i personally think that this is very silly, and don't imagine much of any context where i'd have much time for a ritual that upholds my freedom by reciting pre-written lines that somebody is feeding me. but, that's not what this actually is; this is a way to substitute the social role of the church into the lives of atheists, and it's success depends on the success of the community.

there has always been a reaction against religion, and one will continue to exist for as long as religion does. and, in fact, as religion is the state, a continuing reaction against religion will continue to exist so long as the state does.

in antiquity, you had the philosophers and mathematicians, who argued against superstition by appealing to naturalism and observation. they organized into cults, like the pythagoreans, and met at academies that countered the monasteries. when the christians and muslims destroyed all the knowledge of the ancient world in a fit of mass stupidity, this role was taken over by the northern barbarians, who had been slowly developing a concept of individualism and freedom to overpower the roman systems of servility and slavery that the textbooks mistakenly refer to as "civilization". france is named after the franks, which was not a barbarian tribe in the ethnic sense but rather a confederation of "free men". and, when the barbarians were finally defeated, an era of relative peace, the renaissance, brought the philosophers and mathematicians back again, culminating in the revolutionary movements associated with the masonic lodges of the enlightenment.

i made this point during occupy, and i'm not sure how many people listened, but camping in a park struck me as a lesser concept then starting up a lodge. neither the french nor american revolutions could have happened without the lodge as organizing body, which is why the church-state went to such great lengths to demonize them, in the end. and, the point is to keep it a little bit underground, so the cops can't come in and break it up.

but, there's a danger here that we saw come out of the reign of terror and the fake religions set up in the aftermath of the collapse of the ancien regime: the religion of reason was every bit as brutal as the religion of contradiction, because the root cause of the brutality is not the theology but the ritual.

so, it's tempting to see these as revolutionary bodies, but in the end i would advise treating them like any other religion, because the truth is that they'll act like any other religion should they gain any influence.

if you have friends in this movement, you should be helping them to reassert their individuality away from this group identity and encouraging them to avoid their scripted talking points and learn to think more for themselves.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5488632/satanic-temple-canada/

again: i don't play video games, and i never did. i've noticed that the language has been changing, but in my time you'd call people that liked video games and anime and card games geeks, whereas you'd call people into math homework and classical music nerds. there are always overlaps, but i was a nerd. i had friends that were geeks. i haven't seen or talked to them in years.

so, i don't understand gamer culture. at all.

but, this instagram killing is something out of a gibson or pynchon text. i guess that's another difference - nerds read books that win awards and get taught in schools, whereas geeks read comic books and serials for young adults with recurring characters....into their 40s. i don't know how many times i've read something like this in a novel; it's pretty surreal to see it in real life.

and, what kind of insight can i provide from reading all this cyberpunk, post-modern literature?

people can't separate between the images they're used to seeing, and the images of her dead body. the literary term is hyperreal. so, to the apparently tens or hundreds of thousands of people seeking out these photos (and i am not one of them), this is just another photo shoot - the blood and death and brutality isn't real, but just a corollary of good showmanship. so, have you seen her latest sets? but, it's also a finale, a climax, a grand ending - a final hurrah.

as twisted as this is, and as important as the conversation about patriarchy also is, i'd like to see a deeper discussion around this phenomenon of instagram users falling into this condition of blurry hyperrealism. if there's an "instagram story", it is this - the question of if we're all slowly collapsing into a collective schizophrenia, a shared dystopia defined by ubiquitous dysmorphism, where we simply don't know what is real and what isn't, any more, and may not particularly care to find out.

what the situation really draws attention to is the ubiquity of class structure, and the role-playing that dominates the existing capitalist paradigm. you see this written about abstractly. but, the bernie sanders campaign, whatever it's rhetoric, has an income source and a budget, and it has to be ruthless about minimizing expenditures in order to maximize profit, which in context means maximizing expenditures for campaign outreach expenses, like advertising. the campaign cannot escape capitalism; it exists within capitalism, and must abide by the rules of it. so, to speak of hypocrisy would be to reduce a systemic analysis to a moral judgment, which would be a conservative's way of approaching the situation. a leftist should be able to understand that you can't overpower capitalism with slogans and wishful thinking, and it's not possible to live suspended from it in an ether of self-righteousness.

to argue that he's not aware of the situation is just to demonstrate the point; you're essentially suggesting that he's the ceo, and so doesn't have time for entry-level employees - which is probably actually broadly true.

but, that demonstrates the impossibility of building a socialist political movement on top of a conservative social movement. the real lesson is one we already knew: the social revolution must come first.

everything else aside, it's hard to understand why the campaign would push back on this. again: who couldn't see this kind of press coming? and, what this series of events is doing is less drawing attention to sanders' hypocrisy, which i think is a questionable assertion in context, and more drawing attention to his judgement. we've seen this come up in a number of situations. and, you can like a candidates' policies, but be unsure about whether giving that candidate executive power is really a good idea or not.

the entire discourse around this is missing the obvious question: why didn't he foresee this kind of bad press?

i think bernie needs to clean house. the people he has around him aren't helping him, right now.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/19/we-work-for-bernie-here-are-our-demands/

it's a shame i don't use them, because here's a pick-up line.

"i'll bet you a drink that you don't want to talk to me."

or, for an old friend or partner.

"i'll bet you a coffee that you're still mad at me."

so, i did some thinking last night and i'm really itching to get back to the productive side of the pendulum. i've been edging here for a while, and whatever i needed to do is beginning to get to the end of running it's course.

i still don't want to waste the weekend. it might be the only one like this all year.

but, i need to get back to finishing rebuilding the liner notes and i need to get back to the next recording stage and i'm looking at monday as the day to pivot over.

it's just time; it feels right.

but, the bloc aren't going to sit in the middle like this; they're going to come or go. and, if they can't get over that hump, that support is going to scatter.

i mean, they could still rise, don't get me wrong. but they're not going to sit at 20% - they're going to blow up or fall down.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5656169/bloc-quebecois-federal-election/

it's a debate between racists.

am i supposed to pick a side? is one type of racism better or worse than the other?

no.

fuck both of them - let them tear each other apart.

see, this is why the party should have thrown her under the bus and distanced themselves from her. this is going to kill them, and it was obvious, and they stalled when they should have acted.

you can moralize about this all day; in the end, nobody cares.

now, they're fucked. they can't walk away; they have to stand with her, and it's going to drag them down and cost them seats.

what she said was incredibly stupid, and while this reaction is not any better than what she said in any way, in a lot of ways she absolute deserves it. it's the old adage - if you don't want to be treated like an idiot, don't say stupid things.

and, on that note, my correction of the chant is as follows - they should be chanting "send her back to school".

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/trudeau-trump-send-her-back-chants_ca_5d30a61be4b004b6adacbc85

it's going to be absolutely beautiful here this weekend, so long as the rain doesn't ruin it, and i can't be wasting it.

i mentioned a few weeks ago that the thing that might overpower the sun would be a hurricane, and that's what happened; the reason we're getting all of this wonderful heat and glorious humidity is the hurricane in the gulf. and, it's going to be very short - once this powerful system pushes through, we'll be back to below-normal temperatures by monday or tuesday.

so, let's hope it stays hot and humid and doesn't rain.

hey, if i'm here this weekend maybe i can heckle bernie when he comes over to get discount insulin.

"go home yankee, back where you come from!"

i'd probably get a shoe thrown at me for that one, right?

well, you know it's a thing in a lot of the world to tell americans to go back where they came from, right? sometimes with good reason. like, in japan, for instance. those military guys over there (and there's like 50,000 of them. still.) have kind of a bad reputation with the locals. because they tend to rape them.

or, in much of latin america, where chants of "yanqui go home!" are pretty common place. well, they keep showing up with guns and slaughtering them. i'd tell people with guns that are there to slaughter me to go back where they came from, too.

i actually have no interest in defending what trump said, and that's not what i meant to do. it was a verbose, stupid remark. i just tend to have this tendency to kneejerk against kneejerks, and i'll hold to my analysis - it was a stupid way to say something that maybe actually ought to be said.

so long as we have enough insulin to go around, i'm not opposed to sharing it with the yankees. really. it would be better if they'd fix their own system, but all i can offer is words. and, i'm sure they'll find their way home soon enough.

if i drop by, i'll behave. promise.

i'm going to do a quick grocery run, and..

