he kind of gets a little wonky about it, but is more or less saying what i am, except buying into the false narrative around it.

if capital is mobile and labour is not, then workers are in a...

prisoner's dilemma.

ah.

if they defect, they screw each other over, which is what we've been doing to each other for decades - playing (D,D) or (D)^n, in more generality.

but, if they co-operate, they're both better off, in the long run, and that's what the enlightened academics need to try to get in place.

does that mean that if you let it go then fascism is inevitable? no - because the fascism is artificial, and pushed down from the top. rather, if you pulled the rug out from under it, the fascism would falter, because that's what it's there for in the first place.

and, because the fascism is artificial and pushed down from the top (read gramsci.), if you try to clamp down on it, the more the elite is going to react and double down. so, top down regulation cannot be an answer. it's like asking a lion to be a vegetarian. it's never worked before and it's not going to work now.

the choice we have, then, is between an international working movement and between a system of financialization ("globalization") that uses fascism ("nationalism") to perpetuate itself.

or, as was said in the past: we can have socialism or barbarism.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/restructure-capitalism-or-fascism-will-grow/

as for myself, i think i've been clear: i do not believe it is in the wider interests of the left to allow biden to govern, and am advocating voting for the greens in protest.

in the mean time, don't be surprised if trump is reelected precisely because of blm.

the people behind him can't exist without divisive politics like it.

it's for this reason that i look at something like blm and say "this isn't revolutionary. this is identity politics; this is neo-liberalism. this is divide and conquer. this is a waste of time.".

....and why i'm more likely to go after the more divisive elements of the movement in an attempt to wake them the fuck up from this neo-liberal fantasy reality they're inhabiting than to look the other way and claim "diversity of tactics".

blm is exactly what the bankers want, and it must be moved past to get back to a revolutionary politics on the ground.

it's less that the democrats are abandoning unions and more that they're trying to structurally enforce a system where migrant workers and union workers are on opposite ends of the spectrum, in order to prevent them from co-operating.

....because it's when the auto unions start to organize the food producers that capitalism sees a threat it can't stop.

they need us to hate each other in order to survive. and, you probably don't get it.

in the context of contemporary politics, nationalism and globalization are actually exactly the same fucking thing, as you need the nationalist politicians to prop up the globalist policies.

the counter-movement is in building an international working class that rejects the premise that they are in competition with each other and seeks to cooperate with each other in overthrowing capitalism.

maybe this is a relatively good time to backtrack a little and talk about trade and how we got here, and what a really, truly left critique of the existing trade regime really looks like, as the spectrum is currently split between two different kinds of fascism, both of which benefit the ruling class.

the key thing is understanding that the system they've designed is intended to set the working class against itself. the media doesn't want to talk about class, it wants to replace it with anything else you can conjure up - race, religion, gender, anything at all, really. but, it's instructive to look at the central place that class actually holds in their policies before you take too far a step back from it. if the bankers base their policies on class, it can't be too unimportant, can it?

so, let's remember how we got to the point we're at, which was partly through a labour movement. labour politics tends to take more credit than it ought to for a number of things, which came more out of fordism than a labour movement, but the labour movement was nonetheless instrumental in ensuring that we didn't have those things taken away when fordism went out of style, at least. and, let us not trivialize the central place that the dismantling of the labour movement had in the onset of neo-liberalism in the 1970s, which was largely designed to increase the amount of stolen surplus value appropriated by capital, and leave less for the workers, themselves.

and, they did that by setting us against each other, by getting us to compete against each other by working up concepts of nationalism.

so, a politician like donald trump does not exist in opposition to "globalization", but is rather necessary to implement it, as the bankers could never get what they want if we saw ourselves beyond the identities they push down on us. the division and violence and hate is not a threat to the existing order, but a function of it, and something the system requires in order to function at all. and, really, if you look at what trump says about migrant workers, and the policies he's pushed forward, they're not a break with the past but a continuation from obama, who himself continued from bush, who continued from clinton. i could write down a series of quotes on shredded pieces of paper and mix them in a hat and baffle you with their authorship. going from for profit prisons to compassionate conservatism to the deporter-in-chief to building the wall is linear, it's progress - and the opponents in the election rarely deviated much, either.

and, do the fake nationalist demagogues ever do anything that actually helps workers on the ground? no. they just continue to drive competition between workers, which props up the existing system and keeps it in place.

but, the flip side of that is that the democrats treat mexican workers essentially the same way, and it is actually for this reason that you're not likely to see any serious movement on behalf of the democrats to try to heal some of these divisions between white workers and mexican workers, which is so required to actually address the labour disparities in front of us. rather, they're increasingly just becoming the mirror reflection, in their own pro-latino racist jingoism, designed to make white workers seem "uncompetitive" and "left behind". but, this is just the same language, used by different sides of the same divide and conquer strategy...

racist democrats talk about white people being "left behind"; racist republicans talk about mexicans being rapists. it's two sides of the same coin, two articulations of the same strategy to set workers against each other and distract them from uniting against a common enemy.

it follows that when you see fake left news organizations get weird about covering labour issues in the midwest because it's "racist", you should interpret that as a red flag that they're essentially working for the banks. anybody that actually understands this is not going to take a side on the issue, as that's exactly what the fuckers want you to do.

what they want is for workers in one category to take one side, and workers in another to take another, and for them to hate each other to the point that they'd rather  fight than work together. they do this by pushing competition, by pushing racial separation, by pushing identity politics and by pushing religion and other things that tear people apart from each other.

so, understand that - the democrats and republicans are working together on this, within a system designed to keep workers apart, and buying into it just perpetuates it.

the way to break the system up and advance meaningful workers rights is to attack the propaganda from both parties and foster cooperation instead of competition.

so, don't call me a nationalist - i'm not one. i believe in international solidarity within the working class, but i'm cognizant enough of the reality to realize that the party system breaks that down from both directions, and that by picking a side in the working class you're just playing into the hands of the banks.

the fake left press is often the worst on this point, because they legitimately don't understand it. they're often tricked very badly into thinking they're standing up for an oppressed group, and very rarely have a good grasp of what the actual statistics regarding poverty levels, and who is really being oppressed, actually are. and, it's not an accident - it's by design.

just like trump is by design.

this is complicated and difficult, but i hope i got a point across.

you need to adjust to reality, not pretend the government will keep you safe from nearly air-borne particles.

and, if that means swallowing a pill or adjusting your attitude, so be it.

it's the same basic mentality, though - when somebody tells you it's everybody else's responsibility to ensure they don't get sick, rather than their own, they are basically reflecting the lack of individual responsibility that is ruining the contemporary left.

and, you're just as likely to succeed in declaring a virus-free space as you are in declaring a safe one.

i'll let the internet run with this, and am sort of surprised that it doesn't seem like it has, up to now.

it would be extra sardonic if those kids were dressed like witch doctors, or orthodox priests, and were "cleaning" the air with sage (which is highly carcinogenic, actually) to ward the virus out of their safe space.

one of the few things i just can't do at all is draw. i've never been remotely good at it.

but, i'd like to see a cartoon with some activist kids holding up a sign that says

virus free safe space

...and some recognizable health experts looking at each other, baffled, with a bubble caption reading:

"why didn't we think of that?"

i've been saying this for months, and i'm not going to say it every day for the next two weeks.

if you put your faith in the system to protect you from the virus, and insist you have the right to be safe from it (why not just declare a safe space, a virus free area?) and everybody else needs to behave in a way to facilitate it, then somebody you love is going to die as a result of your actions and you'll have only your own stupidity to blame.

you should assume your kids will get sick, and treat them like they're diseased from day one.

responsibility for your health is your own, and if you don't accept it, you'l need to deal with the consequences.

so, stop worrying about whether there's a sink in your child's classroom or not. it doesn't matter. take the precautions you need to protect yourself, or suffer the consequences for it.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7306040/coronavirus-b-c-teachers-union-back-to-school-ad/

"life is short, art is infinite"

art is infinite.

you are finite.

submit.

so, i mean it's not about john a and it's not about that statue in that park. i have little but criticism for the man, and would probably support moving the statue to a museum, if it were to come up at a vote.

nor is it about race, or racism, however you want to define it.

rather, it's about the ideology underlying the actions, which positions them as public enemy number one, and something that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society: when the virus of religion rears it's ugly head in this manner, it must be rooted out immediately.

i would consequently call for the maximum possible penalties to be enforced against these people, and for the movement to support those penalties, and to clearly distance itself from this savage, uncivil barbarism.

if you don't want to be labelled savages, stop acting like savages.

i see that kind of thing and my only reaction is that red lights start flashing, and sirens start swirling, and giant words flash in front of me:

DANGER

DANGER

BOOK BURNING. RELIGION. DANGER.

