international law. i'm a canadian. i have a historical and continued interest in international law. we're the ones that tend to speak up about it.

i accept the reality of the situation, which is that the united states decided quite some time ago that it did not want to be constrained by international law. to me, the problem this presents is how it is that we are to convince them to be constrained by international law, which is admittedly a difficult path to walk, as we are also legitimately the close allies of the united states.

it's kind of like you've got this friend with terrible heart problems, and he just won't stop eating double bacon cheeseburgers three times a day. you kind of feel the urge to say something, but you need to do it in a way that promotes beneficence without sacrificing tact.

this was a low-key issue for me in the last election in canada. while the conservatives didn't stray far from international law principles under their rule in the second half of the 20th century, it was the liberal party that had the legacy of upholding international law in conflicts from the sinai to iraq. it's kind of a consistently liberal ideological principle, as well, in that it upholds states to a rule of law, thereby restricting their actions - perhaps under the threat of sanctions. but, this requires a world where forces are balanced in such a way that the threat of sanctions is real, even if it's unstated.

i think that it's clear, in hindsight, that the united states never really saw the united nations as anything more than a forum to debate the russians in. maybe there were some lofty ambitions for a rule of law floating around in the chattering classes, but the actual levers of american (and british) power don't seem to have ever taken the idea seriously.

the reform movement in canada sought less to discard the rule of law and more to establish a firmer alliance with the united states, for the purposes of further opening oil markets. it was thought that greater integration would have greater persuasive power, but what we learned was that greater integration meant greater imperial control over our resources, which are being put aside for later use.

there is no question that the liberal party's position on international law required some reanalyzing after the failure of the international system to prevent the war in iraq. during the election, i posed the issue as a question: will the liberal party continue to attempt to argue for the international system, given that it appears to be broken? if it accepts that it is broken, what other ideas does it have to attempt to uphold the rule of law? or, will the liberal party carry on the ruling conservative party's policy and accept and adjust to the absence of international law?

in fact, trudeau answered the question in a debate, and it provided a predictive answer: he answered that he thought there were situations where nato could use force outside of the united nations. this is our dauphin, folks, our aristocratic defender of liberalism, through the noblesse oblige of his lineage.

well, we had an answer. i heard it. i didn't like it much. but, it seemed like there was consensus amongst the options presented, so it kind of disappeared as a non-issue.

i remain convinced that a rule of law amongst nations is beneficial to everybody on the planet, but it requires a balance of power where hegemony is not being asserted. hegemony may even exist silently within the rule of law, which is the unrealistic ideal of empires - never truly met. as soon as hegemony asserts itself, though, the rule of law becomes impossible until the hegemony is broken, and an equilibrium reasserts itself. it is the never met responsibility of a good hegemon to allow the equilibrium to reset without force - although the americans have come closest in human history, through rebuilding in germany and japan. in the end, america failed like every other hegemon, and that equilibrium will need to be reasserted with force.

the canadian will need to wait. but, it is with the expectations of a hidden zeal to reform existing institutions for efficacy, whenever the opportunity again arises.

international law has been dead for years.

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/4/19/15345686/syria-un-strike-illegal-un-humanitarian-law

the united states is on some kind of deep state contingency plan run by the pentagon, or something. no, listen - it's an important question to understand in grappling with what's happening. is the commander in chief in civilian control of the pentagon, or does the pentagon use the civilian commander in chief as a puppet? it's supposed to work a specific way for a good reason, but laws on paper are no match for the brute force of reality, even if that reality remains obscured to not raise suspicion. but, we've seen a pattern in american hegemony over the last several decades that seems to imply the existence of a plan for global domination, a plan that any sitting president seems to have little shape over. a president at some point may reassert civilian control, but that president will not be donald trump.

it wasn't going to be hillary clinton, either. it seems that trump is kind of morphing into clinton in a lot of ways, right? but, it's just because clinton had already read the plan, and was broadcasting what it was. trump was saying all kinds of things in weird contexts, with false understandings and just broadly not having any clue, because - the fucking guy wouldn't get briefed. if he'd have listened, right?

see, maybe he thought they'd just give him civilian control. like - here's the keys to the white house door, and the master control network over the entire secret service. it's some kind of hex key or something, to lock into the sixth dimension, in which they may be puppeteered. all those career analysts in massive government services would just go home. here you go, boss. right.

so, of course, the reality is that he walks into a largely scripted situation. he's shuffled along, told where to sign, given this and that thing to read. it's the same script they would have given her, right?

i just want to get across that there wasn't a real choice in front of anybody last november in terms of deciding which foreign policy decisions the incoming white house was going to make.

"Our strategy cannot presume to separate the fight against [ISIS] from the Syrian people's fight against the Assad regime. They are inextricably connected." - john mccain

he doesn't mean what you think, though.

listen: mccain is talking in code, and rand paul is pretending to be naive in taking him seriously.

"It is true that the fight against ISIS and the civil war in Syria are connected, but not in the way neocons infer. Overthrowing Assad may actually lead to an Islamist regime that finds common ground with ISIS, not America."

this is completely incoherent, and mccain knows it and paul knows it.

it's easy to agree with rand paul on the surface, and on the broad face of it he's right - the united states should cut it's losses in syria, and evade the kind of firefight it seems intent on provoking. it's true that the strategy of winning the war on the ground isn't working, but that strategy was chosen for good reason, nonetheless: the strategy of overwhelming force has no outcome but disaster.

but, he's spouting russian propaganda - right down to the feigned naivete at the purpose of isis.

...which mccain is not being naive about, at all.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/opinions/less-military-intervention-opinion-paul/

see, this is stupid: these are the good kinds of immigrants - the smart ones. you want to keep those.

i mean, we'll take them up here. but i'm not sure we have the same level of opportunity. that's just realism - we have a tenth of the population, and a shitty climate.

well, trump is going to help us get the climate better, too, though. hey, he said he liked canada.

i've been vocal in my view that the entire society - from canada to mexico - requires serious immigration reform. but, trump is doing this the most racist way he can: he's protecting good jobs for white people, and then cutting holes in the fence so low wage industries can avoid paying minimum wage.

and, it's not just racist, it's recessionary, because you're increasing accumulation and discouraging spending.

worse, i don't even think this is what the voters in wisconsin even wanted. i mean, you don't need an engineering degree to work in a cheese factory. although...

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/trump-targets-visas-program-for-highly-skilled-workers-1.3373563

weird article at the bbc, as i'm surfing while waiting for something to render.

i need to do some running around today, but the renders are up to mar 23rd, now. i need to prioritize having the material for court ready, so i'm going to push through to the first week of april.

i actually have a theory that the hebrews were initially an iranian tribe before migrating to the mediterranean. it's pretty unorthodox, but it's not without support over the basis of comparative religions.

the reality is that the hebrew god is starkly indo-european in nature, and kind of weird in a semitic context. it kind of seems more like some iranians showed up there in canaan and integrated with the fundamentally egyptian culture.

the standard history reminds people of the exile in babylon, and it's not like that doesn't make sense. but, if you can derive judaism more directly from zoroastrianism, you can break through a lot of contradictions.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170406-this-obscure-religion-shaped-the-west

no.

stop.

you, yourself no doubt saw this coming, or at least parroted somebody else that did. look through your own social media posts. did you ever post anything criticizing trump for his reality tv bravado, or carefully explaining to trump that the presidency is not a reality tv show?

well, you were wrong - the presidency is very much a reality tv show.

or, at least, it is now.

there is no discernible logic in shooting down a missile test, other than the logic of generating material for broadcast on fox at prime time - and that is almost certainly the actual logic being used.

and, you're not supposed to be frightened, either. you're supposed to pump your fists and cheer it on - because the calculation is that you're a retard.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/18/us-military-shoot-down-north-korea-missile-tests

i'm admittedly having a hard time even empathizing with people that take the propaganda seriously anymore, at this point, but i realize the importance of writing articles of this sort.

kind of.

abstractly...

if you need it, here it is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-suicide-attack-refugee-buses-trump-only-cares-sunni-children-a7687066.html

actually, i like the reality that it's never entirely clear whether i'm trolling or not.

i'll give you hints here and there, sure. but it's your responsibility to figure that out, not my responsibility to make it clear.

the basis of this article is that it's ok to illegally bomb syria, so long as they don't kill civilians.

kind of a bait and switch, huh?

