so, i sent an email to the oiprd directly, bypassing the "co-ordinator" i'd been using.

i'll try to call tomorrow, if i get no response.

for right now, i've found some snapshots of my carleton site that takes me back to mid-2001:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010616043437/http://chat.carleton.ca/~jparent2/

that would have been the summer after first year, and i'm willing to believe there was nothing there before that.

the site gets increasingly complicated for many years...

there was something at crosswinds before that, something at fortune cities and i think something at geocities, as well, going back to i think 1998.

pulling all this down should help me date things a little better.

this is the right way to do this.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/03/politics/rand-paul-trump-national-emergency-declaration/index.html

the exemption is not carte blanch to discriminate any way that you want, which is how religious groups often want to interpret it.

"i have religious freedom! i can smite my enemies!"

nope. not at all. quite the opposite - these rules exist primarily to stop people from being oppressed by religion. that's really what a bill of rights is, a way to stop puritanical cromwellianism, and by extension any other kind of fundamentalism. but, we live in the time of orwell, so ideas are often mangled and manipulated into their contradictions, and the neo-liberal concept of "religious freedom" is a prime example of it. thankfully, our judicial branch is still operating, even if our legislative branch is slowly caving in on itself.

a religious exemption in the law has to be very narrowly defined as intended to protect the purpose of an organization. there has to be a deeply persuasive argument that the charter should be suspended. and, it is for that reason that the argument almost always fails....

http://www.thechristianleftblog.org/blog-home/premarital-sex-is-it-a-sin-or-not

this is the specific clause in ontario, which is not bc, but nonetheless:

Special employment  

24. (1) The right under section 5 to equal treatment with respect to employment is not infringed where,

 (a) a religious, philanthropic, educational, fraternal or social institution or organization that is primarily engaged in serving the interests of persons identified by their race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, creed, sex, age, marital status or disability employs only, or gives preference in employment to, persons similarly identified if the qualification is a reasonable and bona fide qualification because of the nature of the employment;

(b) the discrimination in employment is for reasons of age, sex, record of offences or marital status if the age, sex, record of offences or marital status of the applicant is a reasonable and bona fide qualification because of the nature of the employment;

(c) an individual person refuses to employ another for reasons of any prohibited ground of discrimination in section 5, where the primary duty of the employment is attending to the medical or personal needs of the person or of an ill child or an aged, infirm or ill spouse or other relative of the person;

(d) an employer grants or withholds employment or advancement in employment to a person who is the spouse, child or parent of the employer or an employee;

(e) a judge or master is required to retire or cease to continue in office on reaching a specified age under the Courts of Justice Act;

(f) a case management master is required to retire on reaching a specified age under the Courts of Justice Act;

(g) the term of reappointment of a case management master expires on the case management master reaching a specified age under the Courts of Justice Act; or

(h) a justice of the peace is required to retire on reaching a specified age under the Justices of the Peace Act. R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, s. 24 (1); 1999, c. 6, s. 28 (11); 2001, c. 32, s. 27 (5); 2005, c. 5, s. 32 (14); 2005, c. 29, s. 1 (2).

....and it is easy enough to see that a commission or judge would rule pretty easily that an individual's personal sex life has nothing to do with the nature of the employment.

an example of a situation where this clause would apply would be in telling a jew he can't teach at a christian school, because he doesn't believe in the resurrection of christ.

who you fuck, and how often, doesn't have any kind of causal connection on your ability to work in a library, or whether you identify as a member of a faith or not. it's just flat out discrimination - plain and simple.

this article is terribly written, though.

you have to remember that canada's constitution came into force in 1982, so there were no charter rights before then. the charter is retroactive, but it took a while to kick in. citing a 1984 case as precedent is consequently exceedingly bad form. what your supposed to do in a situation like this is point out that the issue "hasn't been tested in the charter era".

that said, i'm not sure that it hasn't been, and i disagree with the opinion provided by the commission. this would be more along the lines of an issue that has minimal amounts of case law around it due to it being so exceedingly rare, but we're also talking about a broad mindset, here, and the idea of religious exemption has generally not stood up to courts in canada, when challenged. i can't know what they were thinking from such a great distance, but it sounds like the commission didn't want to open a can of worms. my own legal opinion would be that any legislation that provides for a religious exemption of this sort would be ruled unconstitutional, if tested - and that's an issue that civil liberties unions should really be trying to pick up on, if there are laws in existence with language of that explicit nature. it's nice to see that alberta is addressing the issue, at least.

i'd suggest actually reading the article on the buterman case, which i've read about before. the offered settlement was an appropriate remedy, if maybe a little low. i'd think something like five years of salary is more appropriate than $80,000, which is probably in the 1-2 year range. but, the applicant didn't bring the case to commission, and it was ruled as abandoned. so, to suggest that the case was lost is both disingenuous and wrong, and the settlement itself is reason to think that the lawyers involved assumed there was reason to think he'd have won.

the trinity case is a better example of a ruling in the charter era in canada, and should be consulted as existing precedent for similar issues, not the pre-modern 1984 case.

i would encourage ms. kraats to file.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christian-school-forces-resignation-over-community-standards-policy-1.5035804

yeah, that's absurd.

i don't think you can rehire her, but you can write her a large check, and cut off funding to the board.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christian-school-forces-resignation-over-community-standards-policy-1.5035804

if we're seriously talking about this, there is a tradition in the liberal party to alternate between francophone and anglophone leaders, but it hasn't been a very successful strategy since the 80s. since pearson, you've got:

- trudeau (francophone). pm, from...i think it was 68-84....
- john turner (anglophone). lost badly to the francophone mulroney. twice.
- chretien (francophone). pm from 1993-2003.
- paul martin (anglophone). pm from 2003-2006, then lost to harper, partly due to declining support in quebec.
- stephane dion (francophone). dion was badly smeared for his poor english language skills, but was competitive in 2008, holding harper to a minority.
- ignatieff (anglophone). he was completely annihilated in 2011, even losing to the ndp in quebec. this was the worst showing in the liberal party's history,
- trudeau (francophone). pm, 2015-?.

the tory media will no doubt recoil at the thought, as will certain aspects of the liberal party establishment, but i think that dion would have bettered his 2008 results if he were still at the helm in 2011. i think there's little question that he would have held off the dreaded harper majority, at least.

the liberals are consequently in somewhat of a tough spot, in terms of picking a successor. they're supposed to pick an anglophone - but it's an easy prediction to make that, if they do, they'll end up in opposition.

it would probably be a better idea to let an older politician like goodale or bennett take over as an interim leader, and then run a convention.

freeland is toxic. & mckenna is no doubt in trouble in her own riding.

but, a caucus revolt is also defined by it's leaders. we haven't seen any fracture points erupt in public, so it's hard to tell what's going on.

i mentioned a while back that it wasn't clear to me if we were witnessing a revolt by the chretien faction (the old party, which was borderline social democratic) or the continued primacy of what should now be called the ignatieff faction (the neo-liberal branch, of which freeland seems to currently be the face of). i'm still not sure what the truth of it is, but if there are divisions happening, they will present themselves in time.

https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2019/03/03/who-will-lead-if-the-liberals-toss-trudeau.html

if he tried something like this nowadays, he'd get doxxed.

and, yes - i'll be back to rebuilding the discography soon enough, too.

and, here's a little bit of lost canadiana that i remember very fondly from the period, as well.

i mean, you would have called this "college rock" or "jangle rock" at the time. but, it's a beatles song.

and, it's what i was as a young person - not a grunge kid or a punk or a goth or a metal kid. i liked pop/rock with elaborate or orchestral touches.

it's 3 am.

you're in the back seat of a car somewhere in nowhere, pennsylvania, on your way home from florida.

it's snowing through the pitch black.

and, this song that you've never heard before comes on.

"what was that, tony?"

"i think it was pink floyd."

"do you know the name of the song?"