...well, i might get some work done over the next few days. how 'bout that?

so, do i think this is a coincidence?

no.

i think they want to keep this out of court and they thought they could sit on it. so, what i did worked, basically, in getting them to get a move on it.

but, for them, it's more about positioning. if i go in there and nail them on a report that's 100, 120 days late, the judge is going to take my side, off the bat. they know that. so, it was a dumb tactic, they thought they were calling my bluff, and now they're backtracking...

again: i'll have to read the report. i guess there's an infinitesimal chance it's the end.

but, we're almost certainly going to court.

i should be able to use most of what i typed up today, in the end.

and, i guess the other two cases can wait...

well...

i was just finishing my form 68a, and i got an email indicating to me that the review is completed and will get to me next week.

so, what does that mean?

well i don't expect it to say what i want it to say. let's not be naive about that. i have to let it finish, but i know better.

it does mean i can't file anything until i read it, and if i do, it won't be until mid-august at the earliest.

*shrug*.

so be it.

i'll have to find another show to go to, i guess.

for those that aren't familiar how this works, there's actually this rule book that you have to abide by, like you're playing an exotic board game.

"can you move backwards?"
"shit. i dunno. where's the rules?"
"over there.."

(pause)

"did you use the rule book for filter? fucker."
"i just used the back"
"still. whatever, let's just make it up. let's vote. who says we can move backwards?"

(pause)

"so we can move backwards."

but, you can't fuck with these rules, or at least not unless it says you can fuck with the rules in the rules and you're the judge. these rules are set.

and, they're set in legislation called the rules of civil procedure.

this is a common question, so you expect a clear answer:

Place of Hearing

(1.1) The application shall be heard in the county where the proceeding was commenced or to which it has been transferred under rule 13.1.02, unless the court orders otherwise.  O. Reg. 438/08, s. 38.

well, that's pretty obvious, but where was this commenced?

- the incident happened in windsor.

- i filed in windsor.

- they accepted it from toronto.

- the report was done in windsor.

- i asked for a review from windsor.

- they accepted the review in toronto.

and, as i'm asking for them to pull the review, that should be the proceeding, and it should be in toronto.

if the judge wants to transfer to london, she can do that.

ok.

that'll save me some time & money.

wait.

so, should i be filing in toronto or london?

well, if i don't have to go to london, i can save some time and money, right; i could come in for sunrise, serve in the morning, file in the afternoon, catch a show and come back on the overnight bus. that's a 25 hour day instead of a 40 hour day, and it'll cost me less on bus fare.

i am suing the oiprd. the oiprd is in toronto. so i should file in toronto, right?

the other argument would be that the issue is with the windsor police, so i should file in london, but that's less convincing to me.

the other thing is that the divisional court will not be coming back to london until april 2020 (!), but will be in toronto after the summer break, in september.

let's see what the actual rules say.

it may be time to start ignoring the law in the united states, and resorting to underground economies and acts of civil disobedience.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-new-abortion-restrictions-everything-you-need-know-1449494

to put it another way...

the right is about the idea that the masses need to be governed by an enlightened few.

the left argues this is bullshit - the masses can self-determine their own future.

human beings are biologically unique. we are not clones, like ants or bees; we multiply via sexual reproduction, meaning we take genes from both our parents and recombine them in a unique way. so, biologically, we are all unique individuals.

nor do we share unique experiences. while we can empathize and relate to the people that are similar to us, as well as to the people that are different than us, we don't have identical experiences, and consequently don't have identical viewpoints. so, socially, we are also unique individuals.

there's not really a way to salvage these fascist ideas of collectivism, at this point. it's been debunked. give up; move on.

the difference between what you call "social rights" and "individual rights" is illusory, as any worthwhile concept of social rights reduces to individual rights. so, health care, for example, is an individual right, as is education. if "social rights" are to have any meaningful concept at all, they reduce to the realm of fascism - rights of nationhood or rights to security - that have no place in any meaningful conception of socialism, and are admittedly not what is usually invoked by the term. but, sometimes it is, especially with indigenous groups. you have to be careful that you don't walk into something rather nasty with this term, "social rights" - it's never gotten us anywhere good, in the past.

socialism is about workers, and so it is about collective struggle, but it is not about collectivism in the hobbesian or "corporatist" sense, and to make the latter suggestion is just a kind of neo-liberal co-option; to reduce socialism to "social rights" is to accept the capitalist paradigm, and ultimately to end up at an authoritarian, fascist state. marx would have forcefully reasserted the axioms of liberalism, explained that socialism is the only way to achieve liberalism in an industrial society and ripped apart your "social rights" as lassallean.

i follow a traditional concept of left/right that comes out of the french revolution, which is the enlightenment revolution that is more pertinent to me, both as a canadian and as an anarchist.

the right is the aristocracy, the old money, and everything that comes with it - the charity work, the noblesse oblige, religion, the university, the right of kings and the obligations of hierarchy. what the right wants is a system of dominance, where everybody lives in harmony by knowing their right place in society, and going about their daily work, for the benefit of the greater good. the right has at times embraced markets, and at times rejected them. parties and institutions of the right include not just the french monarchists, but also the british tories and the american democrats.

on the left, is the people, who want to abolish the state and govern themselves. yet, we don't want to completely abolish the idea of society, even as we wish to tear down the institutions that order it. it's a tricky position, to tear down the structures but maintain the cohesion, and we haven't quite gotten it right yet, but we've tried a number of approaches: liberalism, libertarianism, anarchism, socialism...it is all with the intent of taking power away from the church-state and putting it in the hands of the people. all of our revolutions have failed; reform has been more successful to this point, but in the end we will have our successful revolution, this much we can all be sure of. so, on the left we have liberals and whigs and republicans, but we also have socialists and anarchists and marxists, and we're all really trying to get to the same point, in the end: self-determination, self-ownership and freedom from the ruling class.

i decided to go to sleep early to wake up and work on this early in the morning, tossed and turned and woke up late.

i have plenty of time if i'm planning to get out to do the first steps either this afternoon or tomorrow morning. but, i'm going to take a hot shower to warm up first.

i don't understand air conditioning. why do people enjoy being cold?

if we're down to a vagina v viagra ticket, i guess the remaining question is which one ends up on top.

i'm sorry. i'll stop.

i still think that booker is going to severely damage harris' chances in the south, though  - if he makes it that far.

if i were to do a ranked choice ballot, what would it be?

keep in mind that i'm really bernie or bust, and that this could change in five minutes, otherwise. but, i really don't like warren's ideas about much of anything. and, i don't trust harris, but at least she lies about things i like better. but, i can't think of any reason why i'd support biden at all - and probably wouldn't, in the end.

1. sanders
2. harris
3. warren
4. biden

bernie shouldda run for the greens...

in the end, vagina/viagra would be a good ticket, though.

especially if you're into intersectionality.

fwiw, buttigieg seems to have a better chance at the vagina vote than the viagra vote.

but, it's hard to see where his path is, really. he's going to lose to everybody, head-to-head.

yeah.

she has no information about timelines.

so, we're going to court. let's hope i can get this typed before the morning.

i mean, i want to be clear: i want the court to pull this, eventually. i have precisely no faith at all in the review process. it's just a process of getting the right argument....

the court won't just pull it on a whim - they'll tell me to wait. and, so long as they have a good excuse, i'm stuck waiting. potentially forever...

at three months past the deadline, if they can't give me a due date, that's an unreasonable delay.

but, if they give me a date, i'll have to wait.

that's why i'm asking them, first. i'll call at 16:00, if i don't get a response over email.

so, what they're claiming is that there's a backlog of cases, which i'm quite skeptical of.

and, they're further claiming that the manager is reviewing the file, which is not how the process actually works - it's supposed to go to a panel for review.

but, there's not a whole lot i can actually do, so long as they keep bullshitting their way through it. i could ask the court to pull the file, but they'll probably just tell me to wait.

what i've done is ask for a time frame. if they send me much of anything at all, i'll have to wait; if they don't, i can claim an unreasonable delay and ask the court to pull the file for that reason.

...and this does seem to suggest that, at this stage at least, there are both "viagra vote" and "vagina vote" constituents at play, potentially because people don't really know what they're talking about, yet.

so, you've got warren v harris and biden v sanders.

but, i expect that to break up as people get to know the candidates better.

if it doesn't, we're going to end up with vagina v viagra, in the end. and, it's going to be very boring, if we do.

i made a gentle attempt at initial contact with the new person, and will start bombarding her with calls at 15:00. i need a straight answer by the end of the day.

you can try to explain this away however you want, but it's the fundamental point:

Sanders does better with those registered with no party (22%) than those registered as a Democrat (15%). (Biden shows a similar gap.) 