i don't concede the point: the united states should not be bombing syria at all, until it is invited to help in clearing the country of terrorists.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/04/18/syria-us-mosque-attack-likely-unlawful

i don't view the messianic religions much differently than a greek scholar would have between constantine and justinian. and, that's not a throwaway statement.

unfortunately, the christians had a habit of burning books that had opinions they didn't like in it, so we've lost a lot of the best critiques. one of the most powerful neo-platonist critiques of christianity came from a well-regarded scholar named porphyry and was called against the christians. we know this was an influential text because it was widely quoted, but we don't have an extant version of it.

remember: at the end of the nightmare, western europe had to translate from arab into latin because we didn't just lose the greek and sometimes latin originals, but we didn't even know how to read greek :\. that's a remarkable thing, isn't it? the greatest empire in the world lost the ability to read it's own language, and most of the texts written in it.

is there any wonder that porphyry wrote the book he did?

the modern equivalents are in hitchens and dawkins, who i've read less of than you might guess. hitchens more so.

i read a lot of isaac asimov when i was very young. that's the real source, here.

my solidarity lies with those that wish to overturn traditional ways of life and assert concepts of self-ownership and individuality, not with those that wish to maintain collectivist or tribalist identities in subsistence farming or hunter & gathering societies.

unless you want to talk about communal land ownership, i have absolutely no interest in indigenous culture at all, and would be just as happy to see it extinct. my interests are solely in a secular & empirical society with strong support for individual rights.

nor is this viewpoint uncommon amongst north americans of mixed ancestry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/does-donald-trump-cheat-at-golf-a-washington-post-investigation/2015/09/02/f8a940b2-50c4-11e5-9812-92d5948a40f8_story.html

so, they've got punks showing up waving anarchist flags that think they're fighting against nazis.

these supposed nazis are apparently mostly veterans, no doubt largely on ssris due to ptsd, that are organizing to "defend free speech" against some communist conspiracy that doesn't exist. and, they don't understand the concept of free speech, either.

there's probably some broad abstraction of truth, here, in the vaguest terms possible. and, in that sense i'll pick the communists over the nazis.

but, these people are equally delusional. and, the more astute observation is that this schizophrenic reality in the era of fake news has really permeated the totality of society.

when people can organize into large opposing camps and actually come to physical blows, and nobody on either side has any concept of reality, that portends some scary ramifications in our ability to react to serious threats - and also in our ability to reject false flag attacks.

the proper analyst here is not noam chomsky, it's john cleese.

no.

stop.

there are costs to unjust laws.

and, these people deserve the compensation they have coming to them.

yeah, well, there's going to have to be a lot of litigation to ensure that anybody that was fined or jailed in the past receives the proper compensation, in terms of mass reparations.

i'm not joking. this is going to cost billions. and, the longer they put it off, the more it's going to cost.

had they legalized it in the 70s, they wouldn't be paying out at all.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marijuana-legal-liberals-charges-possession-1.4070427

i'd be the most bizarre parent.

i'd probably write my kids essays, then make participating in dessert contingent upon answering a series of strategically worded questions, designed to ensure they've not just read but properly understood them.

no, it's true.

easter is a great time to teach your kids about science.

if i had kids, we'd have only talked about science this weekend.

to be clear: i don't have any particular aversion to rebirth celebrations. i'm maybe a little beyond it. but, if it makes you happy, whatever.

i'd just request that you take the time to actually understand what you're doing - and that means researching the history of this over comparative mythologies in order to understand the syncretic basis of it.

you shouldn't look at this as debunking something. rather, you should look at it as better understanding it. if you're getting all of your information from a specific tradition, whatever it is, you're blocking yourself off to the other perspectives.

the rebirth festival is easy enough to understand. it is close to the spring solstice, and meant to represent the end of darkness and beginning of light. i may argue that the astronomy of it is not a reduction but a complication, as it is fascinating on it's own basis. but, if you're so inclined, a better understanding of these themes is likely to deepen your experience, rather than negate it.

i will fully admit that i have an ulterior motive: encouraging people to seek naturalistic explanations of things will likely separate them from the more dangerous components of religious observance. but, i'm not being disingenuous. if you like these holidays, why not learn more about where they came from?

there is nobody in the world that is more disappointed in north korea's failure to present itself as a feasible threat than donald trump.

he won't even release a statement. maybe he's waiting, in the hopes that the next one will be quick and will justify a response.

i mean, he had to drop his giant bomb in afghanistan. he probably didn't even get any bad guys. what a rip-off, this job is, right?

...and that was after he wasn't allowed to do what he wanted in syria.

they make it seem like you get to be the commander-in-chief, but there's all these egghead generals giving you advice, instead, and telling you you can't do certain things. it's not what they make it out to be at all.

maybe you'll get to play this game next easter, don.

everything bad that you've ever heard about sugar assumes you're overweight (and, statistically speaking, you probably are) and does not apply to you if you're not.

yes, we've reached this level of absurdity: it's the healthy people that need to do extra research, because the media assumes that you're fat.

(and, you probably are fat, too.)

it's almost like the only people on the continent that actually believed the 80s drug war propaganda grew up into politicians, and are now behaving as automatons, or something.

no, really. that's what happened to the kid in the front of the class that actually believed this shit: she's writing policy for your pseudo-left politicians, because she at some point got confused into thinking that being a liberal is the same thing as being a christian. oops.

whatever. just pass the bills already, and we'll figure out ways to liberalize the laws from there.

if you're trying to make marijuana less cool, it's just...

marijuana has always been the drugs that losers and outcasts use in order to escape from the conformity of the mainstream. if you don't realize that, here's your wake-up call: you're not one of the cool kids. the cool kids do uppers. they always did.

you can go back as far in time as you want, the constant is that potheads are always losers, and generally by choice. that leaves you with a gradient between people that are losers because they're legit idiots and people that are losers because they're too smart to fit into society.

these tactics to make the drug less hip, if they were successful, might work in reducing cocaine use, or ecstasy use - or alcohol use, being that alcohol is the ultimate "cool kid" drug. but, pot was always the loser drug. and, trying to socially engineer an exaggeration of the point is just increasing it's appeal to it's natural user base of people that don't want to fit in.

is it a little draconian? probably.

do i really care? not really.

do i think it will actually be enforced? probably not...

....and, do i think a court will probably gut it? within a year or two, probably.

i've been over this before. do you know who gives these kids pots? their fathers, or their friends' fathers. that was my first contact: my friend's dad. then, it was my friend's brother.

if they keep the focus of the law to these imaginary bogeyman (that are actually selling addictive drugs, like cocaine), this law will sit in the criminal code, largely unused. if they start going after peoples' dads, it will get struck down in court.

it's not the way i'd choose to do this, but it's not a reason to hold up the legislation.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/justice-minister-defends-14-year-maximum-sentence-for-providing-cannabis-to-minors/article34717884/

"the president is making a lot of progress on this issue." - sean spicer, when asked to explain why donald trump no longer thinks that china is a currency manipulator.

"maybe you're right. the truth is that these guys don't tell me anything." - ronald reagan, when asked about the iran-contra mess.

how long before the first statement becomes the second? or, is it already just about there?

but, you don't understand. this isn't some accident. this is the exact reason they picked trump over clinton, and then rigged the election in his favour.

he's making progress, guys.

or, maybe the missile blowing up in their face is evidence of what the serious analysts outside of the war media have been saying the whole time: north korea is not a serious threat to anybody, and this whole facade is retarded.

i'll be clear: i walked by the first club, and it seemed dead so i walked to the other one, which was also dead. they normally need to clear people out, but it was empty when the lights turned on on this night.

the first club was probably empty for most of the night. there's some christian holiday or something, this weekend? i didn't even realize until i got to the bus stop. and, the first club is a lot more conservative than the second one, so the smoking section isn't as much fun. if i had met somebody outside at the first club, i would have stayed there. the second club is also open a half hour later, which is key. but, despite these drawbacks, the set was probably better at the first club on this night...

