this was posted to google+ the other day and is how i'm going to close the disc here.
this
is inri002; it's what i've been listening to in the other room for the
last day or so. what it does is combine bits and pieces of my first two
demos, which are largely unlistenable, into something that can actually
be enjoyed. i've pointed out that the first demo has a kind of abstract
quality to it that has the potential to find an extreme niche audience
somewhere between philosophy of the world and trout mask replica.
that's great and all, but most people find that kind of thing too
challenging. this is far more digestible - which also means far
less cringe-y. there are some short vocal sections, but it's broadly
instrumental. the sections are usually short. so, it's a mix tape. all
of the snippets were recorded in 1996 or 1997, but the mix was
constructed in 2013. i'm posting this now because i'm enjoying it for what it
is. i've come to the conclusion that this is a really seriously
worthwhile addition to my discography. when i first mixed it, it was
more as a way to save face - i wanted to be able to do something with
all these little pieces of sound that were ruined by bad lyrics. it's
grown on me as a really positive decision. it's weird. very
weird. that's why i like it so much. but, it's contained and sort of
catchy, too. there's an audience for this, for sure. and i'm proud of
this now, finally.
==
i've released a dozen different things with the title "inricycled", making it more of a concept than a release. it's not just the material i'm recycling, now, it's the idea of recycling material.
i hope this is the final iteration. the difference, here, is that i'm trying to isolate segments of songs that people interested in my more recent compositions would find interesting. these fragments aren't entirely void of lyrics, but they're very minimal. they're also quite short.
i've retitled most of the tracks to get a feel of what the music sounds like and/or what i was thinking as i was writing it.
the material in this volume is taken from the first two cassette demos, inri000 and inri001.
this is the best possible absolute starting point for my musical material.
written and recorded over 1996 and 1997. digitally remastered, sequenced
and mildly modified in the fall of 2013. released dec 11, 2013.
finalized as lp000 on july 3, 2016. i consider this my unofficial
zeroth record. as always, please use headphones.
this
release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also
eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all
phases of production (1997, 2013, 2016).
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, found sounds, metronomes, digital wave editing, production.
released july 1, 1997
“hindsight is 20/20.” - hillary clinton, responding to questions about her judgement.
what oksana is irritated with is the assignment. she doesn't think that this is somebody who deserves a prime time interview, and is seeking to demonstrate it. i think she succeeds.
i could take one cat. i could maybe take two cats. three, and i maybe vulnerable to an organized ambush. four? five? i'm actually not liking my chances.
cats have sharp, pointy claws and sharper, pointier teeth. they are extremely agile. they can do some damage, if they swarm you in a pack.
i have a colony of cats in my neighbourhood, and they're frequently freaking me out. it's not any one cat that bothers me, it's the fact that there are always several cats together. have you seen lions hunt? there's quite a bit of co-ordination. they seem to have some concept of geometry, even - it's really fascinating. it indicates some underevaluated intelligence.
i'm not suggesting house cats are as smart as lions, but how much similar ancestral programming is there in there? i don't really want to find out, if it means getting swarmed by five cats.
Saphire Blue
Cats are warm and loving animals so they need the company of other cats, case closed.
jessica
cats are obligate carnivores, actually.
these accusations are consistent with a string of allegations that goes back several years.
yeah. i just got a quick, clean listen of inri001 in on the official setup and it sounds great. i can only hope that this clarity lasts. i'm going to try it through the other gear, but i'm closing it.
this record is very much a continuation of the first demo, but it's also a kind of an appendix to it. if the charm of the first demo is in it's outsider music abstraction, this demo could easily be overlooked. but, it's in truth a more honest representation of the more ordered side of what i was attempting to create. the record also contains cringey moments, but they're not as pronounced and in truth are even largely overshadowed by the increased order in sound. so, despite the charms of the first demo, this is far more predictive regarding the music i would create over the next few years.
near the end of the demo, i become cognizant of the fact that my family is moving and i will lose the recording space - specifically the drums and the recording machine. i kept the guitars, as i was intellectually invested in them previous to the room, and my dad kept the bass. this awareness of an end point brought me to several summary type songs near the end, where i'm attempting to close the idea down prematurely. i always intended for this demo to be the same length as the first one, i just ran out of time. so, the cassette will leave the second side of a 100 minute tape blank.
while i can ultimately not honestly diagnose this demo as any more listenable than the first one, in absolute terms, it is certainly a lot closer to it. again: is this an asset or a drawback? it depends on the perspective. there's something to be said for me finishing my ideas more clearly, even if it means a loss at the level of the surreal - which is actually important in appreciating this, as one cannot actually listen to it.
that's not to say that this demo doesn't get outright weird, as it certainly does. it's just that the weirdness is more composed and less accidental - again, it's a stale academic argument, but it has a real meaning in the contrasted aesthetics.
so, i'd request that you interpret it as a reflection of the first demo rather than try and build a direct comparison with it. i'm pointing this out because i'm bundling them together in chronological time and associating them to one another due to the shared recording environment, but the value of this is more in the contrast than in the comparison.
so, i think it has a path to an audience, if not necessarily an obvious one just right now. it's too good to be intriguingly awful, but not good enough to appeal on it's own merits. so, it has to be understood in chronological context - as a transitional recording.
==
my second demo, recorded over the second half of the tenth grade, is a considerably more polished recording. by this time, i had learned a lot about how to record things and had improved my drumming and keyboard playing. while the vocals remain highly erratic, ranging from precociously insightful to devastatingly stupid, the music here is actually not far from a professional recording.
recorded in spring 1997, remastered in fall 2013. finalized on july 3, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
i consider this an archival release with little direct listening value. i've pointed out repeatedly that i was 16. however, various segments have been isolated and pulled out for a higher listenability value over here: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a
this release also includes a printable j-card insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013, 2016).
i'm going to jump ahead a little bit. but this is a sidenote.
this is inri002; it's what i've been listening to in the other room for the last day or so. what it does is combine bits and pieces of my first two demos, which are largely unlistenable, into something that can actually be enjoyed. i've pointed out that the first demo has a kind of abstract quality to it that has the potential to find an extreme niche audience somewhere between philosophy of the world and trout mask replica. that's great and all, but most people find that kind of thing too challenging.
this is far more digestible - which also means far less cringe-y. there are some short vocal sections, but it's broadly instrumental. the sections are usually short. so, it's a mix tape. all of the snippets were recorded in 1996 or 1997, but the mix was constructed in 2013. and, i believe that i will expand it in the upcoming days into a full 90 minute mix tape. it's currently sequenced for cd.
i'm posting this now because i'm enjoying it for what it is. i've come to the conclusion that this is a really seriously worthwhile addition to my discography. when i first mixed it, it was more as a way to save face - i wanted to be able to do something with all these little pieces of sound that were ruined by bad lyrics. it's grown on me as a really positive decision.
