense the location - i would not want my brand name associated with the pharmacist in question.
23:14
certainly, this particular location should be under an immediate, complete boycott by all conscientious inhabitants of saguenay, until the pharmacist in question is no longer employed there.
23:22
it's a perfect example of how the idea of a "religious right" is just an excuse to infringe on the rights of others - it's an intellectually bankrupt concept that has no place in canadian law and that will be removed from the charter, in time.
23:24
for now, the store must be boycotted to put pressure on it to fire the pharmacist.
the store will need to give the pharmacist severance, when that happens.
23:25
the quebec government can also take steps to make this pill available without a prescription, which, in truth, should already be the case.
23:30
religion is a system of control that takes rights away from people.
there can be no such thing as "religious rights"; it is as much a form of theft as property rights are. it's a contradiction in terms. it's logically incoherent. there is a religious right, alright; there are no such things as religious rights.
religion is oppression; religion is bigotry; religion is violence.
in canada, we do not have property rights, and we should not have religious rights, either.
23:37
the pharmacist in question should be fired without compensation, and the woman in question should be compensated by the store without the need to go to court.
that there are laws that attempt to prevent this outcome is embarrassing, and temporary. those laws are unjust and will be done away with, in time.
23:39
religion is the absence of justice.
23:40
arbitrary religious opinions that infringe upon the rights of others can not be entertained as valid by a functioning system of law.
the easiest way to get rid of this right away is to stamp it out via repeated application of oakes tests, and in this situation i think the outcome is clear enough: the woman's right to access the pill is a far more important consideration than the specious idea that the pharmacist has some sort of right to deny her access to it. this is a restriction that is more than justified - but expected - in a free and democratic society. rather, denying this woman, or any other person, access to any sort of medical care due to a specious and arbitrary religious opinion is impossible to justify in a free and democratic society.
23:58
saturday, august 6, 2022
the outcome here is impossible to defend as upholding any sort of legitimate law, whatsoever.
0:00
how does the actual law apply here?
i'm kvetching about the charter and a part of it i don't like, and i'll repeat everything i said as many times as is requested, but, in context, an application of the charter is incorrect because jean coutou is not a government service. i reacted to something that has long pissed me off, but the framing in the cbc article is legally wrong. if jean coutou's defense (as presented in the article) is to apply the charter, that is legally wrong; the pharmacist cannot cite the charter in context, and the charter does not provide the pharmacist with any legal protection to any arbitrary religious opinions, whatsoever. rather, it's the quebec charter that is relevant, here, as it applies to private services.
there's three issues:
1) was the woman's right to be free of the arbitrary religious opinions of others infringed upon? i think the answer is clearly yes. i don't see any justification for this, at all.
2) was the woman's right to access care justified? unfortunately, the right to access care in quebec is relatively limited.
3) is the employee's ability to express an arbitrary religious opinion in a way that infringes upon the rights of others justified by law, in context? i think it is not justifiable in a free and democratic society. i don't think the concept can be entertained - that's absurd.
the canadian charter is a bill of rights that regulates how governments behave. the behaviour of private entities is regulated by provincial legislation.
i would call on a boycott of the store with the explicit intent of getting the pharmacist fired (and the pharmacist would need to be compensated for it, unfortunately. whatever.) and for the province to eliminate the need for a prescription to get access to the pill. and, i would hope that jean coutou reaches out to the woman and offers her compensation for her troubles.
0:40
in the specific context of quebec, it is relevant to point out that there is widely supported legislation that bans employees that work in the public sector from displaying outward religious symbols, and it is situations like this that demonstrate why this is necessary. nobody should be forced to face intimidation of that sort when receiving public services.
while the mechanism to apply such rules to private sector entities is different than the mechanism to apply them to public sector entities, the bottom line is that a legal status quo where pharmacists are allowed to deny access to care based on arbitrary religious opinions is inconsistent with the secularism policy, which is widely supported by quebec society.
so, quebec might also consider making it's private sector laws consistent with it's public sector rules by amending the quebec charter to allow for it, and i would support legislation to that effect.
1:14
if the result is that people of certain religious persuasions are not permitted to work as pharmacists in quebec, i would consider that a just outcome.
i think it's imperative that quebeckers get the point across that pharmacists that insist on enforcing their arbitrary religious opinions on others are not welcome to work as pharmacists in quebec.
1:17
clayton was a sporadic visitor at the occupy ottawa encampment, and i remember having a discussion with him on a park bench in confederation park. i did not know who he was, nor did i realize he was nearly 70, but he stood out due to his age, regardless.
reference:
"canadian civil rights lawyer and activist clayton ruby has died", cp24, aug 3, 2022
6:30
those kids don't know who rodney dangerfield was, either.
he's right - fuck the boomers. it's time to move on.
6:59
Eliadis added that despite women's rights and secularism being integral parts of Quebec society, a patient can still be refused medical services because of a health-care provider's personal convictions.
that is a problem in the legal framework of the country. that is something that needs to change, and potentially may require altering the constitution in order to correct.
in a truly secular society, nobody would be refused services due to a health-care provider's individual arbitrary religious opinions. as a customer, i don't fucking care what the pharmacist's arbitrary religious opinions are. that should be of no relevance to society, and should not be a barrier to access to care.
if a pharmacist has arbitrary religious opinions that prevent it from doing it's job in a secular society, the legal framework should facilitate that pharmacist being removed from that position as easily as possible, with as minimal barriers as possible. the fact that the law puts up barriers to this rational course of action is an affront upon justice and a barrier to the full embrace of a secular society, which is the political goal of a majority of canadians and what the legal framework in the country should be designed to facilitate as an outcome.
i would encourage quebec to set the way forward in changing their laws to ensure that it's commitment to secularism is no longer being corrupted by the arbitrary religious opinions of individual pharmacists and set the rest of the country on a path towards a full embrace of secularism.
in the mean time, quebeckers and canadians should boycott companies that insist on refusing to commit fully to enforcing full secularism in their stores, in an attempt to politically pressure them into doing so, as a form of activism.
you may disagree with me. that's fine - we'll have to fight about that. we're not on the same side. the forces of secularism and irreligion intend to win and vanquish religion from society once and for all.
no rights for the religious in canada.
reference:
"can quebec pharmacists legally refuse to prescribe the morning-after pill?", cbc news, aug 6, 2022
11:35
i don't want to live in a "multicultural society" where arbitrary religious opinions are legislated above the law. that's a definition of backwardsness.
i want to live in a post-cultural society where religion is marginalized as an irrelevant opinion, and secularism, in the french conception, is the law of the land.
i don't care if you would prefer multiculturalism - i care what i want and i will fight for the country i want to live in. i will seek to defeat you and your values at every opportunity, and i intend to be victorious in this struggle.
there are many, many, many more people like me. i represent the future. we will change the society to reflect the freedom we want, we will not be dragged down by the value systems of the past.
11:50
do i think a judge in quebec would rule that a pharmacist's arbitrary religious opinions in a public access store are more important than a patient's access to care?
i don't.
not today.
nor do i think a federal judge would overturn it on appeal.
the recent rulings suggest that churches have to abide by pandemic regulations. if arbitrary religious opinions are not in force in places of worship, where people choose to go out of their own volition, it makes no sense to think they would be in force in a public access pharmacy. a private access pharmacy may have a different result, and the definition may be blurry, but jean coutou is not an ambiguous case. this is a big chain store.
jean coutou would and should be ordered to ensure that access to care is available in it's stores at all times, at it's own cost. so, that claimed right to an arbitrary religious opinion at the expense of the rights of others would be and perhaps will be correctly oakesed out.
11:56
if you look into the history of it, there was a lot of resistance to the inclusion of the so-called right to an arbitrary religious opinion in the constitution, which was insisted upon by extremely conservative premiers like peter lougheed and opposed by people with better sense, including trudeau and chretien. this was a sticking point - it was not in the initial drafts, and the liberals fought hard to keep it out, before caving in to it in the end. the other points of contention were the notwithstanding clause and the equally absurd idea of "property rights", which the liberals successfully kept out of the final drafts (partly as a part of a compromise that led to the inclusion of the so-called right to an arbitrary religious opinion. so, they traded this goofy idea of "religious rights" for acceptance of the exclusion of "property rights".).
that was a mistake - they should have held out and insisted on not passing the bill with this so-called right to an arbitrary religious opinion and they should have resisted the call for the notwithstanding clause.
now, as it is, the left has unfinished business in removing this stupid idea of a so-called right to an arbitrary religious opinion from the legal framework of the country, as it should have never been entered into it in the first place. i will pick up that torch and carry on that struggle. secularism will prevail, in the end.
12:14
not giving a fuck about your stupid arbitrary religious opinions means exactly that - you can wail at a wall or chant a spell at a statue or talk to yourself in the mirror all you want, and as long as you aren't hurting anybody, i don't care, even if i think you should be clinically diagnosed as insane. but, you have to keep it to yourself.
a civilized society cannot make space for silly beliefs to overturn facts, or for arbitrary religious opinions to interfere with the rights of others. it's just an incoherent, backwards idea that must be done away with as aggressively as possible.
the law should treat these arbitrary religious opinions as what they are - superstitions, myths, legends and poorly thought through deductions that cannot be taken seriously when weighed against facts and science.
12:18
this idea that trudeau is secretly castro's son....it might seem obvious that i shouldn't lower myself to discussing this, but i want to draw attention to the actual truth of it.
trudeau's paternity has, in truth, long been an open question. his father seems to have passed over him. nor does he look much like the elder trudeau, at all.
if the argument is that trudeau doesn't look much like pierre, he doesn't look any more like fidel, so that doesn't resolve the quandry. but, what i want to draw attention to is that the actual issue is his mother, margaret.
for all margaret's public drunken exploits, which are relatively easily explained by a suppression of her urges in the context of what was in truth quite obviously an arranged marriage, she actually seems to have been very conservative, as an individual. there is a long-standing rumour that she had some kind of an unclear relationship with the opposition leader, brian mulroney, and trudeau's odd deference to mulroney (which has not been acknowledged) suggests he saw him as some kind of authority figure. there are good sources that explain that margeret would often show up on mulroney's door step in the middle of the night when she got in a fight with pierre, and the rest of it is supposition and hearsay.
i would think that margaret trudeau would have despised fidel castro and that the relationship is unlikely for that reason.
but, margaret's conservatism seems to have led her to having an interest in islam and there is some evidence that she had a relationship with the aga khan, which trudeau seems to have made great efforts to try to meet. is it the case that trudeau loosk like he may have partial iranian genetic ancestry, though? in truth, it is the case that he does. do you remember the meme with the afghan comic?
the castro theory makes no sense; the aga khan theory makes quite a bit of sense.
understanding why trudeau is so conservative relative to his father has a lot to do with understanding how conservative his mother is and the fact that he was raised by his mother rather than his father.
so, this idea that trudeau is a communist because he's castro's son that is being promoted by demagogues and being repeated by idiots like rogan fundamentally misunderstands where trudeau is on the spectrum, and the actual reasons for it. if the idea is that trudeau is secretly a communist because his father was one, there is no evidence of such a thing in his behaviour or his policies. but, the fact that trudeau is by far the most conservative prime minister in the country's history, when presented in light of his mother being a conservative, and the potentiality that he may have been fathered by an affair his conservative mother had with a religous muslim, does a lot to explain why trudeau is what he is - and why he was rejected by his father.
13:07
this is the current aga khan as a young man:
he looks far more like justin trudeau than pierre trudeau does, or than fidel castro does.
13:12
how i installed arch linux to my dell 3120 chromebook
this has taken a little longer than i wanted, but i think i got it.
in the mean time, i want to point out that i caught a 37 degree reading when i was biking yesterday. that would not have included humidity, but it would have included direct sunlight. this was not anywhere close to downtown, but was rather about 20 km away from downtown, in a suburban area. the official reading yesterday was only 30 degrees, which is a comfortable but not a hot temperature reading; 37, on the other hand, is certainly a hot day, by any standards.
while some variation in a city is normal, the location of the reading at the windsor airport is repeatedly not remotely reflective of the actual temperatures being felt in the city of windsor itself and, while i've repeatedly suggested this isn't a mistake, i need to nonetheless aggressively suggest that the thermometer be relocated so that it's picking up a more accurate reading. if this is being done intentionally, it is utterly irresponsible and needs to immediately stop; if this is not being done intentionally but is merely the result of human error, the point needs to be gotten across that a more than five degree mistake, in context, could have a tragic result. telling people that it's 30 degrees out when it's actually above 35 degrees out could cause them to make very bad decisions that could lead to hospitalization or death.
i greatly enjoy the 40+ degree humidity, but even i was feeling it yesterday. it might have actually been high 40s with the humidex. the difference between planning for 42 and 49 degrees in humidity could be fatal if people are misled by it.
to be clear, my singular concern here is in advancing my own self-interest - i like the heat. i want you to tell me when it's hot outside so i know when to plan to go out and play, and i don't want to be misled into thinking it's cooler than it is, as i might stay inside, instead; i will miss the opportunity to bike through beautiful, hot days if the forecast lowballs the heat, which is a terrible outcome for me, as a strictly self-interested individual. now, i'm wondering if i missed some beautiful, hot biking days because the inaccurate forecast said it was only 26 or 27, which would quite rightfully and entirely logically lead me to decide it's not hot enough and i should wait for a warmer day, when it was actually 32 or 33 and i therefore should have gone out to enjoy it. as annoyed as i have every right to be about such things, that's a trivial concern in comparison to a 70 year old that needs to pick a day to get groceries and goes for a walk in what they think is 30 degree weather, only to find out the hard way that it's actually 40 degree weather.
if this is purposeful manipulation, it's irresponsible and needs to stop. if it's an accidentally consistently bad reading due to a poorly placed thermometer, it needs to be corrected before somebody gets killed.
for most of windsor yesterday, and i rode through a fair amount of it in the late afternoon, the 37 degree reading was more accurate than the 30 degree reading.
so, let me begin by pointing out the hardware i'm using.
june 13, 2022
i'm going to throw a caveat out there regarding what i'm going to do with this dell 3120 chromebook, which has recently expired.
if you're going to invest the time and energy (and money, i suppose) into converting an expired chromebook into a linux laptop, you should do research into the specs, first. i learned that doing pre-research. some of the devices just expiring now will have 1-2 gb of ram, and processor speeds as low as 1.2 ghz.
this particular dell laptop was a bargain, and these 3120s have been known as bargains by savvy users for quite a few years, now. this device is a 2.5 ghz dual core processor with 4 gb of ram, which is perhaps nothing fancy, but is nothing to sneeze at, either. my production computer has a dual core processor at 3.6 ghz with 4 gb of ram, for comparison - and my production machine is 32-bit. you can still do a lot with a dual core processor and 4 gb of ram, just so long as you pick the right os, which in this case is definitely linux.
the only drawback to these things is that they expire. but, for $100, this will be a steal of a linux laptop. it's hard to compare it to a pinebook because the processors don't line up well, but comparable hps and acers with windows or linux, brand new, are still running over $300, and don't have comparable sound systems. it wasn't what google intended, clearly, but the expiration discount is potentially something for nerds to look forwards to.
6:21
so, if you're going to do this, try to get a chromebook with the maximum amounts of ram and one of the faster processors available. this should be easier starting right about now, as very capable chromebooks are beginning to expire en masse. i was not able to seriously look at this for over a month, as i got very distracted by a number of things, but i did finally get back to it around the 20th of july, and started by following these instructions:
the result was that i bricked the machine and had to create a recovery disk, which set it back to factory settings. however, i need to point out that these chromebooks did not come with factory images on them (they were purchased from a high school in montana and sold for cheap by factory direct), and i actually think this is a helpful step, for that reason, as i suspect that a part of the problem was that the bios wasn't the kind of bios you'd buy in a store but was modified for deployment in the context of the scholastic application. you might get the same issue. so, i'm going to advise that step one is actually to create a recovery disk using the recovery app and reset your chromebook to factory settings, which will require actually logging into your dell.
once you log into your dell, the recovery app should be in your app list and you really just need to follow instructions. you will need an 8 gb or larger usb key, which should only cost a few dollars, nowadays. i ordered a dozen from china a few weeks ago for $30. there are more detailed instructions here:
for now, put that aside.
the next thing you're going to want to do is remove the write protect screw, which has instructions here:
was last update july 23rd?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzp_fmG4QRA
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_Chromebook_11#Hardware
16:17
sunday, august 7, 2022
i'm working on a narrative update parallel to writing the linuxbook walkthrough, which has me rereading the blog starting from the phone update on may 24, and realizing that i'm going to need to rewrite quite a lot of this, so i could potentially take a while.
in the mean time, i want to point out that i caught a 37 degree reading when i was biking yesterday. that would not have included humidity, but it would have included direct sunlight. this was not anywhere close to downtown, but was rather about 20 km away from downtown, in a suburban area. the official reading yesterday was only 30 degrees, which is a comfortable but not a hot temperature reading; 37, on the other hand, is certainly a hot day, by any standards.
while some variation in a city is normal, the location of the reading at the windsor airport is repeatedly not remotely reflective of the actual temperatures being felt in the city of windsor itself and, while i've repeatedly suggested this isn't a mistake, i need to nonetheless aggressively suggest that the thermometer be relocated so that it's picking up a more accurate reading. if this is being done intentionally, it is utterly irresponsible and needs to immediately stop; if this is not being done intentionally but is merely the result of human error, the point needs to be gotten across that a more than five degree mistake, in context, could have a tragic result. telling people that it's 30 degrees out when it's actually above 35 degrees out could cause them to make very bad decisions that could lead to hospitalization or death.
i greatly enjoy the 40+ degree humidity, but even i was feeling it yesterday. it might have actually been high 40s with the humidex. the difference between planning for 42 and 49 degrees in humidity could be fatal if people are misled by it.
to be clear, my singular concern here is in advancing my own self-interest - i like the heat. i want you to tell me when it's hot outside so i know when to plan to go out and play, and i don't want to be misled into thinking it's cooler than it is, as i might stay inside, instead; i will miss the opportunity to bike through beautiful, hot days if the forecast lowballs the heat, which is a terrible outcome for me, as a strictly self-interested individual. now, i'm wondering if i missed some beautiful, hot biking days because the inaccurate forecast said it was only 26 or 27, which would quite rightfully and entirely logically lead me to decide it's not hot enough and i should wait for a warmer day, when it was actually 32 or 33 and i therefore should have gone out to enjoy it. as annoyed as i have every right to be about such things, that's a trivial concern in comparison to a 70 year old that needs to pick a day to get groceries and goes for a walk in what they think is 30 degree weather, only to find out the hard way that it's actually 40 degree weather.
if this is purposeful manipulation, it's irresponsible and needs to stop. if it's an accidentally consistently bad reading due to a poorly placed thermometer, it needs to be corrected before somebody gets killed.
for most of windsor yesterday, and i rode through a fair amount of it in the late afternoon, the 37 degree reading was more accurate than the 30 degree reading.