...and this is just random, too. in fact, one of the djs that i saw last night at the second club played at the first club last night. i just happened to randomly catch an off night.

i tend to assume that when i go to a club the dj is going to be playing dance music, and one dj is as good as another. the only exception that i make is for industrial music, which i'll always prioritize. industrial >>>> everything else.

but, i should be a little more selective.

i had fun, anyways. the bands i saw earlier were both a little unexpected, but interesting in their own ways. i'll do reviews in the review space, shortly. right now, i'm still editing. i just wish the dj was a little (ok, a lot) more upbeat.

i'm in for the night, and may have grounded myself for the rest of the month. well, i had fun while finances allowed for it. may is only two weeks away.

that's not yet confirmed. i could work something out, still. i'm crafty.

last night was fun in principle, but i have to state something that has been said repeatedly: trap is fucking terrible. and, i'm going to actually explain why, which is what most people don't do. they just say trap is terrible and expect you to get to not doing it anymore. snappy.

the reason that trap is terrible is that you cannot dance to trap. the reason you cannot dance to trap is that it is very, very slow. you'd have to be on k or something.

i repeat: you cannot dance to trap. so, why are djs spinning this in dance clubs?

the reason is that it appeals to pothead dudes, the type that don't like to dance anyways. djs are pretty much all pothead dudes, so you get this echo chamber. and, if you look at the floor after a few minutes, you will confirm the obvious: the women disappear.

so, if you're running a club, this is the option in front of you: you play trap, and you get a sausage party. and then your club dies.

i didn't check the afterhours dj before i went out last night. i just assumed it would be techno. i mean, i don't have a lot of options in front of me, in terms of after hours parties in detroit (believe it or not). but, i actually should have gone to the other club on this night.

in the future, i'll have to check to ensure that trap djs aren't spinning before i go somewhere. but, i can't imagine this shit has much gas left in it's tank, either. it will no doubt go away soon...

if the situation could be properly analyzed, which is not actually possible, there would ultimately be a specific genetic mutation that would give rise to the first chicken. it is true that speciation would not occur at the point this chicken hatches, but require some time for the allele to become dominant within a subpopulation, and then for that subpopulation to isolate itself - which is usually done physically (through geographic barrier or migration). however, once the dusts settles, we will then need to test for this specific mutation in order to determine whether a bird in front of us is in fact a chicken or merely a near common ancestor to all existing chickens.

such a chicken will hatch from an egg. but, neither of it's parents were chickens.

the egg precedes.

just an open letter to the various health ministers in canada,

i'll be terse.

i know that you're not the happiest about marijuana legalization, due to concerns about potential public health problems. these are perhaps overblown, but not entirely unfounded. i would not expect marijuana usage to increase, in the long run; we may, however, learn that rates of use have long been even higher than we thought.

what i'm getting at is that any health concerns around marijuana are likely already maximized, as it is.

but, there's a policy that could actually decrease health concerns. it's currently being held up by fears around children that are certainly overblown, if not entirely unfounded.

so long as marijuana is sold to me in dried form, i will continue to smoke. in fact, this is the only reason i continue to sporadically smoke tobacco products, as well.

....but if you were to legalize edibles in a cheap and accessible form (cooking with dried marijuana is prohibitively expensive for most people), it is entirely possible that i may never smoke anything else for the rest of my life.

i think the question of edibles is currently being analyzed the wrong way and would urge you to see it from a different angle.

back in the 90s, when i was in high school, it was marijuana that i was first exposed to, and not alcohol or tobacco. you seem to understand this truth. but, while marijuana has been proven to not be much of a gateway drug after all, it was certainly a gateway for me to tobacco, as a cigarette was used to cover up the smell before going back to class.

i would not have started smoking cigarettes had it not been for my earlier use of marijuana. i cannot be an isolated example.

i might suggest that there are consequently potentially dramatically positive consequences in finding ways to separate marijuana from tobacco, and especially in the minds of youth.

may 19th is the next date of vlog publish, for the day of february 16th.

vlogs until mid-march are edited and being uploaded.

the only way it really makes sense to have a "pot store" is if you merge it with existing head shops. i'm sure they can make some space, right? i wouldn't expect the government to go for this, though - especially not considering the way they've been raided.

the reality here in ontario is not likely to change any time soon.

they have to get the federal bill passed, first. the liberals have converted the senate from a rubber stamp into a question mark, so it's not even clear if it will make it through the new guardian council. then, the province needs to write and pass legislation. lastly, somebody will have to decide that it's even worth opening a store over, and it might not be - at least not here.

we haven't had any illegal dispensaries appear, but we do have a pot lounge that lets people smoke inside. it's illustrative of the reality of the situation on the ground: these stores aren't really necessary for distribution.

in fact, here in windsor, i wouldn't expect to see dedicated storefronts at all. nobody would ever bother - they'd just have to start paying taxes. the only way the government supply chain is going to appear is if it goes through the lcbo or the beer store. and, if the price isn't set properly, it will just sit on the shelves.

i know that this isn't what most people want, or what most people want to hear, but it's the truth of it - this idea of dedicated pot stores doesn't make any economic sense. it's just going to over price it to a point that it can't compete with established dealers. if you want it on the shelves, it has to come with almost no overhead.

frankly, i'd like to see it sold at the corner store. but, we can't buy beer at the corner stores here, either.

obviously, i'm very distracted by geo-politics and having difficulty focusing. i feel like i'm procrastinating, but i'm not sure what i'm procrastinating.

i've decided that the vlogs will come back up on may 15th. that way, i can stagger by solstice. also, my court date is the 11th, so it lets me pull things back past it.

that said, i'm going to do a little editing overnight. maybe it'll settle my head and let me focus.

ugh.

i'm going to tell you a story. this is even better than the one about the great oxygenation catastrophe, i promise.

thousands of years ago, humans decided (an abuse of notation, surely) to slowly transition away from hunting (as well as gathering, let us not forget) and into living on farms. in the process, they did things like chop down trees to create grazing lands, and then increase the number of livestock living in those grazing lands. the number of humans also increased dramatically. the process, altogether, released a lot of trapped carbon into the atmosphere...

....which led to climate change. specifically, the rate of melting at the poles increased, and this created a rise in sea levels. cities were inundated and lost. it led to serious disruptions in the ways that people lived. the flooding was particularly bad around the persian gulf area, which for a time was swallowed by the sea.

we will probably never know what life was like in these earliest centers of human civilization. but, the earliest records that we have, the world over, identify these floods as a year zero. they may have been a event that brought people together in the face of crisis. the culture around the persian gulf created the stories around gilgamesh to mark this memory, which would eventually merge with a zoroastrian philosophy into the jewish scriptures and disseminate further from there. but, other cultures have similar stories that mark our ancient experiences with anthropogenic climate change.

this is not why we have rainbows. but, the next time a right-wing christian tells you that we can't change the weather, you might want to point out that their own religion is a consequence of exactly that.

the russian collapse into religious backwardsness since the fall of communism is actually quite total.

what is it like, actually? it's like the american south.

...in the 1800s.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-orthodox-protests-monastery-factory-wont-make-condoms/28185280.html

this is about as good of a source as you get, when it comes to these things.

this is a more convincing explanation than the one coming to us from the white house. sorry, white house. up your game, i guess?

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/12/trump-withholds-syria-sarin-evidence/

john mccain is a pathological liar.

but, he's on point with his accusations around this.

if the senate was seriously concerned about people in the united states working for russia, the people they'd be investigating would be ron and rand paul. this goes way back, too. they work through the remnants of the john birch society, and their media point man is alex jones. i mean, it's there - i pointed it out years ago. it was climategate that convinced me that jones is a russian spy. and, the coverage around ron paul on rt was always just fawning - it was always crystal clear who the russians supported, and it was always ron paul. but i don't get the impression that trump was ever meaningfully integrated into this network. maybe they thought they were using each other, or maybe trump didn't really understand who he was palling around with. i dunno. but, he wants to work with deep capital and the pentagon, not with kgb propagandists.

montenegro is an obvious strategic advantage without the liabilities of expansion further east, and the only ways to argue against it are through ignorance or malice. i don't get the impression that rand paul would need help locating the country on a map.

whether the people of this country want to be in nato is another question, altogether.

http://time.com/4718958/montenegro-nato-rand-paul/

sure.

but, what happens next is that opportunistic conservatives take control of the situation and swing the party further to the right. it's an opportunity to "widen the tent", guys. or do you want to squander the opportunity, and see the tea party come back?

then, we wake up from the nightmare and realize that rahm emanuel is president. because you didn't want to re-elect trump, and you had to pick somebody that could take advantage of the restlessness in the centre...