it's weird. very weird. that's why i like it so much. but, it's contained and sort of catchy, too. there's an audience for this, for sure. and i'm proud of this now, finally.
ok. i feel i'm a decent mediator here, because i'm in between generations and i'm in between ages. i also have little interest in either antagonist.
the way i see it is that young people have a lot of bent up frustrations, right now. this is a trivial example, really - but it demonstrates a larger point. let's forget about the arguments for a minute and who's right and who's stupid. is a strongly emphasized pejorative a rhetorical smack down, nowadays, anyways? what is demolished, here? the child's play pin?
but, look at the anger. the bent up rage. the bottled up hate.
live this:
don't move don't talk out of time don't think don't worry everything's just fine just fine just fine
don't grab don't clutch don't hope for too much don't breathe don't achieve or grieve without leave
don't check just balance on the fence don't answer don't ask don't try and make sense
don't whisper don't talk don't run if you can walk don't cheat, compete don't miss the one beat
know nothing else.
you'd be kind of testy, too. i get it, man. i gave up. fuck that.
policies aside, this anger needs to be dealt with by analyzing the system of order that fused it into such a frighteningly explosive mess. if some pressure is not relieved, the whole thing might blow.
here's a half-baked idea that may actually have some truth to it.
the united states military maintains a large number of contingency plans. they have like a whole unit of game theorists and propaganda experts working together to devise strategies to react to any conceivable scenario. for example, they had a contingency plan to launch an invasion of montreal should quebec vote to separate. clinton actually had the jets on stand-by.
what if there's a contingency plan to stop hillary clinton, and even bill is acting on it?
the e-mail thing just seems so orchestrated. it's centralized. scripted. this is a show trial. but, what is orchestrating it?
hillary's tenure at the state department was apparently rough on an interpersonal level, many times over. worse, she seems to be for sale to foreign interests through her foundation connections. if the system has self-disciplining algorithms - error-correction - then it would just be doing it's job in picking this up. maybe. this is a half-baked idea, remember.
i don't know the plot line of this tale, but it seems like it's going to be narrated for us. i just find the idea of the deep state reacting to a presidential candidate on national security grounds to be intriguing. great theatre, at least.
-
see, i think there's recent precedent for this, too - although, now i'm stacking baked ideas on top of each other, so extreme caveat lector.
i think that this is basically what happened in russia around the ukrainian issue. western-backed factions in ukraine were calculated as such an existential threat that they launched the deep state into a security operation, and the military has taken over.
i don't want to get too far ahead of myself in assigning prescriptions to a scenario i invented out of whole cloth, but perhaps it demonstrates the dangers of allowing intelligence agencies control over any kind of state machinery. democracy becomes an impossible illusion, as flawed as the (coerced) choices may be. even the facade is a distraction for the naive.
jessica
i understand why the young turks is pushing this argument, but i think that the totality of events actually undermines the narrative that has been developing in the independent press and the independent press needs to take a step back on it. what you want to see is that it's a democratic administration colluding with a democratic candidate to help the democratic party. but, then, how'd it get so far into the process in the first place?
what lynch was trying to broadcast in the video was that she has no actual influence in the matter. she could in theory send down a set of directives from the top, but that would be completely illegal. the matter is being dealt with by career justice department people - the civil service - and not by the elected administration. that's why it doesn't matter.
further, what the department is broadcasting is that the meeting was not planned on her behalf - rather that clinton tracked her down and ambushed her at the airport. is that realistic? if it is, it just demonstrates the seriousness of the indictment. which again brings us to the question of why exactly it is that this is an issue in the first place.
as far as i can tell, the evidence we have before us actually strongly suggests that clinton was out to cut some kind of dirty deal, and he got snubbed.
read into that what you will. but, it seems to have at best backfired.
multidinero
On the contrary. The reality of things is that as the chief prosecutor on the case, she is the ultimate power in what is brought forth and used against HRC in the case. If it's not already public knowledge or decided to be not used by the prosecution to strengthen the case, they will essentially stymie their own case to make it seem not as valid. Frankly, being crooked in action or giving the feeling of possible impropriety only makes the whole Democratic party and its countless acts of corruption and staking the deck against those who would ultimately "Rock the boat", look more valid and separates them from The People even more. Though, of course, they think the masses are too stupid to notice.
jessica
the attorney general only interferes in these matters under extreme circumstances. ironically, just about the only time an attorney general would interfere would be due to political pressure - something political like a case against edward snowden or mumia or something. in almost all cases, the documents that her office signs off on are examined by bureaucrats and signed off by staff.
for her to send a letter down from the top demanding that a certain outcome be adhered to would not be lawful.
multidinero
For the DNC to collude with HRC before and during her presidential campaign was also not lawful. For HRC to coordinate with the SuperPacs that help her is also not lawful. Yet, she did it without hesitation. Why wouldn't she cosign this action? Legality is not part of her ultimate concerns, as the powers that be are still ultimately behind her.
jessica
oh, i have no doubt that clinton was looking to cut a deal. what doesn't seem to me to fit the evidence is the idea that lynch was willing to play ball. as stated: i think he got snubbed, and the fall out is going to make the situation that much harder for her.
the process appears to be going ahead.
---
jessica
jimmy, when you get tracked down on the tarmac by a former president, you can't just tell him to fuck off.
he's not just the presumptive nominee's husband. he was president for eight years.
she can't know why he's there ahead of time. what if the strike codes are being launched? no, this is for real. it's out of protocol. but she has to grant the audience.
that is a potential checkmate for hillary clinton. if you think that has nothing to do with it...
y'all should have listened to what she's said about abortion a little more closely. the existing law is judicial, which means it depends on what the constitution states. you get around that by changing the constitution.
what has hillary said about the constitution and abortion? well, like i say - you probably should have taken the time to look that up.
trump is extremely vulnerable with catholics. clinton's coalition requires a strong turnout from hispanics.
listen - i don't like any of this. don't shoot the messenger. i'm just telling you what is tactical. and, picking a pro-life vp is just about the most tactical thing that hillary clinton could possibly do.
one of the arguments that the clinton people have been pushing for a while - and you see it show up here and there - is this idea that hillary really isn't any of the things that the left says about her, that it's just all a lot of right-wing propaganda that's been put in silly leftists' heads. every time anybody says anything critical of hillary, then, it's just right-wing propaganda. typical tactic of restricting options.
right-wing propaganda or not, it's pretty obvious that hillary is "open to influence". and, unusually so. that's usually what the argument is about and it absolutely falls apart when you're talking about corruption or most of the other mean things that leftists say about hillary. that's resolvable by appeal to evidence, and usually even with minimal real controversy.
