#associate degree in Canada

[edwisefoundation]

What Are the Short Courses in Canada for International Students?

Looking to enhance your skills with a short course in Canada? These vocational programs are gaining popularity due to their practical, job-oriented curriculum, shorter duration, and cost-effectiveness. Canada offers various short courses like Associate degrees, Diplomas, and Certificate programs, which can help you build the skills necessary for today's job market. Whether you're interested in a new career path or looking to enhance your current qualifications, these courses provide valuable opportunities for international students.

For a detailed guide on the types of short courses available in Canada, their benefits, and how they align with the Post-Graduation Work Permit Program, click the link.

[slimeydreamer]

Had a dream in which seemingly overnight, a new popular streamer emerged onto the scene named “Crazzey John” (Pronounced “Craze-E-John”. People called him Crazze for short). He looked like if CaseOh was a red head with yellow glasses.

Crazze was from Quebec, Canada, but immigrated to Minnesota, America because he was a self proclaimed “MinneBoo” (which was like being a Weeaboo or Teaboo, but for specifically Minnesota). Crazze would claim on his streams that he learned English from watching shows made in Minnesota, specifically a show called “Sota Socal” which was a reality TV show my dream came up with that had a plot similar to “Real Housewives”.

Crazze had a meme status online because people were so confused about how he could genuinely be so into Minnesota. It became a thing on his steams (which were usually 6 hours long), that after 3 hours he had to have “A Saint Paul Sitdown” in which he shared one fun fact about Minnesota before going back to gaming.

A few weeks after all of this began, I found out that I technically didn't deserve my Associates degree because I hadn't taken a particular test in one of my old American history classes. The “test” was really just an essay that involved the student being given a randomized American state 72 hours before the test (so they could study exclusively about that state and write a 4 page essay in real time about that state).

I found out my state was Minnesota, so I found a 10 hour video of Crazze’s Saint Paul Sitdowns on YouTube and binged it leading up to the test. I passed with a 99% and was officially given my Associates degree a second time.

I felt compelled to thank Crazze for helping me on my test, so I sent him an email explaining the entire situation. That same day, Crazze went live on Twitch and excitedly read out my email to millions of his fans. His chat found out my address somehow, and unbeknownst to me, Crazze and his fans set up a surprise meet up between me and Crazze.

Crazze showed up to my house (live steaming the entire event to Twitch) and gifted me a ton of food that I liked. I was terrified. When I asked him how he knew my address and my favorite foods, Crazze told me that his fans somehow found out everything I liked and gave him all that information on me. I looked into the camera like Jim from The Office, then shut/locked my door.

Crazze stayed outside my house for another 2 hours, just walking back-and-forth the front of my house and talking to his chat about gardening. I tried to call the police several times, but they refused to help because they were fans of Crazze. Eventually, some of Crazze's Twitch Chat realized how weird all of this is and tried to convince Crazze to go home. Crazze gave in, sighting Minnesota as the greatest place to live anyway.

[mydaddywiki]

Jason Kenney

Physique: Husky Build Height: 5' 10" (1.77 m)

Jason Thomas Kenney PC ECA (born May 30, 1968) is a former Canadian politician who served as the 18th premier of Alberta from 2019 until 2022, and the leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP) from 2017 until 2022. He also served as the member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Calgary-Lougheed from 2017 until 2022. Kenney was the last leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party (PC Party) before the party merged with the Wildrose Party to form the UCP. Prior to entering Alberta provincial politics, he served in various cabinet posts under Prime Minister Stephen Harper from 2006 to 2015.

Kenney studied philosophy at the University of San Francisco, but returned to Canada without completing his degree. In 1989, he was hired as the first executive director of the Alberta Taxpayers Association before becoming the president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Kenney was elected to the House of Commons in the 1997 federal election for the Reform Party. In 2000, he was re-elected as a Canadian Alliance candidate and then was re-elected five times as a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Handsome, nice full lips, husky with nice wide hips. And that brings me to that bangable ass of his that looks good in a pair of jeans. You should know by now, I have the biggest weakness for big, thick asses and this guy his one of the best. Problem is, he’s losing weight. Jason you can lose the weight, just don’t lose that butt. Because if I visit Canada one day, I want to take him out for a test ride. You know what mean. Fucking.

Lets see, Kenney is bilingual, speaking French and English. He has never been married and has no children. Wait a minute. A tough-talking Conservative who has never been married and apparently doesn’t like to be open about his personal life. I think I need to visit Canada. Now. Not to offer Kenney the DICK and video tape it for posterity. It’s to see the beautiful country of Canada of course. And if that other thing happens, all the better.