well, you'd vote for rahm emanuel instead of trump, wouldn't you? and you actually would, too.

i've been over this repeatedly: why do you only have two parties? you'll never get anywhere as long as you only have two parties. you'll just keep swinging further right.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/james-thompson-ron-estes-kansas-election-215017

guys, it's not complicated.

montenegro is a historically slavic state with the potential to house russian naval facilities across the adriatic from a g7 country. nato has strong motives to keep the russians out of this space.

why is there speculation about other things?

there is another reason why it is stupid to pressure the russians and the chinese at the same time, and that is because it brings them together.

if the americans were smart, they would be trying to play them off against each other. the chinese are no friends to the russians. there is a lot of room to position in, there.

but, of course, the americans are not smart.

if you attack them both at the same time, the chinese will build those short term alliances out of necessity, despite the fact that they contradict their long term goals.

i'm going to keep my analysis on north korea terse.

it is a stalemate. it has been for decades. and, it's unclear what the americans think they can gain by breaking it.

it's not even "if". it's "why?". at least there are reasons to get into a fight in syria. does trump want to cross the yalu?

in 2017, the reality is that the united states has no strategic objective in invading korea. it would be reckless and idiotic.

regardless, the old truth remains: you can't declare a war on the north without declaring a war on china. it doesn't matter how irritating the north gets; if they have to, it will be the chinese that take them out, so they can occupy the space directly.

the president is driven by the news cycle.

maybe i should clarify in specific language: the clark swing was a hidden movement from conservatives to liberals, on the behest of joe clark, and in reaction to stephen harper, that allowed the liberals to hold on to power under paul martin, despite substantial losses to the ndp on their left. this was self-defeating to the right, as the conservatives would have won in 2004 had it not been for the clark swing keeping the liberals in place.

the red tory is similar to the liberal republican. they don't like social conservatism, they don't like wars of aggression and they were concerned about harper's apparent desire to emulate american conservative politics. the whole evangelical thing has never done well here. the clark swing allowed them to define themselves to around 8%. please understand that clark was very aggressive in his endorsement, and that it was acknowledged at the time that he moved older tory voters.

older tory voters. in 2004.

it took harper until 2011 to finally consolidate the red tories, and only in the face of michael ignatieff, who represented everything they feared from harper.

there was a roughly 8% shift from the conservatives to the liberals in the 2015 election.

but, this was always generational. these proportions are bound to shift.

how about i put it to you like this: you don't want to project the clark swing past the life of the man, himself. in fact, his voters are older than him. it will almost certainly pass before he does.

joe clark is 77 years old.

is trudeau subtly trying to tell us he's a crook, with this constant mulroney intrigue?

is that it?

i'm the one who identified the clark swing. i get it.

but, it's just more proof that this government is toxic.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mulroney-cabinet-nafta-1.4056112

what?

this is some kind of 4chan troll, right?

what the fuck.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/11/sean-spicer-hitler-chemical-weapons-holocaust-assad

When Trump and his senior officials said, as they did just two weeks ago, that they had little interest in ridding Syria of dictator Bashar Assad, Canada was agreeable.

But when Trump reversed himself, bombed a Syrian government airfield, and called for Assad’s removal, Trudeau gamely changed course too.

it's the damned truth of it.

so, if you had any question as to why he wants a security council seat, it should be clear: it's to brown-nose the americans with.

if he gets that seat, he's going to decimate his own party.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/04/11/justin-trudeau-should-defy-donald-trumps-demand-for-regime-change-in-syria-walkom.html

at some point, we have to remember that it is the job of parents to "protect children" - whatever that means.

she's an obscure candidate that the media is giving too much time to because she says controversial things. but, she's neither championed by the small government types, nor by the populist types. shit happens when you have a lot of candidates, but right now she doesn't appear to be a serious candidate.

regardless...

this is why this angle on kids is the wrong angle. no matter how you square this, or how you argue it, whatever effects that pot has on kids can never be an argument to imprison adults. otherwise, we'd bring back alcohol prohibition and make it impossible to buy cigarettes. it's just not what this should be about.

the status quo obviously isn't working with kids. i'm beyond sympathetic to the idea that a new approach is required. but, i remember kids in junior high school drinking vodka out of tupperware containers. there's some level of access that's inevitable.

who will address the issue properly as a means to free up public resources and allow adults to participate in an enjoyable behaviour without risking being arrested?

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/04/11/kellie-leitch-says-marijuana-is-a-dangerous-drug-vows-to-undo-liberal-plan-to-legalize-it.html

given that we already have an unrepresentative body - the senate - i might be willing to entertain ideas about opening it up so that it is proportionally staffed. i mean, bringing party lists into the senate wouldn't be a big change from what already exists. we wouldn't be losing a representative body.

a brief proposal of a bicameral legislature of this sort would be as follows:

1) the house of commons remains riding based. i would like to see it moved to a ranked ballot system, as well.
2) the senate is reformed to be staffed from party lists based on a strict proportional representation.

legislation would continue to largely begin in the house, and then be sent to the senate where it can be thought over a second time, with much sobriety (this was always a joke, right? or was john a. not allowed in the senate premises?).

this actually kind of saves the whole system, as it allows the senate to fulfill it's function in a neary literal manner.

the elder trudeau really turned a lot of things on their heads. he's maybe the only politician i'm aware of that would lie to conservatives, and then govern further left.

the best example of this is the wage + price controls fiasco in the mid 70s, coming out of the opec oil crisis and the resulting stagflation. the conservatives at the time were still old tories, so they were opposed to free trade and in favour of state intervention in the economy. a lot of voters were afraid that their income would be stunted if the government tried to enforce wage controls. so, trudeau campaigned against the conservative party's promise to bring in wage & price controls.

after he had won in large part due to his promise not to bring in wage & price controls, he brought in wage & price controls. like, the day after. with a zeal that made it clear he had balls out lied in your face about it.

that's just the most famous example...

well, this is good, but like i say - it's kicking the can down the road.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/04/08/new-york-buy-american_n_15874840.html

the show last night was enjoyable.

i didn't realize there was an opening band - i thought it was two opening djs. i needed to sit down for the bulk of the opening band's set 'cause i was a little bit tired all of a sudden after having a cigarette out back. must've been the weather. anyways, i had no idea what i was listening to, but the neo-bjorkian voice and gentle guitars coming from the stage were rather soothing, in the ambience of the cross-legged seating. my kindergarten teacher would have said i was sitting like an indian, but she was a racist old lady and she's probably dead, now. she wouldn't let me hula hoop, either. she even yelled at me for reading, a few times. the old hag. i really hated her. it wasn't her actual name, but i called her missus pajamas - which was close enough. maybe there's a more technically correct yoga term for the posture, but i always thought she was talking about native americans, anyways :\. the point is that my enjoyment of this set was greatly aided by the atmosphere of it, which was zonked right out on the floor. it was kind of exactly what i needed to hear, in the situation of floor tourism that i was in. i was able to stand up for the last song or two...

i went into the floating points set realizing it was a little overhyped, and unsure if i was going to get more 70s rehash or something a little bit more warp records. i didn't really get either; it was more goldie than squarepusher, and enjoyable for the head cave, but not what some people want to claim it is. i don't want to dissuade you from it, because i legitimately had fun with it. i'd just caution you from expecting something that it isn't.

i did not take footage because there kind of wasn't footage. it was dark. i'm pretty sure there was a guitarist there. i'm not sure if there was a drummer there or not, but am leaning towards there not being one there. so, it was more of a dj set in feel if not in fact, and i don't usually take footage of dj sets.

i couldn't find the right bouncer last night. i'll have to wait until i can.

i mean, i'm not going to start randomly calling cops. i don't want cops doing random investigations, either. that's a shitty deal for everybody and likely to end with people getting ticketed for j-walking and shit. i'm not doing that.

i'll do the investigation myself and very specifically target any action accordingly. i have to reiterate that i don't know what happened, but that i can't just not react to any random attacks, if they happened, especially if they were politically motivated. i had headaches for weeks. it's potentially a fucking hate crime, guys. but, i need to understand what happened before i got legal on anybody's ass - and, i'm sorry, but you shouldn't begrudge me if i have to do it.

my hearing to have the property owners ordered by the state to build a big, beautiful wall between the units is may 11th. there'll be so much fresh air, your heads will spin, folks. i probably shouldn't have been posting here at all, but need to be a little more guarded now that the date is set.

what about the show last night? well..

i also want to clarify that i'm not, like, opposed to crt or something. whatever that even means.

we really shouldn't even talk about critical race theory as though it's some unique thing, or the ideas are fundamentally black in origin. we should really talk about the racial application of critical theory, which is the broader theory that suggests that justice is not blind, but the consequence of power imbalances. again: i'm an anarchist. i'm all into that.

the power imbalances discussed in critical theory are pretty broad. the classic target in critical theory is actually class, but it can also be used to analyze power imbalances in gender, race, sexual orientation, political affiliation* or whatever else. i used critical theory to analyze the quebec reference succession case when i was in school (the prof was not amused). the basic idea is just that the law works on prejudice: judges come up with reactions first, and then look for answers in the law afterwards, rather than allow the evidence to guide them.

the problem with crt comes when you let it loose into the wild, and in most cases it's not even a problem with crt. it's just a classic case of low information arts majors thinking they can talk about something complicated, and repeatedly failing to really grasp it - and then standing their ground in it rather than learning.