but, i think the argument does hold very well for the things the right says about hillary. if all you've ever heard about hillary came from right-wing talk radio, you'd think she's an anti-war hippie that wants to take away your guns and put an abortion clinic in the corner of every convenience store.
the truth is that hillary has always been right-leaning on abortion. what was it? "safe, legal and rare", i think? she has been on record for opposing late-trimester abortions forever. she's really always been about reaching a kind of compromise position that respects the safety of the woman, but not necessarily her right to choose.
this is, of course, why the right goes out of it's way to skewer her on it. the result is that if you think hillary is a closet social liberal, you really have been fed the line from the right. and, the number of people that think this is not trivial.
it's not just a question of going after a demographic that is probably up for grabs, then. a substantial percentage of trump support is really voting against hillary. but, a lot of what they're voting against is really an elaborate straw man. if she just lets that run wild, and the party gets trump to shut up, then trump is going to be able to mobilize voters against her that otherwise don't really support him. that could be fatal. she must find a way to at least disarm this propaganda by attacking years of straw men arguments against her. and, one of those things is going to be setting the record straight on her views on abortion, what kind of judges she would appoint, whether she would propose such a constitutional amendment and etc.
like it or not, this is actually one of the things that she has to do to win - if not to sway pro-life voters then at least to convince them to stay home.
vlogs are shutting down for a few weeks. i'll be vlogging, just not uploading. i've done this before several times, with good reason. it could be until august before anything else gets uploaded, although vlogs will continue up until the 29th, too (which will be published on the 7th).
in the mean time, i may rant a little here. but i will be mostly focusing on the music journal, and most new posts here will be musically related.
y'all know that social assistance in canada is paid for by property taxes, right? not income taxes. that goes to pay for stuff like war.
so, if you don't pay property taxes, you can promptly shut the fuck up.
...and if you do pay property taxes, you have a social obligation to contribute to redistribution.
it's a pretty good system, all and all. not perfect. but pretty good. if you can navigate it...
those right wing pundits, though? they're just wrong.
it was the c'mon that convinced me. i was a little uncertain. but, that always works.
see, this is what the republican ticket really ought to look like. i'll grant them that. the policies are far more identifiable with what i would define as a conservative candidacy.
as it happens to be i'm not a conservative. at all. so, no thanks.
but the way this is shaping up, conservatives may end up being one of the more important voting blocs. i don't think either of the major candidates have a real advantage amongst small-c conservatives, right now. a three-way split may end up deciding the election.
if you want a historical precedent, you may want to consult the canadian election of 1993. i know you want to go to ross perot, but this may be a more violent break in the tent than that. the situation was very different, but the end result left the conservative movement split in half for a very long time.
jessica
you need to pull the rug out. the idea that you can say she has an x% chance of winning is incoherent. what that actually means is "if these thirty assumptions hold, she has an 80% chance of winning". but, here's the thing: that was always true. it's not that he's lost his way. it's that what he was doing was always a kind of snake oil.
the primary prediction schedule is a completely different thing, because you're building a predictive model. you're using existing results to predict future results. i'll argue about specifics (i don't think race is a predictive variable, for example), but i don't deny the premise. and, then you can come up with these kinds of statements.
aggregating polling and demographics like this together and then thinking you can come up with a number is just ridiculous. it doesn't matter what you're tweaking, it doesn't matter what you're assuming, it doesn't matter how much data you have, and it doesn't matter how close you are to the date - it's ridiculous.
but, that said? one cannot deny that most of the arguments right now are clearly in clinton's favour. his argument may just be a lot of nonsense that he pulled out of his ass, and then made sound more "scientific" by using fancy words. but, it's basically right.
i also think you're kind of misunderstanding what he's saying. what he's saying is that "if these thirty assumptions hold, she has an 80% chance of winning right now.". it's not a declaration of permanence. that number itself will shift and change with the polls.
he is nowhere saying that because his calculations imply an 80% chance of winning right now, they will therefore still imply an 80% chance of winning the day before the election. that's kind of a straw man.
---
hmm
I think Hillary will win by a 65-35% margin
jessica
actually, i think that 35% for trump is a reasonable prediction - but that the other 65% won't go entirely to hillary.
there's obviously too many variables to make hard predictions, right now. but, if the party can't get a muzzle on trump, i think he's going to be stuck in the low 30s.
Lynn Reed
No muzzle can fit him...lol
jessica
see, if they can find a way to shut him up, it's hard to see why he would poll lower than george w. bush. trump is fundamentally the same candidate. it's just that even dubya had some sense of when to shut up. you also need to factor in where hillary ultimately runs. if she decides to go after conservatives, she could beat him soundly on the right. but, if she runs on the left, you could get a lot of conservatives vote for trump out of fear of hillary.
i think there's a kind of breaking point where conservatives, en masse, just can't do it. this is independent of everything else, and that's the scenario where he polls around 30-35%.
Lynn Reed
Since Trump is anti trade alot of GOPers will never back him. Hillary needs to drop the TPP and he wont hav anything real to attack her on. Stay the course and she will be fine
jessica
i think that if you look at trump's position more carefully, you'll see it's mostly smoke and mirrors. it's empty populism, and it doesn't really differ that much from the party line.
on china, clinton & trump are hard to tell apart. clinton is not going to drop the tpp, she's going to accelerate the asia pivot.
---
Xavier Thorn
I haven't heard her say anything about going to war, I don't think that word has come out of her mouth.
Look! I get it, I was a Perot fan back in 92, I've got my Bernie 2016 bumper-sticker on my truck. I get it, but I know when to pick my battles. Trump poses a huge threat, not only to our domestic policies but also, and maybe more importantly, our foreign policies.
He would set us back to pre WWI (that's 1914) relations with some of our strongest allies. He could begin a downward spiral with China that would make the cold-war look like a playground spat.
I'm not an HRC fan, but at worst she's 4 more years of the last 8 years and I don't think that's too bad. With Trump? Who knows? We could be looking at World War 3. Is your frustration with not getting everything you want right f-ing now worth that risk? I hope not.
jessica
you're obviously a paid poster and not worth debating with.
for real people: the right response is that this person is not remotely informed about where hillary stands on the issues. you obviously can't actually convince somebody that's working for her. but, you can point out hillary's support for a chinese containment policy through the asia pivot and the tpp (and that china doesn't like this), her support for continued war in ukraine and general belligerence against russia, her calls for "no-fly zones" and occupation forces in syria, her orchestration of the kony kerfuffle to increase us involvement in africa, etc.
you need to talk past the bots. call them bots. call them bots to their face. do it with contempt. ignore them when they protest.but, always correct them. don't let their warping of the facts stand up. that's the important part of this: that passive readers are not just able to see the exchange for what it is, but don't walk away with bad information.
it's very important that people understand what hillary actual represents (she works for the war industry) before they vote for her, thinking she will be different than trump. we're on the same side in wanting an alternative to trump. we're not on the same side in thinking that clinton is that alternative.