DESTROY.

they've taken away their own voice.

we need to talk about inequality, and the correlation between race and poverty. clearly.

but, not in the context of the destruction of art - it's a non-starter, and i won't engage with people that behave like that.

we've been through this before, and it is the single most serious threat to civilization: religion.

when people gather and start arguing for book burnings, or any other destruction of history or art, they need to be mowed down with drones and bulldozed into the lake.

"but i don't want to save the art. i want to erase it from history."

then you're a dangerous menace to society and need to be stopped before you bring us back to the dark ages.

i have no solidarity for any group that prioritizes the destruction or defacement of history or art.

there is no excuse for destroying art of any sort - books, statutes, etc - and it makes me infinitely less interested in what they have to say when they engage in it.

they just look like a bunch of ignorant christians.

i may support a democratic discussion to move statutes out of parks and into private collections or museums. i have no particular attachment to a statue of john a in a park.

but, the destruction of art has no place in a civilized society or a civilized discourse, and anybody that insists on engaging in the destruction of art de facto removes themselves from the discussion, and renders their voices irrelevant.

they need to stop doing this.

it makes them look like uncivilized savages.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/statue-of-john-a-macdonald-toppled-during-defund-the-police-protest-1.5084561

this is a baby step from a government that nobody expected to care much about actual people and should be welcomed with cautious optimism. but, the devil is always in the details and we should all wait to see the legislation before we react.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7306116/ontario-rent-freeze-could-mean-more-evictions-critics-say/

ok, i'm not being totally fair; it wasn't just rand, there was grisham, clancy and koontz, as well.

i enjoyed the grisham and clancy, but found the koontz a little weak.

i'd rank the best king works higher than all of it, both in enjoyment and technically, which i know is likely to get some push back. but, i actually like king's writing style, and think he was maybe misunderstood by a lot of stuffy people.

i'd expect he'll be revisited by academia in a more positive light, in time.

was stephen king a "horror writer"?

no....

his best works are actually science fiction, clearly, and that's the best way to understand him. he also dabbled in various types of drama, which allowed him to write substantive social commentary into his works, and his books are deeply psychological in the sense of getting into the heads of everything from rabid dogs to people with paranormal psychic abilities, but he's a science fiction writer, first and foremost and that is how history should remember him, as one of the most important authors of the 20th century.

the horror side of things mostly comes out of unfaithful film adaptations, much of it just plain out silly. and, if you're trying to understand king via the shining, you're really missing out. a lot.

a common theme in his writing is the idea of self-control, and i think that's what i remember pulling from him, as a child, more than anything else: good dogs that don't want to be bad and scold themselves for it, kids that can't stop themselves from lighting things on fire, adults that can't stop themselves from altering the future, etc. there's good lessons for kids, there, whether it's intentional or not, about grappling with concepts of actus reus and mens rea. 

i was maybe on the young end of things, but these are actually good books to give young teens to read, despite the reputation otherwise.

i actually did not know that shawshank was the top rated film at the imdb, or that it has been there for a long time. i'm just learning that now.

i used to watch a lot of films with my father & stepmother, and the way this would work would be that we'd pick up two films at the blockbuster - one 'normal' film for the two of them to watch, and that i'd usually skip, and one 'weird' film that i usually ended up watching by myself, after my dad gave up halfway through.

i picked out shawshank 'cause i'd already read it, and the stephen king billing was enough to keep the stepmother interested enough to sit down and try and watch it (she would normally prefer the kind of films that do better at the box office). i'm not sure i have a second example of something that they both managed to get through.

in fact, it was probably my father's favourite film, post-1990, at least. certainly, i can't think of any other film he would reference regularly, excluding things like stallone flicks.

the fact that the three of us could agree on it at the time says a lot, as we really couldn't agree on much of anything. but, it was more than that: if you had polled us at that time, in 1994 or 1995, we would have all ranked this as one of the greatest films ever made.

i'm glad to see it get the recognition that it should have gotten in the first place.

'cause, sometimes things are obvious, even if the world can't see it.

archive.org saves the day, again:

https://ia800700.us.archive.org/25/items/Popcornarchive-theShawshankRedemption1994_qkw5d/Popcornarchive-theShawshankRedemption1994_qkw5d.mp4

and, i'd recommend the text highly too, as you can see.

actually...

shawshank is exceedingly topical right now, with all of the talk of prison reform and racial conflict.

you don't get much more classic than this film. really. if you haven't had the chance, due to age or oversight, spend the time with it, in whatever way it is that people watch movies, nowadays.

i remember watching shawshank with my family, years later, and none of them realizing it was a king film.

and, i'll never forget the dropped jaws when i uttered those lines:

it's not as good as the book

there was a collection called the bachman books that i would have liked to hang on to, and had the running man & shawshank redemption in it. i also wish i had hung on to firestarter, the dead zone and cujo.

the weirdest thing is that i doubt she even read most of them.

my sister became very bizarrely propertarian over the books, for years afterwards. it is true that i gave them to her, if under duress, but nobody else accepted the validity of the gift. my mother vehemently insisted that she would hang on to them until i moved out and got my own place (i was 14.), but it didn't work out that way.

i do believe that taliban jackie discarded the bulk of them, in the end, when the sister tried to bring them into the house, which was foolish on her behalf.

and, i learned many years ago that arguing over ownership of the books was not helpful - and really should have taken it as a red flag of my sister's character, all of those years ago.

if you ask her today, she'll still insist they belonged to her, for no reason that anybody else can discern.

i didn't meet taliban jackie until i'd been walking for years, thankfully.

but, i basically grew up railing against this.

these were books that i bought when i was like twelve or something at the drug store with money earned via allowance, and still have, remarkably.

when i moved from my mom's to my dad's, i ended up "giving" my king collection to my sister (who stayed there) because my stepmother complained that the books smelled like smoke. then, she bought me a pile of books by ayn rand to replace them. yup, taliban jackie.

i never made it through atlas shrugged, because it was so fucking dry; it wasn't until years later that i even realized what i was even reading, or what she had tried to do.

i kept a couple squirreled away, though and still have them: the tommyknockers, it & the stand. in fact, they're sitting on my dresser, right now.

i was like 16 or 17 or 18 or something (i don't remember) when harry potter became a thing, which is the age you avoid things like that.

if i was an immature 15 year old, i could have maybe gotten into it, and if i had kids in my 20s, i could have found myself reading it to them. but, 16-18 is the age where you tend to avoid "children's books" pretty viciously.

i was also the kid that looked towards the older people in the room and really didn't like the younger people. so, i was the last gen xer, even then; i was interested in underground 80s rock music, and trying to build friendships with people in their 20s, rather than trying to connect with people my own age. even at the age of 20, about the year 2000, i realized i was dealing with a generation gap, or on the cusp of something, with people that were almost the same age as me. i'd go work on projects with kids in my class, and realize i related better to their parents than i did to them.

but, i had a handful of friends that were outcasts and rejects, and they tended to prefer the company of people younger than them. so, i remember hearing people talk about it. i never interpreted it as anything more than a children's story, and never developed an interest in it. i'm not exaggerating - i never even cracked one of them open.