* i think that one is pretty prevalent nowadays, actually, with all of the politicized court battles and seemingly inconsistent court rulings coming out of them.

Scientists generally do not recognize races as biologically meaningful.  Yet scientists, including me, discuss race and describe the racial composition of our samples. To be clear, I am not advocating that we ignore race.  In fact, there are many dangers in ignoring race as a social topic. Race is “real”. But race is socially real, not biologically real. Socially important categories can be very real and meaningful, but arguably nonetheless arbitrary in nature.

see, i don't offer any dissent, here. but, if we understand this, what does it imply for social interaction amongst people that understand it?

i mean, it's one thing to argue that random, uneducated idiots are usually racist and they're probably denying it if they claim otherwise. i'll probably agree with you, depending on how you state it. it's another to argue that it's a universal that everybody is racist, no matter what, and can never do anything about it.

read the italic part again, please. if you really understand this, what it does it mean to still be racist?

"yes, i understand that race doesn't have a biological existence, and is just a contrived means of statist control. but, i still think you're inferior because i can't help it - despite not being able to state what that even means."

it defies reason.

if i'm able to understand that race doesn't biologically exist, how can i possibly be racist?

now, if you extrapolate that further, you get to the right way to deal with this: we should abolish racism by abolishing the social construct of race - because racism and race are in fact exactly the same thing. that's the rational deduction from this.

it can't happen overnight, of course. but, you can start by teaching your kids that race is pseudo-science, that it has no biological basis and that it's something that only exists in peoples' heads. if you don't put the idea of race into your kids' heads, they won't be able to understand what racism is.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/without-prejudice/201612/race-social-construction

we resisted.

that is something to be proud of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1917

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070406.cover07/front/Front/Front/

i'm an anarchist.

of course i reject race as a statist construct.

“I think what we should do is ask Russia, how could it be, if you have advisers at that airfield, that you didn’t know that the Syrian air force was preparing and executing a mass murder attack with chemical weapons?”

lol.

this article ignores the possibility that the united states - which has the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons on earth - may have smuggled in the sarin through it's contacts with the rebels, which is the theory i'm operating under.

the united states routinely ships weapons to these rebels, and nobody has the authority to inspect these shipments.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-syria-chemical-weapons-20170408-story.html

so, a peer-reviewed article published by researchers at yale says one thing.

and a not-even-funny skit by a bunch of film majors (if they even got through the program) at the "college humour" youtube channel contradicts it with a vague understanding of a controversial (and entirely analytical) sociological (i almost typed sociolological. freudian slip?) theory via a startlingly poor use of satire.

which source will you take more seriously?

see, i actually know that this is a trick question, though - because most of us are really that stupid. it sounds outrageous when i say it like this, but the actual truth is that most people will actually react better to something that argues the point using emotion than something that argues the point intellectually. nerds don't get laid, so we're probably never going to evolve into cold cyborgs. this is a defect in "human nature" we'll have to deal with. well, maybe it's even a tragic flaw - but let's hope it doesn't take us down, in the end.

i can only sit at a distance and shake my head. that's the story of my life.

of course it was the jews.

even when it was the nazis, i knew it was the jews, deep down. it's always them pesky jews, every time...

the collapse into jew-baiting is consistently the death of a conspiracy theory. it represents the point when the conspiracy theory passes out of the realm of reasonable speculation, and into the realm of knuckleheads and white supremacists.

this won't die, it will just pass into the fringes, where it always belonged.

because it was always ridiculous. and, the candidate that proposed it was always ridiculous, too.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/the-happy-go-lucky-jewish-group-that-connects-trump-and-putin-215007

yeah. see, this is...

if you put aside the chemical attack thing, and grasp the reality of it - which is that the us is trying to support rebels in a proxy war, but can't provide air support because the russians are blocking it - this intuitively insane proposition is actually tactically necessary, in addition to being insane. and, the fact that this was floating around just cements the argument that the chemical attack line is utter bs.

this is what they're really angling for: they want to take out the air defenses. consequences aside, it's not even clear that they could do it, given that the russians have defenses in place. i mean, yes - the americans in theory have these stealth bombers sitting in idaho, or whatever, that can evade russian defenses. but, the technical ability to evade a defense is not the same thing as the ability to overwhelm it.

i've been arguing for years that the obvious reason that the americans haven't been bombing in syria is that they can't. this was clinton's own level of ignorance (and she was the one calling for a no-fly zone, remember), as a consequence of being misled by extreme hawks.

as i stated before, the us central command no doubt had to face up to the choice in front of them: they could acknowledge that the russians have blocked any moves in the region, or they could go full retard and just start balls out bombing shit. these are caricatures, of course, but just barely - there's a real truth in the extremity of it. there's really no end point in continuing to support these rebel groups, when the russians have air superiority. i guess maybe the hope at some point was that they could overrun the air defences from the ground, but that's obviously not happening any time soon, or probably at all.

so, what's the point in continuing to offer support for terrorist groups, if they have no ability to actually win? the pragmatic basis of it, whether you agreed with it or not, is now lost. it's a "shit or get off the pot" kind of thing.

the smart thing to do is to accept the reality of it and back off. i know trump wants to play war and stuff, but he has no space to play games on this front. maybe he can bomb the faulklands or something. or maybe he can go invade the moon.

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/06/u-s-weighs-saturation-strike-on-syrian-government-in-response-to-chemical-attack/

so, does assad need to step down?

he does, actually. but, not for the reasons you think. i've been over this previously, but perhaps not here...

it's been clear for a while that the russians are going to succeed in clearing out the rebels, and there's not much that the americans can do to stop it short of sending in their own troops, which can't actually happen because the russians are sitting there, in the way. the americans have to fight this by proxy to avoid a direct conflict with the russians, and the russians are just about done eliminating these forces. let's skip the delusional bullshit and fast forward to a point where assad has reasonably secured the borders on the west of the country (as that is inevitable) and turns his focus entirely on isis. they're not going to win that over night, but let's say they do, and they're able to think about recreating their own borders.

well, then, they'd have to get into a hot war with the kurds. but, what happens after that?

it's very hard to believe that assad is going to stop once his borders are secured, and you have to get your head around a culture shock to really grasp that. there's all kinds of concepts of honour and retribution worked into this. as assad is aware that his primary enemies are the saudis and turks, who will continue to provide a joint existential threat even when the borders are re-secured, he will have no choice but to continue fighting them, even if we see a long period of peace and a subsequent military buildup or potential arms race.

if you leave assad in power, you are guaranteeing a hot war between iran and the saudis. assad cannot let it go. and, he will need iran's help.

while iran is no match for the saudis on paper, iraq is a potentially decisive wildcard - as is israel.

so, you have to get assad out. and, you have to get the whole alawite sect out, too, as they will not think any differently than him.

but, the idea that you're going to replace assad with one of these rebel groups, or some combination of them, is a non-starter.

fun fact: he actually wants to step down. he was trying to transition into a democracy. but, the saudis didn't like that. and, hence the armed rebels (there were never peaceful protests of any notable size...) moved in to prevent assad from transitioning the country into a secular democracy.

a transition needs to be done peacefully and orderly and needs to reflect the will of the syrian people, as expressed by the ballot box.

but, it needs to happen.

and, the russians don't disagree, either.

what a bunch of clowns.