7:53
the 37 degree reading was on the electronic board of the ecole secondaire l'essor on st gregory's rd, in tecumseh.
8:04
it may be of little consolation to point out that the russians want to capture (parts of) what we call ukraine, they don't want to destroy it. this is fundamentally different than what the americans did in iraq, for example; the americans really didn't want a permanent occupation of iraq, they wanted to install a puppet government and leave. while it's not entirely clear how the russians intend to administer the historically russian regions of what we call southern and eastern ukraine, it's clear enough that they don't intend to dismantle their military bases, and they intend to incorporate the region into some kind of russian-led confederation.
so, while they're certainly breaking things, the reality is that they've gone to much greater lengths to try not to than other powers have in recent wars.
it's been clear for quite a long time now that there really have been ukrainian soldiers - many of them with extreme right-wing politics - hiding in these hospitals and opera houses getting blown up. you can argue the russians should have been more patient, but the basic premised that they're targeting fighters hiding in civilian regions has been clear enough for a long time.
amnesty international are the experts here, not the propagandists being cited in the article; amnesty debunks them, they don't corroborate amnesty. but, these are the kind of reports that western governments have been trying to avoid, as it suggests the media is beginning to lose it's naivete. if you're approaching this from the chomsky/herman angle rather than the "they're all run by the cia" approach (the truth, today, in 2022, is somewhere in between), the ability for the state to cultivate self-censorship is fundamental to the state being able to utilize the war for jingoistic purposes, which is what it's been doing: the reason we're fighting this the way we're fighting it is in an attempt to inculcate a concept of patriotism that evaporated after iraq and that democrats have been trying to get back ever since.
the fastest way to end this is to stop arming ukraine. the russians are going to win. it's a question of how long it takes and how many people have to die - and whether you think it taking a long time and a lot of people dying as in nato's national interest, or not.
once the foundation starts to crack, it's impossible to seal it; when the moral brainwashing starts to falter, we've already lost.
reference:
"human rights groups criticized some ukrainian war actions. experts say they should be taken seriously", cbc news, aug 7 2022
8:57
monday, august 8, 2022
it wasn't quite as hot yesterday, but it was in a lot of ways the same day. i got in late after doing some shopping.
i'm a huge fan of this weather and wish it lasted all year. as it is, i'm trying to get a lot of bicycling done to avoid wasting it.
it's probably going to rain today, so i'm probably in. we'll see.
i'm going to try to get most of the write-up done.
6:51
as i've been sorting through posts from the last few weeks, i'm once again realizing that there's a large amount of evidence that some external entity is editing this site without my permission, but i can't figure out how to prove that they're doing it. i keep changing my password. there's no evidence of unwanted activity in the google logs. i can't find original copies of the posts anywhere - not in email and not in various archives, which i have backed up in multiple locations. either i'm playing tricks on myself, which is what i'm supposed to think, or i'm dealing with something that is far deeper than i realized, and suggests some kind of collusion between government and google. some entity somewhere is going to great lengths to edit my writing, and then prevent me from proving it's happening.
are we at the point where we type things into our teleprompter and the orwellian machinery changes it, in such a way we can never prove, or even truly identify?
i can't prove that any of the editing that i'm sure is happening is actually happening, all i can do is repeatedly point out that the posts are consistently different from what i remember writing, and try to develop motives out of the edits, as best as i can reconstruct them from memory.
i'm going to have to rewrite everything, much of it from scratch. that means i have to do it in a linear order. there's no other answer. the question is trying to figure out where to start, so i can move forwards linearly and rewrite everything, word by word, as i undo all of this data corruption.
where did i leave off? with the loose ends earlier in the year? with the alter-reality from late last year? with the gear run throughs from last year?
do you know where i left off, really?
i left off in early 2018, when i started archiving posts for the period disc, with a completion date in 2020, which is now in 2030. substantive alter-reality posts need to converge for a 2026 date. i made a choice to put that aside and just focus on the actual recording, for the reason that i can always do this typing from a homeless shelter, in the absolute worst case, which is true. but, fuck. the lack of data integrity makes everything impossible, and it's all relative to actors and events i don't even really care about, that i just type up scattered thoughts about for fun. these political actors are obsessed with controlling this data because it contradicts their messaging, and i wish i had realized that earlier, as i wouldn't have bothered. as it is, i didn't start this fight, but i now have no option but to win it.
where are the narratives?
1) 1989, in j's journal
2) 1996, in the alter-reality
3) 2003, when period 3 starts
4) 2013, where this picks up, as a liner note for releases from 2013-2018
5) 2018, when i stopped recording for temporary archiving (liner note building)
6) 2021, when i tried to restart, and ended up winning too many legal battles, and opened too many loose thoughts
7) 2022, now
this is a fair amount of work, and trying to do it all at the same time is fairly difficult.
i know i have to start from the start and move forward.
what is the end goal? the end goal is the blu ray.
if i'm back to having two workstations, i should be able to do those two things together:
1) liner notes, starting in 1989 and moving forward:
1) 1989, in the old alter-reality (journl)
2) 1996, in the secondary alter-reality (first blogspot)
4) 2013, where this picks up, as a liner note for releases from 2013-2018
5) 2018, when i stopped recording for temporary archiving (liner note building)
& 2) finishing period 3,
3) 2003, when period 3 starts
6) 2021, when i tried to restart, and ended up winning too many legal battles, and opened too many loose thoughts
7) 2022, now
that means going back not to the loose ends and not to the journal and not to the gear buying but actually back to the cleaning phase in early 2021, when i put the food blog aside.
from 1996-2003, i was actually pretty focused. from 2003-2013, it was a lot of unformed ideas. from 2013-2018, i was again very focused. from 2018-2022 i have not been.
while i'm not happy about the persistent, unwanted corruption inserting itself into the data over the last few months, i have to utilize a rational process to systemically correct it or it will never get done correctly.
let me get back to building the linux narrative, then. they don't seem to care about that kind of thing, it's the politics and history that are upsetting deep state actors, and my analysis of justin trudeau's character, specifically, that keeps being altered and censored.
8:36
there's a narrative in the mainstream media about how biden is winning all of a sudden.
well, he's certainly succeeded in passing some legislation, but, as a left-wing voter, i wouldn't consider any of this legislation to be victories for my own voting interests. i broadly oppose gun control as an illegitimate use of state power, but i don't actually really care, and i don't consider it a ballot question. this "inflation reduction act", which is named after the right-wing lie that government spending is responsible for inflation and that government policy therefore has some kind of make-believe ability to reduce inflation, appears to be your typical corporate welfare bill, marketed as something that should have been passed in obama's first term.
i don't see any reason to think this bill is going to reduce emissions, and i wouldn't expect that to be an outcome of the bill. i would expect the primary outcome of the bill to be an increase in offshore drilling.
so, perhaps biden's agenda is winning battles, but biden's agenda is the agenda of the corporatocracy, and not the agenda of working people or of climate activists. in very real terms, a victory for biden is a defeat for the country, a defeat for the left and a defeat for the climate.
i cannot vote for biden, but the passage of these bills gives me more reasons to vote for a third party like the greens or socialists and less reasons to vote for the democrats. if this is the best that a democrat-controlled washington can produce, it is not remotely good enough for my support, as a voter or as an activist.
17:00
the way the government claims it's going to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030 is via tax cuts.
that claim is retarded; if that's all they're doing, the expected outcome will be increases in emissions.
democrats that voted for this bill simply voted for another bill that lower taxes, at the expense of all kinds of valid public policy.
17:06
there is a reigning ideology in washington that government is not allowed to interfere in the private sector. so long as that ideology remains in place, the entire concept of government will be unnecessary - the senate, congress and white house are merely wasting tax money, by existing at all.
that money would be better reallocated away from a government with a structural defect that it doesn't think it has a mandate to do anything except repress citizens by passing draconian laws.
the united states would be better off with no government at all at this point.
17:12
the key provision in this bill is that biden is reversing a moratorium put in place by donald trump on offshore gas production.
that's right: biden is undoing an environmental policy enacted by trump. that's the beef of the bill.
some win.
17:16
"This is the most significant action we’ve taken on climate, that we will take on climate and clean energy, ever,” - Tina Smith
nice to see she has aspirations.
ok - we've got tax incentives in place, now. the climate is fixed. that solves that problem.
what small-minded buffoonery.
17:25
the sad truth is that, if we allow this to count as a "victory", she will be right, that this is the extent of what government will do to solve the climate crisis: cut taxes.
that cannot be seen as a victory.
that cannot even be presented as policy; that's a joke.
17:27
the takeaway is that the democrats are a part of the problem, and not a part of the solution, and the democratic coalition will need to be dismantled to even begin to think about approaching any sort of solutions.
stop voting for them.
17:29
the congress should really leave the process of developing jokes to experts like me.
i'm funny. they're not.
17:31
17:33
i think marriage is a religious idea and that, under the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state, there should be no government regulation of marriage at all.
as such, i would support the appeal of all marriage related legislation - including but not limited to the defense of marriage act - with no replacement legislation, at all. the preferred outcome is no federal legislation related to marriage, of any sort.
i would then support bringing the elimination of marriage from government regulation to the state level, and eventually to the municipal level.
the proper replacement to marriage legislation would be the expansion of insurance to universal coverage. i understand that the primary reason that people want an expansion of the legal definition of marriage is to allow for the expansion of health insurance coverage. i don't think this is the right way to expand access to healthcare - you shouldn't have to get married to get health insurance, that's absurd.
i would support the application of these principles to canadian law, as well. marriage is a religious idea that has no place in a truly secular society. the end goal should be the elimination of marriage, not the expansion of it.
19:35
the concept of marriage should be left behind as a relic of the feudal past.
19:38
the tax code should also be overhauled to ensure that people that cohabit with each other are taxed separately.
if people want to hold property in common, it should be treated as a co-operative, legally. there should not be religious restrictions on the matter, and the gender or sexual orientation of the people involved should not be inquired about, by the law. siblings, sexual partners, friends or strangers should be permitted to own property in common as they wish, and the rules should be the same for all of them.
19:44
it follows that i oppose gay marriage for the reason that i support the abolition of marriage, instead.
19:45
if people really want to get dressed up and have some phoney in some robes mumble something and sprinkle some herbs on their foreheads, that's up to them, but it should have no legal relevance or consequence.
the law should not recognize the validity of any marriage performed under any scenario at all.
19:50
teenage head are in the news, and being referenced as a punk band. that's news to me.
i would consider them a pop band. new wave might vaguely apply, but classic rock is a better term. you could argue they were early alternative rock.
but, punk needs to have a political component, or it is not punk, and they were not political.
21:10
i would consider them boring corporate rock music for fat bikers with bad politics, frankly.
21:12
they had a bit of a bowie-influence glam streak, but they belong in the same genre as steppenwolf.
21:23
this one goes out dustin lee hiles.
q: are you not men and women of faith?
a: you are socons!
22:43
tuesday, august 9, 2022
hey, my odsp got renewed.
if it turns out to be the case, it's entirely subconscious, and i'd never be able to isolate the variable; correlation is not necessarily causation, and it could be coincidence.
but, i suspect there's some underlying stress release attached to this.
i don't know if my existing living arrangement is stable or not. i think the property owner is...listen, i'm usually home and i pay my rent on time. the place is clean. i'm not loud. if anything, i'm frequently bitching at him to clean and renovate. he doesn't seem to be religious. however, he's hinted at maybe needing more space.
i think it might be a bluff, or a projection that doesn't pan out. but, we'll see.
the government has decreased the frequency of review, so this could be good for 10 years or more. we'll have to see.
1:49
it wasn't ford that went after odsp recipients, it was his psychopathic minister, lisa mcleod, who has since been demoted. she was talking about completely eliminating disability, which would have cost a fortune in other costs, including running shelters and jails. it was entirely retarded.
ford's election platform was to do a thorough "review" of public funding (he used the term "line-by-line") and find ways to save money. while i haven't seen a complete report, the murmurs seem to be that the analysis is that the government is better off saving money on what conservatives call "red tape", rather than on reducing benefits. so, there has been some concern about layoffs of social workers, but he actually ran on increasing odsp rates.
so, the idea is that they'll save more money by doing less reviews than by throwing people off the dole, and that's actually no doubt correct. that's actually the kind of smart analysis we expect from liberals, around here.
whatever it is, it seems like the language in the letter suggests i may have been put on permanent status. that is, i might not hear anything from them until i'm almost 65, which is a little over 20 years from now. then, i'll have successfully evaded labour for most of my adult life.
i wrote them an essay asking for that, and it seems like i got it. great.
2:05
the author of doug ford's social assistance policy appears to be david graeber. like, no shit.
2:07
they give me $15,000/yr. less, acutally.
the social worker that signs the checks makes $100,000/yr.
how does a smart administrator save money, here?
2:10
it's possible i just fell through a hole left open by a distracted government, but i don't think so. we'll see what happens.
2:12
when i was a kid, i had a friend of mine that used to always tell me "you always find a way out, but you can't beat the system in the end. you can't beat the system! you can't!".
well?
i still got 20 years to work that out - he might be right, still. but, i'm winning, so far.
2:23
i graduated university in 2006, worked a job for a few months, got a large severance package from microsoft, worked some part time jobs for a few months and went back to school in 2008.
i have been employed full time for less than a year of my life.
2:29
i beat the system, but i haven't won the game yet.
there's a paypal donate button on the side.
it just takes one transfer from one rich person.
2:37
you know, i haven't received an order to pay this ticket in the mail, yet.
i'm going to call to look into that.
i have called several time and i've yet to receive an acceptable response from the court staff at the court of appeal who, once again, are discriminating against me because i'm self-represented. that's not going to work - that's going to make my case stronger. there is a 100% chance that the case will be filed, no matter who i have to yell at to get it done. i'm going to have to do that this morning.
but, why haven't i received the fine in the mail yet?
7:59
the arrogance and ignorance of the court staff is pathetic, but the issue is systemic.
these idiots are a bunch of flunkies - and you can tell, talking to them, and by the way they treat other people that they think are less educated than they are.
any actual half-ways intelligent person will refrain from making assumptions about somebody based on what they think is their education level. they didn't even ask me what my legal education was - they just assumed i have no legal education because i'm self-represented.
that is not intelligent; that is retarded behaviour. but it's standardized, and it's just one more thing to fight against and defeat.
8:05
i've pointed this out before.
who works at the courthouse?
people that failed at being lawyers.
8:06
these are insecure, small-minded people that have failed at life and take out their frustrations on people like myself, for the reason that the system teaches them to do so. they're like abusive parents - it's taught behaviour.
i've filed this three times. there was nothing wrong with any of the filings, except that i didn't have a lawyer.
if i have to file it ten times, i will - and i'll start bringing up the procedural justice issue on try 4 or 5.
8:09
these are insecure, small-minded people that have failed at life and take out their frustrations on people like myself, for the reason that the system teaches them to do so. they're like abusive parents - it's taught behaviour.
i've filed this three times. there was nothing wrong with any of the filings, except that i didn't have a lawyer.
if i have to file it ten times, i will - and i'll start bringing up the procedural justice issue on try 4 or 5.
9:33
could liberal republicans win seats in california this cycle?
there's parts of california where liberal republicans could beat "progressive" democrats, yes.
9:34
a longterm consequence of the pandemic may be a generational backlash against the term "progressive".
but, what the kids want is more freedom. they're not conservative republicans, they're liberal democrats looking for some way out of a duopoly that has become far right progressives v further right republicans.
a few liberal republicans could shake things up, sure.
9:37
democrats need to understand this.
they might think they were being responsible, and they may have gotten high marks from the elderly, but this decision to take away everybody's rights could have very well lost them a generation of voters, permanently.
that's not the type of thing people forget as they age. it's defining.
9:42
i argued for months and months to focus pandemic restrictions on the vulnerable and stop restricting everybody else's rights.