even as a kid, i went for the classics. i wanted something more profound, and had no interest in literature for young people that just struck me as a waste of time. so, i was reading like joyce and asimov and stuff, rather than rl kline or whatever else the kids in my class were into.

the closest thing to a contemporary popular novelist that i ever got into was stephen king (by 1995-1996, i had read pretty much everything he'd written up to that point) and i was well aware that nobody my age was reading him.

so, i vaguely even know who she is, and i haven't the remotest interest in her opinion, at all.

the first time i remember reading about the gaia hypothesis was in asimov. foundation's edge. i was very much just a kid, but it got into my head, and i've wondered about it a lot since. nowadays, i wonder more if the real life force is the sun, rather than the earth. the ancients seem to have made a lot of sense to me, more so than the modern religions ever have. and, if the sun dims enough to save us from our own stupidity....

but, i want to react to the idea that geo-engineering is just an excuse, because we may be nearing the point where it doesn't matter anymore.

it's similar to the argument i have with myself about isis, because i bloody well know where they're getting their guns from. so, how can i sit here and argue that we have to stop this using western military might when i know that they're getting the weapons from us, and in fact doing our dirty work? and the reason is that the other option, a new fundamentalist caliphate in the middle east, is just a non-starter. the amount of suffering that would cause is too great to even contemplate. so, you find yourself supporting this struggle that you know is unnecessary, because you just don't have another choice. the intent may have been to terrorize the iraqis into specific concessions, and that may have been horrible, but now they've got us by the crotch and we just have to give in. it's the old story of blowback, and the deficit of good options to deal with it once it sinks in.

so, he's right: geo-engineering should be a non-starter.

but, we might not have a choice, and it might already be too late to avoid it.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/regenerative-agriculture-and-massive-planting-of-trees-is-our-only-hope-earl-katz/

again: there's no science underlying the idea of closing the border. testing in canada has been lower than virtually anywhere else in the developed world, and the official case loads reflect it, and it appears to have been intentionally done to manipulate the data, but the mortality rate is not substantively lower, when adjusted to population levels. we're not doing much better, at all. if it's a little better, it probably has more to do with the fact that we have unfettered access to care, at least in theory.

but, everything's canceled in michigan anyways, and the summer's over, so it's too late to matter, now.

i'm not likely going to want to go to detroit until the spring, anyways.

i'm just hunkering down for a long winter....

this landlord should be thrown in jail, and his assets should be donated to the tenants.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-fairview-adam-barrett-apartment-landlord-removes-doors-1.5704306

i have never read a word jk rowling has written and i do not care what she thinks.

that is all.

i'm not one of them. i bitch about the smoke, but i hate the country side, and want to live in the city.

but, i'd be happy if the wealthy fled the city, and brought rent back to earth.

so, good riddance.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/one-third-of-canadians-no-longer-want-to-live-in-urban-centres-survey-finds-1.5072905

lol.

we get the leaders we deserve, in the end.

maybe we shouldn't have done what we did, but we did...

and, now, everybody is going to be on welfare for the next ten years - even if they remove the laws tomorrow. the damage has already been done.

the government needs to realize this and shift it's role.

they might actually save money with a ubi.

this is an artificial recession caused by draconian laws that restrict people from spending money, and it will last as long as the laws do.

what i'm going to say is that economics as a psycho-social theory needs to be approached very carefully right now.

things that would normally work might not, and things that would normally fail just might work.

but, my basic position is that the government should be less concerned about getting people to spend and more concerned about making sure they don't get evicted. the economy remains largely closed, and stimulus should not be the focus until it's fully opened.

i mean, i'll take any checks you want to give me, sure. just don't be surprised if i put the money in the bank and wait until the mask laws are overturned.

and, if they never get overturned, i may never spend that money at all - because i don't want to hang out in a room full of people with masks on.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-recession-economists-1.5704628

yeah, i'm not exactly a fan, but this woman's career trajectory is particularly exploitative, from the start - from child actor to legal prostitute and everything in between.

the court should have probably put a restraining order on her father, rather than give him custody over her as an adult.

there's such a long history of this kind of abuse in the music industry. your favorite female pop stars were essentially all slaves to the men in their lives, going back to the 1930s and no doubt longer.

she should be granted control of her own finances, for better or worse, in a country that is supposed to be about the pursuit of happiness.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53930167

i impress myself sometimes...

this is a mix tape i put together in 2015 of material initially recorded before the year 2000.

use headphones. please.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0

i'm actually going to do something a tad different with this.

i completely lost track of my train of thought some time near the beginning of august, so i'm rewinding to the start of june and carefully rereading it. as ideas come back up, i'm going to pick back up on them.

there's two things i was doing, directly.

1) i was reformatting the published documents, and doing final edits on them.
2) i was reposting 2014, and getting ready to repost 2015.

if i start in june and incrementally move forwards, i'll pick up on my thoughts in order without skipping anything.

if you told me this is permanent would i spend more money?

on what?

even if i were to buy some clothes, there'd be nowhere to wear them.

right now, there's not any gear i can think of on the list.

i'm a concert person, but it's not just the concerts. you can't see a play, can't see a movie. can you even go swimming? what can you actually do? where can you actually go?

you can go to a restaurant, if you wear a mask and don't talk to anybody, but who wants to do that?

so, if this is permanent, i'd expect a recession. i guess we might figure out different ways to spend money, eventually. but, right now, i couldn't figure out what to even do with free money if you threw it at me.

so, the weather today is making potential fan shopping impossible. i don't want to order it online and wait a week, i want it when i want it. i'll need to wait to go tomorrow.

i spent some time this morning cleaning in here and it helped a little.

the temperature is turning over outside, so the temperature in here is going to fall quite a bit, and that's ok. i might have to put some clothes on, but i can handle that, it's more the refrigeration technology with the air that gets into my bones and drives me nuts.

i'm going to try to do some catch up, but i'm feeling myself nodding off again, so who knows.

i would guess that most money handed out for stimulus right now will just end up paying down debt.

they should wait until things are running more smoothly.

as an aside, there seems to be a lot of fear in the financial press about freeland being a spender, which i'm finding rather baffling.

i'm still expecting a vicious austerity budget, and i realize i'm talking to strawman.

if you give me a lot of money, i'm not likely to spend it, because there's nowhere to spend it.

so, i'd be focusing less on economic recovery right now and more on ensuring that people have basic needs to survive met - which i'm ok with, due to odsp being probably the most stable check in town.

i just want to point out that i have no apprehension about going out of the house and doing things.

it's just that anything i'd want to do has been cancelled, or restricted to the point that it's not any fun.

so, i smoked too much pot (about the only thing that didn't get canceled) and burned myself out, to the point that the sight or smell of the stuff is making me sick. and, now, i'm going to sit at home and wait it out, instead. i'm basically starting my yearly winter hibernation in mid-august, out of sheer boredom.

i don't know how representative i am, but i know that nothing much is going to change with me, personally, until you actually loosen the restrictions in the economy.

https://financialpost.com/executive/posthaste-canadas-economic-recovery-is-already-flagging-it-may-be-time-for-new-finance-ministers-freeconomics

as is so often the case, they trick you by defining the narrative in a fucked up way before the debate even starts.

they want you to play off "globalization" v "nationalism", which is bullshit in every conceivable way. these trade agreements were always about maximizing return on investment, and nationalism was always a trick that the bankers pushed down for that reason.

rather, we need to get back to defining conflicts in terms of class, and seeing nafta for what it was, which was an assault against workers. it is only once we can clear our minds a little, and refocus, that we'll be able to see that the way to oppose nafta is not via nationalism and protectionism, but rather via internationalism and increasing globalization.

workers of the world unite!

as an aside, i've been saying for years that the best thing american workers can do is fight to organize unions in mexico; the system is designed to take advantage of the labour disparities, and the agreements will always reflect it. but, if mexicans had unions, this catastrophe would end.

the reason that the bastards won is that they were able to trick us into seeing each other as competition, and that's what needs to be undone. american workers need to stand in solidarity with mexican workers, against their common enemies in capital, not compete against each other in a race to the bottom. and, we need that mindset, or we'll keep losing.

i don't always agree with sam seder.

trump's still nailing him on that, if you look for it.