look at the picture in the article, too.

it's like a wwf still, or something.

rex is coming for you, vlad. be afraid.

i think lavrov could take him, one on one. he'd probably have a heart attack. been eating beef his whole life, i bet. couldn't lift a shitzu without the strain getting to him...

they think they're being "decisive", though.

trump: strong like bison, strong like eagle.

what they really need to do is have an arm wrestling match, followed by a shark-wrestling competition and a bear riding contest.

this is the art of the deal, i suppose - make shit up and throw it in their face and then demand something be done about it.

i've been arguing for years that the neo-liberals - and also the marxists trying to analyze them - were wrong to reject the age of empires in favour of some kind of transnational conspiracy of capital. those class interests were always lurking. their arguments always ranged from naive to preposterous.

but, here we have it.

i don't even know how to analyze this. it's just ridiculous. look at this language:

"Tillerson will also charge Russia with..."

what?

they don't appear to be attempting to work through any legal institution. they literally appear to be planning on marching into moscow and yelling at them.

i guess the russians should let them finish their tantrum, suggest it's nappy time for rex and then tell the delegation to bring it up at the security council?

if i was in moscow, i would have absolutely no patience for this kind of idiocy.

http://nypost.com/2017/04/09/us-to-accuse-russia-of-complicity-in-syrian-chemical-attack-report/

i don't have an interest in walking into conservative establishments, or upper class enclaves. i seek out radical people with radical viewpoints, and go places where i can reasonably expect people to have radical viewpoints as an expression of a culture that promotes the politics of the revolutionary left. that's a part of the fucking point of going out and talking to people - i'm looking for radicals by going to places where radicals ought to be. and, if these spaces are just full of poseurs that don't understand the politics of the music scene they're participating in, there needs to be some pushback on the point in getting them out.

if i'm going to an industrial night, for example, it had fucking better be full of anarchists and nihilists and atheists and open-as-fuck queers, because that's what the music is fucking about. and, if i'm somehow "subversive" in the crowd, it's a lame fucking crowd that's at the wrong fucking bar, dammit.

just as an example that i have documented.

i got into a debate with an alt-right jerk on this night, who was going around ranting and raving a bunch of nonsense about the superiority of white culture and needed to be talked to. i approached him and tried to counter his bullshit, but he wasn't capable of understanding why he was wrong. and, i took a lot of verbal shit about identity, but i mostly ignored it.

he was apparently completely unaware that the bar was named after harvey milk.

so, i was in the right place.

...why did he show up there?

i mean, it's not like windsor isn't full of hick bars, either.

hey, btw - i go to punk shows, mostly. the odd jazz show. and, underground dance clubs. i bring an anti-establishment attitude, sure. i'm a little dangerous, even. but, i'm where i'm supposed to be. the important question is this: what is your boring, status quo supporting ass doing at the punk show?

i went to the right bar, man. maybe you didn't...

the administration has no credibility, the party has no credibility, the congress has no credibility and, frankly, the fucking country has no credibility, either.

n-n-n-n-n-no.

stop.

this is consistent.

everything that this white house has done up to this point exists in this "post-truth" space, where accusations are thrown around without proof and conspiracies are presented as fact. what just happened in syria, where the administration is accusing syria of using weapons that all evidence suggests they did not have, is entirely consistent with this. it is more accusation without proof, more conspiracy presented as fact, all in the realm of this "post-truth" reality.

the fact that you might like this narrative better, or think it might sell more papers or something, doesn't negate a damned thing - not in the real world, not in a reality where truth still exists.

what is amazing is the doublethink. because, mark my words - the same journalists and the same media outlets that are willing to swallow this whole will be back on the offensive within days, and without a hint of irony or the slightest clue that they understand their own hypocrisy.

when the balance of evidence is on your side, you're not a conspiracy theorist for pointing it out. rather, it is the americans that are presenting a conspiracy theory, in claiming that the russians helped the syrians stump their own monitors.

the americans don't get some monopoly on truth, or something; a claim is not a conspiracy theory merely for questioning the official state position, and especially not when it is presented without proof.

the russians have the better argument. deal with it.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/06/on-that-gas-attack-we-dont-need-conspiracies-to-oppose-us-war-in-syria/

so, what just happened?

well, i spent last weekend catching up on sleep, which was necessary after not being able to sleep all of last week. i did groceries on tuesday. i was at shows on wednesday (a punk show) and thursday (a guitar concerto at the dso & a jazz band at the magic stick). i spent half of yesterday reacting to the egregious bombings in syria, and the other half finishing research on shows for this month. i then slept most of the day today. and i'm just finishing up the show research.

there's lots of jazz this month in detroit. i'm kind of guessing that this might be a consequence not just of the collapse of "edm", but also of the dumbing down of rock music over the last twenty years to the point that there's really nothing left. there's not a lot of options for an actual musician nowadays - your choices are between various types of non-music. i'll pick anti-music over non-music. but, it's an unsustainable status quo - it has to break. the musicians have to eventually find an outlet. or what? not be musicians?

so, what does that outcast that would otherwise be in a musical alt-rock band do when faced with the reality that there is no longer a distributional framework to cater to the market in musical alt-rock? they could join a metalcore band. that would suck, for them. chances are high that they're not into all of the brazen macho posteuring and overt stupidity of it all. they might be more interested in joining a synth-driven jazz band and trying to eek out an audience in some crossover between rock and techno. or, perhaps they may be more interested in bypassing the whole thing and just trying to start a psych band. i mean, you've heard frusciante's solo work, right?

this is all speculative. i guess you'd have to ask around. and, if there are similarities, people probably aren't cognizant of them.

but, it seems like this will be the focus for the month - trying to find a way to squeeze in as many of these jazz shows as i can.

try it.

find some fucking snot-nosed little kid, and make them listen to this. don't tell them when it was made - even let on that it's brand new. ask them what they think...

is this the future of music?

(pompeii was '72. but, saucerful of secrets was '68, and the song is older.)

the actual truth is that if you were to play a selection of late 60s psych, fusion and prog - and you could probably get as mainstream as pink floyd and have few of them really know what it is - to a group of teenagers or 20-somethings nowadays, a substantial percentage of them would think they were listening to futuristic sounds that will define music in the next century.

now, some of the music of the 60s and 70s was brilliant. sure. you'll get minimal pushback from me on that point.

but, what it really demonstrates is that we're in the midst of a period of cultural stagnation and social regression that set in with the the thatcher-reagan revolution (and perhaps much later in canada with stephen harper). obama did not reverse this, but normalize it. and, trump is set to accelerate it.

it's really surreal to see it: these digital natives that hear sixty year-old pop music and think it's futuristic and get excited by it. do they have the same dreams as their great-grandparents, when they hear it?

it's really across the board: the so-called liberal press (like the toronto star, or the guardian) is universally supporting the islamic fundamentalist rebels over the secularists in the assad regime.

it's just a reminder that the press serves the interests of capital, and has little interest in promoting politics, except as a pragmatic tool to serve it's masters.

if it was about ideology and maximizing freedom, you would expect these sources to support assad over the rebels. this is, after all, the reason the rebels can't win: the syrian people (rightly) see them as a bunch of tyrannical terrorists that want to enforce sharia law. they're fully aware that they'll have more freedoms under assad than they will under any combination of islamic rebels that may take over and start slaughtering the infidels and cleansing the population by ethnicity.

but, it's not about ideology and it's not about what is best for the syrian people, as the syrian people themselves have very clearly decided. it's about acting as an arm of propaganda for an aggressive military machine that wants to push the russians out of the middle east at any cost.

they use terms like 'measured' and 'decisive', which are only meaningful within this delusional framework of manifest destiny - as though america has some obligation, let alone a mandate, to rule the world by the threat of benevolent force.

the syrians didn't vote for donald trump. the only winner of any elections there is assad.

the rhetoric will fly in a certain circle, but that circle is exactly the circle of liberal elitists that think it is their birthright to rule.

this is language that has some logic when applied to donors. but, to think you're going to sway the population by convincing them of the merits of some kind of benevolent aristocracy is...it's indicative of the closed-loop thinking that produces it.

they're making a classic french or russian style revolution necessary. the kind that cuts off the head of the inherited classes....

no, i'll say this again - and i was consistent all the way through the cycle.