hillary clinton will not be different than donald trump in any discernible way.
i've been to a doctor a few times this week about the degenerative
disease it seems like i have. that's something i'm going to be doing
over the next year or two, as i seek to figure out what the fuck this
is.
i need to be clear: i don't have a clue what it is.
not the slightest. it's a lot of the same symptoms you get after a
stroke, or get when you have ms, or get when you have als, or get when
you have cancer, even...
these are symptoms that have
been bothering me for around ten years, now. in some ways, they are
getting worse. yet, they kind of come and go, too. i just always lived
with it. facial tics are annoying, but not worth the time to see a
doctor. i can deal with a sore back every now and again. & etc. but,
the dysphagia has been really scary at points over the last couple of
years. this isn't new, either, though - i remember it being awful for
short periods as far back as ten years ago. what's new is that it hasn't
receded now in quite a while.
the first thing i wanted to
do was quit smoking habitually. done. since january. i wanted to make
sure i wasn't just dehydrated, too, and i think i've ruled that out. the
next thing that i wanted to do was rule out an ear infection, as a lot
of the symptoms seem to be centered on my left ear. what's the point in
getting mris and talking to neurologists for the next ten months if i
just have an ear infection, right? so, i did that this week. i will get
results on monday and am not certain what they will be. the doctor
eliminated an actual infection as a cause, but the admin seemed to note
something unusual around my ear drum when she was doing aural testing.
i
don't think i had a stroke, although i've had periodic fainting spells
for years (none recently). i got rid of them by not smoking on an empty
stomach, although i think some of it was also heat stroke. i also think
that this has been going on for too long for it to be cancer. the simple
truth is that nobody has untreated cancer for ten years without the
symptoms getting overwhelming. yes: the dysphagia is bad right now. but,
it always previously came and went. if i had a cancer in my ear ten
years ago, i'd almost certainly be dead by now.
so, i've kind of long deduced something like ms (or als, or...) by default. what else could it be?
well,
something i've overlooked this whole time is lyme disease. i was just
reading up on it. the symptoms are pretty accurate - especially the
facial tic. i don't explicitly remember the rash, but would i have been
able to tell it from a mosquito bite? i've had lots of mosquito bites
over the last ten years, and some period of being "eaten alive". the
absence of a rash is not absolute, either. you'd think that untreated
lyme disease for a decade or more would be pretty serious by now, but
that's at least a way out from ms or als.
the only other
way out that i can think of is that my jaw keeps healing wrong and then
fracturing and then healing wrong again, and it's basically just fucked
that side of my face up so badly that everything has stopped working
right. essentially, then, my face would be fucked. i know you appreciate
my technical definition and in depth knowledge. but, i think there is
something to this.
i wanted to do this one thing at a time
to keep the issue straight in my head and i don't want to see a
neurologist until everything else is ruled out. let's say i have ms, in
the end. it's untreatable. i lose nothing by waiting for the diagnosis. i
gain everything by avoiding a misdiagnosis.
so, i will go
in on monday after i get my hearing test results and set referral
appointments to check both for lyme disease and for skeletal issues. i'm
also going to see if i can get my tongue checked for cancer, just in
case.
it's only once i go through that process that i will consent to see a neurologist to check for a degenerative disease.
right now, i'm honestly kind of leaning towards lyme disease. - and i'm irritated with myself for not thinking of it sooner.
this is a bait and switch.
it's no less of an act....
i have been predicting the demise of pewdiepie for several months, now. this is just the next phase in his ongoing collapse into irrelevance.
china owns huge amounts of oil in canada, but can't get it out.
the idea that prostitution is some kind of valid occupation is the literal victory of neo-liberalism. it is the strongest possible endorsement of capitalism.
i oppose prostitution laws, but i also oppose prostitution. i do not oppose prostitution laws because i think the exchange of sex is a valid market interaction. i oppose prostitution laws because they are ineffective in abolishing prostitution.
effective solutions to prostitution need to get at the root causes, which are largely related to the enforcement of wage slavery. we live in a society where most people have no choice but to sell some abstraction of their labour in order to survive. i would consider it oppressive to restrict an individual's choice in who, exactly, it is that they wish to whore themselves out to.
we often hear this idea that prostitution is the same as every other job and should be respected the same way as any other job. but, the anarchist perspective flips this around: all wage labour is prostitution and should be equally marginalized.
so, is being a prostitute any different than working fast food? no. but, that doesn't make prostitution better. it makes fast food worse.
a truly free society would give everybody the opportunity to make real choices isolated from the social coercion of market forces. the slavery here is in the enforcement of a market economy.
so, how do we get to a truly free society?
1) universal access to education systems. 2) guaranteed annual incomes. 3) liveable social welfare for marginalized groups (like single mothers). 4) a federally mandated living wage.
that will not abolish prostitution outright, but it will restrict it to those that truly choose it out of the enjoyment of sex.
again, i don't know why this post would be flagged other than that perhaps some idiot thinks i'm a prostitute. i think it's fairly clear from my discussion of the matter that i'm not interested in engaging in prostitution.
however, i'm able to glean a little bit of information about the nature of the harassment i'm receiving by looking at the nature of the posts being flagged. again: i would like some help in understanding who is doing this, so i can take my concerns to law enforcement and get this person to be barred from going to my site.
======
the idea that prostitution is some kind of valid occupation is the literal victory of neo-liberalism. it is the strongest possible endorsement of capitalism.
i oppose prostitution laws, but i also oppose prostitution. i do not oppose prostitution laws because i think the exchange of sex is a valid market interaction. i oppose prostitution laws because they are ineffective in abolishing prostitution.
effective solutions to prostitution need to get at the root causes, which are largely related to the enforcement of wage slavery. we live in a society where most people have no choice but to sell some abstraction of their labour in order to survive. i would consider it oppressive to restrict an individual's choice in who, exactly, it is that they wish to whore themselves out to.
we often hear this idea that prostitution is the same as every other job and should be respected the same way as any other job. but, the anarchist perspective flips this around: all wage labour is prostitution and should be equally marginalized.
so, is being a prostitute any different than working fast food? no. but, that doesn't make prostitution better. it makes fast food worse.
a truly free society would give everybody the opportunity to make real choices isolated from the social coercion of market forces. the slavery here is in the enforcement of a market economy.
so, how do we get to a truly free society?
1) universal access to education systems.
2) guaranteed annual incomes.
3) liveable social welfare for marginalized groups (like single mothers).