"no, actually. ask your mom when she wakes up."

i've otherwise got the media i have organized, which is not a lot - a couple of king books, some arthur c. clarke and a few records from u2, rem, bryan adams, peter gabriel, gowan, genesis and the barenaked ladies.

i left a lot of books at my mom's place when i moved out, and sold a bunch more before i went to bc. as i've now sorted through everything, the only thing left is to hope i can get something from the carleton archives, or a fortunecity mirror or something. i know there was a list, i just don't have it.

if i'm going to rebuild the books, i'll need to go through the king, pick up a bunch of science fiction (a fair amount of asimov, a bunch of clarke, some bradbury), some tom clancy, some dean koontz, some mark twain and, yes, some ayn rand. my dead uncle is responsible for that. they told me they found him in the bathroom of a hostel in victoria, dead of an apparent aneurysm; i assumed it was drug related, but that was never confirmed, and i never asked. he was in his early 40s. selfishness as a virtue can bite you in the end, huh?

i'm sure i'll remember some more...

music wise, i'll need to get some michael jackson. what's the status on buying a michael jackson record in 2019? is it alright if it's just going to his...well, it's not even actually his kid, is it? i dunno. see, i got into mj through weird al, though. and, i lost interest after dangerous, for obvious reasons. but, my ten-year old self was really much more interested in black or white than nirvana. we grow quickly at that age, though.

i also had a bit of a bon jovi phase, which i'll defend on the basis that they weren't as bad as their peers. if the criticism is that bon jovi were hair metal, it's actually a bit off the mark - they weren't this pompous, ridiculous, materialistic, nihilistic marketing behemoth, but rather a kind of working class band from new jersey, with a contemporary sound. they were at least as punk rock as springsteen, anyways. and, they actually had a kind of synth pop center, too, which is where i really came from - tears for fears, gabriel, genesis.

i guess that's the missing part of it, stuff my dad or uncle dubbed me. i had a cassette with a day at the races on one side and a night at the opera on the other. i had beatles tapes, genesis tapes, and an out of place dub of animals that it took me years to get into, because it wasn't what i was looking for. i was very young - 8 or 9 - when somebody at chez decided to toss on one of these days for a lark, at like 2:00 am, while i was in the car on the way back from a road trip with my step-father. i was pretty instantly intrigued. the announcer mentioned it was floyd, but didn't elaborate - it was presumably not necessary. tony, to his immense discredit, couldn't identify the track, either. there was a copy of delicate sound of thunder around, but it was missing the second side. so, i asked around for years trying to figure out what the song was. the dead uncle decided i was describing the vocal effects in sheep and dubbed me a copy of animals, which i just found a little too meandering at that age - it hit me like a grateful dead record, just not enough movement for a young mind. my dad never had a copy of meddle, either. it wasn't for years that i found it in a torrent...

"aha! there's that crazy bass part!"

anyways. i have my work for the next little while set aside. it's time to start doing it.

the first post is going to be in the "dear diary, so much has happened..." format. and, we'll go from there. i might be back into the stand by the end of the night.....

this is written like a pravda piece.

ugh.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venezuela-canada-cuba-1.5040857

you know, i'm racking my brain for actual books that i read in grades 7 and 8 - and even 9 - and i'm not able to come up with anything. i remember being given photographed handouts and asked questions around an ability to prove very basic comprehension, or being asked to read short texts and then produce an opinion piece around it. but, i don't think anybody ever handed out books to us and told us to read them.

i went to both elementary school and high school under the rae/peterson curriculum (harris won when i was in high school, and didn't succeed in changing the curriculum until the year after i'd left), and i'm learning just now that it was kind of an experiment. i did not receive any actual marks until grade 10; my high school transcript, which i still have, simply states "completed" for grade 9. i have records of standardized testing where i scored in the 95th-99th percentile, but i don't have grades for these years.

what i remember about the report cards is that they had a long list of criteria, and you'd be evaluated on a points system, with 1 the highest and i think 6 the lowest. this was just the teacher's arbitrary, completely subjective opinion. i remember getting lots of 1s in english and math, 2s or 3s in phys ed and some pretty low marks in the "shows respect for authority" and "works well with others" categories. even my university profs would have scrawled "does not work well with others" on my report cards if given the chance, and i'm not particularly embarrassed about it - i don't work well with others, and i don't want to, either.

i'm not even sure i can pick out much of anything of shape in these years really at all. we were split into classes that taught core subjects, and then shipped into different rooms for specific topics. so, i remember having a science teacher, a french teacher, a geography teacher, a music teacher, a phys ed teacher, a home ec teacher, a history teacher and then a kind of general "grade 7 teacher" that was tasked with everything else, which i guess is math, religion and english. but, that really meant that the curriculum was focused on the peripheral subjects due to the more rigid scheduling, and that math & english were largely unstructured babysitting periods with a lot of pointless busy work. when we went to geography class, or phys ed, we were there for a short period with a defined curriculum; when we went back to the general class room, the teacher could organize it any way they wanted to, or not at all, which was often the actual reality.

so, the system put more of a priority on learning french or geography than it did on learning math or english. we did regular spelling bees in grade 8 english class. and, i don't really remember taking math in grade 7 at all. grade 9 was more structured, in the sense that there were separate math and english classes, but i still didn't get graded, and i still don't remember reading any actual books. i explicitly remember reading shakespeare, but we read it orally in the classroom. and, there's a text called the chrysalids that i can't otherwise place that i might drop into grade 9.

of course, there's some possibility that i don't remember any reading projects because i was so efficient with them. there's a few texts from later in high school that i remember putting off until the last minute and then reading through in an afternoon. there's certainly some possibility that i just devoured it so violently that it never really got digested. but, the thing is that i liked reading, so i don't know why that would have been true.

i think the truth is that i was mostly baby sat all the way to the end of grade 9, and consequently don't have a lot to report on.

if i remember something, i'll insert it, but i think the way we're going to do this is that i'll be doing independent reading over these years, instead.

i think this is grade two. i switched from st bernard's to uplands for the start of grade three, so it's either one or two.

and, because i didn't carry on my schooling with these kids, i actually don't recognize any of them - except the two girls i'm standing beside, strangely enough. i don't know who arranged us, probably the teacher, but i got a choice spot, didn't i? the blonde actually ended up at the high school i went to, and gave me mixed signals for years - i was never sure, so i just kept a distance. the thing is that she grew up into a very, very shy teenager, so i could never figure it out, and felt the consequences of getting it wrong could be kind of crushing, for her. she seemed like an ornament you don't want to sit on - and i state that with as much gender egalitarianism as i can muster; she was legitimately delicate, right down to a falsetto voice, and i truly feared breaking her. i haven't seen her in years.

i liked the brunette, might even say we were friends, but i never saw her again after i switched schools.

i don't remember any of the other kids, here. at all.

that's my cousin erin and i, who are about the same age.

erin and i were inseparable for a time, but she moved away to saskatchewan when we were toddlers and i haven't seen her since.

that's my best friend gabriella, from chile. early 1985, judging from the candles on the cake.

there came a point where gabriella's dad decided i shouldn't talk to her any more on account of the (mis)perceived gender mismatch.
.

this is the day i finished in the top 10 for the....i think it was 5000 m....at the cities. it was the longest long run. there were like 500 kids running.

the truth is that i went to an absurdly small school (there were six grade six students in my graduating class), and these positions were kind of just handed out at random. i don't remember competing for the spot, and nobody expected me to compete at the meet.

but, even at that age, i spent a lot of time bicycling. what happened is that i jogged with the pack all the way around and then sprinted past 200 people on the final lap. it was clear to everybody, including me, that if i had sprinted a little earlier, or jogged a little harder, i would have easily competed for a medal. and, i actually think that if i had spent any time training at all i could have actually won outright.

*shrug*

today, i'm more concerned about maintaining my health than competing in bourgeois competitions. and, while i wouldn't have articulated myself that way at the time, the truth is i felt the same way then, too.

it would have been the spring of '93, so it just missed the cut-off.

this is an undated shot of me doing a killer thomas pynchon impression.