Warren, on the other hand, does better among Democrats (25%) than unaffiliated voters (12%).

This matches up with national polling that suggests Sanders voters are not anywhere near as pleased with the Democratic Party as Warren voters are. 

this was the same basic difference you saw in 2016, too: present warren supporters seem to be old clinton supporters rather than old sanders supporters, and that makes a lot of sense when you look at their actual policies. or you can be gender-reductionist. whatever.

i will continue to argue that sanders is in his own lane, the tricky part is trying to figure out what the other lanes are, even if they all merge in the end. i'm not sure we have enough of an understanding of things, yet.

for example, you could argue that harris is in competition with biden for the black vote and the big money donors. or, you could argue that biden is in competition with bootigieg for center-right voters, or that bootigieg is in competition with warren for the "progressive" vote. these things aren't clear yet, and i think it's partly why the numbers are all over the place - nobody's really sure how to model the data, yet. what that means is that these polls are essentially worthless.

but, if sanders thinks he's going to win this by swinging registered democrats, he's wrong. he's not being embraced by the party, and he's still going to have to overpower registered voters with independents and new voters.

he shouldn't be thinking he can pivot to front-runner; he needs to do exactly what he did last time, and he needs to do it better than he did it last time.

....because he's not a democrat, and democrats know it.

i sent an email to the contact person this morning and got something back claiming that the file has been moved to a different office.

i'm expecting them to claim they "lost" it.

that's fine, keep fucking around. there's no deadlines, here. the judge can sort through all the bullshit, in the end.

i'm still going to have to call her to get a contact number.

they've got these things all over detroit, and the homeless folks don't like them much; i've talked to a handful of them about it at the diner (it's the only thing open for them, too), and they've pointed out that (some) detroiters have a tendency of basically discarding them, bumping into them, running over their stuff, etc.

i'm a long-time bicyclist. i drive on the sidewalk all of the time and have for years, and i've never hit a pedestrian because i'm respectful enough to watch where i'm going and capable enough to manipulate the vehicle - and perhaps because i'm conscious of the reality that it is in fact a vehicle. but, at the same time, i get the impression that it's a lot easier to stop on a bicycle, and that if you do need to stop quickly then you're much more protected from falling off.

the issue is probably that these devices are going faster than they can truly be operated safely at, and the solution is likely to just slow them down quite a bit. i know. but, think about what you're doing for a moment and ask whether it's actually kind of retarded to do it or not.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/death-of-british-youtuber-raises-fears-over-e-scooter-safety-1.4508280

no, really.

i'm serving a cop. meaning, i'm going to have to track the fucker down.

ugh.

i've been complaining about the need to serve people in person being archaic. can't i just send them an email? i mean, c'mon.

but, to file a judicial review, i need to fill out the form, go to the court, get the papers sealed, then serve, and then file again - meaning i'd better be fucking sure they actually get the damned things.

can we modernize this procedure sometime soon?

let me call them, first, and see what they actually say. if i get a shitty response, i'll have to see if i can at least do step one in windsor or not.

i think it's good i didn't buy those tickets, yet.

the changes to the laws in quebec essentially add "displaying religious symbols" to the list of things that public sector workers can do in public, but not at work.

that's the right context.

and, i don't see why the court would be able to tell you that you can't talk about an election at work, but it's ok to push a cross into somebody's face. that would be completely inconsistent; it wouldn't make any sense.

http://psac-ncr.com/political-rights-public-service-workers

well, it's dialectical, anyways.

this maybe isn't the best idea, but it's the right way to be thinking about what to do, next.

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/build-the-energy-wall

again....

in the united states, you have something called the hatch amendment act that bans political activity while employed in the public sector. we have something similar to this in canada, which allows for reasonable restrictions on free expression in order to ensure that public servants are actually acting in the public will, and are not being directed by outside institutions like political parties or, in this case, religious institutions.

i have a hard time distinguishing between a church and a political party, but that opens up another can of worms - i think churches should be treated as political entities under the law, and taxed as such, as well. removing the taxation exemption from religious institutions would be an excellent companion law, to really get the point across.

if you can't come to work without taking your scarf off, you're demonstrating a conflict of interest. and, the courts are actually pretty clear on the point - this is well within the confines of the law on both sides of the border, with little ambiguity around it.

this law would survive a charter challenge.

that said, i think the government made a big error in invoking s. 33 and it may lead to it's unraveling, in the end. there may be specific sections that are too broad, and in some ways it may not be broad enough. the court system should be brought in to help make the law better, not shunned as a threat to it's existence.

but, if you're in america, you want to think of it basically as a corollary of the hatch amendment act. that's how quebeckers are actually approaching it: they want a firewall between religion and government.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/quebec-bans-religious-symbols/593998/

so, what am i actually doing with this judicial review?

well, they're three months late on the review (the statutory rec is 4 weeks; it's been four months), and have made no attempt to contact me, leading me to conclude that they're just not doing it. so, the idea is that i put this in front of a judge, and the judge yells at them to get off their donut-eating, racist fat asses and do something productive for society, for once.

i should call them, first, though, to get some kind of actual response.

if they give me something like "it's in process", then that's not good enough. if they give me something more detailed, with a specific end date, or evidence of extensions, then i'll need to wait.

for the rest of the morning...well, why don't i eat, actually.

i mean, rotating a few conservatives out might sound like a great idea right now.

but, it won't seem like such a great idea when the next republican president uses the same tactic to convert it into an ecclesiastical court.

sanders is usually better at this; he's stretching because he's desperate not to lose the court, and i get it. but, it's really not a good idea...

i'm not going to address the predictably silly aspects of this article, at the national review. conservatives are very silly people.

but, it is not hard to predict what would happen should this take off - whenever a new president takes over, they'd rotate the judges in that they like, and rotate the judges out that they don't. so, what was intended to be a check on power would become a rubber stamp.

i understand that the american left is very apprehensive about the court skewing to the right, but it has to look at this in the longer arc of history and just fucking deal with it until it can regain control using more appropriate measures. i may support shrinking the size of the court somewhat, but my official position is actually to suck it up and wait it out.

that said, there are ways to lure a judge off the bench. maybe one of the conservative judges might like a nice, cushy job as an ambassador to the virgin islands, for example.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-bernie-sanders-would-destroy-supreme-court-%E2%80%98rotating%E2%80%99-justices-67082

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/04/25/analysis/canada-pace-meet-paris-climate-target-two-centuries-late

why are historical liberal voters - not hardcore dippers, but card-carrying liberals - so frustrated with trudeau right now?

well, i'll never join a party. i'm an anarchist. and, i can only speak for myself, although i've pointed out a number of concerns, concerns that the party seems to largely want to address by arguing that they're changing direction. when you go to the party and say "you're doing this wrong", and the party says "actually, that's just the way we do it now.", then they shouldn't be surprised when people get up and walk out. i can point to miscalculations and bad logic all day, but at the end of the process you have to look at the execution and make your choices. if they want to do things wrong, you can't stop them.

trudeau seems to personally have a fondness for ronald reagan; i don't, i think he was a monster. but, it was reagan that uttered the lines - i didn't leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me. and, so i say goodbye to the liberal party, if it insists on burying itself into oblivion.

but, why is it losing so much support to the greens, specifically?

again, i can only speak for myself, here, but it's less a question of the propaganda and more a question of the actual policy. if you flip through these pages, you'll see that i had no delusions about the liberals shutting down pipelines, even if actually buying one is a little over the top. i stated over and over again that the whole point of their argumentative thrust was to act as a pr wing of the oil industry, and that the end point was more pipelines, not less of them - and that because the ndp have essentially the same position, the only way to shut down the pipelines is to stop them in court. so, i took the issue out of the political arena and into the judicial arena, which i would argue is where it actually belongs. in a liberal capitalist society, the legal question around building pipelines largely reduces to one of property rights, which is for the courts to decide, and not for the legislature to use a tyranny of the majority to bully through. the idea of this being in the "public interest" is fundamentally wrong, in a society based around the concept of property.

so, i can only speak for myself, but it's not the pro-pipeline thing that's pissing me off. i fully expected that.