4) a federally mandated living wage.
that will not abolish prostitution outright, but it will restrict it to those that truly choose it out of the enjoyment of sex.
hillary needs to make the choice about what side of the spectrum she wants to run on and then run on it aggressively.
if she decides to run as a conservative, and does it with conviction, then she can win some of these red states that everybody thinks are not in play - but she will probably destroy the democratic party's ability to appeal to the left for a generation or longer. is that already accomplished, anyways? i don't think she'll split the left in any meaningful way, because she'll cut too far into the right; if she loses 10% on her left, she'll gain 15% on the center-right. shouldn't tennessee be in play? kentucky? arkansas? that was her husband's map...
if she decides to run on the left, she'll have to concede some space on the right but with the aim of preventing a split. she'd be looking to emulate the obama map.
if i was working on her campaign, i would be a nihilist. i would be solely interested in power and reject ideology as simplistic modernist naivete. so, i would see these options as equally acceptable and judge them solely on their likelihood of success.
i would conclude she should run on the right, in an attempt to take advantage of conservative disillusionment with trump. she can offer a more credible conservative vision than he can. that's a big vacuum with a big reward. while she may lose support on her left, it is so unlikely to migrate to trump that it is not worth worrying about.
if she tries to hug the center, she will be unanimously rejected and lose.
he's more fake in "real life" than he ever was "in character". this is 95% as much bullshit, with 3% of the content. who could possibly like this guy? epic fail in 5...4....3..2...1...
your time would be better spent watching fucking pewdiepie.
fake poll; online polling is nothing more or less than propaganda. false narrative. real polling shows the race is both tightening and collapsing (clinton<40, trump>30, other/neither~30).
until he formally drops out, sanders is still a threat. or, it may be considered more tactical to wait until after the convention.
but, the way this election is going to work is that the media is going to rip clinton apart over the emails and present trump as the sane, establishment option - presuming he stops running his mouth off. and, i think they can figure that out. if they can get bush elected, they can get trump elected.
the media coverage at this time in 2000 was not dissimilar to what it is today. it's early. the machinations are still at work.
see, the way i read this is "cnn looking for excuse to get rid of left-leaning staff".
you can do this a few ways.
1) send an agent provocateur out to start a movement for mass resignation. that way, you don't have to fire anybody. good optics. extra bonus: no severance.
2) start a fight, then come down on the side of lewandowski to make the point.
it's not just cnn. msnbc is doing this, too.
sanders has had no effect. but, trump's popularity amongst key english speaking tv demographics is sparking a shake-up in the way the networks are going to be approaching the coverage.
brexit is not opposition to globalization, and anybody claiming as much is either being disingenuous or is misinformed.
the alter-globalization movement has actually always argued in favour of the types of things that the eu provides and nafta doesn't. for example, full mobility rights. that's one of the things that opponents to nafta have long argued in favour of in order to fix the labour problems in the deal. yet, this was probably the biggest single factor in britain's choice to leave the eu.
brexit was not about fair trade, slave labour or chapter 11 kangaroo courts. it was about immigration.
there's certainly always been a nationalist fringe out there, and the media likes to play into it, but anybody that's been to one of these rallies knows that they get badly marginalized. i've been at free trade protests where people are spending more time yelling at nationalists than they are protesting.
left-wing protesters don't see the issue as a simple disagreement. the nationalists are often associated with crypo-fascist groups like the larouche pac, or outright racist groups. there's a lot of thinking that a lot of them are actually cops, even.
it's a horrible comparison. the right comparison to brexit is to trump, and we need to collectively come to terms with that rather than deny it or try to spin it.
-
the relationship between alter-globalization forces and the eu is complex.
on the one hand, the eu is an anti-democratic institution that works for the investor class at the expense of everybody else, and alter-globalization forces know that and have loudly articulated it. on the other hand, it's helped to functionally tear down borders throughout europe.
when something is complex, the diversity of opinions reflect it. but, i think a proper survey process would find that most alter-globalization types would view brexit as a step backwards.
conservatives hate trump. they're up for grabs. she's going to make a tactical choice.
these are the first demos i recorded, written 1994-1996 and recorded in the second half of 1996. this corresponds to the end of my 15th year and the beginning of my grade 10 school year. on the one hand, it's an intriguing document of a socially maladjusted teenage punk. on the other hand, it's a 15 year-old kid learning how to use a recording studio (and how to play the drums). influences are displayed on my sleeve just a little too loudly at times.
i was attempting to create something that could be described by the words disturbing, schizophrenic, unique, bizarre, twisted. looking back, i think i succeeded more than i realized at the time. this is a difficult listen that would be appealing to fans of the obscurantist reaches of 80s punk and 90s grunge. i manage to maintain a strange sense of melody, though. in truth, my current adult self is somewhat impressed with my teenaged self at this current point.
that being said, it should not be forgotten that i was fifteen. i am at times rather crude, and i display a childlike understanding of certain issues. most poetry written at the age of fifteen is not particularly insightful. again, though, i surprise myself at points.
this is the first time i'm publishing these demos in any form. i've remained frighteningly self-conscious of them over the years. over the last seventeen years, the audience has been extremely limited. initial reactions suggested i take some time to perfect my performance skills, particularly my drumming skills. however, this indicated a lack of understanding of my intent in the overall sound. the playing is quite purposefully abstract with the aim of exploring mental illness.
the demos were initially dub-mastered onto a 110 minute tape that would have flipped after the eighth track. that tape was at some point recorded into a soundblaster and compressed very heavily; this is the only source of the material that i still have. so, i had to decompress the files from those 128 (or worse) kbps mp3s and run them through some digital mastering equipment in an attempt to "undo" the compression. what that is is a half-effective trick to recover data that is in actuality forever lost. nonetheless, i should point out that while these files were recorded entirely in 1996, they were substantially digitally modified in late 2013. finalized on june 26, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
i consider this an archival release with little direct listening value. i've pointed out repeatedly that i was 15. however, various segments have been isolated and pulled out for a higher listenability value over here: http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a
this release also includes a printable j-card insert and will also
eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all
phases of production (1996, 2013, 2016).