[adastra-sf]

Climate change-driven heatwaves threaten millions

Extreme record-breaking heat leads to severe crises across the world.

Already in 2024, from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria in the West; to Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and the Philippines in the East; large regions of Asia are experiencing temperatures well above 40°C (104°F) for days on end.

The heatwave has been particularly difficult for people living in refugee camps and informal housing, as well as for unhoused people and outdoor workers.

Using the Heat Index Calculator, at that temperature and a relative humidity of 50%, residents see a heat index of 55°C (131°F) - a temperature level humans cannot long survive:

In February, the southern coastal zone of West Africa also experienced abnormal early-season heat. A combination of high temperatures and humid air resulted in average heat index values of about 50°C (122°F) - the danger level, associated with a high risk of heat cramps and heat exhaustion.

Locally, temperatures entered the extreme danger level associated with high risk of heat stroke, with values up to 60°C (140°F):

Even here at Ad Astra's HQ in Kansas, last summer we saw several days with high temperatures of 102°F (39°C) at 57% humidity, resulting in a heat index of 133°F (56°C):

Of course, the major difference in survivability in Kansas versus some of the places suffering extreme heat right now is that air-conditioning abounds here. Those who live somewhere that faces extreme heat but can escape it indoors are a lot more likely to survive, but a person who lives somewhere without such life-saving gear faces not just discomfort, but heat stroke and even death.

This includes unhoused and poor people here in the wealthier parts of the world, who often do not have access to indoor refuge from the heat.

About 15% of US residents live below the poverty line. Many low-wage earners work outside in construction or landscaping, exposed to the ravages of heat. Many do not own an air conditioner, and those who do might need to budget their body's recovery from heat against cost to purchase and run cooling equipment. Because heat stress is cumulative, when they go to work the next day, they’re more likely to suffer from heat illness.

Bad as that is, for those living on the street, heatwaves are merciless killers. Around the country, heat contributes to some 1,500 deaths annually, and advocates estimate about half of those people are homeless. In general, unhoused people are 200 times more likely to die from heat-related causes than sheltered individuals.

For example, in 2022, a record 425 people died from heat in the greater Phoenix metro area. Of the 320 deaths for which the victim’s living situation is known, more than half (178) were homeless. In 2023, Texans experienced the hottest summer since 2011, with an average temperature of 85.3°F (30°C) degrees between June and the end of August. Some cities in Texas experienced more than 40 days of 100°F (38°C) or higher weather. This extreme heat led to 334 heat-related deaths, the highest number in Texas history and twice as many as in 2011.

The Pacific Northwest of Canada and the USA suffered an extreme heat event in June, 2021, during which 619 people died. Many locations broke all-time temperature records by more than 5°C, with a new record-high temperature of 49.6°C (121°F). This is a region ill-suited to such weather, and despite having relatively high wealth compared to much of the world, many homes and businesses there do not have air-conditioning due to a history of much lower temperatures.

Heatwaves are arguably the deadliest type of extreme weather event because of their wide impact. While heatwave death tolls are often underreported, hundreds of deaths from the February heatwave were reported in the affected countries, including Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines.

Extreme heat also has a powerful impact on agriculture, causing crop damage and reduced yields. It also impacts education, with holidays having to be extended and schools closing, affecting millions of students - in Delhi, India, schools shut early this week for summer when temperatures soared to 47°C (117°F) at dangerous humidity levels:

At 70°C (157°F !), humans simply cannot function and face imminent death, especially when humidity is high. This is the notion of "heat index," a derivative of "wet-bulb temperature."

Though now mostly calculated using heat and humidity readings, wet-bulb temperature was originally measured by putting a wet cloth over a thermometer and exposing it to the air.

This allowed it to measure how quickly the water evaporated off the cloth, representing sweat evaporating off skin.

The theorized human survival limit has long been 35°C (95°F) wet-bulb temperature, based on 35°C dry heat at 100% humidity - or 46°C (115°F) at 50% humidity. To test this limit, researchers at Pennsylvania State University measured the core temperatures of young, healthy people inside a heat chamber.

They found that participants reached their "critical environmental limit" - when their body could not stop the core temperature from continuing to rise – at 30.6°C wet bulb temperature, well below what was previously theorized. That web-bulb temperature parallels a 47°C (117°F) heat index.

​The team estimates that it takes between 5-7 hours before such conditions reach "really, really dangerous core temperatures."

On March 5, 2024, Hong Kong saw temperatures of 27°C (80°F) with 100% humidity, which results in a heat index of 32.2°C (90°F) - seemingly not so bad until considering it's higher than the critical wet-bulb temperature. Also, if you watch the video, imagine the long-term effects of water accumulating in residences, such as dangerous mold.

