psvrh

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

Are we perhaps getting A/B headlines?

The title of the article that I get says she was killed in her home by police, and the third line of the lead paragraph says she was fatally shot by a police deputy.

That’s pretty’s good, especially by centrist media standards, where they’d usually say that a “a woman has tied after a hoke invasion, after an altercation with police “.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Kudos to ABC News for not doing the usual “copaganda” thing and overusing passive voice.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

It wasn’t so much about the socialism as it was about domestic (Iranian) control of domestic oil.

Socialism was just the icing on the interventionist cake.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Next time, don’t depose a democratically elected president at the behest British Petroleum, just because said president is too left wing and would rather like to keep his country’s oil wealth.

Also, don’t install an unpopular monarch in that left wing president’s place.

Finally, don’t continue to support said monarch such that his unpopularity inspires a fundamentalist counterrevolution.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

It's self-hate for being a closeted sofasexual.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

If you think Conservatives are going to pay for cops and courts and jails, I have a bridge to sell you. Oh, they'll talk a good game, but they won't spend a red cent.

Conservatives represent the rich. The rich can ignore this problem because they live and work in places where they're rarely, if ever, affected. They can afford to let the problem get really bad--especially when they're making bank on real estate and paying record-low taxes--so why would they pay for more cops or judges?

Maybe we'll get private prisons, but the US has shown that those actually cost more money, and it still doesn't address the gaps in the court system. Doug Ford could partner with Galen Weston on No Frills-branded prisons, where you can use your Optimum Points for, eg, smokes or rations, and even then it'd be a hard sell because other rich people aren't going to pick up the tab for the taxes needed to fund it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's what politicians should be doing, and it's certainly what advocates need to do, instead of tone-policing people who could be allies.

I've spent too much time around people who are addicts who got uppity about potential allies who referred to "safe injection sites" instead of "safe-use" or "safe-consumption. Like, that doesn't help your cause, all it does is push people away. I had one particularly smarmy person say she didn't care about how much the local SCS was helping the community because it wasn't for the community.

Like, how is that attitude in any way helpful?

Getting support for programs means building consensus, and all the progress that's been made is at risk of retrenching because we're failing to address the concerns of people in the community who aren't addicts, but at affected by the fallout from addiction. We're seeing this now as programs get cancelled because, frankly, we're not doing the hard and expensive part that's needed to support everyone.

The other post above puts it really succinctly: when you've lost the support of other homeless people, you have a serious problem.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

“They can come down on you for a lot of things. They seized up the bank accounts for people who were protesting, the truckers. People who were donating to the truckers, they seized their bank accounts,” Rogan said.

One, this is normal. Large amounts of money moving in sketchy ways always gets FINTRAC's attention. The only reason this is getting traction is because white people got caught up in it--instead of Muslims or Tamils or suchlike--and white people finding out that laws apply to them is always funny to watch.

Second, wait until he finds out what Homeland Security can do. FINTRAC is actually pretty lightweight compared it's American equivalents.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (8 children)

The problem, at least from the perspective of people in the communities, is they're seeing people use drugs (and do all the things that people on drugs do, like theft, littering, leaving paraphenalia around, problematic behaviour, etc) anyway.

Source: personal experience. I live in a small Ontario city with a big drug problem. The SCS, while it helps with deaths due to drug use, doesn't appear help with the problems around drug use, especially for people who aren't addicts or people who care about addicts.

What they aren't understanding, is that the drug problem, as experienced by people who aren't addicts, doesn't really change as a result of safe-use sites. It stays the same, or at least get worse immediately around the area. The problem advocates have is that they don't (or won't) understand that people--and this hurts to hear--don't care if addicts die. They actually see that as a bonus: it means one less addict engaging in antisocial behaviour.

Governments really need to step up spending on the things that actually fix the problem of addiction from the perspective of people who are not addicts. This means large, comprehensive mental health facilties that are well-staffed. It means housing-first supports so they aren't using in parks. It means giving drugs away to addicts for free, so that they don't commit crimes. And--and this one hurts for advocates--it means involuntary incarceration for people who can't or won't benefit from the first three.

The problem, for governments, is that this is expensive, both monetarily and politically. It means spending a lot of money on people and buildings, which means taxes for the rich for things that benefit the poor. It means looking like jackbooted thugs when you arrest and detain people, which hurts their image among progressives, and it means giving addicts supports, housing and, honestly, free drugs, which pisses off conservatives. From the perspective of a politician, it's all-pain-no-gain. Except, y'know, solving the problem.

What does happen is that we do the cheap and easy part: decriminalization without supports (for Liberals) and tough talk without action (for Conservatives). Neither really helps much, unless you're rich, because the problems of drug addiction don't affect the rich.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Homer looks like a Zentraedi.

Which...I do not hate.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

I'd always heard "Onterrible" for Ontario, and I've definitely never heard anyone call it "the Heartland Province".

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I'm sure we're not very far from Erdogan blaming a minority and maybe stirring up a small war.

There's a manual somewhere; "Despotism for Dummies" I think.

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