but, it was the other side of the apparent contradiction that i was hoping would be better developed, because i realized that, from the perspective of a bourgeois capitalist party, there really doesn't have to be a contradiction. see, the liberals are all about money; it's the party of bay street. they're supporting the pipelines because all they care about is the money, then they pay lip service to environmental concerns in a ploy to maximize profit - i am not confused about any of this. but, you can make a lot of money by selling environmentally friendly approaches, too, like big infrastructure projects. if this is the bankers' party, and all they care about is the money, and they're broadcasting that they want to invest in clean technology because all they care about is the money, then you're left with a clear lesser evil choice over these western yahoos that would declare independence tomorrow if they could get away with it.

so, i didn't expect the liberals to not support pipelines, but they were broadcasting that they would also support transition because it was profitable, and that's not a contradiction from their bourgeois perspective, even if it seems to be one from any other perspective.

it was the best (realistic) choice on the table.

four years later, they've carried through with their pro-pipeline position as was expected, but they've done nothing substantive on transitioning the economy, at all. rather, they've introduced a (poorly designed) redistributive tax that will have no meaningful effect on emissions, and done a lot of pointless photo shoots. the infrastructure bank that was supposed to fund large scale projects as a subsidiary of the bank of canada using public money has instead been converted into a neo-liberal conglomerate to push "public-private partnerships" for corporate gain, and has essentially nothing to show for itself.

so, if they had spent quickly and lavishly on transition, i would have less reason to be angry about the pro-pipeline position. but, as they've done nothing substantive to actually transition, all we're left with is the expansion of the petro-state. i can't continue to support that.

and, why can't they announce these public works projects? why can't they announce a manhatten project for the climate, switch things into high gear and get 'er done? because they're hamstrung by the ideology of neo-liberalism, by market discipline, by an insistence that government not interfere in the private sector, and by a series of international agreements that make action of this sort potentially expensive. but, this is new to the party - they weren't like that under chretien, and certainly weren't like that under the elder trudeau. really, they were at a crossroads: would they accept these international agreements that were (mostly) signed by the conservatives, or would they tear them up like they used to say they would? and, they've become conservative-lite in every possible way, by upholding the international system, even as it's falling apart in front of them.

if tackling climate change means tearing up nafta and pulling out of the wto, then you tear up nafta and pull out of the wto. but, they didn't - they just let the targets slip by.

and, we're going to have to let them slip by, in turn.

but, if i'm being optimistic, i might present her as a more realistic face for the future of the party.

because she actually writes bills.

you know. the job.

this jayapal character seems to be a better presidential option than almost the rest of the field.

she seems to introduce a lot of very strong legislation, and seems to fundamentally get what the actual problems are. she seems to have an analysis, which is so rare.

it's too bad she was born in india, which bars her from the presidency.

this is kind of equivalent to the libertarian party hiring karl rove.

i saw this coming, but i'm still as baffled as everybody else.

ready or not, here they come.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/07/12/May-Hires-Kinsella/

i'm just skeptical about the return of the bloc.

i was pushing it a few years ago, but they're just meeting a lot of resistance.

so, if the ndp are cooked, and the bloc are stalled, the greens are what's left - which sounds facile, but that's quebec.

there's some problems, granted. but, we don't have to cite stiglitz to reject perfect information, here. it's a tipping-point process, before the mob mentality kicks in. where they're at it is not far from it....

well, what exactly happens if the greens win 50 seats in quebec?

it's probably still a liberal minority, at this point, as they would get most of them from the ndp.

but, the liberals would have little option but to listen to the greens, and very carefully, even if they can avoid coalition with them.

the greens are at eight in quebec?

that's a protest vote, but quebec doth protest (yeah, i know).

everybody knows this is about quebec, in the end. and, they tend to be unpredictable.

hey. i'm just thinking out loud.

https://www.hilltimes.com/2019/07/15/despite-green-partys-rising-popularity-in-polls-and-recent-successes-ndp-and-bloc-likely-to-be-more-influential-pollster-lyle/207983

i mean, did you americans stop to wonder if maybe you like trudeau so much because he's actually, kind of basically one of you?

this is, indeed, long overdue, even if it's just a first step.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/15/workers-our-homes-deserve-rights

and, if trudeau manages to win at all in october, it is quite clear that he's going to lose his majority.

trump is not known for being particularly articulate, but on a certain level i think he's making a valid point. and, i don't think justin trudeau is a very good source of information regarding understanding how things are done here in canada, considering that he seems to be more culturally californian than canadian or quebecois.

i'm reminded of parizeau blaming his referendum loss on "money and the ethnic vote". and, no, that wasn't that long ago.

these kids are not the future of the party - i don't expect any of them to be re-elected more than twice. they routinely say stupid things, and it's just a matter of time before it gets to them. i mean, maybe one or two of them will wise up, but i wouldn't count on it. what will be awful is if one of them sticks their foot in their mouth so badly that they lose their seat to a republican, as they're supposed to be in unloseable seats - which was the point of putting them there.

a lot of the time, the fact is that the basis of their cringe is that they're presenting a perspective that is considered to be backwards, here. those clearly anti-semitic remarks, for example. or, erasing israel from the map. i mean, is this representative ahmadinejad, or what? these are things that you expect people in oecd countries to know better than to state.

there was a famous line by adlai stevenson, who was very much the cultural forefather to the elder trudeau. as he was dodging shit being thrown at him by right-wing protestors, he insisted on pushing the cops off. why? because he didn't want to send these idiots to jail. what he wanted to do was send these idiots to school.

and, if it was anybody other than trump, you'd have expected something worded a little more along those lines.

but, on a fundamental level, he's making a valid point - the west is not going to learn much of value by adopting third-world perspectives about much of anything, and doesn't even really have the obligation to give those perspectives the time of day.

so, step one is done.

step two is the judicial review on the shelved police report.

well, yeah. why would he expect otherwise?

and, he doesn't, you can tell; he knows they're fucking with him.

and, frankly, if you want a reason why his numbers are falling, it's the coverage. he goes on cnn or whatever and they bash him for as long as he's there. then, he complains they don't give him enough time. are you a masochist, bernie? what the fuck?

he didn't get his momentum last time by talking to rachel maddow or wolf blitzer, he got it by end-arounding it and taking his message directly to the people. now, he's a talking head, and his numbers are falling - it's not surprising.

it's easy enough to argue that he needs the tv to get to a wider audience, but i don't think it's actually true. rather, i think he needs to be registering more younger voters, and that he should probably more or less tell cnn to fuck off. 

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/15/bernie-sanders-campaign-media-reject-1415832

i guess he'll want to get this dealt with as soon as possible.


https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/14/asap-rocky-arrested-sweden-state-department-1415839

well, it seems like we got a summer here in ontario after all, even if it ends up being short.

the gulf's moisture - yes, a consequence of climate change - has overpowered the solar magnets. for a while. so, we're going to end up drenched in humidity and rainfall, as all of that water moves from the ocean to the great lakes, through the atmosphere as an intermediary.

the universe is driven by conflict and change, not by harmony or stasis.

i'll take it...

...but, enjoy it while it's here. it won't last long.

let's hope the guy upstairs stays away this week, so it doesn't get ruined by the air conditioner.

so, i finished the human rights application this evening, then fell asleep. it won't send over the virtual network connection in the virtual machine (i don't want adobe software on my dummy gateway), so i'm going to try over the chromebook, and then maybe at the library, before i resort to mailing it....

if there's a hearing, it seems like it will be in toronto.

but, that's done.

the three other suits i need to file are:

#2) a judicial review on the oiprd result. that's going to be in superior court, in london, and i'll need to serve the oiprd directly in toronto.

#3) the constitutional challenge. superior court. i'll need to serve in windsor, and maybe also in toronto..