'92, i think. maybe '91. it's just a little too old.

and, this is the corner unit i inhabited in the public housing project / ghetto that i grew up in.

my dad built that fence in about 1990 or so. still there, apparently.

i have dozens of pictures from a bike trip back that i took in 2012. we'll go over this in the right space...

and, this was at about the same time - and key, as it was the actual gateway into punk rock, for me.

listen. i was 12/13.

the pivot was actually this.

i'd have never listened to anything this loud before this point.

but, i decided that this wasn't stupid, and it kind of was a mind-opener. so, that's mid-94. i need to get there.

so, here's the new link:

https://thejournalofj.blogspot.com/

which is also on the side...

and, we'll say that dad got a scanner for christmas.

so, i've finally reached a pivot point, and there's going to be a slight change of plans.

i have now copied every file that i can find - from laptops, external drives, usb keys, cds, dvds, etc - on to the new external drive, and organized everything by year. it's very rough, and there's a lot of overlap, but it is all in roughly the correct place. so, the next thing ought to be to restart on the rebuild, and quickly run through 2013-2016, with the intent to get back to where i was.

....except that i'm deciding that the process is incomplete, in the greater context, and want to rewind back to 1993. 1993!? yes - 1993. and, why 1993?

i started in mid-1996 for a couple of reasons. it was early 2016 when i decided to switch directions, my first demos were from the summer of 1996 and my earliest memories of internet access were from mid-1996. a lot of things added up with that. but, at the same time, i was picking up a story halfway, one that had undefined bounds. now that the bounds are better defined - the current story begins in mid-2013 when i moved to windsor, meaning the alter-reality ends in mid-2013, with an intended completion date of mid-2033 -  it makes sense to pull the alter-reality back to 1993, to allow for some symmetry in the process.

that would mean the alter-reality will run from the summer of 1993 to the summer of 2013, in the end.

there's some other reasons for this. the earliest files i have are dated to 1995, but i have pictures going back to the 80s, and i wanted to find some way to work some of these things in to the story. starting in 1993 lets me do that. i also wanted to do reviews of records and books from 1993-1996, which was actually the most formative years of my life - starting over again in mid 1993 means i'm starting in the summer between grade 6 and 7, which is of course right before i went to junior high school. if we're going to do a portrait of this artist, that's a better place to start.

but, if i didn't get online until 1996, at the earliest, how am i going to have a journal from 1993?

what i'm going to do is split it off into a separate blog that will run strictly from 1993-1996. i will be sorting through some papers over the christmas break of 1996 and find an old journal and decide it would be neat to put it online. so, the mechanism is that i'll be typing in a journal that i had already written up by hand. when it's done, it will exist in a standalone file.

what that means is that i'm going to be thrusting myself back into the alter-reality almost immediately; i just need to spend another day or two organizing all of these files, first, before i get to posting to the new journal, dated to july 15, 1993. i'll push forward with this as i push forward with the rebuild, until it connects back together in early 1996.

i'm going to try and be as honest as i can as i run through this. i have the benefit of a lot of hindsight, and i'm not going to pretend i can be a 12 year-old again, but people go through a lot at that age, and i'm going to try and get down as much as i can. some of these things will no doubt surprise you. it's been so long, that i may even end up surprising myself.

i am obviously a different person today than i was then, as we all are.

but, in a lot of surface ways, not much has changed - i spent most of the summer between grades six and seven awake at odd hours, in my room reading, specifically through the stephen king catalogue, iirc. i had no friends at all over this period, as i prepared to go to a new school that none of them were going to go to. i'll have to start off with a broad statement around that. i was living with my mother during this period, which is something i haven't talked much about. i played some guitar, but was not really into alternative rock music yet - i listened to a lot of what was called "college rock" during those years, as well as a lot of pop music. there was no computer around, but i had a big tv in my room that was either tuned to muchmusic or to conan. we'll have to go through the process of moving from mom to dad in mid '94. so, that was life and how to live it, and where we're starting over again with this...

i wouldn't be doing this if i didn't think it was going to be worthwhile.

i think that what the russians really want is to get netanyahu out of israel.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/russia-wants-to-get-iran-out-of-syria-netanyahu-says-after-putin-meet-1.6978647

yeah, those poor genocidal thugs that were involved in the most dangerous organization the world has seen since the nazis. awww.

listen: nobody should be surprised by this ridiculous display of "humanitarian concern" for these koran-thumping monsters, given the dominance of arab money in the media. if there was any question about the kind of influence that gulf oil money has in london, ottawa and washington, this ridiculous display of concern for what is truly absolute scum should eliminate any doubts about it. if you can't make sense of this, if you think it's absurd, that's your answer - follow the influence through the media, the think tanks, the institutes, the lobbyists and the banks back to the dirty, blood-soaked, muslim oil money that commands it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-47421627/the-people-fleeing-the-end-of-the-islamic-state-in-syria

you kids nowadays probably don't even know what i'm talking about.

this was supposed to be a kids show, at the time.

i mean, i suppose that handing everything over to moscow is technically a way to avoid being toppled by washington, it's just that then you end up as a hand puppet of putin, which one would think is not really what you wanted, either.

the iranians were able to walk a line on this that a smart venezuelan leadership could look to as a model. even the north koreans have figured out a way to play this.

but, maduro is actually in truth more likely to end up like assad if he plays this game - held as a figurehead until the kremlin doesn't find him useful any more, and then discarded like bad meat.

we may be witnessing the return of the useful idiot, here.

"shoore. bring your gold to rooossia. dmitri will take gooood care of it.

ah ha ha ha ha ha.

one eediot.

ah ha ha ha ha ha.

two eediots.

ah ha ha ha ha ha."

this is actually very stupid on venezuela's behalf. but, nobody ever accused the russians of failing to take advantage of a fool.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-russia-pdvsa/venezuela-to-move-state-oil-firm-pdvsa-office-from-lisbon-to-moscow-idUSKCN1QI4BM

yeah.

no response from the cops, who have now missed their legal deadline.

they could have just released a bullshit report. the fact that they didn't indicates there's something going on.

guess i'll need to get on the phone monday morning.

and, what is my final takeaway on the situation regarding marijuana policy?

you'll recall that i was what might be called a weak proponent of marijuana legalization, up until that point. i didn't really consider it a serious political issue, frankly - but i would have argued in favour of it, if pressed. i was and am still more interested in marijuana as an industrial material than i am as a drug. while i voted for the liberals in 2015, i was driven by climate change policy, rather than marijuana policy. in the more recent ontario election - where the conservatives ran on market liberalization and probably won a lot of votes for it - i voted for the green party, which is just demonstrating a level of consistency around the issue.

so, i voted for it, and i weakly supported it, but i never considered it a ballot issue.

you'll also recall that the woman that caused me so much misery, that forced me to live for months in abject discomfort, was actually a medicinal user, not a recreational user - and i actually think that this is at the crux of the problem. i don't think that marijuana is a medicine, and i don't think that it should be treated like one, and especially not for people suffering from depression, where studies have shown that marijuana addiction doesn't relieve depression, but actually causes it. if marijuana has a medicinal use, it is in physical pain relief, and should be taken in the form of pills, rather than smoked.

while i called the police on this woman not once but twice, it was done out of complete disinterest for her well-being, as she had demonstrated none for mine. i had at that point repeatedly asked her not to smoke in my air supply, and she completely ignored me. while i did not expect her to get arrested, i didn't really care if she did, either; my sole, singular concern was in generating documentation for a court process, and if she ended up in jail as a consequence, that wasn't my problem. she could choke on her own filth, for all i care. but, what i wanted was the report to take to court - and i had no interest in what happened to her, otherwise.

so, what the takeaway from that is is as follows:

1) the idea of "medicinal marijuana" should be completely abolished. marijuana, like alcohol, is a recreational drug that should be available, but heavily regulated.
2) there needs to be stronger restrictions on where marijuana can be used. most importantly, marijuana should be completed banned from any kind of apartment building, or shared living space. i would also support restrictions on outdoor marijuana use in residential areas. these restrictions should be enforced with heavy fines.
3) marijuana use should be permitted in smoking sections at bars, concerts, etc - and the social conditioning should be to try to direct it towards social use, rather than use in alienation.