"biden supported nafta"
"biden cost jobs"

etc

the msm won't touch this, don't expect them to.

but, biden is absolutely mum.

and, history repeats itself.

why did the 5% swing?

they weren't racists; they voted for obama, but not clinton.

so, were they all sexists? i'm sure a few were, but not that many.

was the vote suppressed? those numbers seem too big for that...

in wisconsin, and michigan, the 2016 election was about nafta, not identity. that was the swing...

and, i don't think it's particularly outlandish to ask the democratic party to address the labour issues that are losing it votes. otherwise, what is the party even for, anyways?

you don't need a major swing in wisconsin for this to kill biden.

you need 1%. that's it. that's how many pissed off white liberal voters you need to undo 100% black support.

so, the progressives on the fake left are whining and complaining that they don't care about white voters in the midwest anyways, and it doesn't matter what they think. they're not in the club; they don't want their votes.

first, i think you should listen carefully to what these people are saying and actually process it. do you really support that?

but, why are they wrong?

the argument seems to be that white people don't matter any more, and you win states like minnesota and wisconsin by sending ohan ilmar out to stir up the muslim vote. like, i'm not joking; this isn't sardonic. that's what they say, go listen to them.

they seem to think muslims are the in thing, and being a fundamentalist religious bigot is cool.

and, then they point to the fact that the margin in 2016 was small enough that they could have won if they had just increased black vote by a hair, regardless of what white voters did. ok.

then, worse, they argue that the decreases biden is seeing in support are demographics that didn't vote for them in 2016 anyways, so it doesn't matter.

why is this all basically retarded, from a numbers perspective?

if you look at the numbers in 2016 v 2012, the decrease in the black vote was (1) fairly small and (2) a lot less than decreases in other demographics. i've been pointing out for years that it's just flat out foolish to base your hopes in a region on winning 99% of a marginal demographic within it. yet, here we are again. you have to expect a little wandering, and that the only way you're going to hold that many black voters is by putting a black person at the top of the ticket.

will harris fix that and get black support back up to 99% in wisconsin? well, biden's numbers seem to have gone down in these areas since he announced, so it doesn't seem to be adding up that way, no.

even if it does, the opposite argument holds: the margin of difference was small enough that even getting to 99% of the black vote is unlikely to be enough to hold off a backlash, if it sets in with white voters. you could win every single black voter in these states, and still lose due to a minor shift in the white vote.

but, the really dumb part of the argument is how you could look at those numbers and come to that conclusion. the swing in wisconsin from 2012 to 2016 was well over five points, and blacks are only roughly 6% of the total voting population (and much less of the swing in the last election). if you intend to go from 90% of the black vote to 99% of the black vote, you are increasing your total vote count by .5%. max.

so, we're talking about something like a 0.3% swing in a state that you just lost more than 5% in. and, you apparently don't care about the other 4.5%. because you're a racist.

that 5% just voted for obama a few years ago, they're not too racist to vote for biden, now - and your insistence that they are is just rooted in your own politics of exclusion and priority.

and, when an equally small swing of white voters, .3-.5%, looks at the situation and says "i'm not racist, but enough's enough. this has to stop.", that is going to wipe out even the most hopeful gains in black voters.

and, you can yell and scream that you're with us or against us, and if you don't vote for us then you're racist and blah the fuck blah, but if people decide they're sick of the stupidity, it's not hard to delete and block...

winning back wisconsin by increasing black turnout was a bad strategy to start, and it's a worse one now.

there's nothing biden can really do. it's not his fault, it's just bad luck. but, let's be real here, and not stupid - this is going to help trump far more than it's going to hurt him, and you need to wake up if you can't see it.

if i'm depressed, drugs are going to make it worse, not better.

i need clear air and coffee and free space, not depressants that are going to force me to sleep for 30,40 hours at a time.

i've been drugged, i'm fairly sure of it.

i can't stay awake...

they don't seem to be trying to kill me, and might think it's some kind of treatment for depression. but, i'm useless until i can sleep it off and get my brain back.

decolonization = deislamicization and that is nowhere more true than in the middle east.

we often tend to frame the conflict in the region as being islam v the west, but this is rooted in ignorance. the west mostly supports the islamicist regimes in the region, which consistently root out any sort of populist movement for any sort of freedom with violence and tyranny and oppression; these regions have vicious religious dictators because we put them there and prop them up.

the uprising in egypt was a secularist movement before it got co-opted, and while there never really was much of a movement in syria, the initial protesters were leftists and not religionists.

that is the real struggle on the ground in the middle east: the struggle against the tyranny of islam (which our governments support), and that is the struggle i support.

i will stand in solidarity with movements on the ground that seek to overthrow the religious authorities and assert something in the spectrum of secular democracy or even arabic socialism, and i can be pragmatic about it in terms of supporting targeted strikes against the clerics, but i don't care about the interests of american imperialism in the region, and i will not shed a tear for anybody who dies in the service of the empire.

it's not like you were conscripted....

you volunteered; you did it to yourself, it's your own stupid fault.

now, i would certainly support an expansion of tuition support to ensure people don't have to make stupid decisions to feed their families.

but, fuck nationalism, fuck jingoism, fuck war, fuck afghanistan and fuck the troops that died fighting for pipelines and heroin.

oh, and btw.

if you're going to sign up for the military, and get blown up in afghanistan, i have no empathy for you.

if you don't want to die in a war, don't sign up for it.

fuck the troops.

yeah. i find this tendency on the fake-left to do away with what they call "means testing" to be rather bourgeois, when you look at it closely.

i'm going to suspect that it probably came out of a historical movement to push back against governments that were creating unrealistic cut-off points. so, rather than fight about who is poor and who is deserving, they just argued to throw the whole thing out the window. i've also heard people like david graeber argue that you'd actually save money if you eliminated means-testing, which is something that may be true sometimes, but shouldn't be generalized too dramatically.

i highly doubt that it cost anything close to 20 billion dollars to administer this program, and these kinds of numbers are kind of necessary to keep manageable when you're dealing with credit ratings agencies that want to come in and push imf reforms.

the flip side is that a lot of this will get clawed back at tax time, and that's fine. but, this isn't the time to write checks for the wealthy, if there ever was one. and, i wonder when the left will re-embrace progressive taxation and wealth redistribution, like it used to.

if a lot of wealthy people benefited from this, it's just another reason to raise their taxes to at least get the deficit manageable enough to keep the vultures out, if freeland isn't one herself.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/up-to-22-billion-in-covid-aid-may-have-gone-to-high-income-canadians-fraser-institute-study

you can't vote for me, i'm in and from canada.

and, understand this basic truth: there is no statistical correlation between the number of burned buildings and the number of victims of police brutality.

you can burn down every pizza parlour in the country, and you'll still have thugs and pigs smashing heads, at will.

you'll just have less heart disease, instead. well, unless they go to burger king, instead, then you're making the problem even worse.

addressing structural racism needs a more thought through set of tactics than this, but you're not going to be of much use implementing them from inside of a corporate-run prison.

if the answer is standing there and saying "they don't represent us", and then calling the cops?

that's a fail, at the movement level.

and, understand this - i support abolishing the police, in literal, actual terms. i'm not tucker carlson; i'm an anarchist. i'd like to be on your side.

but, as an anarchist, i wouldn't stand around like a trained seal and just watch this shit happen, i'd step in and stand with the people being harmed; i'd place my solidarity in the right place, i'd stand up against people being oppressive.

if blm wants to redefine policing, it's got a golden opportunity to show us what it means.

i support an actual revolution, and can look the other way at a diversity of tactics.

but, i don't have time for rioters and looters that are just taking advantage of the situation.