the quake soundtrack is really, really, really awesome
i almost forgot about this thing. remember: i can't be on the internet too often, because it's only available on the computer in the shared room. but, school's out....not forever....so, i don't really have a schedule for the next few months. my marks were pretty good. As in the important courses, Bs in the unimportant ones. i'm excited about not having to take phys ed anymore next year - it always drives my average down, every year. i get As in english and math and science and then this big, stupid ugly B in phys ed that takes me down a grade point. it's really unfair. who cares about phys ed? why should it kill my average like this? the other class i always get Bs in is french. i'd like to squirm out of it, but i know my dad won't let me. they say it's important to speak french in ottawa, but the truth is that i've never met anybody that speaks french here, ever. supposedly, you need to speak french to get a job in the government. well, that's easy: i won't work for the government, then. they made the rules, not me. i just find it really irrational to have to speak two languages and so i can't study for it because it's just a stupid idea. i'd rather be doing anything else at all. why can't we all just speak one language? i don't even care if it's english. i'd be happy to learn chinese starting tomorrow if it meant i only had to deal with one language. i'd even be happy to learn french tomorrow if i could forget about english altogether. what drives me crazy about learning multiple languages is the redundancy. it's inefficient. illogical. irrational... i don't know what i'm going to do this summer. i usually spend the summer entirely by myself; i've never had any friends. i went to elementary school on an army base but i didn't live on the army base so there was never anybody around that i went to school with. so, i would just stay inside. last summer, i played a lot of guitar and read a lot of books. my stepmother wants me to get a job, but that sounds like a waste of time. what would i spend the money on? i'd rather not have money and have time than have money and not have time. i don't really understand why she's so insistent. dad says i'm still too young to work and i shouldn't worry about it, but he wants me to go get a social insurance number anyways, just in case. she gets really mad when he says that, and says i'll have to do chores, then, instead. she seems to honestly think that i have a responsibility to pay rent through manual labour in order to stay here. she calls it "room and board". i hope that what happened last year doesn't happen again. i was having a nice summer until my step-mother took her yearly holidays and forced me to spend the day outside pulling weeds. she insisted i didn't tell my father. so, i was working six hours a day in the hot sun for a whole week. i assumed my allowance would go up as a result as i was doing more than my expected weekly chores, but when i inquired she told me that i was just paying the rent. this made perfect sense to her. it did not make any sense to me at all - so, i refused to pull weeds any longer unless she promised to pay up and she locked me out of the house. she said i was getting evicted. when my dad got home, i explained what had happened and a huge fight erupted. he told me that i was right and she was wrong and took me to the music store and let me pick out $100 worth of cassettes. he wanted me to understand that my labour was worth something and i should never work for free. he said she has a "chemical imbalance" and goes crazy sometimes and it's something we'll both have to live with forever. he said she understands that what she did was wrong. but, they fought about it for a long time afterwards. i don't know if i agree that she thought what she did was wrong. i think at least a part of the summer is going to be spent in the basement building a sound proof room. dad used to play the drums when he was younger, and he wants a place where he can go back to playing them. my stepmother won't let him get a drum kit because it's too loud. so, he wants to get sound paneling and insulation for an isolated room in the basement. he says he'll need me to help him - and that i should bring some friends over to start a band once we're done. he'll even put a bass in there, too. i listened to the new soundgarden record a lot this month and really like it, but it's been replaced in my walkman by the new nine inch nails record. my computer is too slow to run quake; i don't have enough ram for it. it can run wolfenstein, but i haven't played wolfenstein in a few years. i only play civ 2, now. but, my step uncle is a really big id games fan and he let me dub a copy of it. he thought the soundtrack was effective in the game, but that it was really funny that anybody might listen to it as music. he says he'd rather listen to the who.
i don't think it's as good as fixed, which is my favourite record of all time. it's different. it's kind of scary, almost. but, i've been listening to it nonstop since sunday and i just can't get out of it.
it's getting late, so i should pretend that i'm going to bed. i'm too old to have a bed time, but i know that people have to get up in the morning so i adjust to it in keeping quiet past a certain time. i can't say when my next update will be. maybe the room will be done?
i got my tell-it-as-it-is from dr. west, too. can't find it all in one piece yet, though.
i seem to be being carefully tugged back to google+ through redirects, the implication being to chill out and just leave my rants here.
the whole point of this is a reaction to separating google+ from youtube, which i'm still pissed off about. what i want is reintegration.
as it is, i don't want to rant over a social media network. if i was going to do that, i wouldn't use google+. nobody uses google+. i'd use facebook. you know - a social network that people actually read.
the whole point of this is that i need to convert my comments into videos for two reasons:
1) there is no longer any feed for youtube comments (that was the sole purpose of google+ - a feed for youtube).
2) youtube comments are now too volatile to be useful.
if your solution is "use google plus", that's basically equivalent to telling me to talk to the wall. i want to use youtube, for the precise reason that it is not a social network, meaning there are not privacy settings.
i'm trying to create a character for public consumption to sell music, not talk over the internet with friends in a way that the government can archive.
i don't see google+ as comparable to facebook, or in any way in competition to it. a better way to compute the way i'd interpret google+ is as comparable to disqus - it was a way that people can find the comments i've left in various spaces, and interact with the author of those comments.
that's actually a decent solution that will let the google+ douchebags maintain their snowflake status, while opening up youtube: just integrate with disqus. that's really what i'm looking for. not a social front end, exactly, just a home base.
i mean, don't misunderstand me too deeply. i've been transparent for years and years: this is marketing. that's my goal. i'm marketing my music, first and foremost. does that mean i'm being disingenuous? well, not at all. but, if you're actually listening to what i'm saying, you might guess that i'm a little bit less than optimistic about the possibilities for serious revolutionary change in my lifetime.
if there's any ambiguity, let me be clear: north america has precisely zero revolutionary potential. none. nada. zilch. and, i've stated this a few times, already: being an anarchist is a fucking lonely reality in a staunchly neo-liberal society. the social revolution comes first, sure, but we're not even at the point where we can talk about a social revolution. we're at the point where we have to teach people how to spell revolution, and then carefully explain what that means.
when we have social movements here - and elsewhere in the world - the way those social movements manifest themselves is as sitting in the public square and loudly chanting for government to solve our problems. we don't have a clue. and, it's not some accident, either. we're absolutely reliant on the state. even those who want to push back think that what revolution means is "force the government to fix things that are broken".
nobody is talking about seizing means of production or redistributing surplus value. the narrative is just foreign, and when you try and have the discussion all you get is confused stares. what people want is equal opportunity to compete over a free market, and welfare for those that fall through the cracks. go talk to them. have you? because i have. there's no imagination, no forward thinking. you'll walk away thinking that it really is the end of history.
even the ones that call themselves "anarchists" sound like calvinist fundamentalists when you push them on it. the kids drawing circled as think anarchism means social darwinism and the abolition of redistributive mechanisms, rather than the abolition of private property. they get their concept of anarchism out of the dictionary; they think council democracy is statist.
so, sure: i'd like to be a threat to the status quo. i'd love it. i can't do it by myself. and, i'm aware that there's not even the most basic beginnings of a social revolution anywhere at all. i don't know if there ever was, but i don't think we're anywhere close to it.
i think the best hope the left has is for mechanization to take over and force us into communes by necessity. i'm basically waiting for this. i give it thirty years, max. but i'll probably be dead by then.
so, what i have left to care about while i'm waiting for the economic determinism to determine itself is art. that's it.
if you think i'm some kind of threat to the status quo, you should pull your head out of your ass.
and, i'm just not keen on banging my head against the wall until i die of brain damage. fuck that. give me a guitar.
so, you know - take me seriously in the sense of believing that i believe what i'm saying. i do. usually. it's hard to tell when i'm trolling sometimes, sure, but not that hard. but, realize that i know my ideas have no possibility of traction.