trump's foreign policy sounded better, or at least it did in bullet form. if you let him try and explain it, it became obvious that the reality was that he didn't have the slightest idea of what he was talking about. so, it meant nothing. in the end - once he was properly briefed - his foreign policy would basically be indiscernible from clinton's, because clinton's foreign policy was just a reflection of the existing status quo in the first place.

the difference was that clinton would repeat what the wonks had said and then try and market it, whereas trump would just go play golf instead.

no, i said that - i told you he'd spend most of his time playing golf.

so, yes, the military-industrial establishment and the neo-cons are reasserting themselves. they work with the big banks to push the contracts through.

trump's viewpoints during the cycle were a reflection of his ignorance and "evolved" as a consequence of being briefed. had he been briefed, he'd have sounded just like jeb, who sounded like he did because he'd been briefed.

i want to clarify that when i said the russians were going to react, that didn't mean i expected that they were going to launch missiles or invade poland or something.

the russians are not nearly as stupid as the americans are, and they fully understand that war in the 21st century is largely fought off of the battlefield.

what i meant was that you can expect that they are going to find a way to frustrate the situation.

here's an example: when obama put sanctions down on russia after crimea, the russians reacted by installing air defense systems in iran, which eventually forced obama to pull out of the iran deal (the so-called iran deal is just a face saving mechanism to obscure the reality that the russians closed the door). that was a major retaliatory measure, but nobody died in the process.

the russians have already indicated that they are going to be increasing their air defenses in syria. that is itself a provocative retaliatory step. and, i would expect further subtle actions meant to slow down and screw up the containment policy.

i apologize if you misunderstood what i meant, but this doesn't make the situation any less serious. the war is in motion. it is hot. it will get messy. and, much of it will escape the understanding of "analysts".

this is not the first time i've written this. but, i confused some people over the last few days, and i think i should clarify a point.

i overheard this on both nights in different bars:

"that woman just went into the men's washroom."

well, i mean, i guess it demonstrates the point, right? to my knowledge, michigan doesn't have any stupid laws (yet). but, people actually seem to expect me to use the women's washroom, and get a little weirded out when i don't.

....or sometimes don't.

the flat reality of it is that i make a judgement call on a case-by-case basis. bellicosity is important when dealing with the assertion of rights. but, in the real world, i'm concerned about a wide variety of things. i have to get a grasp of the room, of security...

a good example of why it's important to be cognizant of your surroundings was the crywolf show a few weeks ago. the audience didn't care. but, the very large men working security (who checked my id on the way in) were clearly uncomfortable at the mere premise. they seemed to see the very idea that i was even there at all as a kind of threat - and they visibly eased up when i used the men's room. they didn't want to deal with this shit. and, i didn't force them to, with unknown consequences - despite having minimal concern regarding pushback from the actual audience.

do you see why this gets complicated?

well, you probably already realized it was complicated.

one of the issues i feel the need to balance very carefully is the idea of audibly hearing the urine fall. now, i'm not shy about this, either - i've had this conversation with many people, and i've never met a woman who wouldn't not squat in a public restroom if she could urinate without doing it. so, i'm going to walk into the toilet and i'm going to make the non-choice of not squatting, for simple sanitary reasons - because nobody would squat if they didn't have to.

but, that means that anybody walking into the bathroom is going to hear it, and i have a problem with that.

imagine the following scenario: i walk in about thirty seconds before a cisfemale does. so, i go into the stall. i urinate standing up - as any woman would in a public toilet, if they could. she walks into the bathroom as i'm urinating and hears it.

of course that's going to make her uncomfortable. she didn't see me walk in. why wouldn't she think there's a dude in the stall? and why wouldn't she get upset?

so, i've placed a covenant on myself with the women i interact with daily - if i'm going to use the women's washroom, i'm going to squat. and, if i'm not going to squat for reasons of sanitation, i'm going to use the men's room.

that doesn't mean i'll always use the men's room. a lot of bars have multi-use men's rooms and single occupancy female stalls, in which case i'll usually opt for the single occupancy stalls. further, there have been rare occasions where i've felt unsafe using the men's room and have picked the women's washroom instead.

but, more broadly, you have to understand that i did not transition young. i've used the men's room for most of my life, and i've gotten used to it. i'm not usually afraid to go in there, and broadly don't even think that which letter is on the door is really even important.

the push back is kind of more on principle: i get to make this choice, and it's up to my discretion to make it properly.

detroit actually appears to be being bombarded with jazz this month.

if this is a consequence of electronic music's latest failed attempt to go mainstream, i'll take it. but, i'm not going to be able to hit every show...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJdu0OZ9hr8

so, instead of concluding that this claim of a chemical attack is nearly impossible because the russians are operating the military in syria, they're suggesting the russians are complicit in the chemical attack. how much further down the rabbit hole are we going with this?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-u-s-response-syria-attack-1.4060817

hey doggy.

doggy, doggy, doggy.

bombing the russians is too dangerous as a distraction tactic. go bomb the virgin islands or something.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/07/us-march-jobs-report-98000-retail-government-freeze-trump

as usual, the swedes get it right when everybody else fucks up.

i can hardly expect the swedish government to accuse the cia of manufacturing the sarin attacks. but, this is much closer to the approach that canadians expect a liberal government to take.

given that the ndp don't appear to be offering any kind of alternative at the moment (mulcair proves again that he's a dipshit) or presenting any kind of resistance, it's not clear what kind of direct damage this is going to do to the liberals. but, it is going to contribute to the general feeling on the left that this government is toxic.

https://www.thelocal.se/20170407/sweden-urges-political-solution-to-syrian-conflict-trump-assad-wallstrom

“an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law.”

are you denying this? or are you claiming it doesn't matter - that international law doesn't actually exist?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-us-missile-strike-syria-bashar-assad-chemical-attack-khan-sheikhoun-reaction/

i'm not going to make it out, but i'll extend my solidarity with this.

http://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/protest-planned-in-windsor-over-u-s-missile-strikes-in-syria

so, what should they be doing?

they should be working with the russians to take out isis, and then helping assad transition. but, of course, this is an obtuse position because it relies on multiple naive assumptions, such as:

1) isis is operating outside of the influence (at least) of us intelligence.
2) assad wants to cling to power.
3) this wasn't always about pushing the russians out in the first place.

i guess the us central command was down to two options: attack the russians (balls out, no bs) or accept strategic defeat and pull back.

they've attacked the russians.

and, the war is on.

canada's role here should be to try and broker a peace deal. this isn't a war that america can win any time soon. so, it has the potential to drain the empire to a point of collapse.

expected conflict points in a hot war with russia are not just syria and ukraine, but afghanistan/iran, the caucasus, the balkans, the baltics, france, scandinavia, north africa, south america and eastern asia.

this was the attack that the americans never launched. they've launched it. it's on.

expect a russian retaliation.

also, yes: hillary would have bombed syria, too.

she was the one promising it. trump was the one suggesting otherwise.

i understand why trudeau is not interested in picking a fight over syria, but he's wrong to take this approach. he has the benefit of an extra year's worth of briefings, but he truly doesn't understand the situation much better than trump does. and, the situation requires a multilateral approach.

the americans need pushback on this. they're just making things worse...

see, you need to understand that trump can't just wake up on a friday and bomb syria like this. syria is not iraq, and it's not libya, and it's not even iran. bombing syria is more like bombing a warsaw pact state. the one on the furthest reaches that never fit in right. armenia or something. or, conversely, it wouldn't quite be like russia bombing mexico, but it wouldn't be that different than russia bombing costa rica.

because the chain of command right now has the russians operating the syrian military as a client state, and the decisions ultimately coming down from moscow, trump basically just declared war on russia.

this war will likely not be contained in syria.

so, it's not just a moral thing. this is a foolish strategy.

these are not going to be contained or targeted strikes - and it's flatly delusional to suggest they are. this is a substantial escalation, and it will lead to chaos and war.

this is another hard shift to the right by trudeau.

historically, canada has always rejected unilateral military action. ambrose is wrong in her statements - the conservatives supported multilateralism under diefenbaker, clark and mulroney.

what trudeau is doing here is signalling that the liberal party has adopted stephen harper's position on the marginalization of the united nations in favour of american unilateralism - and i fully condemn his language in the strongest terms possible.

justin trudeau is not a liberal, and perhaps never was. he is a conservative, and he is recreating the liberal party in the image of stephen harper.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/04/07/canada-not-part-of-us-strike-on-syria-but-backs-efforts-to-stop-atrocities.html

what is ontario's comparative advantage in construction materials?