and, ideally it is the movement that deals with this itself, rather than whining "they don't represent us".

take control of your movement, blm - shut these people down, if they don't represent you.

listen, i've been clear that i just think this is stupid, and ultimately plays into the hands of conservatives. i've been on the ground in these movements frequently enough to know that they lose the plot in five minutes and just turn into aimless shit-disturbing, or end up so tactically inept that they just advance the views of their opponents.

it's frustrating, but it's the story of the left.

we need a more serious economic catastrophe, and a more class-based politics, before you're going to get anywhere with a lumpenproletariat uprising. as it is, these are sadly even largely middle class kids that are just looking for trouble...

i mostly agree with the the actual worker at the pizza shop.

things you should smash up and burn:
- churches
- mosques
- banks
- police stations
- symbols of power, dominance, oppression and control

things you should leave alone:
- stores
- houses
- fire stations
- community institutions that serve or represent the working class

in minnesota and wisconsin specifically, largely white states with liberal leanings and large numbers of working class voters, this kind of thing is tone deaf.

it is going to get trump elected.

and, that's why my map was what it was when i posted it.

this can be reversed, still. but, if this narrative asserts itself, trump won't just win wisconsin, he'll win minnesota, too.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-blm-convention-1.5701697

my grade three teacher had a thing for yellow submarine.

and, in hindsight, perhaps lsd.

he kind of disappeared. we never got a straight answer.

freakin' kids.

this should be taught in grade school, along with other timeless classics like beethoven's fifth.

be kind to your children.

please.

the world depends on it.

energy. momentum. love.

it's just physics.

conservation law.

qed.

i forget sometimes that there are children in the room.

ok, maybe your dog cares about you, but not if you raised it like a nazi.

i'd rather flip this over; dogs, like kids, need love, first and foremost. and, these wise words are perhaps useful, in the context of parenting:

and in the end,
the love you take
is equal to the love
you make

i mean, you don't think your dog cares about you, do you?

you're just a cookie dispenser.

your dog would eat you in a minute, if you ran out of treats - and your kids will too, if you raise them that way.

the woman is basically stupid, if she thinks that kid will grow up caring and compassionate.

that kid is going to turn into a utility monster. that's what she's teaching it - selfishness as a virtue.

https://www.cbc.ca/parents/learning/view/train-your-baby-like-a-dog-parenting-is-here-and-the-internet-is-angry

so, i dunno what the next step is at all.

it's still true that the only non-smoking housing that exists is run by the city. but, i'm losing confidence in that being a way out.

i may find myself wanting to move to a small town, but i know that opens up a lot of other problems around my gender identity. i'm more likely to get into a fight with the church than care what they think, but christians are known to kill people they don't like, and i have my safety to concern myself with.

what it means is that if i thought there was no escape before...

it's ubiquitous.

it's just the normal outside air smell, now. all day, every day, everywhere, all the time.

you walk down any street in this city nowadays, and all you can smell is low quality drugs for miles around, and carbon monoxide from the cars.

it's a truly disgusting combination.

i was guilty (for a few weeks.), but i've stopped. and i can only hope that everybody else does soon, too.

the headache is getting a little better, but i'm still overwhelmingly drained, and unable to stay awake.

am i depressed? is that possible?

it's a depressing scenario all around. i think that tuesday was the only day i've bothered to brush my hair and look presentable all summer. there's just nothing to do, no reason to get out of bed.

if i could get those testicles cut out tomorrow, it would help. really.

and the smell of smoke is not pleasant. at all.

i need to make some calls today, but am not expecting to be productive for a while, still. that fan is paramount, and i just need to make the point about it - i'm basically useless without it

the irony is that this article is, itself, just conservative party propaganda that the liberals seem to have repurposed and adopted as their own, as they seem to no longer want to be the party that dominated this country through the 20th century.

it was about that security council resolution. and that is all. really.

don't let them tell you it's about anything else, including the canard of women's rights. that is the most uninformed and most ignorant analysis possible....

https://globalnews.ca/news/7300684/commentary-trump-trade-advisers-comments-about-canadas-role-in-afghanistan-grossly-uninformed/

to be clear: i basically think assange is just leaking cia propaganda, just doing their dirty work. he doesn't seem to really realize it, or at least he didn't; maybe he does, now.

mccarthy would have essentially been the conservative 1950s version of assange, in that sense.

i've called assange a useful idiot.

i think there's a major parallel, even if the spectrum flips.

yeah, my understanding is that mccarthy was essentially a useful idiot - that the fbi fed him a lot of psy-ops, and that he was essentially a foot soldier for the secret service.

and, i've said largely the same thing about contemporary actors, that are out there right now pushing what is essentially just propaganda about russia, in order to take a loose canon president down a notch.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/demagogues-from-mccarthy-to-trump/

does this seem kind of oddly current?

i think most people realize how absurd that is, today.

yet, they wear masks to the mall and don't see the irony.

but, your kids will....

if you read up on this era, you learn that it's only half the case that the politicians were idiots; they knew that wasn't going to be useful, but they pushed the fear anyways, because it was more about control and dominance.

we're in a very weird moment.

....and it's the city.

i'm just a few blocks from where the 401 hits the ambassador bridge. maybe the one thing that was nice about the shutdown was the decrease in air pollution; now that it's come back, it just stinks that much worse.

my headache and sleepiness is not going to go away until i'm able to find a new fan on the weekend, and i'll probably buy two. the 31st is a monday, so i don't know if it'll clear 24 or 48 hours from now. and, that will be the end of this somewhat awful month.

i'm going to make an omelette, but i don't really expect much between now and then.

i just can't function in stagnant air like this. it's not the temperature, it's the stillness. i need constant flow.

this is a perfectly valid observation.

that is all.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/right-now-biden-is-underperforming-hillary-in-battleground-states/

if the glove fits.

i hear he has some good ideas about health care reform.

(there's an odd fit of coughing from a dark figure in a bright suit, coming from far in the background)

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/27/mitt-romney-staffers-support-joe-biden-402408

you're neither fixed, nor free.

you're stochastic.

you're not free, not exactly - not any more free than an electron in a field is. we are subject to the effects of external forces. clearly.

but, you're certainly not predetermined.

that's not even classical.

that's not even wrong.

frankly, this strikes me as obvious, and i can't fathom how anybody could think we're born with a specific amount of intelligence. that doesn't even strike me as worth testing for, that strikes me as fundamentally clear.

but, what the "we are born blank and can change" people are really up against are the christian snowflakes, the ones that think god made us all unique and variation is an expression of divine will. that is not the debate in the literature, but perhaps it ought to be, because it's what it really is.

if you take a step back from that for a minute, the idea that you're born with a specific iq, or a specific weight, or a specific height, ought to be considered ridiculous. it just doesn't make any sense, intuitively.

and, even eye colour changes, too. mine have been blue, green and brown at various points.

https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/plasticity-its-time-to-rethink-the-notion-that-intelligence-is-fixed/

there was a "chinese supermarket" i was in when i was looking for raspberry tea that...

i think there was a language barrier, and that's why i haven't posted about it. i told him repeatedly that i have asthma (which is a half-truth.), and he honestly didn't seem to understand. he just kept saying in broken english that i needed to have a mask.

so, i just stopped and asked him, blankly: "do you want my business or not?"

and, he looked at me like he was going to cry and shook his head.

so, i walked out.

the adjustment i made was that i carry my puffer now, so that people with language barriers can understand why i'm not wearing a mask, and can make a choice as to whether upholding the fud overpowers their bottom line, or not.

again, if you find yourself in this situation, what you need to do is the following:

1) be assertive, but stay calm.
2) ask for the manager.
3) explain to the manager that you're leaving the store because of the laws. that way, they understand why they're losing business.
4) take your business elsewhere.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/mask-restaurant-brandon-manitoba-1.5699001

maybe there's a nice bunker in bosnia for her to hide in for the next few months.

now, was she on drugs during the last election?

i think it's clear that she was, yes - but it's normal, most politicians are, nowadays. they give them anxiety meds, or very strong uppers to keep them alert.

what's weird is that trump doesn't seem to be; he's the exception, here.

she needs to shut the fuck up.

and somebody needs to tell it to her in no uncertain terms.

can somebody fly clinton to benghazi to get rid of her for a few months?

thanks.

so, again: let's stop pretending we can rely on china for supply chains.

we can't.

we need to adjust.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/canada-china-covid-19-vaccine-trial-plug-pulled-1.5701101

i mean, if it was a church group, i'd maybe have a more subtle response.

but, it's not.

so, my condemnation is clear:

you? never did! fuck the kenosha kid.

i can condemn this kenosha kid.

if he blew up a mosque, that's a diversity of tactics to advance secularism - i wouldn't advocate it, but i won't condemn it

but, i have no common cause with anybody that wants to shoot black protesters on the street, unless the protesters are explicitly christians.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with shooting three people — two of them fatally — during a Kenosha protest Tuesday night, considered himself a militia member trying to protect life and property

you never did.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/08/26/kyle-rittenhouse-charged-kenosha-protest-shootings-militia/5634532002/

i never did.