#4) a judicial review regarding the access to information request. that should also be in superior court, and i guess i'll need to serve in toronto, as well.

so, when do you have the right to use force to stop an anti-abortion protestor?

when they stand in your way - and not before then.

talk is cheap, and the right to expression has to be much, much wider than telford & joly are allowing for.

these are arguably even abuses of power that necessitate some resignations; i haven't looked into it closely enough, but it's certainly straddling a line on acceptable behaviour from a cabinet minister, anyways.

again: if there wasn't a reason to delay the report, they would have released it.

they're essentially just sitting on it. because they know.

ok.

still nothing from the oiprd. time's up.

by statute, this should have been done at the end of april by the very latest. by the time i file at the end of the month, it will be three months past any reasonable release point. so, we'll let the judge rip them apart over that.

step one - human rights complaint.

if people inside or outside of the liberal party have a problem with this movie, then the appropriate thing for them to do is prepare a rebuttal to it and ask the venues for equal time.

just for the record: i don't think that the federal government should be trying to ban movies, whatever they are, and whether i like them or not.

liberals are supposed to be free speech advocates. what they're doing with this movie - which i have no plans to see - is just another reason to abandon the party, as they are continually taking these directions that are incompatible with the basic concepts of liberalism.

but, i decided a long time ago that i would not be voting liberal in october.

and, just for the record.

if you're going to cite him or his work.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216

the way i would put it is that the error that the bourgeois press makes, often on purpose, is that it cites statistics that are true broadly for immigration in the context of debates that are specifically about low wage workers, and even more specifically about low wage workers from south and central america that migrate into the country over the mexican border. in the process of doing this, they skew the data, and often badly, as it simply doesn't make sense to use data about people coming from europe or asia to study in the universities and then apply it to people coming from mexico to farm the fields. if the source that you're reading or citing just talks about "immigration" as a uniform thing, without trying to separate into types of immigration, then it's glossing over data, and probably intentionally.

the issue with wage depression is very specifically applicable to workers in specific sectors, and you need to make sure your sources are being honest about it, if you want to make an honest argument, yourself.

i think that one of the best ways to understand the changes that have happened between gen x and gen y is to compare alanis morisette to taylor swift.

this is what alanis was like when she was a little girl, compared to what she was like as a grown-up.

meanwhile, this is what taylor swift was like as a grown-up:

and, this is what she was like as a child:

so, we can see that what we've had happen here is an inversion of adulthood and childhood.

i'll let you decide which is really more grown-up, and which is really more childish.

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/08/less-than-1-percent-of-u-s-farmworkers-belong-to-a-union-heres-why_partner/

so, to recap. what is the socialist position on ice? not a "progressive" position, and not a liberal or ancap position, but a position that is explicitly socialist?

1) cut funding for ice to zero, and redirect it to the department of labour, so that the state is no longer policing the supply of labour but rather enforcing the labour code. and, i mean this - i want cops out there searching out labour violations. something like 'e-verify' is nowhere near sufficient to properly police employers and ensure they aren't breaking the law.
2) drastically increased penalties for employers that violate the labour code. not fines, not slaps on the wrist, but serious consequences, including losses of license, shutting down businesses and lengthy jail sentences.
3) this crackdown should not be accompanied by attacks on workers. the idea is to ensure that everybody is on a level playing field - that employers are required to provide the same wages, benefits and conditions for immigrant labourers as they are for native-born labourers.
4) tying the minimum wage to inflation.
5) legislation that allows and encourages unionization in industries with large numbers of undocumented workers, and allows those workers to join the unions.

socialists will argue that the issue with ice is not merely a humanitarian issue, but a question of ensuring that migrants, who are workers, are entitled to protections and standards, so they are not exploited for the benefit of the middle class.

and, no, it's not just small businesses.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/19/big-name-businesses-exploit-immigrant-labor

no.

stop.

it's simple.

migrants are workers. all workers deserve equal treatment. that is the fundamental axiom of socialism. employers that treat some workers differently than others, or prey specifically on those without legal recourse to defend themselves, are enemies of socialism and must be identified and prosecuted as such.

this should have the effect of reducing illegal crossings, as the market for illegal labour dries up. but, the basic issue is one of workers rights.

and, what you will see over and over again if you pay attention is that the democratic party does not care about the rights of the migrants as workers, so much as it seeks to ensure that this system that exploits them is not substantively disturbed.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21284/wage_theft_Chicago_undocumented_workers_minimum_wage

but, i mean, you expect the republicans to push supply-side economics, right?

again: ice is the hr wing of the agriculture industry, and it's doing exactly what it was designed to do.

see, this is the problem, and the thing that needs to change.

"progressives" will focus on trying to make the system more humane, while fundamantally keeping it in tact. but, socialists understand that this is a waste of time, and that the root cause of the problem is a system - as well as a society - that is willing to look the other way in the face of widespread labour abuses.

the socialist position is to redirect resources away from a crackdown on workers and towards a crackdown on employers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/us/illegal-immigration-employers-prosecutions.html

warren's approach to ice is the perfect example of why she's a textbook "progressive", and not at all a socialist, and why i cannot and will not support her candidacy in good faith.

what she's calling for is a reorganization of the service, which is rooted in the ideological positioning that the problem is not the system itself but the people within it. it's the old "bad apples" argument. so, she wants to reform the system, presumably so that it is better able to carry out it's initial purpose. this is the old "we've lost our way" canard.

ice has not lost it's way, and it's not being tarnished by a couple of bad apples. ice operates as a human resources arm of industry, and is doing exactly what the people that created it intended for it to always do. there is consequently no future in reforming it, unless you're just trying to reduce operating costs.

but, abolishing ice is not even enough, as it will be recreated again if the conditions which have allowed for it's existence - namely the lax enforcement of labour laws - are not addressed. abolition is a first step. but, an actual policy - a plan that is actually worth pursuing - would be centered around ensuring that all workers, everywhere, are entitled to living wages and proper protections, which means converting the immigration police into a labour enforcement unit. if america spent half of what it spends on policing immigration on policing employers, it wouldn't have an immigration problem. that would be actually taking control of the state for the benefit of the people; that would be an actual plan.

you won't get that from a "progressive" that fundamentally wishes to keep the status quo in place; you will need to support the socialist.

i just measured my own right now - and i haven't done anything strenuous since i came in saturday morning - and i'd say it was more like 48-54.

also, if you're curious, the doctor took my pulse last thursday.

after reading this, what do you think it was?

remember: my cholesterol is very low. but, that's just one metric.

ready?

scroll.






























































62.

and i was still a little sweaty from biking.

well, i guess it's progress, right?

fuck.

https://enwin.com/fluoridation/

no, really. all of these things are fundamentally the same.

1) somebody that gets caught discriminating against trans people or gay people uses "religious freedom" as an excuse, and accuses you of actually discriminating against them. and, they think they're smart.

2) somebody calling out islam on it's treatment of women or homosexuals gets accused of being "islamophobic", meaning they're the one being oppressive for calling out the culture on it's shit. and, the crowd thinks it's very smart for being sophisticated enough to work it through.

3) a black person reacting against a white racist gets accused of "reverse racism", meaning they're the actual racist, not the white person. and, the racist thinks they're very smart.

"religious freedom" is kind of the same thing as "reverse racism" or "islamophobia"; it's just a bullshit excuse that privileged people use when they get caught actually discriminating against somebody. but, the danger lies in actually legislating it or taking it seriously in a court of law.

again: if i could open up the constitution, i would abolish the concept of "religious freedom". but, the uk does not have a constitution, and the idea that you're going to find a precedent in common law for the premise that this is a substantive attack on his "religious freedom" is asinine.

he got fired because he refused to do his job correctly.

https://windsorstar.com/news/world/u-k-doctor-fired-after-refusing-to-refer-to-theoretical-six-foot-tall-bearded-man-as-madam-sues-government/wcm/5392b52e-99f7-494a-8733-307a08cd4460

i saw through this from day one...

in some sense, he's using the same kind of language we heard from other charlatans like barack obama, when he talks of "bipartisanism" and "ending partisanship". that is code for handing over power to the corporate sector, and has been for quite a while. but, he's added a new layer to it - he also talks of "independent oversight" in the same way, which essentially means removing oversight from government.

it's not that this is new, overall. i mean, that's what nafta is, to an extent. instead of having real courts apply real laws, they set up these kangaroo courts staffed by corporate cronies that rule on whether a policy will affect profits, at the behest of just about anything else. and, what are these kangaroo courts? they're "independent advisory committees - just like those phony nafta panels.

what is new is that i've never heard a politician talk like this, or to try to generalize the process so widely.

so, what we have here is really a whole new level of corruption, in a politician that appears to be actively working with industry to entirely dismantle the entire role of government oversight. it took way too long for people to figure it out, but better late than never...