9:44
the democrats want to take away your rights is a hard slogan to run against.
9:46
a part of the climate bill is funding for water management, something added at the last minute due to the fact that the west is in a drought. this is more helpful than tax cuts.
the relevant state apparatus needs to understand that water on this planet is a closed system. what that means is that if rain is not falling in the rockies, it is falling somewhere else, like kentucky. this seems to have been a regional block grant, in intent, but that's missing the point.
rivers don't run dry; not exactly. rather, rivers change directions. all rain water ascends to the sky by evaporating from the earth, falls to the ground and finds it's way into the oceans. when climates change, the patterns of rainfall change and the direction and placement of rivers alters as a result of it.
the rivers in north america are so arterial that it actually seems to be designed, and you have to wonder, really. we know so little about the ancient inhabitants of this place. there was a large indigenous city where st. louis is today, and it was erected on giant mounds in order to account for difficult water management in giant, alluvial flood plains. if there's increased rainfall in kansas and kentucky, that water will flow into the mississippi via the tributaries and along the way undo droughts in illinois and minnesota; if there's less rain in colorado and more rain in arizona and new mexico, the colorado and the rio grande will shift directions to adjust. water is so strongly attracted to itself that it will destroy anything and everything in it's path as it plunges towards uniting with it's greater whole. this is a great example of the inherent destructiveness of collectivism. so, call it a fatal attraction, but we're going to either need to adjust to it or get out of it's way.
we haven't lived here long enough to know if eastern north america experiences the same kind of periodic redirection in the river systems that occur in northern china, and that routinely destroys cities and kills thousands of people. the archaeological record in the middle of the continent strongly suggests that the civilizations that previously lived here collapsed directly due to the fact that they didn't have the technology required to control the flow of water around their settlements. we certainly have the technology and the engineering knowledge required to react, but we lack the democratic and communistic political system required to work together to solve problems. the bankers in new york aren't going to fix the water system in the west, or not without a down payment. they will let the people there burn, dehydrate and starve, unless there's some kind of return on the investment. that's how the political system in the united states operates: government maximizes profit for shareholders, and anybody not in that profit-maximizing equation is simply left for dead. there are no mechanisms to build systems that serve the community for the purpose of serving the community. thatcher was right: in america, society does not exist.
i'm not claiming this is easy; i'm being vague because it's complicated and difficult to predict. but, the water didn't disappear, it shifted to somewhere else. rivers are not static entities to be protected from change, they are dynamic systems that constantly evolve and change direction and volume based on constantly fluctuating input variables and humans therefore need to be constantly adjusting to how those rivers change volume and direction, and not seeking to protect them as pristine projections of our own delusional imaginations. all advanced civilizations have understood this. so, modern, integrated water management needs to mean resource sharing across the entire country, in order to adjust to rivers changing course, and water changing paths - as rivers do change course and water does change paths. there are counter-examples, but most rivers on this planet have not existed in the same place for millions of years, but are actually constantly evolving, living systems that are drastically different today than they were a few hundred years ago.
as some rivers disappear, others will appear out of nowhere. but the total amount of rainfall should remain roughly constant. we can adapt to this, if we're smart; if we're not, we will die.
18:20
wednesday, august 10, 2022
we really need to abolish diplomatic immunity.
nobody should be above the law in canada.
as it is, i would call for the immediate permanent deportation of the criminal in question.
reference:
"diplomat involved in gatineau police altercation was in legal dispute with landlord", cbc news, aug 8, 2022
0:08
is this the first vaporwave record?
1:44
electric rendezvous was at about the same as the devo instrumental record, but it has too many live instruments to be vaporware.
that said, if you kids haven't seen this video from the following record, you really must.
if you don't know who that guy is, it's because he plays guitar, and you don't have guitars anymore.
he is broadly considered the best guitarist of all time.
1:59
you know who al had playing drums for him on that record, right?
2:08
i think you have to mention the ymo, but devo was actually before the ymo.
i mean, that particular record was after ymo had released a few, but that devo video was based on a demo from about 1973, which was when kraftwerk was doing weird, boring shit (and, it was weird boring shit). i wouldn't consider tangerine dream to fit the definition, either.
there's a handful of composer types to cite earlier than that, like morton subotnick, but that doesn't really count, either.
so, i think it's either devo or ymo, and there's probably some serious discourse, there. but, if anything, the ymo is too serious - devo actually nailed the irony of vaporware, before there was anything to parody.
2:28
so, i've switched to scotch bonnets from thai chilis and what am i thinking?
the scotch bonnets have a sort of a delayed reaction while i'm chopping them, so i don't have the same quasi-allergic reaction, which includes immediate nose runs and sneezing fits. this is a lot more enjoyable, for obvious reasons. what happens, instead, is a few sneezes a few minutes later, after i've washed the oils off with dish soap.
i also like the fact that the scotch bonnets are little red peppers, as opposed to the thai chilis, which are these wormy looking things that dry out and are hard to de-seed and chop (although that's actually the opposite of the truth, as scotch bonnets are a different species than bell peppers and thai chilis are the same species, just a different cultivar). de-seeding and chopping a scotch bonnet is exactly the same process as de-seeding and chopping a bell pepper.
the result is that the scotch bonnets are actual pepper chunks in your salad, and the thai chilis are almost like adding a dried up spice.
as the scotch bonnets are more like actual peppers (despite that being evolutionarily and cladistically incorrect), they pull more nutrients into them. the larger surface area means they get more vitamins. the red pepper is the nutritional centre of my salad; you don't find many food items that have more of a total nutritional profile than the humble red pepper, and i've done the research on this. so, tossing in an extra little red pepper is just giving me that much more a, c, b9 and minerals, including iron. it may not be necessary, but i'm liking this. i've already decided that i can't replace the cayenne powder with live peppers, but i still like having the live pepper, regardless.
taste wise, i find that the scotch is a drier hot and the chilis bring out the vinegar in the other pepper ingredients (red pepper, cayenne powder, paprika, frank's). that might undo itself, but that's the drawback, for now. i'm consequently not tasting the scotch's heat; if anything, it seems less spicy, although i realize that's not true.
so, there is some chance that i'll go back, but i'm actually considering adding both the thai peppers and the scotch bonnets.
6:58
i don't cook my kale because it destroys the vitamins and advise that you don't either. but, i do eat it with a fat-based dressing and advise it for absorption. eating kale with meat defeats the point.
but, i think they're right about the temperature. i keep my kale at the very back of the fridge, and then chop it into tiny little pieces rather than cook it. it's not frozen, exactly, but it's kept very cold. i've never had an issue with tough kale and am not sure what they're talking about. the chopping helps with absorption without destroying the vitamin c.
whether you are eating lettuce, spinach or any other green, the thing you're probably doing wrong is serving it in the form of leaves and then trying to chew your way through it. you want to chop all of your greens up into the smallest pieces possible. you might even consider using a blender, but i'm avoiding that.
7:09
the way i eat the stems is that i separate them from the leaves upon purchase (i actually dry the leaves before i store them at the back of the fridge, because the grocery stores keep them annoyingly wet) and put them in a covered tupperware container (i leave the leaves uncovered). i then essentially eat the stalks like celery, but i also cut them up into small pieces.
7:14
controlling the flow of water is fundamental to the existence of civilization. civilizations that cannot alter the flow of water do not survive - and the indigenous civilizations of north america are the best example of it.
they were not successful living here. we need to learn from their mistakes, not repeat them. the inability to control the flow of water was their biggest mistake and their primary point of failure.
my position is pretty stark: people that oppose water management in the form of dams and hydro plants are simply complete idiots that must be condemned as buffoons and thoroughly ignored. there are some positions that cannot be entertained as serious, and this is one of them.
8:56
rivers are not static objects to be protected from corruption by the outside world. that is ignorant and absurd.
rivers are evolving, dynamic systems that are constantly changing direction and volume. if we don't decide how the river will change it's direction, the river will decide for us, and we might not like the outcome.
what will not happen is the river remaining the same into perpetuity; there is a 100% chance that the river will alter itself.
that leave us with the choice to alter it, or let it alter itself, and refraining from asserting control over the river when we can - when we need to - is consequently simple foolishness, rooted in the delusions of naturalistic fallacies.
9:02
given that rivers are constantly shifting and reforming, they are constantly destroying themselves - constantly flooding, constantly uprooting trees, constantly redesigning habitats.
there's no logical reason why engineering a river ought to be more damaging than letting it re-engineer itself. it might be, if it's planned poorly. or, it might be beneficial to the region, if it's designed well.
i have little doubt that humans are capable of designing more sustainable ecosystems than the violence and randomness of sudden geological change. but, we have to put our minds to it.
i am an environmentalist, but i'm not a naturalist, i'm not a conservative and i'm not a fucking stupid hippie. science will help us. it's our only chance out; if we demonize the engineering, the only solution we have, we will die.
9:09
modern engineering takes biological and ecological systems into account, and that's been true now for decades. it's not perfect, and it will never be, but it's more perfect than an act of god, and has been for a long time.
9:10
we don't lack technological or scientific advancement, we lack a functioning political system, and a functioning society.
9:11
i understand that there are people out there that believe in god.
they cannot be allowed to make decisions at so important a juncture in history.
9:21
the yellow river has shifted by hundreds of km, and in sudden events. it's been catastrophic.
we really don't know if the colorado or rio grande have shifted directions like that. there's been some minor shifting around el paso that has actually altered the border with mexico.
however, the geography is not entirely dissimilar, and a dramatic shift in the river might help explain why civilizations on this continent have historically had short time frames.
9:46
i do hope that the supreme court declines to hear the brian day case.
that would send the message that the issue is settled, as i believe it is.
unfortunately, it would seem that there are political actors that think the law will be overturned, and are waiting for that outcome. hearing the case will drag this process out. refusing to hear the case will refocus the system on funding, which was the intent of the ruling that created a two-tier system in quebec.
the court should realize that private sector actors will take any hole in the ruling as an excuse to find a way in, and that governments at both the provincial and federal level are waiting for that. the last supreme court issue on the decision made the naive assumption otherwise, and it had a result the court did not intend for. simply refusing to hear the case is the safest, fastest way to send the message to politicians that they need to increase funding, which is what the court intended to do last time, and failed to do.
23:40
thursday, august 11, 2022
what's the update on my teeth?
the dentist is insisting i pay him $100, which is a non-starter. so, i'm going to need to find a new dentist, but i'm going to wait until early next year.
after the last cleaning on the 30th of june, i started noticing that the chewing surfaces on my back molars were starting to get a little bit sensitive when i ate crunchy foods. the cause and effect from the cleaning was pretty clear. what happened is that the hygienist misunderstood what the discolouration on the chewing surfaces was; she thought that the sealant in the back was calcification, and in the process opened it up a little bit, by trying to clean it off. that created some sensitivity on the inside of the tooth.
while this was technically a mistake on her behalf, i actually think it's a net positive. i'm only realizing that this is sealant, now, and i know now that what happens when you apply sealant to teeth is that you lock in bacteria, which creates cavities. so, what the dentist did to my teeth in 2013 was an algorithm to create a paying customer that would come back for more work.
dentists are crooks with phds. i should have never gotten that work done; at the least, i should have done research on it before it was done. it looked good for a while, but it created a huge amount of irreversible damage.
so, i essentially have this plastic goop on my back molars that has potentially locked bacteria in under them, and that is a serious liability. i want this stuff off my teeth as soon as possible, but i don't want to drill it out.
what i'm using is dish soap, and it is working in both senses: the discolouration is brushing off, and the sensitivity is leaving along with any infection that may exist within it. what's going to happen is that any infection should be killed by the soap, as it deteriorates the plastic, but it might unfortunately leave somewhat of a hole in it's place, which is a cavity. i'm going to try to fill it in with calcium hydroxyapatite, but i'm not very confident about it. i mean, we'll see what happens. my x-rays were good, so i don't know if the sealant really did any damage or not. if it hasn't done any damage yet, i could escape any serious harm. if there's something in there under the plastic, all i can do is get it out of there as fast as possible, and try to minimize any further erosion.
i don't want to see another dentist until i'm sure that i have that under control.
the thing i wanted from the last dentist was a good cleaning, and i got it. in the process, i learned that the discolouration was stains and not cavities, but also that much of it could not be removed via any easy process. so, they're "just" stains, but there's no easy way to remove them. that means that the teeth cleanings are less important than i thought.
i think i'm better off getting the sealant off myself than letting a dentist do it, so i'm going to focus on that first and see if i want to let another dentist touch my teeth again after that.
2:05
it's a good test of the use of calcium hydroxyapatite to remineralize small holes.
if there are holes under the sealant, they are not big, or they would have shown up in the x-rays, and they did not. eroding the sealant is a gradual process. if i'm able to clean it with the dish soap, and gradually fill it in, i could save those teeth from bad work by a bad dentist.
if i just open up holes in my teeth, i should at least get the bacteria out - the dish soap should at least kill the pathogens, i am very confident of that. that would have to be less damaging than drilling the sealant out, and i can then let a dentist try to suggest approaches, from there.
2:12
the routine has been as follows:
pre-eating:
- use soft brush with dish soap to clean molars
- use soft brush with novamin fluoride toothpaste to coat molars
post-eating:
- use soft brush with dish soap to clean molars
- use medium brush with novamin fluoride toothpaste to brush molars
i'm still doing fluoride baths and hydroxyapatite baths roughly every second day, on alternating days.
2:16
if you're going to do this, make sure you use an antibacterial dish soap with seriously harsh chemicals in it. that's the point.
and, don't swallow it.
...if you had to be told. you fucking retards.
2:19
somewhat unsurprisingly, farmers know more about farming than elected officials. the farmers are actually right - you'll never reduce emissions by that level without reducing fertilizer use. that doesn't mean i oppose the restrictions in the netherlands, even as i realize how small the netherlands is,
when i hear "we don't want to end up like the netherlands", i'm more likely to imagine ending up underwater than concerns about nitrogen oxide emissions.
fertilizers are not just emitters but also a petroleum product (even "organic" fertilizers), and the question as to how much the rising cost of fertilizers due to inflation in oil may have on food prices, in comparison to costs from trying to avoid fertilizer use, is a complicated one. the minister may have some information to share with the farmers that may be of use to them, in regards to the future of oil-based fertilizers, in a reality where oil is more expensive.
the hard reality is that petroleum-based food production is not sustainable and needs to be phased out in favour of a variety of alternatives, including vertical indoor growing. some large polluting crops, like corn and potatoes, should largely be phased out in favour of crops that are more easily grown indoors, as they are not nutritionally valuable, in addition to being highly polluting.
that said, i would hope that future government policies are directed equally towards meat and non-meat agriculture production. both are large problems, and both need to be addressed.
it's not just about the climate. we're probably passed peak oil. we don't have a choice: we will have to adjust.
reference:
"dutch farmer protests and what's happening in canada, explained", ctv news, aug 10, 2022
3:31
this is an interesting graph, though.
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what is behind this?
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3:36
this isn't agricultural, though, it's total emissions, getting the point across that the primary producer of nitrogen oxide in the country is the tar sands:
the source is worth reading:
it doesn't answer the question.
farmers claim that nitrogen use is up because yields are up, but the primary culprit, then, appears to be british columbia, where the main crop is....
marijuana.
you think that's a joke. it's not.
is that actually it?
3:51
this article is linking it to canola production:
well.
if a 60% increase came from planting more canola, surely we can get a 30% decreasing by planting less canola. canola is not wheat or corn - it's not a food crop, exactly.
these exact targets may be a little easier to hit than i thought, which just means they aren't enough.
i would rather grow less corn than less canola, but it seems like this variety of canola uses a lot of fertilizer to produce something that nobody actually even eats. i'd support attempts to get those numbers down. a lot.
4:01
"she don't know corn from canola"
4:01
i'm doing things, it just doesn't seem like it, and i don't expect to have anything to show for it.
i need to pick it up today, hopefully.
6:23
in canada, it would seem that a good plan to cut emissions from plant-based agriculture - and this doesn't negate the need to reduce methane emissions from livestock, which are a bigger problem, but the nitrogen is a lot worse, by the kg - would be as follows:
1) do we really need fertilizer to grow canola? what i'm getting at is that nobody eats canola. it's just pressed into oil, and a lot of it is used for reasons that don't have to do with food. does it matter if the canola is visually appealing? i'm going to strongly suspect the government is right on this - it's low hanging fruit, but simply reversing canola emissions to what they were 20 years ago would meet the target.
2) we need to eat less corn, anyways. so, we should replace corn with other crops like wheat.
3) likewise for potatoes.
4) while canola, corn and wheat are likely always going to be grown outside, most of the vegetables we want to eat moving forwards with higher nutritional content can and should be grown indoors, which should allow us to recycle nitrogen. this is easy to understand: the nitrogen evaporates from the soil and is captured by devices in the roof, which can then compress it and even re-use it.
plants need nitrogen; we will need to use nitrogen to produce food, and that will not change. but, we should be able to keep nitrogen out of the air by capturing the nitrogen cycle in the facility, the way that a hydroponics system re-uses water.
i did know that canola was a major crop in western canada, but i did not realize the extent of the increase in emissions connected to it's rise as a major crop. you might guess the second biggest crop in canada, behind canola, is wheat. you might not realize that number three is soy, and soy is healthy - we should all be consuming more soy.