maybe i'm ahead of my time. maybe i'm just fucked. who knows....
i'm finally caught up (which means a week behind), and this is indeed quieting down like i claimed. somehow, i've lost the last several days, although it was more scheduling related than anything else. i guess the 22nd was narrating, before i moved on. then the 23rd was about the appointment, so why turn the machine on? yesterday was just wasted. i've got one more quick round of narration, and then i should be back to a more normal schedule for the rest of the month. i see every reason to think i should have the machine back on after i eat, so some time around noon.
i will hit some shows in july, but it will be more like june than may. i still plan to get through 1.1 by the end of june, and think i can maybe push back to the point of rebuild.
i think i'll probably move relatively quickly once i get the machine back on today.
i know i've claimed i'm shutting this down, but i've been backlogged here for quite a bit. i don't want this to continue, i want to get back to the music production.
it's actually the wrong argument, in the long run. nowhere have you rejected the premise: that intelligence is somehow correlated with income.
see, that's the lie you need to undermine. it really doesn't matter who wins this election. but, pulling the rug out from under the calvinist mythology does matter....
this is a scatter plot of income and intelligence, from a respected academic publication. this is not a blog post. you need a jstor account to get this.
what it indicates is that there is some correlation between stupidity and poverty, but no correlation at all between intelligence and wealth.
and, look at the society. look at a football player's salary and compare it to a professor's salary. the market rewards criminality, but it does not reward intelligence.
so, the plot twist is that jesse is secretly a douche bag in real life?
bad idea. abort. abort. error. turn around. abort. abort. error.
"Bernie Sanders said Friday he will likely vote for Hillary Clinton for president in November, the strongest expression of support yet from the Vermont senator, but he left the door open that he could change his mind."
this is becoming farce. they just can't deal with the lack of expectation.
i don't like affirmative action, either, frankly. it has an absolutely valid critique from the left. but, i think it's a kind of a short term necessity. i've made both arguments about whether this necessity has run it's course, and don't really have a strict opinion on it. i would love to wake up one day and say "we don't need affirmative action anymore". what is clear is that this day is not upon us. what is less clear is if we've made progress or not, and whether this is really the right approach. if we cannot expect progress to come from it, i think the approach should be abandoned and we should try something else.
as a social libertarian, i simply can't agree that this is ideal or an acceptable structural concession to the way society ought to operate. i think that it's best to break this down into three options.
1) the status quo, into perpetuity. that is: society is permanently racist, and we need permanent structural means to balance it out. that would mean we should have affirmative action forever. i absolutely reject this in the most forceful terms possible.
2) society is temporarily racist, and affirmative action is helping us make things better. we're not at the point where we can get rid of it yet, but we're seeing some progress and we should stick with it a little longer - so long as we keep in mind the the end goal of eventually abolishing it. i can live with this, if the evidence upholds it.
3) society is temporarily racist, but affirmative action is not helping us make things better. there has been no appreciable change in social attitudes or hiring practices. employers simply see it as a burden, try to circumvent the law as much as possible and ultimately want to go back to openly racist hiring policies. well, then why are we holding to it if it doesn't work? seems like we need to try something else.
the first option is wrong - that's just ideological. i refuse to accept that racism is normal or inevitable, so i refuse to accept the perpetual necessity of a policy that is only even worth discussing because it is ameliorative. i'm a social libertarian. i'm sorry. if it's working, it's a necessary evil - but i won't stop stressing it as evil.
it's two and three that i'm torn between. the court made a choice. i'm not convinced the evidence upholds it. but, i don't see anybody talking about any better ideas, either.
normally, when you put a policy in place, it comes with an assessment period at the end of it. what have the effects been? has this policy been effective? if so, what have we learned that can improve it? if not, what other ideas exist that might work better?
this issue is just stuck at the political phase. opponents never really accepted it, so advocates have never really stopped fighting for it. but, we're decades into it, now. it's time to stop and evaluate.
phoenixkhost
News Flash left-wingers...calling people fascist, racist, and bigots does not work.
jessica
so, what if i call hitler a fascist? is that just an empty ad hominem?
let me guess. godwin's law, right?
i think the more important lesson for the left is that you can't argue with fundamentalists. rather, you have to make sure they just don't happen.
what's the cause of this? thatcher destroyed the education system in britain, and nobody did anything to rebuild it.
---
jagheterjonteh
Free movement was not possible before, UK has never been a part of Schengen... I live in Europe and have visited the UK several times. Trade benefits will be worked out in Britain's favor, they are one of the strongest economies in the world. The UK has already benefitted from leaving, the pound has decreased in value and as an export country that is great news. Any other arguments I can demolish for you?
jessica
do you really think the uk is still an export economy?
i guess that's what happens when you use fifty year old textbooks in high schools.
jagheterjonteh
First of all, the UK is not a country. It consists of four nations, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Second, the UK export of 2015 was $503 billion, which is the 9th largest in the world. So definitely still an export country. You're not that Sharp are you?
jessica
it's a 3 trillion dollar economy that's entirely reliant on imports. there were conscious government policies to deindustrialize. the capacity to return to an export economy does not exist. this guy thinks he still lives in the empire. but, it's exactly what the problem is: mass ignorance about the reality of the uk economy in the current century, as a consequence of a horribly broken education system. (deleted)
jessica
while that claim is not going to actually come out in the numbers (rather, we will learn that conservative voters rejected the pleas of david cameron, which is why he has resigned), i think a moment of pause is required to point out that a big part of what has allowed for the rise of the ukip is the political vacuum created by new labour's swing to the hard right. euro-skeptic parties throughout europe have taken certain economic positions that are usually associated with the left and have been able to gain traction as a consequence of there not really being an actual left.
the mainstream parties are starting to adjust by reorienting themselves, but the damage may already be done. and, yes - trump is somewhat of the same phenomenon.
if you fear trump, you should take brexit as an ominous signal. the root causes are the same: thatcherism in britain, reaganism in the united states. you claim americans could not be so stupid? note that the british just proved they are that stupid, whether by accident or by design.
--- jessica
see, what's happening here is that toza doesn't like being called a racist because it hurts his feelings. he'd prefer a more politically correct term, like "integrationally challenged".