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/07/11/news/advisors-storm-out-and-accuse-trudeau-government-dithering-corporate-watchdog

freedom is not impossible the way that property is.

but, it comes with the same set of contradictions - and it is reasonable enough to argue that freedom is not a realistic end goal until property is abolished, first, for essentially the same reasons.

freedom is not merely a lack of restraint, but is rather a lack of restriction. for, even the most enslaved person can discard restraint, if they are willing to face the consequences, and to be free of consequence from your own actions is merely to enslave those around you to the ramifications of them. so, that is not freedom. freedom is only real when it allows for the actualization of responsible self-interest, in a way that minimizes harm to everybody else.

i was an asshole.

and, now i'm a bitch.

in actual fact, i can't imagine anybody suggesting that i was ever a very nice person at all.

that's never been my shtick in any kind of way. really. i've always been kind of distant, brutally honest and not very concerned about offending people or hurting their feelings. i've never been very concerned about what other people think of me.

if you're stuck in the fallacy of biological determinism and need to come up with a tactic, i guess i'd have been better described as the mysterious, distant weirdo that blows by you and ignores you in some kind of reverse psychological ploy. but, it's a big stretch - the fact is that i really wasn't interested, and that not much has really changed.

i'm not saying that blowing up the mullahs is necessarily the right answer. i understand that if the united states wants to win in iran, it's going to be a difficult process - and the chances are higher that it will lose. this will harm the united states, certainly.

but, i'm not an american. i don't really care if you win.

so, what i'm saying is that i'm not going to oppose a strike on iran in the same way that i opposed a strike on iraq. i was absolutely opposed to iraq - it was based on false pretexts, and it was not a smart move for anybody, except maybe the saudis. iran is really a different animal, and if a very specific kind of scenario plays out, it could be of a large benefit to real democracy in the region.

i mean, if there's a country in the region that we can build a real democracy in, that country is iran. and, if you really want stability, what you want in the region is actually democracy.

i nailed hitchens on iraq at the time, and i'd nail him again. but, his problem wasn't his logic; his arguments made sense. he just had very, very bad information. it's an open question whether he took all these wrong facts at face value disingenuously or not; you'd think he'd have been smart enough to work it through, so accusations of dishonesty are pretty relevant. but, if his facts weren't wrong, his argument would have been solid. i know; this is circuitous and awkward, but it's true, nonetheless.

the relevant facts to make a right choice will come out in the course of a debate, if we're lucky enough to get one. i may still oppose it, but my mind is not as made up now as it was in 2003.

http://www.socialismtoday.org/215/iran.html

by contrast, the baath party in iraq was the consequence of arab socialism being perverted into stalinism, so the socialist forces were already in power, there. saddam hussein obviously wasn't much of a socialist, but his party was historically a socialist party. so, taking down the baath party opened up a space for the islamists.

and, for the ignorant or naive, i'll remind you that this is the nature of politics in the middle east and has been for years: it's socialists v islamists. that's the political spectrum. this shia v sunni thing is a conflict on the right, and was mostly created by the imperial occupation.

in iran, the islamists are in charge, so knocking them out should open up space for the socialists - and that's potentially a good thing.
 
http://socialistresistance.org/the-iranian-revolution-socialism-and-theocracy/3826

now, do i think that if the empire goes in and topples the ayatollah that they'll set up a socialist state in replacement?

obviously not, no.

but, the way i'm approaching the question is not from a pacifist or pro-peace perspective. my interest is not to stop a war in iran. rather, what i'm asking is whether the forces of secularism, socialism and modernism are powerful enough in iran to take advantage of the chaos caused by the vacuum of power, in the way that al qaeada did in iraq. put another way: is the fantasy that the bush administration told you about iraq actually realistic when applied to iran? i think it's clear that it's more realistic; the question is whether it's realistic enough to back action to dismantle the regime, in the hopes that the socialists can seize power in the end.

but, the biggest problem in iran - and i've pointed this out before - is that the russians are already there. it's instantly a proxy war - it's korea, it's vietnam. and, even if the forces of modernism win in the end, you're looking at a thirty year war to get there.

so, i remain unconvinced that war is imminent.

but, i'm not necessarily opposed to it, and am certainly not opposed to it on the basis of being pacifist, if it is.

hey.

i'm a socialist.

that means i interpret the world through the lens of class conflict, and i support revolution everywhere i can, not that i want class harmony and world peace. those people are called conservatives.

so, solidarity, comrades. we will win, in the end, if we fight together.

iran may come off as relatively humane when compared to the saudis, but that shouldn't be used to erase or whitewash the iranian government's crimes against it's own people. iran remains a despotic state with a set of brutal, medieval laws that have created a horrendous humanitarian catastrophe, and any free thinking person should be supporting the overthrow of the iranian state by any means possible. this is a government that cannot be left in place, in the long run.

it's easy to pick sides when presented with a conflict of this nature, but this is a situation where nobody should be doing that.

a pox on both their houses.

do service workers deserve living wages, benefits, time off, holiday pay and all of the other things you get through unionized labour? of course they do.

and, do they owe us a living? of course they fucking do.

but, does it make sense to seize the mcdonalds and redistribute the hamburgers? it very clearly does not. you want to shut these kinds of things down altogether, actually, tell the customers to make their own fucking sandwich and tell the workers to find something better to do.

so, if you think you can just redefine socialism for a service economy, you've lost the plot. we should be focusing on something else, and that something else is an emancipation of our time.

the old paradox was that you need somebody to run the machines that make our lives easier, but this has largely eroded and flipped over: the existing economy enslaves us rather than emancipates us, and we consequently don't just not need anybody to run it, but would be better off shutting it down altogether. when conservatives yell about dismantling the economy, my reaction is something like "yes, please!".

i've made this point before. if you live in an agrarian society, where almost everybody owns property and produces their own products, then a free market system is the best way to maximize freedom. but, if you live in an industrial economy where class is a much more defined concept, then the socialization of production is a pre-requisite for any meaningful discussion of freedom. the problem with really existing capitalism is that it is applying free markets to an industrial economy, which by definition doesn't make any sense. so, now that we are moving into a post-industrial economy, we need to ask the question: what is the best way to maximize freedom? and, it seems to me that the answer must lie in a system, perhaps as yet unnamed and undefined, that focuses on alleviating the necessity of work. that is what is in front of us, and should be the economy we want to try and build: one where people are truly free to spend their time how they actually want to.

i haven't written this. i doubt i'll be the one that does. but, to do this, you need to start talking about redistributing resources in a way that collectivizes ownership, but not through the worker co-operative. if we end up with restaurant co-ops while the banks keep demanding their rent, we're just spinning in circles.

if the left wants to regain control of the ndp, it's going to have to organize and do it. an article like this merely states the obvious.

but, i'd actually advise against it.

the ndp is dead; the economy has changed, and organized labour is not the political force it used to be. let's move on to a post-industrial society, and let's take control of the green party in order to do it.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/07/08/Moderate-NDP-Has-Not-Worked/

i mean, if you want a really scary comparison, the fact is that maxime bernier has more in common with emmanuel macron than justin trudeau does.

i don't think we're walking down that path.

i don't think it's implausible that we might, though.

if the conservatives were actually in power, it might be a little different.

but, in this election, where the conservatives are in opposition, bernier is a much greater threat to the liberals - and the numbers are starting to show it.

i know the liberals try to present a specific idea about what they call "multiculturalism", and then viciously attack anybody that challenges them on it.

but, if you look at historical data from actual liberal voters, you're going to see a different reality than the party likes to project. these ideas that the party wants to define itself by are only going to get 60-70% from actual liberal voters, meaning there's a big opportunity to poach liberal voters by appealing to their hidden or not so hidden racism.

but, what i actually think - and i've pointed this out over and over again - is that race is not an important issue in canadian politics, and certainly not the way that it is in the united states. immigration is an issue, and maintaining a secular identity in the face of so much religious immigration is an issue, but race itself is not very important to most canadians. bernier consequently doesn't really offer anything different to most conservative voters. it would be a different story if he was appealing to things that conservatives actually care about - like lowering taxes - but he actually isn't doing that. however, he is appealing to pro-market liberals, that may want to do things like break up supply management, and that tend to lean towards secularism over religious identity, but may perhaps simply be looking for a protest vote - and unwilling to give it to the greens or ndp because they're too far left for them.

i mean, it's not such a crazy thing. really. to look at bernier as a valid protest, all you have to be is a capitalist, centrist liberal that doesn't like the direction that trudeau is taking the country in, but knows the conservatives are even worse. that's a potentially large demographic, actually.

if the trends continue, the libertarians are going to get stampeded and swallowed.

i don't know how likely that is. but, if even the leader of the libertarian party thinks it's time to cooperate and stop competing, there must be some cannibalism happening in the libertarian party - or at least more than usual.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bernier-libertarian-party-merger-1.4827241

in canada, we now have, on the left,

1) liberals (in name only.).
2) socialists (in name only).
3) greens.
4) libertarians.
5) quebec nationalists.

the socialists (in name only) are in big trouble for october, and the libertarians could very well exit parliament at that time as well, while the greens and french nationalists are trending upwards.

together, these parties will get upwards of 70% of the vote.

on the right, you have one party: the conservatives, and they're to the left of what americans call centrist democrats. they'll get around 30% of the vote.

i need to reiterate the point.

maxime bernier is not swinging anti-immigrant conservatives.

what he's swinging are right-libertarian liberals.