6:35
in fact, most nitrous oxide is released by microbes in the soil. this is a waste process - it's nitrogen that gets applied on the soil but doesn't get used by the plant. it is for that reason that a lot of the guidance is to simply use less fertilizer.
but. what that means is that a hydroponic system should have almost no nitrous oxide to capture, because it doesn't have any soil. i'm sure some nitrogen loss will still occur, but the upside of less nitrogen waste is less nitrogen emissions.
in the farms of the future, smart farmers will seek to capture nutrients as much as they can, and nasa is teaching us how to do that. but, if you think it through, it shouldn't be nearly as much of a concern in a hydroponic system because there should't be nearly as much fertilizer waste to begin with.
7:09
see, i'm baffled by this.
i remember re-writing my dec, 2019 analysis of vavilov when i reposted it in jan, 2022. so, my records of the post for 2019, from 2019, should be different than the post as it exists today, and that should be different than the repost in 2022.
bafflingly, they're all the same, and i don't think any of them were the original post.
that would suggest that:
1) somebody altered the version in my email from 2019, which is dated to 2019
2) somebody then put that edited version in the blog
3) somebody then edited the version in two of my email boxes, which are dated to 2022
4) that version ended up in the 2022 post.
the really baffling thing is that the version dated to 2019 at the blog is the same is in the email. that should not be true - they should be substantively different.
so, i'm going to have to rewrite it, and there's not going to be any note, and i'm not going to concern myself with that. i think i have an absolute right to alter my own writing, that the time stamps are not important and that a footnote that indicates altering the writing is not required.
but, this is exceedingly sophisticated - or i'm just tricking myself, but i'm not just tricking myself. this editor is able to manipulate existing messages in my gmail folder, which means they're hacking it at the server level.
my only tactic is resiliency - i need to keep rewriting these posts, and hope the author gives up.
8:27
this memory of rewriting an old post is specific.
i'm not trying to guess what i wrote in 2019. i explicitly remember opening the document in 2022, altering it and reposting it in 2022. yet, it actually seems like the stored version from 2019 was updated to reflect an alteration in 2022, at some point after i reposted it in jan. that is, it seems like the editor took the post from the repost, altered it and then re-inserted it into my email from 2019.
that's crazy. that's somebody with total control over the google servers, or i'm imagining it. but, i'm not imagining it - and i have no way to demonstrate it.
ugh.
8:30
what would you do when faced with this?
8:32
the idea that is being eradicated from the post is that what vavilov is really about is political correctness.
what vavilov says isn't that the correctness precedent is to be eliminated, so much as that it's rude to question whether somebody is correct or not. a more polite way to question authority is to question their reasonableness. so, if something is factually wrong, the review is to argue that it's unreasonable because it's wrong.
that analysis seems to be threatening to the editors, so it therefore must be absolutely correct.
i'm not going to pretend that i remember exactly what i wrote in december 2019 about the new judicial review precedent, but the edits are always incomplete; they may give me enough of my thoughts to realize there's a conclusion without a premise, and i need to reconstruct the premise. they don't tend to remove entire posts, so much as they take out specific paragraphs, probably thinking i've forgotten, which is of course mostly true.
is this serious? am i crazy?
if i find myself unable to follow my own argument, i have to rewrite it, regardless. i can't prove anything. but, the result is the same either way: i have a conclusion without a premise and need to insert a premise.
keep this in mind, though: this idea that vavilov is really about questioning authority appears to be threatening enough that it must be true.
9:20
privatization isn't going to solve the problem, it's the cause of the problem. capitalism does't have anything to do with innovation, that's just propaganda pushed by airheads. innovation is largely the result of socialist industrial policy. we get innovation with government funding for research and development, not with free markets.
the most efficient way to manage scarce resources is through centralization, not through markets. markets will simply create exclusive access to those with capital, while excluding those that don't have capital. that's not a solution to the problem, it's an entrenchment of it.
that's been the result in quebec, which has a public access system that is so neglected as to be impossible to use. the outcomes in quebec are some of the worst in the world. you'd be better off in the united states than in quebec.
so, they're going to use all kinds of stupid language that doesn't have any meaning, and it's going to leave smart people struggling for ways to disassemble it, but the basic point is that a two-tier health care system means you pay your way to the top, or you don't get access to care, and that is deplorable and contemptible barbarism that must be resisted by all means possible.
if they start bringing in for-pay healthcare, activists must take steps to make it impossible to access by physically impeding access to it by blockading it. paying for care cannot be a way to evade resource management in a civilized society, and canadians should not accept that it is. that kind of anti-social behaviour must be met with real consequence and must be shut down with the use of force.
this has been coming for a while, though. it's classic disaster capitalism: they refuse to fund the system, then they claim that privatization will allow access to greater resources. it's complete bullshit based on fantasy world economics.
economic systems don't create resources, they manage them. capitalism developed in a feudal society and is a fundamentally unfair way to manage resources for the reason that the society it developed in had classes of people that were not seen as equal. socialism was designed to address the inequalities inherent within capitalism. neither system can solve the problem of scarce resources, which must be addressed at the root cause. in canada, we're dealing with an overpopulation crisis created by a poorly managed immigration system, coming out of an era where immigration was strictly managed. whether we have socialized or market-based health care will determine how we allocate resources (on a pay-to-access basis or on a needs-first basis), but it won't address the lack of resources that are at the root of the access issues we're experiencing.
the outcome of the shift being proposed is obvious: those with capital will experience shorter wait times because they will pay their way to the front, whereas those without capital will in many cases not be able to access any care at all. that is not a solution to the problem of too few resources to service the society, it is a decision that only the wealthy should have access to care.
canadians won't accept this. but, it may be helpful for the conservatives to play their hand, because they're not honest about where they stand on the issue. the current incarnation of the liberal party has not been honest about this, either.
the irony about it is that the people most likely to suffer from privatization are the refugees and extended family members being brought into the country under the immigration system that is causing the strain on the health care system. that immigration system isn't likely to change for that reason, either.
we need the opposite of this: we need more centralized planning, not more free markets. but, we have to understand that and vote for it. if the conservatives take step towards a free market healthcare system, it might be the catalyst we need to understand that we need the opposite policy to help us solve the crisis.
i've been looking into it, though, and apparently one of the primary reason nurses are leaving is due to covid restrictions in the hospitals. canada held to covid restrictions longer than most places in the developed world and has largely eased up, but hospitals are still locked down facilities. i wouldn't want to wake up and go to jail every day, either. for obvious reasons, hospitals need to be a little more aware of viruses than the general society, but the nurses seem to be voting with their feet in arguing that the restrictions are a little overboard. they may actually start coming back when the restrictions at the hospitals start to lift.
the hospitals are also apparently creating a lot of the staffing issues by enforcing quarantine policies, which are of marginal utility at this point. a lot of the closures being presented by media as due to low staffing are actually a consequence of temporary under-staffing due to the public hospital's policy around quarantine rather than systemic under-staffing. if a hospital is going to close because it's nurses all have covid, whether it's public or private isn't of any consequence, and doesn't have anything to do with it. solutions have to do with learning to live with covid in high exposure environments by quarantining people in place, rather than allowing a disaster capitalism agenda to frame the issue as an allocation crisis.
nurses with covid should simply work in the covid ward, where everybody has covid, anyways. sending them home on sick leave is a policy that needs to be ended. covid isn't going away, and that isn't solving any problems, it's just creating them.
so, while there are certainly systemic funding problems, many of them a result of politicians that have been trying to create a crisis for years on end, the exact issues being reported on in the media are apparently largely due to mismanagement of staff by rural hospitals, and outdated policies regarding quarantine that need to be updated.
there is also some suggestion that the market is skewing nurse's salaries, which i suspect is being overblown. nonetheless, if the absence of sufficient nursing labour is being exacerbated by private companies that are paying nurses more than public sector unions, that is not a crisis in resources but a crisis in resource allocation. that problem is solved by a government that comes in with wage controls, not by marketization. marketization is the cause of the problem, and will make the problem worse; the solution is to eliminate the market by setting a common price for nurses in society via government legislation. that is what socialized health care is all about. if a market for private nurses is opening up in ontario, the government must take steps to stamp it out by legislating wage levels across society.
there is also some suggestion that the market is skewing nurse's salaries, which i suspect is being overblown. nonetheless, if the absence of sufficient nursing labour is being exacerbated by private companies that are paying nurses more than public sector unions, that is not a crisis in resources but a crisis in resource allocation. that problem is solved by a government that comes in with wage controls, not by marketization. marketization is the cause of the problem, and will make the problem worse; the solution is to eliminate the market by setting a common price for nurses in society via government legislation. that is what socialized health care is all about. if a market for private nurses is opening up in ontario, the government must take steps to stamp it out by legislating wage levels across society.
the only way to pay for a nurse in ontario should be with an ontario health card and the rates should be standard, in all scenarios, like with doctors.
this is going to be a fight and we're going to need to get ready for it. the conservatives have four years to wreak havoc, and the trudeau liberals seem to be on their side. worse, the public discourse seems to believe the opposite, but that might change when evidence is thrust in people's faces.
references:
"ontario isn't ruling out privatization in health care. here's what that could look like", cbc news, aug 11, 2022
17:10
if you want to know what a two-teir healthcare system will look like, look at quebec.
the outcome has been terrible.
17:11
after years worth of people dying in old folks' homes due to poorly standardized care - they had to send the military in - it is beyond baffling to hear the health minister suggest privatizing long term care facilities.
that is a completely absurd suggestion.
we need to completely abolish private long term care facilities.
further, the only way to pay for "home care" should be with an ontario health card.
17:29
ohip is a monopoly on health care insurance in ontario.
if that monopoly is beginning to crack due to poor government oversight, it needs to be further enforced with stronger regulation.
but, i don't think that's the solution, because this is about allocation, and the problem is regarding total resources. neither stronger regulation of existing resources nor less regulation of existing resources is going to create more resources.
resources are managed by training and immigration, not by arguments over the primacy of pay-to-get-ahead or needs-basis allocation decisions.
17:33
this issue isn't about doug ford placing caps on public sector salaries, it's about doug ford not placing caps on private sector salaries. we can't let this collapse into a union action about nurses' salaries. that would be creating more harm to the public system than anything ford is suggesting.
this isn't about wages, it's about access.
there should be caps on salaries for public sector workers and real socialists will always argue as much. but, those caps should also apply to the private sector, to prevent competition for nurses between public and private sector actors.
that is the reason that doctors' salaries are legislated: the public sector can't win if that kind of competition ends up in place. the competition must be prevented by government legislation.
so, if you're asking me to pick a side between a government that wants to restrict public sector salaries and a union that wants to increase them, i don't pick either side: i'm on the side that wants the government to set private sector wages equal to public sector wages, and is willing to use the notwithstanding clause to do it (although it shouldn't be necessary, and that would be over the top).
historically, that's a position taken by liberals, in opposition to both the free-market conservatives and the public union agenda of the ndp.
this doesn't require reinventing the wheel, it just means applying existing legislation as it already exists for doctors to nurses, which should have been done in the first place.
and, in fact this is where the design of the canada health act comes in - the federal government should be stepping in and telling the provincial government to apply wage controls to nurses, if it wants increased levels of funding. that's how this is supposed to work.
as mentioned, i don't actually think this is the root of the problem, but if this is the argument the ndp wants to have, the feds should come in and shut them down by insisting on wage controls. that's long overdue, anyways.
17:59
i need to reiterate the point: i'm not picking a side between a government that is acting as a spokesperson for the private sector in pushing market liberalization and an opposition backing a union pushing for higher salaries, to compete with that marketization. neither side is in the public good and neither outcome improves access to healthcare; this is a struggle between capital and workers that leaves the public worse off, as is generally the case in struggles between bourgeois governments and public sector unions.
the problem is the existence of the private market and the right approach by a government acting in the best interests of taxpayers is to eliminate that private market, which neither side is arguing for.
collective bargaining is fine for private labour markets, but wages for nurses (as well as teachers) should be legislated within the framework of the health insurance monopoly in order to prevent this struggle from happening.
when was the last time we had a labour issue with doctors? the answer is the 1960s.
18:40
i don't know anything about video games, but i know that the police in canada take gun calls seriously.
frankly, if somebody told me that a video game streamer had a bunch of guns on their property, i would at least consider it worthy of investigation. i understand that these swatting calls are relatively common forms of mischief in the gaming community, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored.
video game addicts going on shooting rampages is, in fact, something that has happened more than a few times and any tips the police may have in preventing such a thing are not to be trivialized.
23:05
this is somebody that spends a large amount of their time sitting by themselves fantasizing about operating a phallic symbol and killing people with it.
concerns about the role of their gender identity are likely misplaced, in the context of the police action.
23:08
friday, august 12, 2022
most loser teenage boys grow out of the video games before they turn 20, sweetie.
0:01
the kid that swatted her was probably 15 years old.
maybe the lesson is to grow up a little and stop hanging out with 15 year old boys online.
0:08
while maliciously swatting people should be a criminal offense, i do hope that law enforcement continues to take tips about violent gamers seriously and that this doesn't impede them in any way.
0:10
he ought to take a walk in traffic, perhaps on the 417.
our dauphin thinks he's the king. he's gonna be prime minister for life.
so, he will need to be defeated, and we'll have to see if he actually steps down or not. i wouldn't be sure about it.
it would be a lot easier if the party threw him out by telling him he's not welcome there.
reference:
"justin trudeau’s reality: much of the country dislikes him", globe and mail, aug 9, 2022
1:01
trudeau going for a walk in traffic would be one small step for one canadian, but a giant leap forward for people-kind.
1:10
i'll be ok when trudeau's gone.
this new guy with the conservatives will give me plenty of material, and i'll always have doug ford to fall back on - although i won't want to fall too far, or i might get stuck in the blubber, and you'd have to liposuction me out.
if not, i'll make fun of trudeau's kids.
1:13
chomsky's going to get into an argument with one of the many children he spends his time arguing with, and he's going to get swatted and arrested by some arizona cop that thinks he's a communist spy.
wait for it.
3:26
jagmeet singh is threatening to force an election in the fall if the trudeau government doesn't put a federally administered program in place that provides free dental care for low income children under 12.
i criticized this last year because the truth is that every single one of the programs within the scope of mr. singh's demands are in fact already functioning and in fact already in place. it follows that the agreement between the ndp and the liberals was for the ndp to slavishly prop up the liberal government in exchange for the creation of a set of programs that are of provincial jurisdiction and which already exist in every province. that is, it was an empty agreement that in truth could never be upheld and yet could never be broken.
i'm going to agree with the ndp that the liberals have done nothing substantive at all, in the most generous analysis possible.
but, it will be interesting to see exactly how it is that that mr. singh will define a program that meets his demands. which province does not already have free dental care for low income children under 12?
5:49
at the time, it seemed as though it was just an excuse to avoid another election, which actually is probably what they were thinking, as the deal could not be broken. the liberals don't have to do anything at all to meet the first goal, because there are already programs for this in every single province.
but, now it might turn out to be an excuse to have an election, as there is no way the liberals could have implemented the program, because it's not in their jurisdiction and because it already exists in every province.
it's going to be interesting to hear mr. singh attempt to make sense on this. but, it looks like we're going to have another election.
5:54
there is a hole in dental coverage in canada, and it exists with employed, non-unionized workers.
poor people, kids, seniors, etc actually already have decent dental coverage in every province.
6:25
my odsp dental is far better than the dental received by fast food workers, for example.
6:26
in ontario, kids under 17 are covered by the healthy smiles program:
i did the research on this previously.
there is a comparable program in every single other province. no exception.
so, i don't know what mr. singh's criteria are going to be.
6:29
there is a difference in income requirements. in ontario, income needs to be under $30,000 (roughly) to qualify. so, mr. singh's demands would explicitly entail expanding coverage to people that make in the $30,000-$90,000/yr range, which would be middle income, and not low income.
so, is the actual truth that ndp voters are so wealthy that they (1) think $90,000/yr is low income and (2) don't even know that dental care for poor kids already exists?
i don't know how the federal government could design a system that expands eligibility for a provincial program from low to middle income families. that proposal would be almost impossible to implement within the constitutional framework of canada.
it will be interesting to see how mr. singh attempts to articulate himself on the matter.
6:39
i would assume that most kids with parents in the $30-90K range have dental insurance.
it's workers in the 20-40K range that don't.
6:57
this is a rewritten vavilov write-up, dated to today.
am i playing tricks on myself? i have to acknowledge that i might be playing tricks on myself via rationalizing it, too.
we'll talk soon.
this is relevant to me right now:
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/18078/index.do
========
(note, dated to sept 26, 2022.
i am taking posts down due to concerns about back-end editing by governments. one of the posts that made me aware of what was happening was edits to the vavilov sequence of posts from dec, 2019.
this was a real-time/contemporary analysis of a landmark ruling in canada, and that it might be edited to advance the interests of a sitting government is of extreme concern to freedom of thought in this country. this would be an extreme abuse of power, an extreme abuse of technology and severe infringement of several of my basic constitutional and even natural rights as a human being. i'm left with no paper trail, but suspect google could clarify the point on subpoena.
i want to collect the versions of the post i have here for insertion into three (i suppose four) separate archives. i do not want to write this now, as i'm typing into the backend and there's no point. i will need to wait until this is on a more stable system before i attempt to rewrite it again.