:)
Broke Ass Dollar Store Ellen
calling racist people racists? how dare we!
all this political correctness making it hard for racists to be bigots without consequences, boo-hoo-hoo.
jessica
you need to be a lot more sensitive about their feelings. a difficulty accepting others is something that can be disabling on a day-to-day basis, which just exacerbates their existing problems. they need hugs.
so, apparently homosexuality is such a debilitating mental illness that it can create such a level of conflict in people of faith that it can drive them to shoot up nightclubs they frequent.
thanks, "left" media.
the specious nature of the argument aside (and the fact that it requires the rejection of direct statements by the attacker to take it seriously), this is actually useful because it drops the secular facade: much of what we call the "progressive left" in north america is really the scattered remnants of american religious fundamentalism. sometimes, they remind us of what they really think.
for those that legitimately mean well, please take a step back. this narrative only harms the queer community. and, because it so obviously wrong we don't have to have discussions about hard truths. the discussion ought to be about convenient lies.
but, as mentioned, i'm not naive. nobody wants to talk about ending the war in afghanistan. that would be seen as some kind of concession. instead, the media will continue to propagate nonsense, then pretend it's confused when the attacks continue.
i think that the balance of evidence admits waukesha as a very limited special case. i haven't read the case, but if it limits the situation to the very limited special conditions then this is actually a positive precedent.
i said something snotty about the brexit before, but i'm going to expand a little on it.
there's a broad narrative in british history that is a long struggle against roman colonization and has worked itself out through religion, culture, science, language - it's very broad. the romans won quite a few battles, but have never really managed to win the war. britain has adopted ideas from the romans, but it has largely managed to resist romanization in a way that is unique in europe. sweden, for example, has also resisted romanization - but it was never actively sought after by roman civilization the way that britain has been. the british have singularly succeeded in fighting the romans off.
in the process of it's long struggle against roman colonization, britain eventually emerged as a colonial power unto it's own. this allowed it a level of financial power that allowed it to eclipse roman civilization. but, the romans never fully submitted, either.
the end of the second world war left both the romans and the british under control of a common occupier, who did something remarkably british: they drew arbitrary lines on maps that ignored thousands of years of history, solely for their own interests. nato exists for american strategic purposes. the eu exists to strengthen the nato alliance. but, the boundaries drawn on the map ignore the historical reality that britain is defined by it's opposition to roman colonialism. the alliance is inherently unstable because it ignores the historical facts.
we don't talk of the situation like this, because we're taught to see imperialism through the lens of racial dominance. the europeans are white, so they are our allies and not our subjects. but, the collapse of the eu is fundamentally not different than the collapse of the sykes-picot line. it's drawn out of similar historical forces at play, and out of imperial ignorance.
it may seem as though the world cannot go back to how it existed in 1933. but, a closer analysis should reveal that the british empire does still exist, and that it's capital was moved from london to washington. what the americans call the revolutionary war should be viewed through the long lens of history as a civil war between factions in the anglo-american empire. and, to pry the homeland free from the romans is not to grant it any meaningful kind of independence.
so, what is brexit? in some ways, it's a false choice. britain is a small country, it can hardly go it alone. but, it does have a real choice between being a province of rome and a province of canada.
it should be viewed less as a breaking apart and more as a coming home: like justinian re-entering rome.
have i explained the trotsykists? if you're looking at it from a distance, you might think the trostkyists are better than the other marxists. they really aren't, except in one way - they are very good at analyzing foreign policy. the reason for this is that they have no interest in the propaganda. they are almost unique in this. they don't dissect it, they don't dance around it, they don't counter-act it - they simply ignore it. they just tell it like it is, as though the western narrative doesn't exist at all.
however, one should not forget that the wsws is the propaganda arm of the trotskyist international; i'm citing pravda. but, i'm citing pravda with the understanding that it happens to be really good at doing this one thing.
i'm not claiming that brexit is a conspiracy by american secret agents to react to the rise of an independent germany. i'm just pointing out that the rise of an independent germany is the more important story, here - and that international reactions to brexit will be defined more by how the various actors are interpreting the new reality in germany than by how they are interpreting the new reality in britain.
the pound is dead. the dollar wins. the euro loses.
you probably have no legitimate self-interest in this.
this has been solved, from my understanding - it's a combination of the industry on the island with the salt mines under windsor. what's happening is that the vibrations are sending sound waves through the old mines, which is literally shaking the whole ground.
i'm on the other side of oullette, and i've never heard anything over here. but if i was living around lasalle, i might be more concerned about sink holes swallowing my house....
yeah, i got some hip for you, hillary. how 'bout some hip surgery.
damn.
somebody find me footage of a young hillary rockin' to some huey lewis. i'm counting on you, internet.
where's her climate policy, anyways?
"you can't dress like me"
https://vimeo.com/154519080
i'd be loathe to call myself a hipster. i'm actually willing to go all in on gen x and just stick with being an open-minded punk.
me? meh. i'll close this line of thinking with some frank, who more accurately represents what i think about hipsters: i'm sympathetic, really, but the actual honest truth is that they really are fucking dipshits.
in the end, the hipsters will love hillary as she beats the shit out of them. she doesn't need to try that hard. she'll carry hipsters. it's the educated young folk that she'll have problems with.
seems like he had his registration switched.
you know, there's a serious branch of constitutional scholarship that argues the constitution is a practical joke.
balderdashery G
I had no idea it was that flagrantly bad. I wonder if it's that bad here in Canada.
jessica
canada doesn't have anything comparable to a primary system, or a president for that matter, so it's a meaningless comparison. our prime minister is the leader of the largest party and could in theory be removed by a confidence vote in parliament; party leaders are chosen entirely by party members, so the idea of disenfranchising independents is incoherent on it's face.
in fact, we don't even vote for parties at all. we vote for independent members of the house of commons, who then choose to align themselves in parties afterwards. or, that's the technical way it's supposed to be. you're supposed to vote for john smith as an individual. when john smith gets to ottawa he decides what party he wants to sit in after he's been elected. further, he can then switch parties on his discretion - because you voted for him, not his party. that's a little disconnected from reality, but it's the way things are supposed to be.
regarding nomination battles, half of the time there aren't even elections for nomination at all. so, one doesn't run to represent the party. the party appoints it's nominee. that might seem undemocratic, but you have to go back to the system being about the individual, not the party. the flip side is that it's very easy to get on a ballot in canada. so, we don't have nomination battles to represent the party - instead we let just about anybody run and then let the party choose which independent it wishes to back. it's hard to make a decision about which is a more democratic process. note that we don't have a two-party system, and we routinely elect at least a few independents.
in terms of voting in the actual election, all that is required is a health card - and if you don't have a health card, you truly shouldn't be voting.
so, you could argue we don't have to suppress voting because the system is closed. but, we compensate for that with a less partisan system.
you could think of it like this. in the united states, the system restricts the number of parties you can vote for but lets you pick who represents the limited number of party options. so, it restricts your options, but then gives you more control in shaping those restricted options.
in canada, the system lets you vote any which way you could want to, but then lets the parties endorse specific candidates. so, it gives you more options, and then lets the parties decide which options they want to back; in canada you may have less control in shaping the parties, but you also have more (viable) options to choose from.
it's pros and cons, and a lot of subjectivity. direct comparisons are perilous.