....because, in canada, the libertarian movement is in coalition with the left, not the right. or, was, anyways.

this narrative is complete bullshit.

reliable polling has held the parties within the margin of error the whole time, which is an advantage for the liberals because they have a far better shot at the undecideds. support has not flowed from the liberals to the conservatives over the last few years, but rather from the liberals to the greens - and increasingly from the liberals to the people's party.

what the tory media tried to do here was set their party up with a lot of gramscian conditioning around something nobody actually ever cared much about. it's now realizing that the approach has failed, and trying something else.

it's a good demonstration of the limits of media power, and the fact that it can't always shape the voting decisions people make; while it may have succeeded in denting the liberals pretty badly, it has completely failed in propping up the conservatives. and, now it's dealing with the possibility of giving the greens the balance of power, as blowback.

i'll take it.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/suddenly-the-ndps-money-woes-make-sense/

listen: i actually don't think that a person's wealth is relevant in analyzing their politics. if a really rich person came out with politics i support, i wouldn't have a problem supporting them.

but, i don't want to support somebody that is entering politics because they think they're on a mission from god - that's scary, backwards stuff.

i'd be checking louisiana for chem trails, though.

haarp.

clearly.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/whats-behind-the-weird-track-of-invest-92l-and-other-july-tropical-storms

ok, not really - but if they were going to test a system, this is what it would look like.

In his late 30s, Steyer had "a revelation" and began an involvement in the Episcopal Church, the religion of his mother (his father was a non-practicing Jew). He has stated that during this time he became much more interested in religion and theology. This new interest reportedly galvanized his political advocacy.

nope.

next.

lots of baggage, there.

i wonder how tom sawyer would do in the south carolina primaries, though.

i'm actually not sure if tom sawyer is too young to run for president, or too old to run for president, at this point.

oh. tom steyer.

never heard of him. needs to work on name recognition.

this was completely organic, and i was just reacting to a guy falling on top of me.

also, this is a very old picture of me (blonde, white shirt) at a night birds show at the house of targ, in ottawa.

credit for the picture: marc gaertner. this is something he does, apparently.

admit it, you wish you were there.

https://thequietus.com/articles/25644-interview-cardiacs-tim-smith

and, i actually just stumbled upon this right this moment.

i'm going to get something to eat.

also:

https://www.google.com/search?q=cardiacs%20flower

if you're unclear about something that i've said or done, please go ahead and ask me questions about it. understand that i'm an unusually honest person that has been surrounded by incredibly dishonest people for the last several years and the filters that you've been receiving information from are simply not good sources of information. so, please ask me directly before you jump to conclusions, and realize the following point: i would take the position that if you're not going to even bother asking me for my side of the story, then your opinion is not valuable enough to be worth concerning myself with.

so, i'm back to what i was doing again, and i'm going to get this figured out one way or another in the next few days.

this article is illuminating in it's citations - and it's clarity in debunking many of the points used on both sides of the debate.

this could be an empirical question, but we'll likely never have any actual useful data until we try the experiment in real time, and, even so you're looking at shifting conditions. being an empiricist also means understanding the limits of the tactic.

http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3839

https://reason.com/2018/07/02/libertarians-call-for-sex-work-decrim/

if you're really ra-ra about prostitution, and absolutely convinced that it's just a job and should be completely legalized, you're really expressing an ancap position and should be looking into a libertarian kind of party.

and, it's actually kind of obvious, even if the lines are pretty blurred. what you're arguing for is more capitalism, not less of it.

something frequently brought up in these articles is the idea that pushing sex work underground makes it less safe, but nobody ever presents any kind of reference to any kind of study when they say it. it's just assumed. i'm willing to challenge the truth of this claim, and even suggest that it's a bit reactionary, in the sense that it's ignoring basic market forces - something that marx or proudhon would not have done.

i would suppose that the argument, never really stated, would be that women are less safe if they're less policed. why are socialists parroting this claim?

i might rather suggest that when you decrease the supply of something while maintaining the demand relatively stable, the price goes up, and, as such, the bargaining power of the seller increases. a purely market-based argument would be that driving prostitution underground would make people more safe, and not less safe, as it would give the seller more control over the buyer. the counter argument would be that the buyer will react with violence, but i'm not sure this is well thought through; if they're going to react with violence when the price is x amount, why wouldn't they when the price is however much less? why is violence dependent on cost? and, if you're rather arguing that it's the lack of visibility that leads to violence, i might rather make the opposite point - driving the transaction underground makes it harder for violent people to find the sellers, and easier for a community to snub people it wants to avoid. a small industry advertised via word of mouth is no doubt far safer than one advertised to anybody and everybody in magazines or on the internet.

this issue aside, this is another prominent socialist journal explaining a kind of basic socialist position on prostitution: if there would be any prostitution in a truly free society at all, it would be very minimal, and the focus should consequently be on providing women with better choices, rather than normalizing what is probably the shittiest one.

http://isj.org.uk/the-sex-work-debate/

http://socialistreview.org.uk/393/debating-sex-industry

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/11/socialist-whores-what-did-karl-marx-think-of-prostitution.html

so, what do i want to hear from socialists - not ancaps and not "progressives" - regarding the issue of prostitution?

- decriminalization, but not legalization. don't send people to jail for this, whether it's consensual or not, but try and keep it underground, to keep the economic power in the hand of the sellers. this would functionally legalize independent sellers, while maintaining a strong and vigorously enforced prohibition on things like brothels, escort agencies and other corporate-driven prostitution models. that is, keep the means of production in the hands of the workers, themselves.
- this is important enough to state again: any attempt to corporatize prostitution should be aggressively opposed by anybody calling themselves a socialist.
- more funding for women in at-risk populations. this would include things like increasing access to healthcare, increasing access to education, increasing access to addictions services, more community housing and also increases in social assistance, like welfare.
- more of a focus on teaching men to treat women like people rather than products, and not to see sex as a meaningless high to buy on a market.
- i would also support aggressive action against sex trafficking, which includes aggressive action against pimps, escort agencies and other services that reduce prostitutes to salaried employees. if you're asking me if there's a difference between sex work and sex trafficking, i'd clearly state that the lines are pretty blurry.

once all of this is in place, if women still want to sell, that's up to them.

a lot of the sympathy in the general population around prostitutes' rights is based on the idea that it's an act of desperation - that you shouldn't punish people for trying to survive in such a harshly competitive, capitalist reality. you gotta do what you gotta do; blame the system, not the girl. ok.

but, this argument is taking a different position - it's not arguing that they can't find another job, or that the landlord isn't going to wait for the interview process to complete or that their kids' diabetes can't wait until the end of the month for the insulin shot. what they're saying is "i don't want to do something else. i want to do this. you're infringing on my rights to do what i want.".

well, that's a different perspective; this is not an argument from desperation, it's an argument from entitlement, and it's consequently very different in scope.

i don't think that there should be criminal charges attached to consensual prostitution; it's a reality i can't fathom, but we shouldn't criminalize consensual sex, if it's really consensual. but, i'm actually closer to bernie's position on this than i am to the pro-market, right-libertarian position that's recently creeped into the "progressive" "left": it's far more important to combat trafficking than it is to facilitate sex work as a profession, and if people that choose prostitution out of their own free will get caught up in laws designed to combat trafficking then that's not something i'm going to concern myself too much about.

if these people have specific amendments that can make their lives easier without reversing the general thrust of the bill, they should bring them forward. but, they shouldn't think they're the most important thing, here - because they're not.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjpqvz/fosta-sesta-sex-work-and-trafficking

if your primary focus on the border right now is in increasing funding for the private prison system, what are you actually supporting? and, if your primary concern is reducing the amount of spending, what are you actually doing?

don't misunderstand me - i think a good faith application of the court order to advance the best interests of the child means that you have to feed them, as you're quickly moving to place them into foster care. the whole point of the argument i'm making is to advance the best interests of the child. it's even the actual name of the legal doctrine at work, which nobody seems to want you to know about. but, that doesn't reduce to increasing funding for the prison-industrial complex - it rather necessitates an attack on the foundations of the system, itself.