- the kenosha kid

it's going to be a sleepy few days, i can barely stay awake.

so be it.

the pig upstairs seems to be smoking, and it's not helping.

it can't happen here, right?

so, there's this idea that this unrest in minnesota and wisconsin is going to help biden.

derp.

if she cared about him at all, she would recognize his autonomy and provide him with agency.

he's right to call her selfish.

this is absolutely terrible.

she cannot have the right to interfere like this, and the law should be amended to ensure that she can't.

an individual's life belongs solely to them, and they must remain the sole decision maker over it.

it's things like this that are why i can't fathom getting married.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-medical-assistance-in-dying-bridgewater-couple-court-1.5700203

i don't like either candidate.

but, joe's the conservative, here. not don.

it's funny that richard spencer endorses joe biden, and the coverage around it is that biden rejected it, as though biden has some kind of right to choose his voters, and as though biden's rejection at all matters.

it's this weird tendency tied into the rise of identity politics to see voting for a candidate as joining a club, rather than as an act of self-interest. in the minds of identity voters, it seems to be that there's a "biden club" and that, by supporting the candidate, you're joining the club. as such, members of the club have the right to remove you from it.

this is of course utterly ridiculous to everybody else...

if biden rejected my endorsement (which is not coming.), i'd tell him to fuck off, and that i'm voting for him anyways, whether he likes it or not.

so, let's take a step back, here.

richard spencer apparently thinks that joe biden aligns more with his concept of history than donald trump. why is that?

is it the kasich endorsement?

and, is spencer right? or is he foolishly voting against his self-interest?

this hurricane that's about to hit near new orleans has a very weird track, and there is actually a fairly high probability (relatively) that it could zoom across the south, end up back in the atlantic, and then slam new york.

we see these weird tracks every once in a while, where the thing zigs and zags like mohammad ali, and then pow.

you'd be daft to predict a hurricane.

but, this could be vicious.

after the last election, the media instantly jumped on the comparisons between 2019 and 1972, and i cringed.

say what else you will about the dead old man, but nobody doubts that pet was a master strategist. 

what if pierre had missed his chance all those years ago?

yeah.

he missed his chance at an easy majority, and now he's vulnerable. as fatigue sets in, the trend will be downwards.

he'd better give us a helluva budget.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7296428/trudeau-leadership-election-poll/

i'm not going to write the white paper here, and i'll leave it to the economists to fill in the details, but the rule of thumb here should be that the wealthy need to shoulder the burden, and that cuts for the vulnerable should be avoided.

but, i expect an austerity budget from freeland, at the least.

and, i'm hoping the ndp doesn't cave...

who is benefiting from this?

- online sales are up. maybe a tobin tax would help.
- the market isn't hurting.
- property is variable, up in some places, down in others. but, this would appear to be a good time to raise property taxes.

etc.

they appear to be calling for rae days. no thanks.

i don't want to see a single dime cut from spending, anywhere.

raise taxes.

https://financialpost.com/opinion/in-the-tough-times-ahead-what-is-trudeau-prepared-to-cut

i actually agree with the sailor.....

this is an international waterway, and we have no right to enforce any sort of authority over it, or stamp our feet and get mad when people disobey it.

and, we need to get used to it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/new-zealand-yacht-cambridge-bay-nunavut-1.5698347

if death grips were half this good, they wouldn't suck.

but, they basically built their career on this old bowie/eno/reznor/ice cube/rave ogilvie collab.

i strongly agree with the historical liberal party position on this matter.

i don't care what america thinks, and don't want america running the planet.

i care what the security council thinks, and want the united nations running the planet.

my primary concern about afghanistan is the potential of getting into a war with china over it.

it would not be in canada's interests to get involved with a proxy war with china. at all.

we went to korea, and it was a mistake. but, we avoided vietnam, and we should avoid whatever's coming next, too.

nato will probably withdraw from germany before it withdraws from afghanistan.

they could be there for 200 years, if america lasts that long. and, if america collapses before then and hands over the anglo-american empire to some satellite, like canada, then they'll be there for the next 200 years, too.

now, as an aside, the nato presence in afghanistan clearly doesn't have anything to do with combating terrorism, but is rather a geostrategic positioning that has to do with controlling a very important part of the world.

well, that and the heroin.

actually, i think it's clear enough that the position that the canadian government took in afghanistan is that what america wants or does not want is irrelevant in determining the legality and desirability of intervention; what's important is how the intervention exists in the framework and context of international law.

it follows that canada would have gone to afghanistan whether it was in america's best interests, or opposed to american interests altogether, so long as it was agreed upon by the security council. what america thought, in context, did not matter, and whether it was good for america or bad for america was not a part of the calculation.

so, are we doing america a favour? what does that mean?

i think we're just implementing the security council resolution...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/top-trump-adviser-peter-navarro-disparages-canada-s-military-efforts-in-afghanistan-1.5079375

i do hope that they are fully prosecuted for assault, and charged under the appropriate hate crimes legislation.

see, this is what nobody wants to see. and, they don't have any claim to self-defence, either, if they're going to stand on the corner and preach hate against an identifiable group, nor should they be allowed to hide behind "religious freedom".

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/anty-gay-attack-prompts-hate-related-investigation-1.5697192

the thing is this, though - how different is what they were saying on the corner in a language we all understand from what they say in a mosque or a church every day, in a language that most of us don't?

and, if you think it's ok to confront them when they do it on the sidewalk, why don't you think it's ok to confront them when they do it under their domes?

i don't want conflict, here. but i'm a very stark realist, and i know this kind of thing is going to be more likely in the future unless something is done to address the hate against homosexuality in these communities, which isn't evaporating due to integration.

i had to do a lot of running around yesterday.

i was concerned about cops sitting on the street corners with baseball bats, but almost nobody was maskless, indicating that the fear, uncertainty and doubt seems to be working. there were again two cases yesterday...

people actually seem to have been taken aback by something they saw on me that they may not have seen on anybody in quite a while, namely lipstick.

i'd bet cosmetic companies are taking it hard right now in some places, because what's the point when you're wearing a mask? but, you could see it in the eyes of random females walking by.

i remember that. i miss that, just a little. not jealous.

i managed to find another month's worth of brand name estrace, right here in windsor. is there more out there? there might be, i don't know....

this month was been awfully unproductive. i keep trying to clean up posts back to early august, and keep getting stuck, either via distraction (posts this month are twice the average) or as a consequence of migraines or oversleeping. it snuck up on me this time by accident, but quitting smoking is not fun. but, i'm inside now for a bit, and am two weeks past it, so let's hope i can get a bit of work done before i have to do groceries for september.

mackay would have won, i think.

but, he's lost this now what, five times?

this isn't america. you don't get to lose twenty times before you win.

i do hope he's done done done, now.