i don't think the issue is whether you can smoke it or not; the issue is about where you can smoke it. as a non-smoker, my self-interest is in ensuring that my mental and physical health is not affected by the habits of other people; it is protecting the rights of non-smokers that needs to be the focus of the law, not the rights of smokers.

the way this process works in ontario is that the cops have 120 days to write a report, on a complaint about police misconduct.

i can then appeal the report to the office of the director, which is supposed to be an independent body but clearly isn't.

the next step is to launch an administrative review, which means going to an actual court, which i fully expect to be necessary. and, frankly, i'd have rather jumped directly to the court process - but i have to wait for them to finish fucking around, first.

so, what's going on with me, personally?

i'm now at nine months completely straight-edge (in the sense of choosing abstinence) and have been out of the pot lounge apartment for five months. i think i'm reaching a turning point in terms of regaining my cognitive abilities, and undoing the damage caused by the marijuana - i'm having longer days, certainly. it seems to be a process that operates in a progressive manner, meaning i think i should hope the effects continue to decrease week over week. at the least, i think it's clear enough that if i had concerns about permanent damage then they weren't grounded - even if it takes months and months to completely recover. it's taking a long time, but i am getting better. slowly.

at this point, i can't imagine ever smoking another cigarette again, ever.

the second-hand (tobacco) smoke came back in yesterday, though, and left me unproductive for a good while, just waiting for it to lift; there's not a lot i can do besides hide under the blankets when it does come in, because i just end up hacking and wheezing for hours, otherwise. it seems to have mostly lifted again, now. i dunno. really - i don't know. there is an older woman's voice upstairs, from time-to-time, often at odd hours, and it might be the source of the filth. what i know is that the weather is finally set to break in a few days, and i should be able to start to get to the bottom of what's actually happening when it does.

there's three possibilities that i think are likely:

1) it could be the heating system. i don't think it is, but i can't rule it out, yet.
2) somebody upstairs is smoking, periodically. the thing is that i don't know how it's getting in here, as there's no clear source. that said, i think this is somehow the right answer.
3) it's just the neighbourhood. but, again - i don't think it's getting in through the windows. i don't think this is actually true.

the source actually seems to be below me, somehow. but, i'm in a basement with tiled floors. if there's anything below me at all, it's just the water table - and this isn't something abstract, it's second-hand tobacco smoke, clear as day.

so, the fact is that i don't understand what's happening.

if i can prove somehow that somebody upstairs is smoking, i'm going to have to sue to get out of the lease. the process i went through last time where i gave the owners a set of options to choose from isn't relevant in this scenario - it's his house, and i can't tell him what the rules are, but i can sue him for damages relating to a breach in the contract and demand release from the lease as i do. if i decide it's the neighbourhood, and i can't fix it, i'm going to have to move away somewhere else, which will be a more typical give-notice-kind-of-thing. and, if it's the heaters, i'll have to figure out if there's a way to clean them. the key thing is needing this awful winter to end so i can try and figure it out...right now, i'm just locked inside by the snow and ice.

the long term says we should be past the worst of it next week. let's hope that's correct...

and, how about the court situation?

the cops are required by statute to get me my report by the end of the day. it's technically saturday that is day 120, but they have no reason to ask for an extension to monday, and i fully expect the report by the end of day 119. that said, i don't actually expect anything at all, except the need to call the opird on monday. as mentioned, i'm not deciding on a next step until i read the report...

and, what have i been actually doing?

i don't think i mentioned it here, but i picked up a third external drive on sunday morning. you can get a 2 tb external drive for $100 nowadays. i picked this up for the purposes of housing data for the alter-reality, and have actually nearly filled it up over the week - although that will no doubt cut nearly in half once i've sorted it. it's almost done, anyways. that's been the week - not all that productive, really a lot of waiting, but i'm in a bit of a bottleneck on it that i'm almost through...

the last remaining issue with this is how to find that email, if it exists, and it's becoming increasingly clear that it doesn't. the fact is that it's going to be years before i really need to worry about this too much, but i nonetheless need to have some process to sort through what physical media i have in a systemic manner. at this point, i haven't been able to open the email i found in that virtual machine, but i haven't exhausted my options, i don't think. rather than sit down and go through each thing one by one, i should try everything i can with that one virtual machine and then approach each physical disc using everything i've already tried. am i going to find anything, in the end? well, i won't know until i've tried everything, and i won't know i've tried everything until i've given up on the vm.

so, that's the substantive progress report - i'm copying over a large amount of data right now, and on the brink of getting back to the rebuild.

actually, i think this is the most humane approach possible.

one way or another, you have to remove these kids from the influence of their family.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/syria-isis-belgium-mothers-children-repatriate-samima-begum-a8801381.html

in the united states, you have independent bodies that create a systems of checks and balances on each other.

we don't have that in canada.

rather, we have a cabinet that works to reach consensus, and then acts in solidarity with itself.

Annex D  Cabinet Decision Making

The Cabinet is the political forum where Ministers reach a consensus and decide on issues. It is the setting in which they bring political and strategic considerations to bear on proposed ministerial and governmental actions. These considerations must necessarily reflect the views and concerns expressed by Canadians, caucus colleagues and other parliamentarians. Once a consensus is reached, Ministers can fulfill their collective responsibility to Parliament. This Annex addresses the main elements of the organization and conduct of decision making in the Cabinet.

D.1.  Basic Rules for Cabinet Business

A number of basic ground rules for the conduct of Cabinet business are essential to maintain Cabinet solidarity and enhance its practical effectiveness.

Decision making is led by the Prime Minister. Through the Cabinet and its committees, the Prime Minister provides Ministers with the principal forum in which they can resolve different perspectives. The Prime Minister organizes Cabinet and Cabinet committee decision making, determines the agenda for Cabinet business and chooses committee chairpersons to act on his or her behalf. The Privy Council Office is the Cabinet’s secretariat and administers the Cabinet decision-making process on behalf of the Prime Minister.

Cabinet government works through a process of compromise and consensus building, which culminates in a Cabinet decision. The Cabinet and Cabinet committees do not vote on issues before them. Rather, the Prime Minister (or committee chairperson) “calls” for the consensus after Ministers have expressed their views. As the Cabinet secretariat, the Privy Council Office records and communicates the decision.

Consultation among the Ministers, departments and portfolios involved must precede the submission of a proposal to the Cabinet by the responsible Minister or Ministers. Ministers must also consult caucus at an early opportunity on policy and expenditure proposals. Ministerial discussions in the Cabinet or Cabinet committee focus on the decisions required and provide Ministers with an opportunity to participate in and influence those decisions.

Ministers have the right to seek their colleagues’ consideration of proposals for government action in their area of responsibility. This is, of course, subject to the agenda set by the Prime Minister for government priorities. Cabinet committee agendas are set by the committee chairpersons acting on the Prime Minister’s behalf.

Confidences of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, more commonly referred to as “Cabinet confidences,” must be appropriately safeguarded from unauthorized disclosure or other compromise. The Cabinet’s collective decision-making process has traditionally been protected by the rule of confidentiality, which enhances Cabinet solidarity and collective ministerial responsibility. Confidentiality ensures that Ministers can frankly express their views before a final decision is made. The Prime Minister expects Ministers to announce policies only after Cabinet decisions are taken, in consultation with the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office.