---
on aug 11, 2022 i posted the following:
(a) as recovered from email sent to my google account from the blogger ui on aug 11, and collected on sept 26:
see, i'm baffled by this.
i remember re-writing my dec, 2019 analysis of vavilov when i reposted it in jan, 2022. so, my records of the post for 2019, from 2019, should be different than the post as it exists today, and that should be different than the repost in 2022.
bafflingly, they're all the same, and i don't think any of them were the original post.
that would suggest that:
1) somebody altered the version in my email from 2019, which is dated to 2019
2) somebody then put that edited version in the blog
3) somebody then edited the version in two of my email boxes, which are dated to 2022
4) that version ended up in the 2022 post.
the really baffling thing is that the version dated to 2019 at the blog is the same is in the email. that should not be true - they should be substantively different.
so, i'm going to have to rewrite it, and there's not going to be any note, and i'm not going to concern myself with that. i think i have an absolute right to alter my own writing, that the time stamps are not important and that a footnote that indicates altering the writing is not required.
but, this is exceedingly sophisticated - or i'm just tricking myself, but i'm not just tricking myself. this editor is able to manipulate existing messages in my gmail folder, which means they're hacking it at the server level.
my only tactic is resiliency - i need to keep rewriting these posts, and hope the author gives up.
8:27
this memory of rewriting an old post is specific.
i'm not trying to guess what i wrote in 2019. i'm explicitly remember opening the document in 2022, altering it and reposting it in 2022. yet, it actually seems like the stored version from 2019 was updated to reflect an alteration in 2022, at some point after i reposted it in jan. that is, it seems like the editor took the post from the repost, altered it and then re-inserted it into my email from 2019.
that's crazy. that's somebody with total control over the google servers, or i'm imagining. but, i'm not imagining it - and i have no way to demonstrate it.
ugh.
8:30
what would you do when faced with this?
8:32
the idea that is being eradicated from the post is that what vavilov is really about is political correctness.
what vavilov says isn't that the correctness precedent is to be eliminated, so much as that it's rude to question whether somebody is correct or not. a more polite way to question authority is to question their reasonableness. so, if something is factually wrong, the review is to argue that it's unreasonable because it's wrong.
that analysis seems to be threatening to the editors, so it therefore must be absolutely correct.
i'm not going to pretend that i remember exactly what i wrote in december 2019 about the new judicial review precedent, but the edits are always incomplete; they may give me enough of my thoughts to realize there's a conclusion without a premise, and i need to reconstruct the premise. they don't tend to remove entire posts, so much as they take out specific paragraphs, probably thinking i've forgotten, which is of course mostly true.
is this serious? am i crazy?
if i find myself unable to follow my own argument, i have to rewrite it, regardless. i can't prove anything. but, the result is the same either way: i have a conclusion without a premise and need to insert a premise.
keep this in mind, though: this idea that vavilov is really about questioning authority appears to be threatening enough that it must be true.
9:20
(b) as recovered from the blogger draft post on sept 26:
aug 11
see, i'm baffled by this.
i remember re-writing my dec, 2019 analysis of vavilov when i reposted it in jan, 2022. so, my records of the post for 2019, from 2019, should be different than the post as it exists today, and that should be different than the repost in 2022.
bafflingly, they're all the same, and i don't think any of them were the original post.
that would suggest that:
1) somebody altered the version in my email from 2019, which is dated to 2019
2) somebody then put that edited version in the blog
3) somebody then edited the version in two of my email boxes, which are dated to 2022
4) that version ended up in the 2022 post.
the really baffling thing is that the version dated to 2019 at the blog is the same is in the email. that should not be true - they should be substantively different.
so, i'm going to have to rewrite it, and there's not going to be any note, and i'm not going to concern myself with that. i think i have an absolute right to alter my own writing, that the time stamps are not important and that a footnote that indicates altering the writing is not required.
but, this is exceedingly sophisticated - or i'm just tricking myself, but i'm not just tricking myself. this editor is able to manipulate existing messages in my gmail folder, which means they're hacking it at the server level.
my only tactic is resiliency - i need to keep rewriting these posts, and hope the author gives up.
8:27
this memory of rewriting an old post is specific.
i'm not trying to guess what i wrote in 2019. i explicitly remember opening the document in 2022, altering it and reposting it in 2022. yet, it actually seems like the stored version from 2019 was updated to reflect an alteration in 2022, at some point after i reposted it in jan. that is, it seems like the editor took the post from the repost, altered it and then re-inserted it into my email from 2019.
that's crazy. that's somebody with total control over the google servers, or i'm imagining it. but, i'm not imagining it - and i have no way to demonstrate it.
ugh.
8:30
what would you do when faced with this?
8:32
the idea that is being eradicated from the post is that what vavilov is really about is political correctness.
what vavilov says isn't that the correctness precedent is to be eliminated, so much as that it's rude to question whether somebody is correct or not. a more polite way to question authority is to question their reasonableness. so, if something is factually wrong, the review is to argue that it's unreasonable because it's wrong.
that analysis seems to be threatening to the editors, so it therefore must be absolutely correct.
i'm not going to pretend that i remember exactly what i wrote in december 2019 about the new judicial review precedent, but the edits are always incomplete; they may give me enough of my thoughts to realize there's a conclusion without a premise, and i need to reconstruct the premise. they don't tend to remove entire posts, so much as they take out specific paragraphs, probably thinking i've forgotten, which is of course mostly true.
is this serious? am i crazy?
if i find myself unable to follow my own argument, i have to rewrite it, regardless. i can't prove anything. but, the result is the same either way: i have a conclusion without a premise and need to insert a premise.
keep this in mind, though: this idea that vavilov is really about questioning authority appears to be threatening enough that it must be true.
9:20
aug 12, 2022
this is a rewritten vavilov write-up, dated to today.
am i playing tricks on myself? i have to acknowledge that i might be playing tricks on myself via rationalizing it, too.
========
(this was never posted but left as a draft until it was reposted in the august archive. this post has now been posted to the space this post is in, as a reminder to rewrite the initial post)
8:04
==============
the jan 15, 2022 posts, at 9:27, as i can recover them, are as follows:
(a) from blogger, as recovered on sept 26, 2022 and edited after aug 11, 2022:
i want to repost my analysis of vavilov from late 2020.
===
(edit: this was removed on aug 11, 2022 and should be replaced with the updated version)
---
and, if the question is "expertise", let's look at the situation, in context.
the report was written by a police officer that probably has no legal training. the review was done by a civilian oversight body.
i'm asking for a ruling on an interpretation of the criminal code. so, where is the expertise, here? in the oiprd or in the judiciary?
i don't like this ruling, and i don't think it'll last very long. the exceptions for correctness are far too limited. and, if this is the case that opens it back up, so be it.
i will appeal this if i lose.
--
so, yeah.
i'm going to show up in court and yell for twenty minutes that they're FUCKING WRONG.
and, if the judge wants to politely suggest that they're merely "unreasonable", then whatever.
--
it's the ruling i want, not this semantic debate about language.
(b) from email, resent from the blogger ui on jan 17th at 1:42. the email was resent with spaces in the hyperlink, suggesting that i may have reposted it because the initial post wasn't sent due to the existence of the link.
i want to repost my analysis of vavilov from late 2020.
===
we'll talk soon.
for now...
this is relevant to me right now:
h t t p s :/ / sc c -c s c . l e x u m .c o m / sc c - c s c / s c c -c s c / e n / i t e m / 1 8 0 7 8 / i n d e x. d o
a naive flip through this might suggest that they've more or less dismantled the correctness basis of review, but what they're really doing is redefining correctness issues as reasonableness issues. there is a slightly different procedural approach, but it should more or less come out in the wash.
so, where i may have argued last month that the report fucked up it's use of r. v. storrey, and the result was consequently incorrect, i may now need to argue that fucking up a precedent the way the report did lead to an unreasonable outcome. the ruling is really quite bizarre, in that sense - the supreme court seems to have gone down a sort of a rabbit hole in the absence of beverly mclaughlin, who is responsible for a great deal of what has made canada what it is. but, it shouldn't lead to different outcomes.
with a reasonableness review, the court can't ask what the right answer is, but can only ask what a range of correct answers is. that means you can't tell a panel that they fucked up and they're wrong - you can only tell them that the outcome does not follow from the precedent, and is not in an acceptable range of possibilities. it's really exactly the same fucking thing, it's just a whole lot more polite in this bullshit politically correct sort of manner.
more specifically, in my precise example, the new precedent would render a review that relies on a statement such as "the report was reasonable because it cited case law" to be an unreasonable report, but it won't let the judge explicitly question the correctness of the outcome, because that would be rude. as such, i may want to modify my argument a little bit in terms of the language i'm using.
i'm not going to, though.
see, the thing about a judicial review is that the judge doesn't look at the precise arguments. i could make an argument about x, y and z and the judge could rule on a, b, c and d instead. most of this is just empty procedural pomp, at this point - the only thing that's really important is the application record, because that's where the actual facts are.
so long as i can get the thing to a fucking judge, she should rule the error of law as unreasonable, even if i'm arguing that the outcome of the report is incorrect.
yeah.
well, welcome to canada. next exit - dark ages, ontario. 50 km.
if i'm going to alter my argument, i'd actually rather argue for an expansion of the rule of law section of the exceptions. this isn't a constitutional question, or at least it isn't one yet. but, the fundamental issue here is whether the rule of law is being upheld or not. i don't want to play these language games. really. i want the court to uphold the rule of law, declare the report wrong and confirm that the arrest was illegal. but, like i say, the judges will more or less ignore what everybody says and do their own analysis from scratch.
so, it looks like a really backwards ruling, but it's just rooted in some weird, pc language and it shouldn't really actually change much
---
and, if the question is "expertise", let's look at the situation, in context.
the report was written by a police officer that probably has no legal training. the review was done by a civilian oversight body.
i'm asking for a ruling on an interpretation of the criminal code. so, where is the expertise, here? in the oiprd or in the judiciary?
i don't like this ruling, and i don't think it'll last very long. the exceptions for correctness are far too limited. and, if this is the case that opens it back up, so be it.
i will appeal this if i lose.
--
so, yeah.
i'm going to show up in court and yell for twenty minutes that they're FUCKING WRONG.
and, if the judge wants to politely suggest that they're merely "unreasonable", then whatever.
--
it's the ruling i want, not this semantic debate about language.
======
this is the version of this original post from my email, which was dated to dec 21 @ 4:22 but was actually sent on dec 22 at 10:02. i do not believe that i was having difficulty archiving posts at this time, so this is actually a little bit alarming. that post should have been sent from the google ui and dated correctly.
[dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja] 12/21/2019 4:22:00 PM
we'll talk soon,
for now...
this is relevant to me right now:
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/18078/index.do
a naive flip through this might suggest that they've more or less
dismantled the correctness basis of review, but what they're really
doing is redefining correctness issues as reasonableness issues. there
is a slightly different procedural approach, but it should more or
less come out in the wash.
so, where i may have argued last month that the report fucked up it's
use of r. v. storrey, and the result was consequently incorrect, i may
now need to argue that fucking up a precedent the way the report did
lead to an unreasonable outcome. the ruling is really quite bizarre,
in that sense - the supreme court seems to have gone down a sort of a
rabbit hole in the absence of beverly mclaughlin, who is responsible
for a great deal of what has made canada what it is. but, it shouldn't
lead to different outcomes.
with a reasonableness review, the court can't ask what the right
answer is, but can only ask what a range of correct answers is. that
means you can't tell a panel that they fucked up and they're wrong -
you can only tell them that the outcome does not follow from the
precedent, and is not in an acceptable range of possibilities. it's
really exactly the same fucking thing, it's just a whole lot more
polite in this bullshit politically correct sort of manner.
more specifically, in my precise example, the new precedent would
render a review that relies on a statement such as "the report was
reasonable because it cited case law" to be an unreasonable report,
but it won't let the judge explicitly question the correctness of the
outcome, because that would be rude. as such, i may want to modify my
argument a little bit in terms of the language i'm using.
i'm not going to, though.
see, the thing about a judicial review is that the judge doesn't look
at the precise arguments. i could make an argument about x, y and z
and the judge could rule on a, b, c and d instead. most of this is
just empty procedural pomp, at this point - the only thing that's
really important is the application record, because that's where the
actual facts are.
so long as i can get the thing to a fucking judge, she should rule the
error of law as unreasonable, even if i'm arguing that the outcome of
the report is incorrect.
yeah.
well, welcome to canada. next exit - dark ages, ontario. 50 km.
if i'm going to alter my argument, i'd actually rather argue for an
expansion of the rule of law section of the exceptions. this isn't a
constitutional question, or at least it isn't one yet. but, the
fundamental issue here is whether the rule of law is being upheld or
not. i don't want to play these language games. really. i want the
court to uphold the rule of law, declare the report wrong and confirm
that the arrest was illegal. but, like i say, the judges will more or
less ignore what everybody says and do their own analysis from
scratch.
so, it looks like a really backwards ruling, but it's just rooted in
some weird, pc language and it shouldn't really actually change much
===========
finally, this is the version was left stranded in aug, 2022:
====
this is relevant to me right now:
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/18078/index.do
a naive analysis of the ruling would suggest that they're dismantling the correctness basis of review, but what they're really doing is redefining correctness reviews as reasonableness reviews. there is a slightly different procedural approach attached to this, but it should more or less come out in the wash.
in a correctness review, the reviewing judge is expected to determine whether the lower body of law (often a panel of non-judges) committed an error of law or not; the issue at law is whether or not the decision is correct. in a reasonableness review, the court can not ask what the correct answer is, it can only ask what a "range" of correct "outcomes" is, whatever that even means. the idea was supposed to be deference to an expert, but the concept has become corrupted via the application of irrational precedents, and has now lost any coherency in application. unfortunately, the legal system in canada has adopted the frightening and backwards idea that facts do not exist, so
so, in a reasonableness review, you can't tell the judge that the panel done fucked up and is fucking wrong like i want to - you can only argue that the outcome is not in an acceptable "range of possibilities". outcomes that are legally, factually or logically wrong may be upheld by the court if the court decides that being wrong is "reasonable". this essentially undoes any concept of law, and instead converts the court into an authoritarian body that is dictating random, arbitrary proclamations, which it gets to self-regulate as "reasonable" or not. it's a complete absence of law, elevated to judicial precedent.
what the new ruling really seems to be saying is that telling somebody they're wrong is impolite, so you have to suggest that they're merely being unreasonable, instead, even if what you're really saying is that they're wrong; being wrong is only meaningful if they're also being unreasonable, so the issue at law becomes whether they're reasonable or not rather than whether they're correct or not.
so, where i may have argued last month that the report was incorrect in it's application of r. v. storrey, i will now need to argue that incorrectly applying a precedent the way the report did led to an unreasonable outcome, instead. it's really exactly the same fucking thing, it's just a whole lot more polite in this bullshit politically correct sort of manner. the ruling is really quite bizarre, in that sense; the supreme court seems to have fallen down a rabbit hole of political correctness in the absence of beverly mclaughlin, who is responsible for a great deal of what has made canada what it is. but, it shouldn't lead to substantively different outcomes.
what the new precedent decides is that being incorrect might be unreasonable.
in my precise example, the new precedent would allow a review that relies on a statement such as "the report was reasonable because it cited case law" to potentially be an unreasonable report, but it won't let the judge explicitly question the correctness of the outcome, because that would be rude. as such, i may want to modify my argument a little bit in terms of the language i'm using.
i'm not going to, though.
in a judicial review, the judge doesn't actually look at the precise arguments. i could make an argument about x, y and z and the judge could rule on a, b, c and d instead. most of this is just empty procedural pomp, at this point - the only thing that's really important is the application record, because that's where the actual facts are.
so long as i can get the thing to a fucking judge, she should rule the error of law as unreasonable, even if i'm arguing that the outcome of the report is incorrect.
yeah.
well, welcome to canada. next exit - dark ages, ontario. 50 km.
if i'm going to alter my argument, i'd actually rather argue for an expansion of the rule of law section of the exceptions. this isn't a constitutional question, or at least it isn't one yet. but, the fundamental issue here is whether the rule of law is being upheld or not. i don't want to play these language games. really. i want the court to uphold the rule of law, declare the report wrong and confirm that the arrest was illegal. but, like i say, the judges will more or less ignore what everybody says and do their own analysis from scratch.
so, it looks like a really backwards ruling, but it's just rooted in some weird, pc language and it shouldn't really actually change much)
in a judicial review, the judge doesn't actually look at the precise arguments. i could make an argument about x, y and z and the judge could rule on a, b, c and d instead. most of this is just empty procedural pomp, at this point - the only thing that's really important is the application record, because that's where the actual facts are.
so long as i can get the thing to a fucking judge, she should rule the error of law as unreasonable, even if i'm arguing that the outcome of the report is incorrect.
yeah.
well, welcome to canada. next exit - dark ages, ontario. 50 km.
if i'm going to alter my argument, i'd actually rather argue for an expansion of the rule of law section of the exceptions. this isn't a constitutional question, or at least it isn't one yet. but, the fundamental issue here is whether the rule of law is being upheld or not. i don't want to play these language games. really. i want the court to uphold the rule of law, declare the report wrong and confirm that the arrest was illegal. but, like i say, the judges will more or less ignore what everybody says and do their own analysis from scratch.
so, it looks like a really backwards ruling, but it's just rooted in some weird, pc language and it shouldn't really actually change much)
8:04
what that instrumental devo record is really reminding me of is some of jim thirlwell's instrumental work, under the monikers steroid maximus and manorexia.
i'm going to guess that the master of disaster was a fan at some point.