it's hard to see what kind of path o'toole has. mackay would have done quite well in the east, and that alone would have put the liberals in trouble. o'toole doesn't strike me as the type of conservative that is likely to do well in ontario, so he's basically just playing the same game as scheer, and the result is probably the same.

but, we still have to take him seriously. that's how they win; we stop taking them seriously.

if he does manage to get in....uch-o....

but, if he doesn't, i guess the conservatives are at a kind of crossroads. frankly, i don't see what the point of replacing scheer with o'toole actually was, but you can only run the same candidate with different hair so many times...

you have to wonder if the right answer for mackay isn't joining the liberal party.

in other news, dog bites man.

pearson >>>> douglas.

that's just how it actually is, in the real world.

sorry.

you just can't.

sorry.

woahwoahwoahwoah.

let's be truly realistic, here: the united states is currently fighting proxy wars against china in africa, and could potentially wage them again in the southeast, and in korea, as well as in south america, and even in europe.

as much as i agree with the idea that conflict is inevitable, it's another thing altogether to suggest direct conflict is inevitable, and i'm not following you down that path.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/the-danger-of-war-with-china-is-real-and-insane-larry-wilkerson/

hi.

i spoke with dr. ________ this afternoon (aug 24) at 14:30. i mentioned at that time that i had a video of the first migraine with aura that i experienced, but didn't send the link.

dr. _____ has not requested this, but i suspect i will call him again in the future. further, as he no doubt does not often run into bloggers documenting their first serious migraine, it may also be of some professional interest to him, in general.

i've sent a fax because links are hard to speak over the phone...

this link, if typed exactly, will jump to the part of the video that is of interest to dr. _______, where i first start to experience stroke-like effects and actually get myself to the hospital. it is not unlike later occurrences, except without the shock of it being the first time and not understanding what's happening.

i was told i did not have a stroke.

the first 40 minutes, the part that you skip if you type the link exactly, are a critical analysis of the 2016 democratic party wisconsin primary (i have a math degree.).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgNetAISshM&t=2516s

if you believe that, go back to school with your kids.

this is, what, the tenth time they've made this stupid, obviously wrong claim?

https://globalnews.ca/news/7294893/coronavirus-reinfection-hong-kong-study/

to be clear.

what i'm having would appear to be a "migraine with aura", in which case the hemiplegia is a part of the aura.

that is different than a "hemiplegic migraine", which is apparently something that mostly affects kids.

i'm not convinced i see the difference, and when i pushed it he didn't give me a good response, but it was clinically relevant to him.

so, the neurologist got uber wonky on me and denied my hemiplegic migraines, claiming it was a specific condition that mostly affects children rather than being a description of a "migraine with aura" like i was using the term. so, despite experiencing extreme weakness on one side of my body in a stroke-like way, which is the literal translation from latin greek, i should be describing my migraines as "with aura" rather than as "hemiplegic". language matters, apparently.

he doesn't think it's likely that the migraines are the result of head trauma.

rather, he strongly suggested i refrain from inhaling any kind of smoke (which is hard if the neighbours upstairs are smoking), as that struck him as the most likely trigger, something i actually found myself in agreement with him around. it's pretty clear, really - when the air quality comes down, the migraines come in.

i can't stop them.

there's some possibility of a stroke, but there's nothing i can do.

i can take drugs to ease the pain, but i don't want to.

and, i just have to deal with it - and try to avoid bad air.

so, that was an overwhelmingly unproductive week that just evaporated into nothingness in front of me, and i was hoping to get some sleep this morning to start fresh, but so be it.

i'm kind of floaty, but i need to get going.

i have to make a call this afternoon regarding these headaches. while i wish my weekend was less wasted, it's sort of topical, at least. i mostly just want to know if these are something to be concerned about (i don't think they are) and talk about what this means long term, and maybe ways to get out of them when they come in. i fought that headache off for what, three days? and, then it got me in the end, and i'm still not sure it's done yet.

i was *this* close to being done, and now i'm back in lalaland again.

*grargh*

now, i'm sleepy, but won't be in five minutes.....that's what it's been like all morning....it's almost like somebody put something i don't want in my water or something...

pro-tip: if you're 45 years old and you think you're smart enough to run a country......

....that suggests you're pretty dumb.

they're all in their 30s and 40s....i think trudeau might be the oldest, at 48.

i don't think there's a single person in the inner clique over 50.

they should be out having fun, like normal people, not trying to run the country.

this is a job for older people.

"no one listens to filth pig"

touche.

so, i mean, i often suggest that this government has swung hard to the right, and it's true, but...

a lot of it is just the reality that they don't have the slightest idea what they're doing.

this is a hard country to run, that requires a lot of very careful balancing acts, and a very deep base of knowledge in the country's history.

you can't bullshit this.

you can't wing it.

you can't make it up as you go.

they're too young to govern.

that's the truth - they got over-zealous, they threw away their brains, and they're lost in a canoe in the dark without a light, floating up schitt's creek to the fall....

it's not catastrophic. not yet. but, if nothing changes, wait for it.

this entire discussion is alien to them.

but, it's in any text on canadian foreign policy.

the frustrating thing is that it's absolutely clear that these people are not carefully overturning a policy that they've researched, for sound reasons that they've argued rigorously.

they don't even know why the policy existed, or that they're overturning it in the first place.

"but we're special"

that was what they said.

yeah, we're in a special tariff category.

if they haven't woken up yet, we're doomed.

the reason that canada was the leading voice for the rule of international law through the second half of the twentieth century is because it realized it had the most to lose from the order collapsing; the threat was existential, and well understood - both from the americans to the south and the russians to the north.

canada would be the first to go, if the system ever fell apart.

so, when chretien held to this position - until the day they dragged him from his office - he was holding to a position rooted in a very deeply held view, of an international order that was of his party's design, for his country's survival.

it wasn't a triviality.

and, to suggest it "wasn't worth it" is about the most ignorant thing i could imagine somebody possibly saying.

just a reminder that history is still being written....

i can understand that it may seem incredulous to believe that this institution called the liberal party of canada actually rigorously held to the idea that any kind of military action outside of the security council is a war crime from the time the council was formed, right up until the invasion of iraq in 2003. that sounds like a fairy tale.

but, we're the ones that set the damned thing up in the first place.

to answer the question as to why the security council was so central to liberal foreign policy before ignatieff (who broke it.), you need to understand why we created the security council in the first place, which had a lot to do with our own security.

it's 1945. what country in the world is most in threat of an american invasion? hint: it's not cuba, even if we eventually formed a bond with the cubans over a shared threat.

so, that is why the security council exists in the first place! of course we held to it, and we held to it very strenuously, with the very sporadic counter-examples coming exclusively under conservative governments.

but, this is the reminder: the liberals, themselves, have yet to break from this rule in actual fact. they've said stupid things about venezuela, and supported shady groups in ukraine, but the basic policy has not yet been reversed, and can consequently still be salvaged, if the right dipshits are pushed out of power in enough time.

it was one of the things i liked most about the party, and one of the things i liked most about the country. it'll be a sad day to see it go, if it comes to it.

it doesn't have to.

it's still good.

listen...

when i had these discussions about reviving the union movement in the early 00s, there was still a sense of dissent and reversal to them. the neo-liberal project was far advanced, and we knew it, but we had yet to feel it.

and, when we had these discussion around '11, we knew it was done, but we still held to it, because we didn't know what else to do, besides drink in the park.

but, we can't still be having these discussions in 2020. it's done. let's get the memo, let's move on....

i'm going to mexico,

where there's nothing but the sun.

nothing.