Cabinet business is extensive, and Cabinet consensus at times is difficult to achieve. Given the limited time available to Ministers and the importance of clear decisions to government operations, Cabinet business must be conducted efficiently and according to accepted ground rules that are fully understood and respected. Cabinet discussion is not used to air introductory or preliminary discussions of issues. Deputy ministers are expected to ensure that other affected departments are adequately informed in advance and that coordination across portfolios is pursued, so that other Ministers are prepared for Cabinet discussion and government decisions are coherent and aligned with overall objectives. When departments directly involved differ on a matter, the dispute should not be referred to the Cabinet until all other means of resolving it have been exhausted.

https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2015/11/27/open-and-accountable-government#Cabinet_Decision_Making

i'm going to double down on the idea that the problem here is that the pmo doesn't seem to really understand our own system of government - and that, again, it seems to be viewing itself through some kind of american prism.

so, the pm is saying things like "the decision was solely up to the minister." - and that's actually wrong. maybe it's the way things are in the united states, but not in canada.

this isn't exactly an academic source, but it's not a controversial point, either:

Ministers are responsible for ensuring that the policies developed by the Cabinet are implemented in the departments.
(https://www.ourcommons.ca/About/Compendium/ParliamentaryFramework/c_d_executivebranchgovernmentcanada-e.htm)

that's what a minister does in canada. it's not an elected office, and it's not expected to act independently of the cabinet; what it's supposed to do, rather, is carry forward with decisions that are made, collectively, at the cabinet table.

what that means is that the cabinet actually had every right to tell the minister what to do here, if it was determined to be a matter of government policy, which i believe it clearly was - they passed a law specifically for this purpose, and had the clear policy objective of preventing economic harm.

so, i don't know where this discourse is even coming from - it's not in the canadian legal tradition to argue that the attorney-general is independent of the pmo.

moral posteuring and ethical signalling aside, what is clear at this point is that trudeau is running a weak pmo, and that his weakness could very well take him down from the inside.

this woman is still in caucus.

that's outrageous.

if the liberals made an error here, it's that they weren't firm enough - they should have turfed her right out of caucus, immediately, due to gross dereliction of duty.

i know the tory media is going to howl that the pm acted unethically, but i hardly think most people are going to walk down that path when presented with the evidence. there's no question that the liberals have managed this terribly, and in the process turned a non-issue into a headline. they should have acted decisively and firmly changed the channel; as it is, they let it fester and erupt. as it is now? let them have the investigation. it doesn't look like anything happened.

these people around trudeau - butts, telford, etc - have minimal legal training.

the actual problem here seems to be that they didn't seem to know what they were doing.

generally speaking, when you refuse to listen to your boss, you get fired.

i mean, my takeaway from reading the summary of the testimony is that her demotion was justified on the grounds of not upholding the interests of the government, which is what she is there to do. she's not elected as attorney-general; she works for the prime minister, at the prime minister's discretion. and, if she doesn't want to do her job, that's grounds for dismissal.

her claim that these discussions were inappropriate is actually completely wrong, in my view.

and, it's not clear why she would insist on not listening to her boss in a trivial case like this.

this is how the system works.

*shrug*.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wilson-raybould-testifies-justice-committee-1.5035219

so, why don't i criticize the russians?

because they rarely do things worth criticizing.

i mean, don't get me wrong - i wouldn't want to live in russia, not now and probably pretty much at no point in it's history. at right this moment, russia is struggling with population replacement, and pretty hostile to queer people as a consequence of it. the western media wants to blame this on putin, but it's primarily the church at the crux of it, and kind of a bottom-up problem - i might not face technical legal restrictions in most of russia, but i'd be in constant threat of being lynched, pretty much anywhere outside of downtown moscow. there's video footage of, like, queer-bashing mobs beating people up in the street. i think the smart analysis is that it's a reactionary movement against state restrictions on religion and probably generational, but how long it takes for russia to once again free itself from the effects of christianity is a hard thing to put bounds on.

i'm aware that i wouldn't be welcome there.

but, in terms of geopolitics, of strategic manipulation - it's the russians that are acting like a rational, humanitarian actor, here. it's the russians that are upholding international law. and, it's the americans that are acting like boorish mongoloids, drunk at the party, disinterested in any concept of law.

in theatre after theatre, it is simply the case that the russians are actually right and the americans are actually wrong - and the only argument that any american could come up with that isn't disingenuous is that might makes right, and self-interest defines what is correct, which is of course just an argument for nihilism and chaos.

i'm an anarchist, but i'm not a nihilist.

when the russians fuck up, i'll call them on it. but, they don't - so i don't.

and, hey, listen - i live across the river from detroit.

i know what a city looks like when it gets taken over by these kinds of attitudes.

at the end of the day, i hope that the employees of amazon are able to find somebody in congress that is willing to stand up for them.

you know, it seems like that kid in new york is going to be running against amazon in the next election, which may be a tough fight. she may have shot herself in the foot on this.

i'll just reassert the point that she hasn't produced any substantive policy at this point, making her more of a shit-disturber than anything else. and, what was the point of this, really? it seems like empty political rhetoric.

nobody doubts that bringing amazon in would create a lot of jobs. the argument against it is apparently that the wages are too low. but, how does sending the jobs somewhere else fix the thing? moving the jobs somewhere else doesn't improve wages or working conditions. the answer you'd expect from a socialist candidate is to fight for a higher minimum wage - not to tell the company to locate somewhere else. i mean, you'd think a real socialist firebrand would see the opportunity to organise that many workers in her district as a godsend. you'd think she'd be all over it. if you send the jobs to a district with a less progressive representation, you just decrease the chances of the workers getting a wage increase. it's consequently pretty harshly anti-worker...

...which i suspect was the actual point. base nimbyism aside, the actual driver probably had to do with district demographics, which was some kind of combination of the existing residents not wanting to get flooded with amazon workers and the representative not wanting to get flooded with voters that work for amazon.

it's hard to avoid her right now, and when that happens you know there's money afoot.

stated bluntly, i don't trust her, and think you shouldn't, either.

simply legalizing prostitution and shrugging it off is not a policy, it's a non-policy that will lead to immense amounts of human suffering.

and, this is a good demonstration of the difference between a socialist and a liberal, which is actually my point: a liberal may be content to leave it up to the coercive effects of the market and allow for the reduction of the prostitute to salaried wage work, whereas a socialist wants to eliminate the coercive root causes of most prostitution, thereby reducing it strictly to the realm of enthusiastic consent.

ok, so nobody knows where she stands on anything at all, because she just caters her positions to the polling. i'm still getting to know kamala, but some clarification is opening up: career politician with little if any conviction on much of anything. pay-to-play.

and, we're talking about prostitution...

you'd expect reason to frame the issue in terms of market theory, rather than in terms of human dignity, and i'm going to just throw that entire discourse in the trash bin - this is neither about supply nor is it about demand, but actually about economic opportunity. i'm not naive about this: there will always be women that would rather sell their bodies. it's easy money, and lots of people are lazy. they shouldn't be thrown in jail, but the system should be modified so that they're all that's left. if you want to use the language of market theory, adopting policies that restrict the supply by shifting labour out of the market would have the effect of increasing the price, which is the ideal end point. prostitution should only exist on the highest of scales, with the wealthiest of clients - and the most enthusiastic types of consent.

the best policies around prostitution have to do with social policies ensuring that women have access to affordable child care, to affordable housing, to education and to addictions services. women need to be given better options. the issue needs to be reframed in these terms, not reduced to a crass discussion about a market interaction.

and, i actually suspect she might agree with me if she'd get a little bit of conviction and take a stance.

https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/26/kamala-harris-sex-work-legal-fosta

i think this summarizes my position on the topic relatively well.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/essays/intersov.html

the thing that people aren't cluing into is that "reparations" is a kind of code word in competing contexts. if you walk into a church in south carolina, it means transferring wealth downwards, and one would expect sanders to support that. but, if you walk into a hockey rink in burlington and start taking about reparations, what it means to the people there is transferring wealth sideways based on racial characteristics, and nobody at all should support that.

i understand that components in the black community want a simple answer on it, but they're wrong to take that position - and rather than being pandered to, should be called out for taking a simplistic, binary position on race. warren, particularly, should be called out for pandering, here. sanders is right to ask for the term to be defined before he commits to a position that he doesn't just not support, but that has the potential to severely damage him with the kind of voters that are actually going to decide the election, at the end of the day.

i have a simple position on reparations, myself, although it means something different in canada, where the reparations are directed entirely at the indigenous population.