8:09
these are sneaky lost classics.
i mean, i think there's little doubt that jim loved devo, at some point. but, you can really hear the influence from that instrumental devo record in his instrumental work.
8:12
there's a bizarre ap article on this story floating around that suggests that dignity in dying is some kind of nazism. this link explains the situation:
suicide is a personal choice, and family members in denial have no right to interfere in the process. this is a family in denial, it's not some kind of a rights abuse.
i support alan's right to complete, total bodily autonomy and thoroughly condemn anybody that would try to take that away from him. the accusations of nazism are bizarre; anyone arguing that people don't have the right to suicide on demand - for any reason at all - are denying their right to self-ownership and upholding a system of slavery.
i hope that the united states adopts a more enlightened approach on this issue some time soon.
as for the family, they need to go through the stages of grief. but, denial is an early stage, and it's perhaps long past the time to move on.
12:23
taking agency in suicide away from any individual is demeaning and juvenilizing.
no, you don't have the right to decide that alan isn't capable of making decisions for himself, and you're a nazi if you think that you do. that's outrageous on it's face.
12:29
we're slowly realizing that americans clearly still believe in slavery. they don't understand autonomy, freedom or self-ownership.
it's not just this, it's more broad. slavery may have been abolished on the surface of society, but the mentality of slavery remains deeply embedded in the culture.
if you don't have the right to kill yourself, you don't have any rights at all. it's the most fundamental, basic, inalienable right possible.
12:36
i almost never support capital punishment, but salman rushdie's attacker is a rare scenario where the attacker should be put to death in order to:
(1) send the message that this will not be tolerated and
(2) prevent him from receiving the bounty.
the execution should be public to send a message.
23:44
saturday, august 13, 2022
attempts to restrict free expression by acts of terrorism or violence are crimes driven by the most contemptible motive possible; special punishment for crimes of this nature should be legislated, to ensure that people responsible for heinous crimes of this sort are made examples of and punished with extreme force. this ought to be a capital offence, even if mr. rushdie survives.
there is almost no other category of crimes that i think should be punished to such extremes, and in most cases i don't think crimes should be punished at all.
but, restricting speech rights with violence can simply not be tolerated, and the society must state as much in as clear terms as possible by decapitating the attacker in public, and letting the crowd kick his severed head down the street.
0:16
if you read the criminal justice textbook, "making an example out of them" is in the list of sentencing objectives.
i almost always oppose that.
but, it's the right approach, in context: a very bludgeoned, humiliated example must be made of the attacker. it's the only language this strain of religion understands - humiliation.
0:29
i mean, i'm not happy about this; i don't enjoy suggesting that people should be killed in public. that doesn't make me feel good.
but, the only way to defend yourself against a predator is to attack it with greater force. they are trying to instil fear; we must make them fear us, instead.
so, we have to show them what happens when you do things like this., and we have to broadcast it to them, so they can see it.
i would hope the government of iran releases a statement condemning the attack. they're really the problem of least concern at this point. it's the non-state actors that the message needs to be sent to.
0:36
salman rushdie is not a military target. he is not responsible for violence in the middle east. he's not even white. this is not some kind of self-defense, and there is no legitimacy to it, not via any sort of mental gymnastics. there is no conceivable way to justify it.
it's simply a basic attack on speech rights, and anybody attempting to frame it otherwise will be exposed for what they are.
i will be surprised to find out that the attacker has any link to any foreign government, but what that demonstrates is that the threat is coming from within, and is, in truth, not connected directly to any religion or ethnicity. this is a far greater threat than some foreign terrorists, with weird ideas from a weirder culture. we're cannibalizing ourselves. this is an intolerable escalation that the forces of authoritarianism have been setting up for some time, although many will deny that and distance themselves from it, and many should be given the opportunity to re-evaluate and re-align.
don't let them suggest that a violent attack on salman rushdie is some kind of anti-colonialism. that's ridiculous.
0:46
so, they waddled doug ford out to the podium to tell everybody to obey his authority on healthcare privatization.
the presentation speciously asserted that being "creative" by allowing private capital into the healthcare system will somehow increase the number of total resources in the system. this is an article of faith amongst the right, but that's all it is.
there is nothing creative about allowing private capital into the healthcare system, and it will not help increase the amount of resources available to the system. the government is not confused about this. they're not mistaken. they have not misspoken, and the outcome will not be an accident.
this is intentionally chosen language to obscure the policy, and make it harder to follow. it's propaganda.
the fact of the matter is that there is no incentive for the government to allow for private capital in the health care system, if the only way to access the care is via a health card. doug ford's words on the matter are a malicious lie. nobody benefits from that. it's incoherent. no government would decide that the non-existent benefits of such a policy would have any meaning within the overwhelming public image costs associated with it; the only possible analysis of such a policy is that it will be unpopular, and that nobody will benefit from it.
so, you can ignore them when they say that.
if they're bringing in private health care, you're going to have to pay for it, and you should not believe them when they try to tell you otherwise, as they already have.
5:43
the way they'd have you believe it, the government's plan is something along the lines of:
1. allow private capital into the health care system
2. but, you can still use your health card
3. ???????
4. profit
but, it's a disingenuous facade.
they know how to fill in the question marks - they're just pretending they don't, so they can string you along.
the real plan is:
1. allow private capital into the system
2. but, you can still use your health card - for now.
3. string people along into thinking nothing changed, while the infrastructure turns over
4. introduce user fees to be covered by people paying into the entirely superfluous newly created canadian health insurance industry
5. profit. and lots of it.
6:01
there's a short term period where, if we can force the companies to take heavy losses, we can convince them the market isn't profitable. boycotting private healthcare as much as you can is the best thing you can do, as an individual, for right now. however, it's going to be hard to stop this from happening while pro-market forces control the legislature, and that's going to be the case for at least a few years. we have a difficult, dangerous couple of years ahead of us in ontario that could destroy the province, if the society is even salvageable in the face of imminent demographic changes, if this kind of turnover isn't an inevitable consequence of the ideological changes in society being brought in by mass immigration from right-wing societies. all we can do in the short run is refuse to participate.
6:05
so, the latest fringe theory to become embedded in wikipedia is that the odyssey, which today is actually widely seen as quasi-historical, is just a retelling of gilgamesh.
the argument is something along the lines of that they're both stories with heroes, so therefore they must be the same.
in fact, they're not even remotely similar to each other. the compare and contrast essay would be about the contrasts.
if you want to take a run at fixing that, go for it. i'm not doing it.
9:55
the implication is clear enough: because the mythology in genesis accurately describes the beginning of the universe, greece therefore must have been colonized and built by semites, and they're specifically pointing to the assyrians, no doubt because it fits into their naively built timeline. also, history begins with akkad - just ignore the sumerians.
i can point the absurdity of this revisionist arab supremacism out, and i have a few times, but i don't have the resources to address it.
the site has been taken over by muslim fundamentalists trying to politicize history, and this isn't the first time they've tried to rewrite history, like this. it's become an overwhelming problem that makes the site unusable.
if the site doesn't address the problem on it's own, it should be boycotted - and really taken down.
it was a good idea. really. but, it's clearly been taken over by idiots and rendered unusable as a result.
crowd-sourcing is a very good idea and the ability to get experts together to collaborate is worth maintaining. but, it needs to be closed to general edits. it's an unfortunate but now very obvious truth. we're not capable of maintaining a site like wikipedia without it being overrun by obscurantists with a political ideology.
they're going to have to go through page by page and clean it up.
10:05
we're on the brink of a dark age, as the planet burns under a horrific demographic shift towards authoritarianism and the backwardsness of religion.
the enlightenment remains the only path forwards. but, the hegelian concept of linear progress is short-sighted.
we're in for a major downturn, and it's going to last a while.
those whose job is to protect the books should be taking note. my job is just to draw attention to the rewriting taking place, and to remind the kids that you can't believe everything you see, hear or read on the internet.
10:45
i don't know how we sort this out in the end. there was a time when we carved symbols into stone, and that history was permanent. when history is digitized, it becomes a dynamic system with no stability. it is left in constant flux, and that poses serious problems for people that want honest assessments to determine objective reality, rather than manipulated lies to push a politicized agenda.
nobody really takes wikipedia seriously, anyways.
but, it's a canary - what i'm seeing here is centralized. it's clearly stage one.
10:49
i told myself i wouldn't do this, but fuck.
the arabs have apparently all of a sudden understood that they're cultural descendants of the greeks, just like the west is. well, fuck; i told them that. is this my fault?
now, as the arabs have understood they're in the sphere of greek culture, the history of greece must be dismantled and realigned with an arabic-first mythology, to uphold their arab supremacism. so, the greeks are therefore now semites - despite decades of archaeological research that proves they are indo-europeans that migrated into the region from southern russia.
fuck.
i shouldn't have bothered. how can i convince them back? no - you're not greeks! you're different! you're exotic orientals, outside of western culture! you're others.
dammit.
it's like something from a monty python skit. really.
16:01
you point out a common basis of western culture, and they just want to buy it from you and extract profit from it. way to miss the fucking point.
you explain what the translation event really was, contrary to their own mythology, and why it was actually terrible rather than "golden", and they just want to do it all over again.
you can't fucking win with them.
it's like when paul mccartney explained to michael jackson that he was getting screwed by his record label and he wanted to buy his songs back, so michael jackson went out and bought the rights to the beatles, just so he could screw sir paul over. sir paul regretted explaining that to michael, i tell you.
if i point out that the basis of western culture is greek and not semitic, that doesn't mean i want the semites to buy out all the history companies, and rewrite the history, so they're back at the centre of it.
but, here we are.
16:07
yeah, i wouldn't expect russophobia to be seen as politically viable by politicians in western europe. that politicians in eastern europe think this is an acceptable policy, or it's ok to talk like this, is really eye-opening. this kind of language runs counter to the mandate of the european project, at it's very core purpose.
with the sole recent exception of donald trump, western societies don't consider this kind of thinking to be acceptable, and don't tolerate people that make calls for these sorts of policies.
we don't judge people based on their nationality, or enact collective punishment on them for the activities of their governments, in the civilized world.
16:19
"no dogs, no blacks, no irish and no russians"
that's what they want.
it's outrageous.
16:21
i would rather suggest avoiding spending your money in racist countries like estonia and finland.
16:29
it would really be a lot easier if they'd just accept that their moderate conservatives are actually in power: they are justin trudeau and chrystia freeland.
it's frustrating for me to have these red tories sitting off on the side like this, when the truth is that trudeau is a good leap to the right of joe clark. what happens, then, is you get this framing problem, as people imagine that there's this elusive centre somewhere between the two bourgeois parties.
the centre of canadian politics is really somewhere to the left of the ndp. but, nobody will realize that, so long as there's all these conservative and liberal factions complaining about each other over trivialities and the media gives that bourgeois bickering a platform. voters will interpret the options as they are framed to them and pick the relative option.
i mean, i'm nowhere close to the ndp, or even the greens, on the spectrum, but i still see them as the lesser evil, because they're the least furthest distance away. i've posted compass scores (in fact, there's one in the banner at the top of the page), and i'm not even in the same quadrant.
the more bourgeois options there are, the less real choice we have.
reference:
reference:
"centre ice conservatives are warming the bench for now", cbc news, aug 13, 2022
16:46
it is baffling to me that the charge is attempted murder in the second degree, when it is obvious that the charge should be attempted murder in the first degree. this is a serious difference in charge, and will mean that the individual will not be punished substantively in a situation where he should clearly face the maximum extent of the law.
if you ever see this person out in public, he must be slaughtered on immediate contact. this is not a human being, and cannot be treated like one.
this unjustifiably light approach by the prosecutor is a victory for terrorism and victory for backwardsness.
what a sad, exceedingly depressing joke.
21:37
i don't know how anybody could argue that the attack on mr. rushdie was not planned or premeditated.
some explanation of the prosecutor's decision is really required.
21:41
the charges against the individual should be updated to attempted murder in the first degree, and he should also be charged with terrorism. the attack should also be designated as a hate crime. the prosecutors should seek the maximum sentence possible.
the designation of the charges as second degree, despite clear evidence to the contrary, opens up serious questions about the ideology being held to by state prosecutors.
why are they pursuing second-degree charges when a first-degree charge is so apparent, and would be so easy to prove in court?
21:52
the dutch have had a far-right government in place for much of the last 20 years.
it's likely that the increased rejection rate in the netherlands is due to over-regulation that should be pulled back on, rather than that the lower rate in canada is due to not enough regulation that needs to be increased.
what the low rejection rate in canada means is that regulators are respecting the rights of people to make individual choices about their own lives, and not interfering in situations where they shouldn't be interfering. that's what we want to see; in a system where sovereign individuals that own their own bodies are free to make autonomous decisions about their own lives, rejection rates for assisted suicide should be exceedingly rare. rejection should be a statistical delta - a fraction of a percent.
reference:
"more than 10,000 canadians received a medically-assisted death in 2021: report", ctv news, aug 13, 2022
22:51
the only time that an assisted suicide application should be rejected is if it's determined that family members are trying to kill the person by putting forward the application for them. two primary motives for that would be to cash in life insurance or to remove a family member that has become burdensome.
assisted suicide must be a decision made strictly by an individual, and not a decision made by a family on behalf of an individual.
such requests should be rare, but they are inevitable; the formalities around the procedure exist, and must continue to exist, strictly to prevent them.
the government should not be deciding that people are unable to make decisions for themselves, that's abhorrent.
23:04
the regulatory process is not about evaluating the validity or appropriateness of the decision - this is not the role of government, and the government should not be interfering in people's lives in this manner - but about ensuring that the decision being presented has genuinely been made by the individual seeking the suicide.
it is not a process of second-guessing the decision, it's a process of validating the will of the decision maker.
23:15
there was a case in saskatchewan where somebody was convicted of killing his daughter because he felt she was a burden:
robert latimer would frame the action differently, but he was convicted of murder and the widespread view is that he did it for his own benefit.
that is what the law is designed to prevent, not abuses of power by medical professionals, which are of marginal concern.
23:23
under the existing law, it would not be possible to receive consent from tracy latimer, and for that reason her suicide could not be permitted. that is how the law is designed, and that's the right way to design it.
the language used by the regulatory bodies might say things like "the patient didn't have the mental capacity to consent", but what they mean to say is "we cannot receive consent from the individual".
in most cases, the reason for that would be because the individual is in a decreased mental state due to dementia and has since lost the power of attorney, is in a coma or is otherwise not able to sign a consent form.
23:31
we can't let people with power of attorney sign the death warrants of their wealthy parents. that's what the legal issue is and what the legislation is written to concern itself with, not paranoia about death panels for disabled people, which is a bizarre and obscure conspiracy theory.
23:34
there should be more public support available for people in situations like robert latimer was in, but it's not up to him to decide if his daughter should live or not, and it cannot be.
these are decisions that must be made by individuals, and cannot be made by families on behalf of individuals. i frequently attack the state for trying to own people, but the family is as tyrannical an institution as the state, and must be held in the same contempt. self-ownership means that neither the family nor the state - nor the church - can be making decisions that only the individual can make.
there is nobody that could have made this decision for tracy latimer, and hence it could not have been made. but, perhaps, she would have been better off in a hospital.
23:40
sunday, august 14, 2022
i really don't think it's likely that thought trump thought he could steal classified documents from the white house. apparently, clinton tried to take the furniture. i think that's as ridiculous as can be credible.
if trump were to do something so reckless and ridiculous, you'd think he'd store them somewhere other than his living room.
yet, the fbi are telling us with a straight face that trump tried to do this, and they just found a stack of classified documents in plain view on his couch.
so, how to make sense of such nonsense?
there's a precedent developing: the deep state eliminates actors it doesn't want in charge by sending it's armed wing after them. so, it seems like trump will not be running for office in 2024.
2:21
we'll have to see how the political theatre unfolds, but my guess is that the plotline is that he was trying to sell them to russia.
2:22
trump outstmarted them, though.
they didn't look under the couch.
2:34
you didn't think i was serious about clinton stealing the furniture, either, did you.
2:38
i don't understand this pairing of words, "cowardly attack".
it seems like a contradiction in terms on it's face, until it's realized that it is intended to assert the attack was not brave, as though it would have some sort of heightened legitimacy if it was. the implication is that violence is justified if it is courageous. then, it's actually an attempt to take away the courageousness of the attack, under the premise that attacks are somehow justified if they are courageous, which is daft.
"cowardly attacks" are to be looked down upon, as opposed to "courageous attacks", which are legitimate.
i don't think many attacks are "cowardly". most require a fair amount of vodka, or a naturally occurring comparable lack of grey matter. you have to either be brave, or you have to be stupid. "cowardly" really doesn't seem like an empirically accurate adjective to apply in any scenario where violence is utilized. this is blatant stupidity, but that is not unusual.
i'm more concerned about the underlying implication that violence is justified if it is audacious enough and this particular violence is condemned only because it is not sufficiently manly to warrant justification. that is absurd.
i understand that some people don't think before they speak, that this pairing of words has become utilized as a kind of homeric epithet and is often simply applied lazily. i may be accusing somebody of using patriarchal language when the truth is that they're just too lazy to think about what they're saying. but, we can have the swift-footed achilles and the bright-eyed athena while dispensing with the cowardly attack.
it's language that should really be done away with.