and, this is the thing about "progressives" - they consistently dress up these right-wing, status quo policies in this humanitarian language, to essentially trick you into advancing a corporatist agenda. and, they are taking incredible advantage of social media, and your naivete, in order to do this, right now.

it's funny.

one of the things that the doctor i saw on thursday wanted to stress was that any kind of operation is going to result in me spending a lot of time alone, as though i don't already spend a lot of time alone, and as though i wouldn't rather spend most of my time alone. i'm a real deal introvert - not the kind of phony introvert that thinks it's cool to come off as introspective at parties, but the kind of person that legitimately needs very serious alone time, and a lot of it.

and, i understand that she wasn't just trying to scare me. she was trying to level with me - i know this is something that exists in the literature, and i understand that trans people have high suicide rates, partly for this reason. a bad transition is often times a life-ending mistake, both figuratively and literally. i get it.

but, i've been on hormones for years and years, now. i took a long time to make this choice, and i'm pretty confident in it.

regardless, that's actually not my experience. i get pursued by both sexes, at various levels of intensity. that night at the bathtub pub ended with me dragging a guy halfways down woodward, because he had his hands all over my ass and didn't get that i was walking away.  he followed me out because i was "the hottest girl in the bar" - which was full of prostitutes. strippers, i think, actually. frankly, it's a good thing i had an inch or two on him (and i don't wear heels) and was able to just plow through him. and, even the people that have given me shit are only telling you half the story. i'm pretty sure that one of the guys that was giving me shit on my works review tried to give me an open mouth kiss on the floor - a bold move that fell totally flat as i walked off, and could easily be the cause of some scorn. and, i think that that guy gary something may have been the person that followed me from the red bull to menjo's in mid-2017, told me stories about jamming with david bowie (does he tell that to all of the girls?) and then got pissy about me not wanting to fuck him. i don't, personally, have any trouble getting the attention of men, and i'm quite certain that i'd be having a lot of sex if i actually had any interest in it. a full transition would help with my sex life, not hinder it.

examples of statements said to me tonight by men:

"god, you're fucking hot. i'm so high. can you stay here and help me with my phone?"

which is maybe the lamest excuse of all time to get somebody to stand by you, but whatever. i accepted the compliment.

"my little brother transitioned, so i've spent a lot of time with transwomen, and you're really hot. it's too bad your voice gives you away, because i'd otherwise be trying to fuck you right now."

and i actually don't mind this kind of thing. i don't like being groped - at all - but i actually like the compliments and awkward sexual innuendo, to an extent.

in fact, i actually have minimal experiences with men grabbing me. it's the women that seem to think they have some kind of entitlement, and i want to draw some attention to it because it's becoming normal.

i'm still trying to figure it out, but i've come to expect that i'm going to get mauled or molested by at least one cis-woman pretty much every time i go dancing. sometimes it's subtle. there's this blonde girl that likes to sneak up behind me and adjust the straps on my tank top, and has actually been doing it now for years. i'm not sure what the point is, but it's harmless, and what do i do besides stay still and let her do it? and she always runs off after. i got lunged at at the xiu xiu show by somebody that had been brought there by her boyfriend, who was standing beside her (overheard a few minutes later: so, what are you doing tonight?). a few weeks ago, i got kind of mom-smothered, complete with a smooch. these are selected stories, it's not comprehensive. and, tonight somebody decided to walk up to me and sweep the hair away from my face, in a manner that was either checking for a wig or extensions (nope. it's my hair. all of it.) or getting ready to dive in on me. i'll never know, because her friend literally grabbed her and pulled her away, in apparent concern at about what was going to happen next. i don't know if she was drunk, or maybe on something a little more touchy-feely. it's a weak excuse, either way.

however you want to gender me, and i'm clear about how i gender myself, a certain subset of ciswomen seem to actually like what i've done with myself quite a bit.

but, it's making me understand that patriarchy is a hierarchy, and i'm at the absolute lowest rung of it. there's a concept of entitlement there, there really is.

as distant and aloof as i am, i don't rule out making out with people a priori. it's just that i'm kind of shy and like to move a little slower. like, maybe i might want to know your name and have a conversation with you, first, to start off with. people nowadays are just incredibly forwards, and being at the bottom of the hierarchy means i get the kind of physical advances from women that women don't like to get from men - and that they don't seem to even realize what they're actually doing.

let it be known: i clearly like to dance, and dancing is a good way to approach me. but, like, don't ask to dance with me, because then i think you want me to hold your hand and spin you around like a princess or something, and i'm not going to do that. don't get me wrong: i'm a stickler for consent. but, it's funny that you think you have to ask to dance, but don't think you have to ask to grope me. if you want to dance with me, just dance with me. and then come talk to me after.

i missed the ferndale show because customs was slow, and i spent the rest of the night in the diner because i couldn't find a late show. but, the fun part of the night was fun, even if i'm still trying to figure this out - even if we're maybe all still trying to figure this out.

she's a liar. flat out.


so, you don't know where she stands on medicare, and don't pretend that you do.

but, has anybody checked into the claim that she was actually bused? is that even actually true?

so, kamala harris appears to just tell people whatever they want to hear, basically.

no time for that. next.

fuck it. i need some fresh air.

and it's cold in here.

it's looking like the rain's not moving out of here until after 20:00, and i'm going to end up missing the early show.

that means i'm looking at catching the 21:00 or 21:30 bus over, and getting to ferndale for the last band. i might catch the one before it.  and, then i'll need to bike back, and potentially in the rain....

this is a local act; in fact, i missed them at pj's last week, too. this night isn't making sense for me, at this point. i guess i'll have to hope i catch them again soon....

i was initially considering a show at villain's in windsor, but on closer perusal, it's not that interesting.

tomorrow's flat out dead.

so, we're writing off this weekend, and i actually saw that coming. it's a shame, because i like the humidity, but i don't like the rain; i feel like i'm wasting the weather, after such an awful winter. and, while next weekend may also be a little slow, the week after looks solid. let's hope it stays nice and hot while the show schedule catches up.

if you're to have security in a bar, it's actual function is twofold:

1) to make sure people pay to get in. that's the real reason you have bouncers.
2) to stop men from fighting each other.

....and, yes, i think i was drugged at the works, but the funny thing about that is that i don't actually remember it.

and, is the night life safe in detroit or not?

the truth is that it's a dumb question that is essentially built on the premise of slut shaming. if your primary concern is sexual assault, you can't ask the question of whether somewhere is safe or not - it doesn't work like that. it doesn't matter what she's wearing, it doesn't matter what time of day it is, it doesn't matter if she was by herself, and it doesn't matter if the bar had security - and when i say it doesn't matter, what i mean is statistically, in terms of trying to predict patterns of prevention. the fact is that sexual assault is generally an act of control, and it's not usually a stranger at a bar but rather somebody you've known for years and deeply trust.

so, i'm not falling for this. i'm not answering this question. i'm not proposing these kinds of solutions. the science is crystal clear on this topic: there is only one way to prevent assault, and it's to teach men to stop doing it.

so, you're not safer in a bar with high security in a nice neighbourhood. you might feel safer, but it's a mental trick, and really a reflection of your own prejudices.

the correct answer is that detroit is as safe or unsafe as anywhere else.

i've now been here for a few years and been to a lot of venues and i've only ever really been bothered in a substantive way at one place, and that was the bathtub pub right downtown. i didn't realize it at the time, but there was a prostitution ring operating out of the space. that's been closed for a while.

on second thought, tonight seems kind of pointless, too. i really projected on the quality of the potential shows.

i could potentially hobble something together by hitting the sanctuary early and the loving touch late, but that is actually a lot of biking and then i'm back to drinking in the park from like 4:00-8:00 or something, which is a good enough time once or twice for the year, but i kind of want to save it for something else. if there's even anyone there, which is not guaranteed. this is actually probably going to come down to whether i want to go for a bike ride tonight or not....it at least looks like a beautiful night for it....

either the late night shows are especially underground this weekend or nobody wants to do one because there's lots of options for the rest of the summer opening up next week and nothing at all this week, as far as i can tell. there's been big shows at marble until 3:00 every night, though. it just seems like a lull. legit.

but, if i'm going anywhere tonight, it's to the loving touch, meaning i won't get back into the downtown core until at least 1:30. i guess i could try to hit last call at goth club. if i'm lucky. it's a stretch.

we'll see how i feel in a few hours.

i have made massive progress in paring down that list either way and should have the rest of the month planned out in the next few days, regardless.