"yes, i have support for reparations. i call that support socialism."

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/26/reparations-bernie-sanders/

see, we've been through this with bernie on foreign policy before - he takes these positions that are factually dubious in the sense that he holds hands with the washington consensus most of the way down the path before stepping back on some point, and holding to it. in a sense, it's weasel words, but it's backwards - his weasel words are directed at the cfr, or whomever it is that is listening in. so, he's able to avoid what ought to be a lot of wrath.

then, the left starts yelling that he's repeating falsehoods, and he is, but did you notice that he's on cnn, guys? if you listen carefully, you realize that what he's doing is avoiding the hegemonic talking points, without directly contradicting them. so, the left is kind of missing the dog whistle. but, we're not trained for it.

and, then, after walking this tightrope over all of this propaganda, he comes up with the right actual policy, which is that maduro is not a dictator, it's up to the people of venezuela to determine their own future and intervention is wrong.

so, you have to give him like a B- or something because he came up with the right answer, in the end. meanwhile, the rest of the field is getting Fs and Ds. so, you curve him up to an A - even if you're a little unsure.

you just have to remember that noam chomsky isn't running for president, and bernie sanders is.

it's enough to me that he's not participating in the zombie apocalypse that has hit both washington and ottawa - he's demonstrating independent thought.

is there a kind of liberal that's all about free markets, supply management be damned?

sure.

and, are there more of them in the west than the east?

probably.

and, do they care much about muslim immigrants and their head scarves?

mostly not, probably, no.

also:
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/search?q=bernier

the greens did not run in this riding. so, it's not entirely clear if bernier's party hit the conservatives or liberals more.

in bc, you have the socred history - which is really what bernier is tapping into, right? and, it kind of splits through both bourgeois parties...

so, do the liberals win by default already, then?

not if the ndp collapse pushes the bloc over the brink.

so, they've just grown a beard to spite their face.

it is likely that history records this victory as a brutally pyrrhic one, but here we have it - jagmeet singh is entering parliament as the leader of the third party, on the same day that the liberals retake outremont.

the ndp had exactly zero seats in quebec for something like 70 years. but, people forget that the ndp vote came mostly from the bloc, who lost party status as a consequence of the ndp's surge in 2011. everything is suggestive of a bloc resurgence, right now, as the ndp roll up like a carpet.

they will probably lose party status in october, as they seek to rebrand themselves in a post-industrial economy as a right-leaning alternative for disaffected minority groups. whatever you think of this, it opens up a dramatic vacuum in the balance of power, as a large (if shrinking) voting block in canada slowly becomes disenfranchised.

if i'm right about what they're doing, the new ndp could very well win power within a decade, but the left is unlikely to be very supportive of their policy positions, when they do - it will be as a neo-liberal party in the image of the american democrats. and, this realignment i've been talking about for what is now a couple of years is going to need to find a new party to exist on the left, or risking forfeiting dominance to the right, as former ndp voters sign faustian deals with a conservative party that is just looking to take advantage of them. 

singh didn't create this and isn't fully at fault for it, but it's up to voters to adjust to what is unfolding in the way that is most in their own interests.

i always thought the ndp were better off entering into a coalition with the bloc than trying to displace them. but, we need to find a way to do some serious organizing in ontario.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-jagmeet-singh-wins-burnaby-south-by-election-clearing-leadership

"a luxury the country can no longer afford"

this rhetoric is coming from:

a) a thatcher-era tory minister talking about the destruction of the welfare state.
b) a gringrich-era republican talking about cuts to medicare and social security
c) a german banker arguing for austerity in the south
d) a twenty-first century american democrat talking about border security.

if the military was capable and intelligent, it would have interpreted the situation swiftly and acted quickly to rectify the problem.

but, the military is neither capable nor intelligent - it is corrupt and incompetent.

wait.

listen.

while the venezuelan military should have removed maduro by now, and only hasn't due to it's own stupidity and consequent inability to understand what is happening around it, there remains no other possible outcome.

when you're dealing with an irrational opponent, you sometimes have to give them extra time to figure it out. but, the stupidity of the actor doesn't alter the logic of the game, itself.

and, if the military does refuse to accept the evidence in front of it, cutting off oil sales will eventually lead to the uprising that the west is pretending is happening.

they could, in theory, launch a project to increase the agricultural base, and eliminate their reliance on imports, which is not necessary - the country has ample resources to feed itself. there is no evidence that this is going to happen. rather, accounts are going to dry up and knives are going to sharpen.

it would be another thing if venezuela was an actual socialist state, standing up against the empire, and willing to die for it's convictions. you could see that happen in cuba. but, in venezuela, that's just a lot of bullshit, and it's just a matter of time.

so, be patient. you're not a squirrel; stop acting like one.

just to be clear.

the carbon tax credit is $150 for the whole year. that is less than the cost of one month's worth of interest on the loan.

so, holding the credit will have absolutely no worthwhile effect on the outstanding debt.

but, could i use the $150? well, i'm pretty poor, so i certainly wouldn't turn it down.

it's perhaps reflective of the sitting government, though, to make an error like that.

you actually wouldn't expect the liberal bean counters to expose a disabled person to a collection agency like that - you would expect them to think that through and design it in such a way that they can't get at it. i have access to several credits for the precise reason that past liberal governments have legislated them this way, quite consciously.

but, this government is really very bourgeois in that sense. something that would have been thought through at the basic planning stage by any other liberal government probably never even crossed the mind of this one, which is really very narrowly focused on the upper middle class, without that historical reflex on the poor.

i was probably legitimately overlooked for the simple fact that i'm clearly of minimal concern. and, that's actually a policy shift.

and, no i don't expect the minister to tell me it's my own fault for being in debt, either. i'm disabled. it's crazy that i can't default - and i've tried. i expect it just never came up.

in theory, that means i'm being exposed to a carbon tax while more wealthy people are not. in practice, that probably isn't true, because so much of the food we buy here is imported. so, i'm not getting the transfer, but i'm not really paying the tax, either.

but, it's bad optics - and they should probably fix it.

i'm not wasting my time with it, though.

and, i don't know - i could get it, still.

so, i did my taxes and there was indeed a $154 tax credit worked into it. it's calculated at the very end of the process, so that essentially everybody gets a tax cut. if you have kids or dependents you can claim more, and if you live in a rural area you get an extra 10%. you then just subtract that from whatever you're owing.

my taxes are zero. so, instead of sending in a zero return, i get a $154.00 tax refund. i presume that will come in a lump sum.

...except that it might not, because i have a $70,000 student loan that i haven't made a payment on in ten years. they can't take rebates or sales tax credits, but because this comes up as a refund, they'll probably be able to take it. i was expecting it to come up as a rebate, like the gst does.

i've already explained to them that i'm disabled, but they didn't seem to understand.

i'm not going to protest the point, i'll let them look at the data and come to the conclusion on they're own. maybe seizing my $150 credit for a few years and realizing that's all i've got or ever will have will get the point across that they're wasting their time.

i just can't even imagine the premise of willingly forfeiting my time in such a foolish manner, at this point.

i haven't seen a commercial, hollywood style film in well over 15 years, but i highly doubt much has changed, except for the worse.

 that club in miami that is serving alcohol to minors like malia obama should obviously lose it's license.

we can have these debates from a distance, but it is ultimately up to the people to govern themselves, whatever you think of their structures. i think there's little doubt that some progress has been made in the region, especially if you compare it to the despotic regimes in the region, but the level of actual freedom for everybody in the society still no doubt pales to that that exists even in a half-secularized state like turkey, which is culturally responsible for where the kurds are coming from. as critical as people may be of turks or baathists, the kurds are a consequence both of the secular turkish state and of the movement towards secular nationalism in the arab world.