8:00
it's another application of the warped logic of capital, but it's also right out of marx. all resources stolen by private capital in truth belong to the people, so the proposition that allowing private capital to control resources in the healthcare system can alleviate the burden on the public system is merely an easily deconstructed base contradiction. the burden only exists in the first place because private capital is being allowed to extract common resources out of the public system. then, once it has use the government to erect this legal fiction of private property and used it to take control over publicly owned resources via the application of the state monopoly on violence, it then sells access to those resources back to the people it stole them from and says "we're helping to solve the problem". no - the problem is private property and the problem is that we're letting private capital control resources that belong to the people.
in the end, you have to deny the legal basis of private property by refusing to respect it via civil disobedience, but some help at the political level is fundamental. it is imperative that these people trying to sell any sort of healthcare be thoroughly boycotted and driven out of town, in the short run.
as for the legality of the clinic in nova scotia, i would question it, but i'll leave it to activists on the ground to deal with it. if it can be shut down legally, it should be. if it cannot be, it must eventually be shut down with force.
reference:
"owner of private medical clinic says it will ease burden on n.s. health-care system", cbc news, aug 13, 2022
8:31
nova scotians know how to burn things down.
they might want to question if the best approach is preemption. at the very least, don't give them your money.
8:32
one of the dominant threads of thought in this ongoing rewriting of history by arab propagandists on youtube and wikipedia is the arabs taking credit for carthagian civilization, which is requiring them to fabricate a history of assyrian colonization in phoenecia (lebanon or canaan). this revisionism allows the arabs to assert a foundational claim to north africa - an issue that may arise again in the future - via carthaginian colonization, because the phoenicians were just assyrian colonists, and the assyrians were just early arabs. the actual arabs lived very far to the south of the fertile crescent, as illiterate nomands that spoke an entirely different language, in the desert. it also allows the arab revisionists to claim primacy in a history over their claimed cultural zone, which is in truth exceedingly flimsy. people that self-identify as arabs today in truth come from a wide range of ethnic and linguistic groups, and very few of them have any direct connection to the actual arabs, who invaded and conquered a large area from a small region on the red sea coast in the 7th and 8th centuries, and didn't try to colonize it for centuries afterwards. the mythology says otherwise, but the archaeology is relatively clear that the early caliphs ruled the areas they conquered as a small, usurping clique of outsiders for centuries, and the events that resulted in the arabic colonization of the region had more to do with subsequent waves of plague and famine. the end goal of this rewriting of history is a likely saudi invasion event, so it wants to build an origin myth in iraq and expand it to the regions it considers in it's historical sphere, in order to justify the neo-colonial arab empire it is currently designing in riyadh. this might also be a reaction to the failure of saudi attempts to dominate iraq and syria (and perhaps also afghanistan) via isis, under the realization that the people that live in the region actually don't want to live under islamic fundamentalism, but are in fact relatively european in culture due to the fact that they are more greek than arab, under this enforced cultural veneer of arabism. it is for that reason that the propaganda is attacking the primacy of greek civilization in the region, which is what the translation event was about in the first place. stated differently, there may be a realization in the unexpected rejection of isis by syrians and iraqis that the translation event actually failed, and they're still greeks, after all. my attempts to explain that islam is really greek in origin (and arabic civilization is consequently a part of western civilization) may be exactly what they don't want to hear, and i may be drawing attention to myself because i'm accidentally succeeding in explaining why they're failing. but, this is not a user manual for islamic imperialism, it's a deconstruction of it.
i can look at the empirical evidence of clear historical revisionism being entered into social media and try to guess where it's going; i can only deduce why. but, i don't think i'm being frivolous. i think i'm on to something.
in fact, i don't actually care much about or for islamic history. i'm not looking up muslim mythology and getting annoyed by it. frankly, i think they can have their mythology - i just would hope that there's some attempt to address it as mythology, via archaeology and other scientific methods (something muslims universally reject, while only the most zealous christians reject such things, today). the problem is that every time i look up things i do care about, i'm blown away by how the history has been rewritten from an islamic fundamentalist perspective. if you look up articles on greek or roman history, it's full of muslim propaganda, trying to undo the primacy of greece as a foundational culture forming the underlying basis for the existence of contemporary western civilization and instead replace it with the primacy of semitic cultures (particularly the assyrians, who were in truth illiterate barbarians that were responsible for destroying much of the area's cultural history and were destroyed and forgotten as a result of it, they were not responsible for innovating or curating anything) in ways that make no historical or archaeological sense, and are clearly wrong. in fact, much of it is unsourced, as well, so i'm not even arguing with bad sources at this point, i'm arguing with literal bullshit that was imagined out of nothing, and exists for no reason but to advance a political agenda.
you can try if you want, but my experience has been that you can't correct this bad information. in fact, in a display of outright absurdity, they've now blocked me for calling out their racism. the edit i was blocked for had to do with deleting the following unsourced phrase from an article on greek astronomy:
"In this context it is reasonable to suggest that whatever Homer and Hesiod hinted at in their small contributions comes from the knowledge they acquired from the Oriental people they rubbed shoulder with in Lefkandi, the center of Greek culture at that time."
this is a speculative statement without any kind of source that does not reflect academic consensus and the nature of which has no place in an encyclopedia-style article. this is the kind of language you expect to see in a grade school essay, and which you expect a teacher to correct the student for. if you remove the clearly inflammatory and absurdly racist language, almost nobody would argue the basic point that homer and hesiod were influenced by semitic ideas. the academic consensus is that the mythology in hesiod comes from an indo-european pantheon that originated in southern russia, whereas the trojan war was a historical event and the epic poetry of homer has origins in an indo-european oral tradition.
the reason the article claims lefkandi as the "center of greek culture" is because it has built up a mythology that it was colonized by assyrians, which it presents with no evidence (and rather suggests it is a "reasonable" deduction, when it is anything but). the claim is that the area was colonized by "literate" assyrians during the start of the greek dark age and was then inhabited continuously, thereby upending the idea of the greek dark age and replacing it with the presence of a semite colonization event.
in fact, this is wrong for a lot of reasons:
(1) the assyrians were not technically illiterate, but they were not a literate culture. the babylonians and phonecians were literate cultures; the assyrians were war-like, brutish and barbaric.
in fact, this is wrong for a lot of reasons:
(1) the assyrians were not technically illiterate, but they were not a literate culture. the babylonians and phonecians were literate cultures; the assyrians were war-like, brutish and barbaric.
(2) there is certainly absolutely no evidence of assyrian colonization in greece and the idea is in truth ridiculous. the assyrians considered the mediterranean coast to be the end of the world, and the cedar forests of lebanon to be an exotic, distant land. assyrian colonization of greece is in truth as ridiculous as assyrian colonization of china, although i guess i shouldn't be giving them ideas.
(3) the writing in lefkandi is not aramaic, it is early "greek" (i want to be careful here because i don't want to use the wrong technical term. it is spoken greek and uses an early greek alphabet.), and derived from the phoenecian script.
(4) the greeks of the greek dark age were not technically illiterate either, even if the mycenean script disappeared. what happened is that greek "sea peoples" conquered the cities on the levant coast around 1200 bce and brought back the semitic script, which replaced the linear b script. to be clear: the sea peoples destroyed both the myceneans and the semitic settlements in the levant, but only adopted the writing system of the latter. the fact that the greeks use a phoenecian writing system is the result of an ancient period of greek control over the levant, and not of semitic colonization in greece. the key point here is realizing that the sea peoples were, in fact, greeks - a point that is indisputable now, but was ambiguous previously.
(3) the writing in lefkandi is not aramaic, it is early "greek" (i want to be careful here because i don't want to use the wrong technical term. it is spoken greek and uses an early greek alphabet.), and derived from the phoenecian script.
(4) the greeks of the greek dark age were not technically illiterate either, even if the mycenean script disappeared. what happened is that greek "sea peoples" conquered the cities on the levant coast around 1200 bce and brought back the semitic script, which replaced the linear b script. to be clear: the sea peoples destroyed both the myceneans and the semitic settlements in the levant, but only adopted the writing system of the latter. the fact that the greeks use a phoenecian writing system is the result of an ancient period of greek control over the levant, and not of semitic colonization in greece. the key point here is realizing that the sea peoples were, in fact, greeks - a point that is indisputable now, but was ambiguous previously.
(5) the period of phoenecian colonialism is now understood as later than previously thought, after the greek dark ages. the period of greek adoption of the phoenecian script is also now independently dated to the beginning stages of the archaic period and not to the dark ages. we now know that there were not extensive phoenecian trade networks during the greek dark ages as previously thought; rather, greek and phoenecian colonization of the mediterranean was roughly contemporaneous, and they were broadly in competition with each other. as before, the key point of clarity here is realizing that they were daughter cultures of the sea peoples, who had an empire that included both greece and canaan. so, the idea of a greek oasis in the dark ages surviving via contact with phoenecian trading networks is upended by the fact that the phoenecian trading networks have been pushed forward in history. instead, we have a broader understanding of canaan as a part of a sea peoples empire, centered in greece.
(6) there was in fact a destruction horizon in lefkandi, and it did in fact have a dark age. the claim otherwise is out of date and has been debunked by further research. it may be the case that the sea peoples had a base in lefkandi, but the island went through the same process of decline as the rest of the region.
i did not intend to go through all of this, i merely intended to delete an unsourced statement that is both offensive and wrong.
in fact, the center of greek culture at the time was in attica, not euboia. everybody knows that. at most, euboia was a periodically settled trading centre, not a continuously populated cultural centre, like athens. euboia is eventually subsumed into attican greece and not the other way around.
i did not intend to go through all of this, i merely intended to delete an unsourced statement that is both offensive and wrong.
in fact, the center of greek culture at the time was in attica, not euboia. everybody knows that. at most, euboia was a periodically settled trading centre, not a continuously populated cultural centre, like athens. euboia is eventually subsumed into attican greece and not the other way around.
on top of all of that, the language used to describe homer and hesiod is inflammatory and does not belong in an encyclopedia type article. it is a very crude, brutish attempt to remove homer from history and replace him with an anonymous assyrian, when the reality is that the reason we don't know much about mesopotamian astronomy is that the assyrian kings burnt all the libraries down.
i did not attempt to correct the statement with better language. in fact, the statement, as wrong and racist as it is, is also irrelevant to the article. i simply deleted it.
i was banned from further edits, and the irrelevant, racist and wrong statement was re-inserted. this particular sentence in the article is so outlandish that benefits of the doubt are no longer possible; nobody that would claim that homer's contribution is small can be taken seriously, and for the site to repost that statement when it was edited out indicates that it is no longer attempting to be objective, but is rather operating on clear racial biases. it is trying to brainwash people; it is no longer intending to be taken seriously.
this broader revisionist narrative of the primacy of assyrian imperialism as a source of phoencian, carthaginain and greek civilization requires the wholescale destruction of decades of archaeology that makes the following points clear:
(1) sumerians were not semites and were understood as having migrated to the area
(2) semites migrated into the area even later than sumerians (two to three thousand years later)
(3) there were clear divisions between east, south and west semites. an early migration event, probably from egypt but certainly from north africa, landed the semites in the levant sometime around 3500 bce, where they migrated south, north and east and eventually came into conflict with the people already living there. canaanite, arab and assyrian language and culture separate at this point.
(4) by the end of the bronze age, caananites, arabs and assyrians (and also babylonians) were dramatically different people that spoke different languages, had different ways of life, had different religions and fought wars against each other.
(5) the assyrians destroyed large amounts of the levant, enslaved it, carried people in and out of it, enacted tribute upon it and also chased people out of it.
(6) in fact, the assyrian domination of tyre and the cities around it was the primary catalyst for canaanite migration out of the region, towards north africa. the phoenecians went to spain to flee the horrible assyrians.
(7) phoenecian colonies lost contact with tyre because it ended up under assyrian dominance. that is, the assyrian conquest of the levant is the event that led to carthaginian independence.
(8) tyre was reborn under the philphoenecian persians, and migration into the region under persian and greek hegemony was far more substantive than any influence from assyria.
(9) the arabs don't show up there until around 800 ce - 1500 years after the events in question. by this time, the assyrians had already been forgotten about, and largely erased from the history of the region. that point needs to be understood - babylon was remembered, and baghdad was built on it's ruins, but the arabs had no understanding of assyria, because the people that lived in the region had erased it from it's own history. assyria was so cruel, so barbaric, so evil that nobody that lived there wanted to remember them. it's cities were burned to the ground by it's own people, and reclaimed by the sand. they left no substantive writing.
in reaction to all of this, i've decided to thoroughly and aggressively boycott wikipedia, moving forwards.
what i've learned is that the site is not full of honest mistakes by naive editors, but of purposeful lies being protected by an organization with a political agenda; this is not incompetence, but malice. the narrative is being arranged in a specific manner to advance a political agenda. i can only deduce what that is, but it's pretty obvious, too.
(4) by the end of the bronze age, caananites, arabs and assyrians (and also babylonians) were dramatically different people that spoke different languages, had different ways of life, had different religions and fought wars against each other.
(5) the assyrians destroyed large amounts of the levant, enslaved it, carried people in and out of it, enacted tribute upon it and also chased people out of it.
(6) in fact, the assyrian domination of tyre and the cities around it was the primary catalyst for canaanite migration out of the region, towards north africa. the phoenecians went to spain to flee the horrible assyrians.
(7) phoenecian colonies lost contact with tyre because it ended up under assyrian dominance. that is, the assyrian conquest of the levant is the event that led to carthaginian independence.
(8) tyre was reborn under the philphoenecian persians, and migration into the region under persian and greek hegemony was far more substantive than any influence from assyria.
(9) the arabs don't show up there until around 800 ce - 1500 years after the events in question. by this time, the assyrians had already been forgotten about, and largely erased from the history of the region. that point needs to be understood - babylon was remembered, and baghdad was built on it's ruins, but the arabs had no understanding of assyria, because the people that lived in the region had erased it from it's own history. assyria was so cruel, so barbaric, so evil that nobody that lived there wanted to remember them. it's cities were burned to the ground by it's own people, and reclaimed by the sand. they left no substantive writing.
in reaction to all of this, i've decided to thoroughly and aggressively boycott wikipedia, moving forwards.
what i've learned is that the site is not full of honest mistakes by naive editors, but of purposeful lies being protected by an organization with a political agenda; this is not incompetence, but malice. the narrative is being arranged in a specific manner to advance a political agenda. i can only deduce what that is, but it's pretty obvious, too.
14:04
lefkandi might have been a base for the sea peoples.
and, there might have been a lot of slaves brought back from the levant to greece, at this time.
15:30
i would rather deduce that he was obviously a pirate.
but, what is a "warrior trader"? that's a pirate.
i think this is the right answer to the question. as mentioned, though, the deduction that lefkandi did not experience a dark age is an overturned position.
16:06
lol.
the burial site being referenced at lefkandi as evidence of assyrian settlement (supposedly. i can find that claim nowhere besides wikipedia.) is a kurgan.
like, c'mon.
this is a dorian burial site with goods that were captured as booty, and while the site does not show continuity of settlement, the higher level of wealth indicates that they've found somewhere that the pirates camped at, as they were destroying settlements on the mediterranean coast.
you'll never get the fucking hippies of contemporary archaeology to accept that, though. that theory has bad karma, man.
this article gives an overview of the site more generally:
16:29
this text also explains why the crux of the idea presented in the wikipedia article (that lefkandi did not experience a dark age) is out of date:
this does not address the offensive language in the article or the absurdity of the obscure theory that lefkandi was settled by assyrians.
so, let's list some of the fringe (and racist) theories embraced by wikipedia that i've been banned for trying to correct:
(1) that kiev was founded by khazars. this is a fringe theory with no academic support. the standard academic theory is the normanist hypothesis.
(2) that the homeric epics were adaptations of gilgamesh. the standard academic theory is that they are oral traditions and reflect an ancestral indo-european narrative. in 2022, the setting of the trojan war is actually accepted as historically accurate.
(3) the lefkandi in greece was an assyrian settlement. the standard academic theory is that it was a mycenean settlement, but i actually think that is wrong. i think it was a dorian greek sea peoples base, erected outside of a wall that the greeks built to block off the peloponnese peninsula from raids from the north.
all of these theories are absurd, fringe theories that almost all academics would laugh at. they are not in the realm of acceptable alternative hypotheses, they run the range from "thoroughly debunked" to "was never taken seriously in the first place". attempts to correct what is simply bad research (on it's face) have been reversed, and i was banned for deleting a sentence that claimed that homer's contribution was small.
the commonality in these three issues is that i'm trying to correct an underlying arabist ideology that is presenting history from an islamist perspective, making it clear that the entity responsible for curating these bad theories and preventing edits on the site is advancing an agenda of arab-first or islamist-first revisionism, as a corollary to the racialism that defines the islamic supremacism that is inherent to arab culture.
you couldn't make that up.