We are witnessing the effects of climate change right now, all around the world, and rising temperatures are just the most-obvious (what we used to call "global warming"). Many, many other side-effects of climate change are beginning to plague us or headed our way soon, and will affect us all.

Unfortunately, those most affected - and those being hit the hardest right now - are people most vulnerable to heatwaves. With climate crises increasing in both intensity and frequency, and poverty at dangerous levels, we face a rapidly rising, worldwide crisis.

We must recognize the climate crisis as an international emergency and treat it as such. So much time, creative energy, resources, and life is wasted in war and the pursuit of profit or power - consider how much good could come from re-allocating those resources to ensuring a future for Earthlings, instead.

(Expect to see a "Science into Fiction" workshop on climate change coming soon - SF writers have a particular responsibility to address such important topics of change and global consequence.)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A group of professors and former students at a Nova Scotia university are working together to deliver post-secondary education to imprisoned individuals throughout the province. The “prison access to education” program, spearheaded by assistant professor El Jones, at Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) is one of a kind — as it makes the Halifax institution the only degree-granting university for incarcerated people in Canada. Jones, who’s also known for her activism and spoken-word poetry, said the program, which started in 2018, connects inmates to professors and covers everything required to attend university, such as program costs associated with fees and textbooks. “We believe that access to education is a right and is so incredibly important in people’s reintegration in their time in prison,” she said during an interview in her MSVU office on Thursday.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[ewingstan]

Are those all the factions associated with the bunker? That's a pretty miniscule number of capes, all things considered. Sure, a ton would've died in gold morning,but still, that's five teams with a few dozen capes at most. There aren't others we haven't heard of that are getting pulled for this? No equivalent to the cauldron meetings where we suddenly hear about some of the major international players that hadn't been within the story's scope up till this point?

This gets at another thing: for being the main settlement of Earth Bet survivors, the City is weirdly heterogeneous. Everyone seems to speak English, to a greater degree than you'd find even in modern American cities. There doesn't seem to be any cultural clash, not even in terms of one of the major teams gaining members from somewhere besides America or Canada. Is The City actually just one of many major settlements, with the non-anglophone refugees from Earth Bet going elsewhere?

[perpetualexistence]

Sea Monster AU: First Meetings

I'm still getting a heehoo giddy feeling with all the interest for this AU! I haven't even properly written things yet and you're all being very welcoming! I'm seeing likes from people I've been following in the TD fandom! I got my first reblog from someone else who understands the joys of big monsters and monster x human tropes! Aaa! It sparks joy in me.

I promise to use this joy exclusively to give Noah a Bad Time. He's one of my favorites, so he must suffer. That's the rules. (Don't worry, Alejandro will get to suffer too, we just haven't gotten that far yet.)

I'm going to start with how the two meet and their relationship up until Alejandro decides to reveal his true colors. So no real content warnings for this part except for manipulation and intimidation, especially regarding size. Given the premise, and the fact that Alejandro is Alejandro, this is going to be true of most of this AU.

Now let's see if I can properly use the Read More button to get into the juicy deets.

<- Start/Prev | Next ->

Noah lives in a small town on the coast of Lake Wawanawka. In days long past the town was a major shipping port. It was fighting with a rival city for dominance in the region. A massive storm set the town back, and now it only exists as a place to stay that's cheaper than the big city up the coast. The town government has been trying to revitalize the town by turning it into a tourist trap, but that's only resulted in tourists trashing the place at night while they spend most of their time and money in the big city. Still, money is money, so the townspeople have little choice but to put up with it.

Noah's recently been accepted to the one community college in town that's kind of helping to keep the town afloat. He plans to coast through an associate's degree with ridiculously easy classes. Then he's going to use his intelligence to get a scholarship to a private university and will never look back on this town. Only exception would be to come visit his family, though at this point only a few of his older sisters still live at home. Some have already left the nest just like he plans to.

Noah doesn't have many friends, so he tends to go off on his own. He's managed to find one spot on the beach that's inaccessible to most. It requires a tight squeeze through rocks. It's the one thing his wiry frame is good for. Tourists don't know about it so they can't ruin it. Townspeople who do know about it typically don't bother. He's taken measures to make it look as unappealing as possible. Can't have people taking away his best spot to get away from a rowdy house and read in peace.

That is, until a particularly bad storm hits. He returns to his reading cove, ready to complain as he has to either deal with or ignore the debris that's sure to be littering the place. It's while he's kicking away debris that his foot comes across something soft, small, and....tan? He moves the debris away to see something that would look like an eel if not for the top half being a human that looked around his age.