regardless, my position on the point is consistent: the kurds cannot expect protection from an imperial occupation that is illegal under international law. to begin with, they literally cannot expect it - the americans can literally not be trusted, in any serious way. second, the longer they rely on the cover of american imperialism, the more they become an imperial force, themselves - which is what we're seeing with their expansion to the south. the kurds are well out of their historical zone of occupation, which is particularly problematic given their history of complicity with genocide in the area. they need to pull back; if they don't, the comparisons to orwell's catalonia are going to become less relevant than the comparisons to animal farm, as they become little more than america's most recent group of occupying thugs.

but, when i say they cannot expect protection, that also means that they must defend themselves. what is an anarchist revolution under the protection of an imperial military force, but a colonial farce? what kind of statelessness is this?

i don't want to be too critical, because i understand that any progress in the region should be applauded. but, an honest analysis of the situation presents a set of rather cynical conclusions.

this is not a good reason to keep american troops in syria, in contravention of international law.

https://libcom.org/library/rojava-fraud-non-existent-social-revolution

hrmmn.

maybe i should convert to catholicism?

nah. the theology is still stupid.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/andrew-sullivan-the-vaticans-corruption-has-been-exposed.html

if all of these candidates are going to stand by an interventionist foreign policy, while refusing to support any kind of meaningful form of social democracy, why would i care if they lose to trump, in the end?

i pointed this out in 2016, and it's rung fairly true. if you put 100 issues down on the table, i might agree with hillary clinton over donald trump something like 53% of the time. but, i would take sanders over trump something more like 75% of the time, and sanders over a more traditional conservative candidate (like ted cruz) something like 95% of the time. i might lean a little right on immigration and free speech; nobody is this abstract political position of left or right. see, the twist is that if clinton were running against a cruz or a rubio, that more comfortable distance would open back up again: clinton beats the traditional right 70-30, while she runs against trump as a coin toss. and even a neo-liberal like harris or gillebrandt is likely to do a little better than clinton against trump - maybe you even get to 60%.

the differences where trump blurs the centre are to do with things like trade and foreign policy, although i also should be quick to point out that trump's position often doesn't match his rhetoric. he was also supposed to fund a massive infrastructure project, and hasn't. but, if i'm opposed to what we call "free trade", opposed to foreign intervention and in favour of public infrastructure, does that make me right-wing? hardly. it's the spectrum that's fucked up.

i think that biden presents the same basic problem as clinton, even when you adjust trump for his record. do i think biden would be better than trump? maybe 55% of the time, at most. warren might get 63 or something - and not due to her positions on financial regulation, which i actually think are naive, but due to a slightly better foreign policy. and, these faceless, milquetoast neo-liberal senators - harris, booker, klobuchar, gillebrand, etc - are just going to land somewhere in between, around 60.

but, bernie is still a dominantly preferable candidate, even if i don't agree with everything he says.

so, save your guilt trip about trump winning for the partisan circle jerks. if some non-bernie candidate wins, the fact is that i'm probably going to be pretty rigorously opposed to most of their policy positions, and not able to articulate much of a benefit of them winning.

the greens probably need to look beyond jill stein, and how much rhetorical support i give them is going to depend on who and how they run. but, you should expect me to line up behind a green candidate before you expect me to support another neo-liberal, corporatist democrat.

i had no issue in a plea deal.

i was aggressively demanding disclosure and forcefully pushing for a thorough trial.

in a sense, i'm even disappointed that i didn't get the opportunity to rip the police department apart in a court of law...

the actual issue at hand here is a police force with an anti-queer bias here in windsor, and i expect to hold them accountable for it.

and, i will repeat the facts in the case i'm dealing with, tersely.

1) in september, i was arrested (illegally - that is, without a warrant on a charge where one is required in canada) in my home for harassment for repeatedly applying to an ad for housing. all communication in the matter was with a corporation. the person i was communicating with used the screen name of "ryan", and i had no other clues as to their gender. i have never met this person or even seen a picture of them, and would not be able to identify him or her (the person's gender actually remains unclear to me) if put in a room with them.

2) communication in the matter was strictly related to the question of housing availability. no other matters were discussed, whatsoever.

3) i am readying litigation against this person for discrimination in housing, and expect to win a cash settlement in the matter. broadly speaking, litigation in the matter is likely to drag on for several years, on my own initiative.

4) charges were dropped in november, upon the realization that the officer did not collect the electronic communication that the case was reliant upon. i actually have most of the electronic communication in question and will be using it in the civil proceedings against the complainant. i intended to go to trial, with the intent of the judge dismissing the charges as ridiculous - if the communication were to be placed in front of a judge and correctly analysed, i am confident that it would be determined to not remotely fit any definition of harassment. as it is, the policing was too incompetent to even collect it - and, as such, no warrant for arrest could have possibly been granted, if applied for.

5) there is consequently an ongoing investigation into the conduct of the officer that i am expecting this week. i believe the officer acted primarily out of a transphobic bias, and the issue was interconnected with arguments i was having with tenants in the building regarding my right to not be invaded by their second-hand marijuana smoke, or otherwise disturbed by their drug or alcohol habits.

6) i would actually like the officer charged with harassment, as i am the only victim in the situation, at hand.

7) upon completion of the investigation into the conduct of the officer, i will be launching a substantive charter challenge for a massive infringement of my constitutional rights, which is the only remaining legal issue at hand.

if it isn't obvious - and it should be - i'll state clearly that i don't work for bernie sanders, i don't speak on his behalf and i am not a surrogate of his. i am not only not a member of the democratic party, but would consider myself a staunch opponent of it. i am an independent and anarchist-identifying political analyst in a different country. and, while i would like to see bernie win, the legitimacy and independence of my blog is my primary concern, not his campaign.

and, i don't care if i offend his opponents, or even his followers, for that matter. you can expect harsh and brutal - but honest - language from this space.

what i will say is that if the democrats don't want to be attacked for running morally corrupt, corporatist candidates then they should defeat them at the ballot box; if they are going to run these kinds of candidates, they should expect them to receive the kind of criticism that they deserve to receive.

so, if kamala harris is going to push for morally depraved policies then i'm going to call her a morally depraved candidate, and tell her to alter her policies if she doesn't like the criticism.

and, if that makes you sad then find a box of kleenexes and cry it up - i don't give a fuck.

bernie is actually overstepping his bounds on this point - he has no right to police other people's language and should apologize for it.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/431328-sanders-writes-internal-memo-warning-against-bullying-and-harassment-on-his

they're probably waiting for the federal election.

there's a chance the conservatives could roll it back if they win. or, they may be trying to steal the thunder.

i don't smoke very often - it's been nine months since i last smoked a joint (on purpose), and i've been completely straight-edged over that period, as well. no cigarettes, even. just a lot of coffee. i pointed out from the start that i was going to be more excited about dispensaries opening up in detroit, because the only time i like to do drugs is at concerts, and that's where the concerts are. so, being able to go to detroit and buy something on the way to the show is very emancipating, but buying pot in canada has never had the same kind of appeal.

if i lived in a different city, it would be different, of course.

so, i should be more upset about this than i am.

i'm going to warn people not to buy online, though. you're probably setting yourself up for something.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/london-region-may-be-shut-out-of-first-phase-of-ontarios-new-marijuana-dispensary-plan

i haven't been paying any attention to this at all.

what a joke.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/despite-council-support-slim-odds-windsor-gets-a-pot-store-in-2019

are they going after cuba next?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/05/venezuela-capitalist-success-not-socialist-failure/

this is the vice president of venezuela, who would be next in succession, should maduro resign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delcy_Rodr%C3%ADguez

now, if maduro were to resign, then whomever is next in the line of succession would take over until the next scheduled election - it wouldn't trigger an election.

they just had one.

the opposition boycotted it...

socialist dictator.

it's a bizarre abuse of language - a contradiction in terms, in fact. for, if you are a socialist, you cannot be a dictator, and if you are a dictator you cannot be a socialist. so, which is it? is he a socialist or is he a dictator?

in fact, maduro is neither a socialist, nor is he a dictator. maduro is an elected representative of the people, in a system with a broken opposition that doesn't appear to be interested in democracy. and, venezuela is a capitalist economy - albeit with a few social programs.