(except car factories)

i can't not vote against erin o'toole. he's an unacceptable candidate for high office.

ugh.

so, this isn't like "the west v the east" or something....

islam is a western philosophy, through and through.

this is the future v the past, science v religion, enlightenment v counter-enlightenment, revolution v reaction, liberal v conservative.

if you're going to look at the board this way, and i don't think it's wrong to do so, in fact i do it all of the time, then what the rise of islam in the west is is the reactionary, conservative counter-revolution to the enlightenment.

it's the return of christianity, in a mildly different variant.

it's not something new, not an invasion, not an overrunning; it's a return to the past.

and, i want to look forwards, not backwards.

the freedom to have an identity is, again, a contradiction in terms.

it's only freedom from identity that makes a coherent use of the language.

i identify as a member of the species.

well, sometimes.

that is all.

and, i don't want an identity as an ethnic or religious type, either.

identity is slavery.

i'm an individual; i'm free.

and, of course, they're going to tell you i'm a jew, because it's what they do.

don't like somebody's opinion? must be a jew.

i think i'm ancestrally hebrew on my dad's side in some combination, but i don't actually know with any certainty. i also think i'm ancestrally cree, italian, french, irish, finnish, norwegian, malagasy and welsh. that is, i'm a mix - and any hebrew ancestry that i have is incidental, and not any important than the rest.

my father was a non-religious catholic; my mother is a non-religious anglican. i eventually went to a catholic school, but i didn't participate. my mom baptized me when i was four because the public school system started at age 5 and the catholic school system started at age 4. it was a question of getting me to school a year early; it had nothing to do with catholicism. i did not take the eucharist, did not get confirmed and don't even know what the next sacrament even is. so, i'm not technically a catholic, by their own admission criteria.

i'm a born and raised atheist.....

this is the original version of the parenti article, for the purposes of full disclosure & transparency:
http://www.swans.com/library/art9/mparen01.html

that's a different type of soundtrack for the blind, apparently.

it also follows that accusing china of colonialism in it's west is a kind of false equivalency, because islam is the root cause of colonialism, as we understand it in the west.

it doesn't really make sense to argue that they're colonizing a colonial ideology.

what the chinese are actually doing is decolonizing the uighurs by deislamifying them.

it's also a good time to post the parenti article about tibet, which debunks a lot of myths:
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

there's no question that the chinese could have been a little less zealous in tibet. they didn't have to be quite as heavy-handed as they were.

but, i'm basically in support of the policy.

we should all be seeing this as a way to help the uighurs move past an obsolete identity that has them mired in the past, not as a way to take something away from them.

so, what i'd like to see the chinese do is implement a very careful, considered type of mass conversion program that has a specific focus on deislamifying them, but through positive incentives rather than violence and fear.

i've been pretty clear that i actually vaguely support treating religious conviction like a mental illness. i don't believe in the premise that "religious freedom" is some kind of human right - it's a contradiction in terms.

so, if i basically agree that the uighurs are batshit insane, what's the best way forward? the answer is that i'm not fundamentally opposed to what china is doing in principle, it's more in the details. how do you separate the muslim from the uighur in a way that is fundamentally just and fair?

when you see articles about china at sites like the atlantic, you need to correct for a level of bias, immediately. you expect a level of intense exaggeration in the media around "human rights abuses" in china, but you also expect that there's a kernel of truth underlying them. the truth is that nobody really knows what they're doing, and these kinds of articles should be taken with a grain of salt.

but, i don't think it's impossible to secularize these groups in a way that is ultimately beneficial to them and, in the end, has them freely choosing to move past their religion as backwards. in fact, i'd support it - and would argue it's the only approach with any chance of success.

if the chinese come in here with giant sticks, it's just not going to work, in the end.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/china-pathologizing-uighur-muslims-mental-illness/568525/

the most dangerous virus out there right now isn't covid-19.

actually, maybe there's something to that.

i've been pushing the idea of secularizing islam to defang it. maybe it's a better idea to corporatize it, to discredit it.

if we can get to megamosques quickly, we might get to herd immunity not long after.

we tried to escape.

but, here they are, knocking on the door, again...

it's almost like they're the abusive boyfriend that has followed us across the country, and found us hiding in a witness relocation program, and just left off back where we were, before we escaped.

the fact that they're the same as us is exactly what the problem is.

they're not different than us, they're the same as us - but they're the worst part of us, the part of us that we fought so hard to escape from and leave behind.

"western civilization" is hellenism.

christianity is just a little, small, piece of that.

i feel like a pagan standing in the third century watching the empire collapse in the face of a primitive, backwards system of thought.

i feel like we're being recolonized by a new type of christian....

and, i expect that secularism will win, so long as we can have that debate, so long as our own leaders don't sell us out. it's just a bit of a scary point in history, as it could in theory go either way...

again: i don't see islam as something foreign. it's fundamentally greek, so it's fundamentally western, unlike systems that derive from east of the indus. my concept of "the west" is greek, not christian, so it includes russia and iran and north africa and arabia, as well as some parts of black africa that ended up greek in the pre-columbus period (like ethiopia).

i'm not afraid of being invaded by a foreign culture. that's not what islam is.

what i'm afraid of is reverting to the past - just as i would be by the rise of an evangelical movement.

i just see them as a new christian denomination, a new type of evangelicalism.

and, i'm fully aware that the christians & muslims will eventually unite and gang up on secularism.

is it possible that i'm mistaking corporatism for censorship?

google sells ads. that's the point. so, if your exact phrase is close to something that can help it serve an ad, maybe it might want to expand the term a little. that's an invasion of privacy, perhaps, but it's not as scary as the image i just posted.

the terms i'm testing with make such a thing fairly unlikely, unless google is running ads for mosques, or something (would they even allow that? well, it's inevitable that we'll see a muslim jerry falwell, eventually. maybe it might help if they speed that process up.). if you can show me where the algorithm failed, i'll concede the point. but, it seems like it's too much of a stretch, in the context of the terms i'm using, and the way that the server is reacting.

google should have some kind of way to tell the engine that i want to search for a specific phrase.

quotes don't work anymore - they've decided that when i tell them i want to search for a phrase, i don't actually, really, i'm just confused.

it's curious that we can still get curious results about dechristianization, though:

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=dechristianization

i'm actually flipping this around from the conservative arguments you hear: i like the fact that i get good results when i search for dechristianization, that reflect what i actually want to see.

why i can't i get the same kind of results when i search for deislamificatoin that i get for dechristianization? why do i get censored for one and not the other?

but, no - don't react by censoring my second result. fix the problem with the first...

if it's not clear enough, i want a search engine that gives me what i'm searching for, with absolutely no censorship at all, whatsoever.

i mean, i'm searching for it. that's the first hint.

i wonder what kind of fascist agreements this government has made with google, and what we're going to learn about it when they're removed from office.

they do this kind of thing in china; are they doing it here, too?

something like this is right out of orwell:

and, it's kind of scary to see it in front of you.

if i'm looking to find some kind of information of some sort, and the search engine gives me the opposite of what i'm looking for, i'm not going to just read that instead - which is what they seem to expect, bizarrely.

rather, i'm going to turn the computer off and find some other way to get the information i'm looking for, instead.

this is useful to me, until it isn't.

if the internet loses it's value as a search tool, i'm just going to stop using it altogether, and go to the library, instead.

i may have spoken too soon regarding the openness of information on the internet, and it's utility as a means to find information.

google is clearly filtering results around certain phrases, and i do not like that it is. bing isn't any better....

i don't want my search results filtered, and i have no interest in reading the propaganda that the corporate media wants me to read, instead.

the religion is legitimately oppressive.

the question is what the most enlightened way to react to it is.

and, i won't pick a side in a struggle between nazis and muslims.

the world would be better off if they killed each other off.

likewise, as somebody that is exceedingly apprehensive about the increasing numbers of muslims in the west, i need to find that careful balance between looking the other way at offensive assertions of islamic values that are harmful in theory but not in practice, and cracking down on assertions of oppression and intolerance by people that hide behind a veil of religious freedom - even as i suggest that the line between islam as a supposedly peaceful religion and islam as a vehicle of hate is much finer than the multicultural propaganda might suggest.

it's a very subtle debate and it can't be had by ideologues.

but, remember: my argument is that christian nazis and muslim jihadists are essentially the same thing.