22:43
how do i imagine that the dorian invasion event happened?
it started a little before the bronze age collapse, with migrations of people from the north into greece. this doesn't align well with the climate data, and attempts to try to explain the movement of peoples during this period using climatological models are lacking. rather, there was a rather clear conflict of civilizations that occurred between the primarily indo-european north and the primarily semitic south. the south likely began to venture north in search of materials and, being that they were of the south, promptly attempted to enslave the northerners, which created a backlash. this is a hypothesis, but it aligns far better with the social realities in the mediterranean at the time, which indicate a high level of inequality due to the existence of a wealthy and oppressive elite, than poorly thought out theories about climate change controlling the movements of peoples.
when the northerners moved south, they did so largely via the southeastern part of europe that makes up the greek peninsula, including macedonia and thrace. they moved into anatolia and dismantled the political entities there. they also moved south into greece, where they were met with more strenuous resistance.
the greeks - and they were greeks, if greeks of a different dialect - erected a wall to keep them out. in response, the northerners started building boats to get around the wall. a dorian settlement was erected at lefkandi that was initially used to harass the greeks, but eventually became the centre of a maritime empire. from this point, the dorians become the sea-peoples, and begin to behave as vikings did in the later dark ages.
surrounded by dorian pirates, and hemmed in by their own wall, the greeks become cut off from the rest of the world. dark age greece is consequently actually the result of the greeks existing under a dorian blockade. if the myceneean writing was lost, perhaps it was never theirs, anyways. the dorians then meet people coming to greece that are far more wealthy than the greeks, realize the source of wealth is offshore and follow them home, where they burn their settlements to the ground, carrying back the booty to lefkandi. the arrogant southerners may have made the mistake of trying to enslave the northerners, a second time. however, i suspect that the sea peoples were likely met as liberators in regions that suffered greatly under the oppression of the oriental despotism that was standard at the time. the striking levels of inequality in the archaeological record suggest that the sea peoples likely found a population waiting for a messiah to come to help them overthrow their cruel masters. the warrior graves, along with levantine goods, are evidence of the pirate activity emanating from lefkandi, while the rest of greece was isolated due to the dorian blockade.
lefkandi then becomes the centre of a maritime empire that includes the conquered peoples in the levant as well as people that lived in the adriatic sea. i don't know if the etruscan peoples were a part of the initial sea peoples confederation (i think many would argue they probably were), but there is clear evidence of clear cultural interchange between the etruscans and lefkandi through the dark ages, and the etruscans eventually adopt the writing system of the greeks at about the same time as the greeks adopt the writing system of the canaanites.
this maritime empire was short lived. either due to invasions from attica, or due to internal revolts, there is in fact a destruction horizon on lefkandi, and the area is in fact uninhabited for some time. the area then enters the dark age with the rest of greece as it is repopulated by attican greeks, who reintegrate it into the broader greek cultural sphere, a process that takes until the end of the dark age to complete. the greeks may have succeeded in chasing the pirates off, who were then more interested in canaan, which had more wealth.
the empire of the sea peoples, while short-lived, was not fleeting. as the attican greeks retook control of the island, the maritime contacts developed by the sea peoples with canaan and etruria are eventually maintained, after an initial period of isolation. this leads to both greek and tyrian colonization of the western mediterranean, and the eventual mare nostrum of the romans, who conquered both.
the hippies won't touch a toxic theory like that with a ten foot pole, man. that theory has so much bad karma it's going to destroy my chi, man. but, they're nearly dead. like the greeks, we will need to rebuild when they're gone.
the hippies won't touch a toxic theory like that with a ten foot pole, man. that theory has so much bad karma it's going to destroy my chi, man. but, they're nearly dead. like the greeks, we will need to rebuild when they're gone.
23:17
for all their appeals to fake leftism, the theory of history presented by the hippies is not marxist but burkean. marxist history is about the class conflict that develops when people align together with each other based on common economic interests and struggle against other people that have aligned together based on their own competing economic interests and the subsequent population replacement that results in this competition of class interests, which is exactly what the hippies tried to write out of history and replace with burkean ideas of "class harmony".
it should not be surprising to realize that i reject burkean history, with it's insistence on continuity and harmony, and support marxist history, with it's focus on population replacement and class conflict.
23:19
"why does it have to be violent?"
because there is only one war, the class war, and that war is eternal, throughout time.
23:53
monday aug 15, 2022
interestingly, the scotch bonnets are not having the same effect on my digestive tract that the thai chilis did.
i might have gotten a mild batch, i think.
2:12
if one of the underlying narratives of the situation around ukraine is american gas exports - which are all bundled up with nowhere to go - and european reluctance to buy them, having canada barge in and give the europeans what they actually want, which is a renewable way out, is certainly an interesting development.
i need to see more details, but i don't see anything to criticize. yet. i do wonder how much this is going to help, though.
the loser here is the united states, but it seems less and less likely that canada cares anymore, which is healthy. this is something harper did wrong and that has taken far too long for the liberals to unwind.
this is really going to piss them off, but it's potentially a good deal - i want to see data on things like efficiency, actual power output and transportation, first. i'm sure the project will be engineered relatively well.
hydrogen is generally pointless, and something i would worry about would be oil producers taking over if the wind farms don't work out, for whatever reason.
7:30
tuesday, august 16, 2022
i got my ultrasound results from the hospital today hoping that i might be able to see something in my digestive tract, which is not the case. however, the machine actually flagged me with an enlarged liver, which is the reason i did the ultrasound. the report the hospital sent to my doctor did not indicate i had an enlarged liver.
my liver is 14.64 cm, which is larger than average but below what the internet is telling me is clinical, which is 15 cm. so, there's a concern here, but no doctor is going to treat it.
why is my liver enlarged?
let me look at the rest of it.
1:37
there's no clear definition as to what constitutes an enlarged liver; ranges are non-standard, and this result of 14.64 is right in the middle of a grey region of ambiguity, where it might be symptomatic and it might just be the higher end of variation.
ugh.
everything is consistent with a mild amount of hemolysis that is probably not clinical. but, you cease to live when your liver ceases to livify you. i don't want to ignore something now and have it develop into something else.
1:45
i have an appointment next week to get a random glucose test because i skipped it this year.
i know i have hep b antibodies.
i'd might as well ask for a hepatitis test, too.
at this point, i haven't touched any alcohol, marijuana or cigarettes in years, but i have of course been dealing with low iron.
1:53
wow.
enlarged undersized spleen: 9.33 cm (width length)
in fact, the system flagged a number of organs as enlarged. this is the same hospital i sued last year.
enlarged liver: 14.64 cm
enlarged cbd: 0.31 cm
enlarged right kidney: 9.86 cm (width)
enlarged right kidney: 4.43 cm (height)
enlarged left kidney: 8.96 cm (width)
enlarged left kidney: 5.31 cm (height)
there may also be some signs of hemorrhaging from the spleen.
well.
i got the test, and i got the results. this is the doctor i previously suggested was unprofessional. and, fucking right, huh?
how serious is any of this?
2:15
listen, there's bad doctors everywhere. if i lived in a for-profit system, i wouldn't even have access to the machine. what this really demonstrates is what i've been saying for months: you have to be your own doctor. you have to communicate with doctors, because they monopolize access to the technology, but they don't care about you, at the end of the day. only you give a fuck enough about you to take care of you.
i'm experiencing some hemolysis; i already knew that. it's not yet clear how much actionable information this provides, but it does help me better understand what's happening.
2:33
as the valuable component of health delivery becomes more and more focused on the technology, it's just that much more important to socialize the means of production. we need to own these machines ourselves.
it's the technician that did all of the work and the machine that provided the data.
and, i'm going to guess that the truth is that the doctor didn't even look at the results.
2:56
the enlarged cbd - common bile duct. what were you thinking? - is above the statistical average, but not beyond a standard deviation.
i'm not going to worry about that.
3:52
the kidneys are also only marginally larger than the statistical average, although they're also oddly misshapen. hrmmn.
4:05
on second thought, i misread the spleen image.
i actually have a small spleen, which is why it was flagged. i thought it was flagging the width, but it's flagging the length, at 9.33. this is on the lowest possible end of female variation.
so, the marginally increased kidney size isn't much to worry about, but i do legitimately have a large liver and i do legitimately have a small spleen. that is a very unusual combination.
4:34
the combination of a large liver and small spleen is something you might see in advanced sickle cell disease, but it's otherwise really a pretty glaring contradiction.
i don't have sickle cell anemia, clearly. yet, all of the evidence points to some far less dangerous sickle-cell-like (or sickle cell lite) type genetic disorder.
i've explained before that there's a mystery regarding an unexplained, periodic anemia on my dad's side of the family. i don't have the answer, and there might not be a good one. it might be a novel mutation in a very small population. on the other hand, it might be some ancient halstatt-era blood disorder that got defeated via natural selection and nobody else has; whatever it is, it's something like sickle cell, just nowhere near as dangerous.
i basically have the mildest form of sickle cell imaginable, a form so mild it's evaded serious classification.
4:43
my anemia potentially stems from my rare iron age genes.
ironic.
4:51
i'm a 5 foot 8 genetic male in my early 40s. my spleen size would be at the very lowest end of variability for a 5 foot 1 genetic female my age.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3213754/
that is both substantive and very strange.
6:21
nowadays, screening for sickle cell anemia is done routinely at birth in ontario. i don't know if that was true in the early 80s.
it's covered - as sickle cell preparation. why not get tested?
to be clear: i don't have sickle cell anemia, but i might be a carrier, and carriers can sometimes have weak symptoms. that makes sense. the dna test identified jewish and italian ancestry; i know the italian is on my dad's side, and i think the jewish is on both sides (my mom's would be franco-sephardic and my dad's would be ashkenazi-slavic). carriers on both sides is important for inheritance, but a distant ancestor can also pass the trait down directly over generations without it's ancestors even realizing they have semitic ancestry.
so,
- sickle cell preparation (to check for carrier status)
- hepatitis
- blood glucose
11:14
the issue is not entirely unprecedented - the word sovereignty is itself chosen in deference to quebec - and we have a succession reference case to refer to, which stated that governments that follow democratic mandates in contradiction to constitutional law have the burden of proof to demonstrate their legitimacy by force of application, leaving it up to the federal government to challenge their mandate by enforcing their monopoly on state violence, which would be of questionable legality under international law. this was a very realist ruling that defines existing canadian law on succession within the federalist framework of the constitution of canada: the legitimacy of the democratic will to exist outside of the constitutional framework is dependent on it's ability to assert itself by force. the constitution must be upheld by the people.
the opinion expressed in the article is consequently in error and smith is actually right, although the burden then falls upon her to present her draft legislation to voters, which is something that should be more common. if she's going to insist that the legislation not be criticized until it's read, she must give us the legislation to read, before the date of the vote. otherwise, abstract criticisms are justified, even as they have no concrete value.
quebec does not have any special place in the constitutional framework of canada, but it has it's own charter and routinely uses the notwithstanding clause to undo the constitution. the supreme court will rule on issues differently in quebec than the rest of the country, due to the existence of the charter. there are wide swaths of federal law that are consequently unenforceable in quebec. if alberta wants it's own charter, there is no fundamental reason it cannot have one, within the federalist framework of the constitution. the details will indeed depend on the implementation.
while this would undo canada in some sense, it is up to canadians as to whether they wish to undo themselves or not.
understand this: prominent thinkers have argued canada is a failed state. it's far too big, and far too diverse. the narrative is often about whining westerners but i don't like them either and, as an ontarian, i think i'd be better off without westerners threatening to take control of ottawa. it would come as no surprise to many if this country split into several components within the next several decades, based on geographic, economic and ideological differences.
if kenney really thinks that alberta can't have what quebec has, maybe he should go home to toronto.
reference:
"what's worse than premier kenney calling danielle smith's big idea 'nuts'? Her idea", cbc news, aug 15, 2022
15:23
this is the most important part of the ruling.
it is generally ignored by textbooks. i got into a very big argument with my constitutional law professor, when i did the opposite - i ignored the first part (which is really of no practical value. really.) and just strictly looked at this important part:
(5) Suggested Principle of Effectivity
106 In the foregoing discussion we have not overlooked the principle of effectivity, which was placed at the forefront in argument before us. For the reasons that follow, we do not think that the principle of effectivity has any application to the issues raised by Question 1. A distinction must be drawn between the right of a people to act, and their power to do so. They are not identical. A right is recognized in law: mere physical ability is not necessarily given status as a right. The fact that an individual or group can act in a certain way says nothing at all about the legal status or consequences of the act. A power may be exercised even in the absence of a right to do so, but if it is, then it is exercised without legal foundation. Our Constitution does not address powers in this sense. On the contrary, the Constitution is concerned only with the rights and obligations of individuals, groups and governments, and the structure of our institutions. It was suggested before us that the National Assembly, legislature or government of Quebec could unilaterally effect the secession of that province from Canada, but it was not suggested that they might do so as a matter of law: rather, it was contended that they simply could do so as a matter of fact. Although under the Constitution there is no right to pursue secession unilaterally, that is secession without principled negotiation, this does not rule out the possibility of an unconstitutional declaration of secession leading to a de facto secession. The ultimate success of such a secession would be dependent on effective control of a territory and recognition by the international community. The principles governing secession at international law are discussed in our answer to Question 2.
107 In our view, the alleged principle of effectivity has no constitutional or legal status in the sense that it does not provide an ex ante explanation or justification for an act. In essence, acceptance of a principle of effectivity would be tantamount to accepting that the National Assembly, legislature or government of Quebec may act without regard to the law, simply because it asserts the power to do so. So viewed, the suggestion is that the National Assembly, legislature or government of Quebec could purport to secede the province unilaterally from Canada in disregard of Canadian and international law. It is further suggested that if the secession bid was successful, a new legal order would be created in that province, which would then be considered an independent state.
108 Such a proposition is an assertion of fact, not a statement of law. It may or may not be true; in any event it is irrelevant to the questions of law before us. If, on the other hand, it is put forward as an assertion of law, then it simply amounts to the contention that the law may be broken as long as it can be broken successfully. Such a notion is contrary to the rule of law, and must be rejected.
========
this section makes the rest of the ruling nothing more than babbling nonsense.
18:45
it is what is a matter of fact that is meaningful. law can become meaningful if it aligns with fact, but if the law does not reflect empirical reality, it is of no force or value - it's just mental masturbation.
18:58
to be clear - and this is what confused the prof. it's the logic. he wasn't good at logic. but we can do it together - what the ruling says, in one simple line, is that there is no way, under canadian law, for quebec to unilaterally secede from canada. we agree on that point.
the ruling also says that canada is obligated to hold negotiations with quebec if it votes to secede, but is not required to reach a settlement in those negotiations. this is essentially a duty to consult. nobody expects that would go anywhere.
therefore, as there is no legal way for quebec to secede unilaterally under canadian law, and the premise that it may secede via negotiation is a non-starter, if quebec seeks to secede via the process of democratic legitimacy through seeking a mandate from the people to overturn the existing constitutional order and status quo, it would need to do so strictly unilaterally and by establishing the reality of sovereignty via the use of force, which the ruling explicitly addresses. yes, the ruling says it's illegal to secede under canadian law, but that is only meaningful as a form of deterrence. to decide that quebec cannot ever possibly secede because the supreme court says it's illegal - which is what the prof tried to argue and tried to force me to regurgitate - is so facile as to be retarded. this argument is one of the major reasons i walked away from the program, as i didn't like the slavish deference to the court and the insistence by the educational system to try to brainwash me with specious bullshit. if quebec is gonna secede, quebec is gonna secede. as the canadian supreme court has ruled that this act is necessarily illegal under canadian law, that there is no way around it, quebec will need to erect it's own jurisdiction to validate it by the application of the use of force if it seeks to secede, in rejection of canadian law. that is the reality of what the ruling says: quebec can only secede violently, as the path to peaceful succession is closed.
the secession ruling does not ban quebec from leaving, as that is not possible; rather, it tells quebec that, should it leave, it must be prepared to defend itself, and assert it's independence by fiat, as canada will not cooperate in the process.
are we following the logic?
what tactic might canada have to enforce it's law? the answer is the use of force. look at tamara lich. quebec would need to be arrested and charged with public mischief, and then necessarily released on bail. the continued existence of canada would rely on quebec not breaking it's bail conditions. a canadian military occupation of quebec in the face of a clear will to secede would be illegal under international law and the ruling does explicitly address that, if in passing.
so, it follows that because unilateral secession is illegal under canadian law, regardless of the result of the referendum, therefore whether quebec can effectively secede or not is strictly reliant on whether it can enforce it's democratic mandate via the use of force or not.
i hope that's understood.
the prof didn't get it, but i've wondered for years if he's been instructed to attack deductive, rational arguments like that one, and instead enforce the authoritarian conventional interpretation which, as usual, is oversimplified to the point of being inherently wrong.
20:06
wednesday, august 17, 20022
good riddance.
6:11
i don't watch tv and i don't really know who lisa laflamme is. television after about 2005 is a total black hole, for me.
however, if you want to know why she was fired, i would suggest looking at the ethnicity of her replacement.
the station wants to move in a different direction. it's up to us as to whether we want to follow them or not.
6:58
it's pretty clear that lisa laflamme was simply in the way.
the action of the station is really less about removing the old anchor and really more about installing the new one.
we'll need to see what this "new direction" is about, as it unfolds.
7:00
ctv is owned by bell canada and is considered an establishment right-wing news source in canada. they generally parrot right-wing talking points, and are pretty much always in line with the conservative party.
how it is that changing the ethnicity of it's public image is relevant in this new direction remains to be seen.
7:05
“Recognizing changing viewer habits, CTV recently advised LaFlamme that it had made the business decision to move its acclaimed news show, CTV National News—and the role of its chief news anchor—in a different direction,”