there's more socialism in denmark or mexico, or even in quebec, than there is in venezuela.

but trump needs a straw man to tear down, and the corporatists in the democratic party seem keen to let him have it.

but, let us not forget the truth that, elected as he may be in the context of a system as broken as the venezuelan's is, maduro is also completely incompetent. the man is a high school drop out. socialism does not mean idiocracy; a re-evaluation of the division of labour doesn't imply the elevation of ignorance. chavez was stupid to elevate him to power, but perhaps the point was that he was seen as too impotent to threaten him.

and, i, for one, am not any more on side with any kind of fawning support of maduro than i am with an invasion to overthrow him. my position here is non-intervention out of principle, not out of solidarity. my solidarity is with the peasants, who will be fucked over by whatever happens.

and, i actually agree that he should probably step down - due to the clarity of his own incompetence. but, that's not my choice.

and, to be as clear as possible - venezuela is not currently and never was a socialist country. it was at most a mixed economy, with a state-run oil sector. but, you couldn't even really call it "state capitalism". it's just as capitalist as anywhere else.

if the country had actually embraced socialism, it wouldn't have destroyed it's own agriculture sector, or become reliant on imports of food by crowding out the rest of the economy.

socialism is a worker-run economy, and there is no sign of that in venezuela. at all.

so, it's an absurd red herring for ignorant buffoons to squabble over and not a serious debate to engage with. these right-wing idiots pushing this kind of stupidity should just be laughed out of the room.

in the trump era, it's easy to forget that bernie almost certainly doesn't post his own tweets. he has a staff to do that for him...

whether the problem is duss or not, i agree that there's an issue here that needs to be attended to.

that said, he just stated a few days ago that he doesn't think maduro is a dictator and is apprehensive about the motives in american involvement. so, i'm going to wait to let him clarify himself before i join the chorus: this may be more about a rogue staffer than a swing towards american imperialism.

if you dissect the statement, there are some truths and half-truths to it. it is true that there is a humanitarian crisis in venezuela, and that the government has mismanaged the situation. it is also true that the sanctions have exacerbated a situation of poor management. and, while i haven't looked into it very deeply, i've seen this situation before: the security forces are probably reacting to provocateurs, who are inciting them into violence to generate headlines. then, cnn will run a story about some protestors being shot, but will forget to mention that they were lighting cop cars on fire.

the worrying thing about the statement from sanders' account is in it's urging to accept a humanitarian convoy that is clearly a propaganda ploy. it is that specific point that he needs to clarify.

the position that harris is taking is contemptible. the right thing to do is get out of the way and let the venezuelan people govern themselves, not interfere in the borders of sovereign nations. kamala harris seems to have a very warped concept of morality.

but, i wouldn't expect sanders to take a pro-maduro position, either - nor has blumenthal. and, while i'm a fan of roger waters, he's been known to rely on questionable information in the way he forms his opinions. i think abby martin's primary concern is likely to be international law.

the reality is that there is no contradiction between rejecting american intervention in the region and criticizing maduro's handling of the economy in venezuela. you don't have to embrace maduro to criticize trump. bernie is good at this and knows how to navigate it. but, see, the fact that i know that indicates that he doesn't have a lot of space to start spouting bullshit, either.

i don't have a twitter account, fwiw. i've pointed that out here, repeatedly.

https://www.rt.com/usa/452276-bernie-sanders-venezuela-regime-change/

i actually think that democrats need to stop pretending that it's important to win primaries in deep red states like south carolina.

bernie shouldn't completely abandon the state - he should make a nominal effort to show up and compete. but, his strategy should be to get out of the way and let the other candidates split the vote.

the reality is that losing south carolina, as he no doubt will, will not matter a whole lot, in the end. what matters is making sure that no other candidate runs up the score, there.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/bernie-sanders-already-repeating-some-crucial-2016-mistakes

if there was an acceptable younger candidate available today, we would just support that younger candidate.

it's not clear to me why we should put faith in the universe to produce a better candidate in the next 6 years.

and, if we are in the same position four years from now, the same logic will hold: sanders will still remain the candidate, by default.

i lean in the opposite direction: i think they should abolish term limits.

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/22/bernie-sanders-2020-one-term-pledge/

what i actually called for, and it was years ago now, was a manhattan project for the environment - and if it is a successful transition, that is more what it will actually look like.

but, it's maybe not as effective marketing as a "green new deal".

even if the green new deal ends up written in manhattan....

well, bolton told you that the invasion route was via columbia, didn't he?

so, is assad a dictator or not?

i'm not running for office, so i don't have to pander. and, the fact is that it's a ridiculously ignorant way to frame the situation. i'm going to tell you the story the way i understand it, which may have more detail than any existing candidates are actually even aware of.

in terms of actual technical power, yes - assad is at the top of a hierarchy. but, so is the queen of england, and nobody actually cares what she says. assad is more like a constitutional monarch than an actual dictator - a powerless figurehead, thrust into power by accident. the real power is in the hands of the military, and currently even actually in the hands of the kremlin.

syria is under a military dictatorship, and has been for a long time. on the death of his father, who was an actual dictator (i think he even had a moustache), power was supposed to pass to assad's brother, who had been groomed for the position for many years. as the remaining assad was actually assumed to be out of the succession, he ended up in england, where he became an optometrist.

that's right: assad is actually an eye doctor. he didn't spend his youth studying machievelli, he spent it studying biology. he has a phd, and had a practice in london.

but, by circumstance, he found himself in power - sort of. he was a pawn of the generals from the start, making few decisions and projecting little influence. but, being back from england, with an english-born wife, he actually kind of had a thing for democracy. as a consequence, his focus on his return has not been to consolidate power, but to abolish it; assad's sole goal as the monarch of syria for years has been to prepare a path to step down. he actually put a constitution up to a referendum in 2012.

so, not only does he not actually have any real power as a head of state, but he's trying to get out of being the head of state altogether. i'm not sure if anybody's really explained it to him recently, but last i heard, he actually wanted to go back to his practice in london. some dictator, right?

the saudis of course have a hate-on for anything resembling democracy, and created havoc in the country in order to try to stop it from happening. had that not happened, he'd no doubt be back in london, tending to his practice. as it is, he's stuck in a complicated conflict that he has little influence over.

my guess is that putin thinks he's an imbecile that is incapable of governing.

see, this is the case i thought wilson-raybould was moved out over.

brison resigned over apparent favouritism regarding an old money ship-building contract. was there any pressure put on the former minister to drop charges in this investigation, as well? that's what i initially deduced was the case, anyways....

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-norman-trudeau-wernick-butts-1.5029737

there we go - that's what i want to see.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/civilians-take-arms-chase-islamist-rebels-town-northern-hama-videos/

While Bayaral is a marginal figure in Turkey, Kirchner warned that his statement demonstrated that the government’s pious base exerted “bottom-up pressure against [a secular] way of life without having to impose legal constraints.”

yeah, he needs some bottom-up pressure, alright.

i think this guy needs to spend a few nights with a nice boy, myself.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/beardless-men-look-like-girls-provoke-gay-thoughts-says-muslim-preacher/

remember: the s-300s are not the s-400s, which have been such an important (if unreported) factor in the iranian nuclear talks. and, the russians seem just as willing to sell them to the saudis, too.

we don't know how well the syrians are going to use them. we don't know how well the israelis will react to them. we just know that it's a substantive deterrent, once the syrians actually activate them.

they say they're close. we'll see what happens.

i think the russians are focusing more on the election, myself. the israeli military has been pushing back on netanyahu re:iran for years and may be getting fed up with him...

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/syrian-military-nearly-ready-to-use-s-300-system-source/

i'm staunchly disappointed - if not particularly surprised - by trump's decision to keep troops in syria, and hope that it doesn't - but fully expect that it will - lead to rising tensions with regional powers in the region.

unlike russia and turkey and iran, the united states has no legitimate presence in the region and should leave the territory of the sovereign state of syria immediately.