to describe the scenario as "free trade" is to purposefully obfuscate the meaning of "free trade". what the ontario government wants is to protect the privilege of it's own capital to invest outside of the country. why should the united states facilitate this, given our reliance on their imports?

we can cry that it's not fair. perhaps it isn't. or, perhaps we've been utterly foolish in allowing ourselves to lose our productive independence.

i understand that these "buy american" clauses are potentially disastrous, and that the government has to do something about them. but, we need a deeper analysis of the situation, here. even if we can resolve this problem, it just kicks the can down the road. there will be another crisis, and another crisis after that.

conceding the potentially disastrous effects of these clauses should be generating a movement to rebuild our own industrial capacity.

nor does doing so negate the potential benefits of actual free trade, when we actually have a comparative advantage to exploit.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ontario-premier-reaches-out-to-u-s-governors-to-win-allies-on-free-trade-1.3358953

medeski, martin, wood ....+ spencer?

i had fun dancing last night.

if trump carpet bombs syria, a lot of the responsibility is going to lie with senate democrats who have been trying to paint him as a russian puppet.

when accusations of chemical weapon use are thrown around, it is of the utmost importance to allow for an investigation to proceed. accusation is not proof. and, we know, today, that the rebels in syria (probably with help from nato intelligence operations) have staged attacks and blamed it on assad in order to try and instigate greater nato involvement. that is historical fact.

i mean, assad would have to be a complete idiot to do this at this time. to begin with, assad is not making decisions. the russians are making decisions. but, trump has indicated that he wants to disengage from bombing the regime and focus entirely on isis. why would assad choose this particular point in time to launch a chemical attack? that would be retarded.

yet, trump is absolutely dumb enough to fall for fabricated reports. he won't ask questions. he has total faith in his handlers.

if you know anything about this situation, it's absolutely fucking obvious.

but, he's also stubborn. and narcissistic. it's the opportunity to prove he's not working for the russians that is the real incentive, here.

and, the resulting war crimes prosecution that will never actually happen should be distributed equally upon every member of congress, and every member of the media, that has contributed to the dissemination of this fabrication.

not only is western civilization not built on top of christianity, but the christians did everything they possibly could to stunt the growth and development of western civilization.

if western civilization had never conquered the church, the europe of today would look a lot like the middle east does.

rather, the basis of western civilization is greek philosophy, and it's corollary of science. christianity and islam are both disastrous and dangerous offshoots of greek civilization, the hell let loose from the proverbial pandora's box, if you will.

they are not from disparate origins. they do not reflect fundamentally different worldviews. they do not have different intellectual genealogies. they are rooted in the same origins, have the same fundamental worldview and are of one and the same intellectual genealogy.

if you accept that western civilization is rooted in greek philosophy, and is therefore the sum of it's descendants, it follows that islam is not outside of western culture but an integral component of it.

if you are a conservative, that should lead you to embrace the religions as basically the same thing. but, if you are an iconoclast it should lead you to see their destruction as equally necessary.

i still don't know what happened back in february, but if i find out that somebody punched me, i'm not going to blame it on the alcohol.

that's preposterous.

this was predictable via logic: what extending last call by an hour did was push the duis forward by an hour. that is all.

that said, there's a hidden concern, here: if you extend the hours too far, you'll get drunks in rush hour.

i think 4:30 am is the right time, myself. as mentioned: not all of the bars will stay open. but, i'd rather have people drinking in public places that aren't afraid to call an ambulance than have them disperse into bushes, alleys and illegal watering holes.

4:30-5:00 is when people start looking for breakfast.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2693378/#R36

i'm glad to see that the senate is focusing it's time and resources on the pressing issues that are most important to canadians.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senate-opposed-changes-o-canada-1.4053013

"no, he's not mentally challenged. he's just an american."

although, there's another factor in detroit to consider: whatever and whenever and wherever the bars close at, you can then walk across the street to the 7/11 and get a case.

(and drink it in the park.)

(and, yes, you should share if somebody asks, within reason.)

i understand that the doctor has spent a lot of time treating the results of late night drinking, but i suspect that he hasn't spent much time out drinking past 2:00 am, himself.

this is actually a classic example of harm reduction. if you shut the bars off at 2:00 does that stop people from drinking? of course not: they find liquor cabinets, if they haven't prepared earlier with a stash in the car, and head to after hours locations to keep drinking - some of which are actually unregulated bars. of course they exist.

the choice that the state has in front of it is whether it wants to let late night drinkers drink in the open or keep them drinking in the shadows, where it's harder to keep them out of trouble.

further, i'm sure toronto will find the same thing that detroit has found: just because the bars can stay open past two doesn't mean they actually will. the hours in detroit are 4:00 am, but there are only a few bars that stay open that late, and usually only on the weekends.

but, the idea that last call sends people home is crazy talk.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/why-this-toronto-er-doctor-is-dead-set-against-extending-last-call-1.4053845

and, who's gonna pay for the wall?

i don't want to tell people they can't smoke, i want them to realize it's a shitty habit and quit - which is what i did.

i run into this in a lot of situations. people don't get this subtlety. they can't differentiate between wanting to force a group to do something, and wanting to convince them to.

and, i don't like proselytizing either; in fact, that's another example: i don't want to force people into atheism, i want to convince them that it's the obvious answer and that all religion is complete insanity that should be immediately halted.

so, i mean, this isn't about smokers' rights. i mean, it's kind of a dumb idea, really - not a lot different than "religious freedom". what does it mean to say that a smoker has the right to pollute the air wherever it wants because it's a slave to a dangerous chemical? that's really crazy talk, isn't it? the better idea is smokers' responsibilities. an even better one is smokers' emancipation.

but, even so, i have only approached the smokers twice: once to ask them what the problem with the coal was (i did not get an answer), and once to assure them that i'm not trying to tell them where to smoke.

the goal of the litigation is to build a wall to prevent their habit from affecting me, not to force them to change to my liking.

i just think the argument on rent control ought to be less about markets - whatever you think of them - and more about locking the contract into place. the price you agree to should only be subject to negotiation upon the consent of both parties. this idea that a landlord can unilaterally change the price at their pleasure is not liberalism, it's feudalism. liberalism is about the sanctity of the contract.

that said, i'm not much into contract theory, either. it's just that you usually see these things packaged together: markets, contracts and liberalism. you don't need to get into deep regulation to uphold the fucking contract; to the contrary, the contract is meant to get the state out of it. what the law currently does is negate the contract in favour of the landlord unilaterally doing whatever the fuck it wants, and then pretends that this is about "free markets". it's not. it's just about property owners placing themselves above the law, and above the market.

what i'm into is not contracts but co-ops so i think these things should mostly be set in law, and largely be non-negotiable. the one thing that is negotiable is the price, which i think ought to be the sole purpose of a contract. but, once it's set, it's set, and should not be alterable except under dissolution.

the fact is that the socialists and liberals agree, here: the contract should set the price and it should not be unilaterally altered by anybody. that's contract theory. that's liberalism. it's the conservatives that then step in and say they shouldn't be regulated by contracts, and should have the ability to do whatever they want, because they're property owners and therefore superior.

the press will endlessly attempt to confuse you on this, trying to argue that free markets mean there shouldn't be regulation. but, the market needs some regulation in order to even be a market and not be either anarchy (no rules, no property) or feudalism (those who own the property write the rules for their own benefit), and the contract is the most liberal way to do that.

don't fall for their bullshit.

ok. good.

there's some people waving around the standard "free market" bullshit, and arguing that abolishing controls will lead to decreased prices. right. they're probably not as stupid as they sound, but you're a fucking idiot if you believe them.

rent control should apply equally to all buildings and be strictly indexed to inflation.

i hope they get this through before the next election.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/wynne-rent-control-1.4054781

the way to read this is that turnout was down (obviously. byelection.) and the conservative totals were consequently inflated. but, the tory press never fails to disappoint.

it's too bad that there wasn't more pushback in markham.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-byelections-2017-1.4054337

this is absurd.

it's no different than asking for a prescription for vodka. that'll help you sleep, too.

it's a recreational drug with health hazards. it's not a medicine. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/health-canada-urged-to-clear-way-for-medical-pot-insurance-1.4053888