He reacts calmly when this thing groans and looks directly at him asking "¿Qué pasó?" He takes a second to breathe, and think rationally about what he's seeing in front of him.

He certainly doesn't scream like a bitch, fall on his ass, and attempt to crab walk away.

Once Noah actually calms down and accept the fact that this is not a psychotic break on his part, he and who he learns is Alejandro get to talking. Fortunately in English. Alejandro reveals that he swam too close to the surface and got swept in the storm. He doesn't know where he's ended up. He took a really nasty blow to the head too because he doesn't even quite remember where he came from. Alejandro would greatly appreciate if Noah could tell him where he is.

Noah's got some questions about all this. Ignoring the fact that merfolk apparently exist (a phrase he never thought he'd utter), Alejandro's an eel. Literally. Eels aren't native to Canada. So there's no possible way he could be from Lake Wawanakwa. Noah suspects he's an electric eel, which would place him somewhere in South America. When he points this out, he swears he sees a spark of electricity in Alejandro's tail. It confirms Noah's suspicions. It also confirms that Noah's not about to touch Alejandro with his bare hands. Alejandro commends him for being smart enough to help jog his memory. He remembers humans referring to the name 'Peru' in the waters he comes from.

He reveals that magic does exist in this world, as is evident by his very existence. There must have been magic in the storm that brought him here. Sadly, he doesn't know how he can use it to get himself back home. Not that it matters much, he can adapt to living here. Still, he begs for Noah not to tell anyone else that he's here. Noah has been so kind to him, but Alejandro isn't quite so sure how other humans will react to seeing him.

Noah's still quite suspicious about Alejandro. But the alternative is either A) a townsperson finds Alejandro, sees him as their ticket out of this town, and does who knows what to him for fame and money. Or B) a tourist finds Alejandro, and either does like the townsperson, or flips out and calls the cops, leading to who knows what kind of military experimentation assuming the cops don't just shoot him on sight.

So curse Noah's bleeding heart, he tells Alejandro that if he's going to stay in shallower waters, he'll be better off staying here. He warns him about the tourists and the townspeople. If he's going into deeper waters, then he's going to have to watch out for the fishermen, the cargo ships, and the ferries that go across the lake. Alejandro just grins and promises to repay Noah's hospitality in full one day.

And thus, Noah begins to meet Alejandro in secret. Mainly because he refuses to concede his favorite reading spot. Noah does some research on electric eels, and comes prepared with rubber gloves any time he wants to get close with Alejandro just in case. Alejandro isn't always there, but when he is he insists on interacting with Noah. He gets interested in the books he sees Noah reading and reveals that he doesn't know how to read. Noah can't just allow for that, so he teaches the Peruvian how to read English. He tries to teach him how to write too, but that's more difficult given the size difference and Alejandro constantly being wet. Noah will take to reading aloud to Alejandro, and when Alejandro learns how to read, he takes to slithering his way in between Noah and his book so he can read along, taking care not to touch Noah's skin.

Their relationship continues to grow as they talk about their respective lives. Noah tells him about humans, and Alejandro will tell him things about merfolk. When Alejandro goes to deeper waters, he comes back and describes the old shipwrecks he's found closer to the bottom of the lake with a certain wonder in his eyes. He'll even start to bring little treasures back from them, first for himself, but eventually for Noah as well. They get to make fun of tourists together and watch them from afar. Noah's dog Ark comes in at one point, and Ark loves Alejandro. Alejandro doesn't feel the same way about Ark and complains about the slobber. At a different point, a stray cat makes its way to the beach and Alejandro learns that he loves cats. And that cats don't feel the same way about him. To them he smells like a fish and looks like a snake, so they'll either try to claw at him or flee on sight. This saddens the Alejandro. He vows to one day successfully pet a cat.

Then, things take a turn seemingly out of the blue. Alejandro reveals that he has a surprise he wants to show Noah. It's a skill he'd lost for a while due to the nature of his arrival. He's been practicing it in private, but he thinks he's finally recovered it fully! He begs for Noah to indulge his theatrics by covering his eyes. It will be the last time he asks like this. He promises. Noah rolls his eyes, but begrudgingly agrees to do so.

Noah hears a lot of shifting. Of rocks. Of waves. He hears something scraping the ground around him. He feels the air around him grow charged. The hair all across his body is standing on its end. He can't help but remember those initial doubts he had about Alejandro.

"You may open them now." a familiar voice rumbles. The accent is as thick as ever. It's louder than a tiny body should be able to produce. It's coming from the wrong direction.

It had been so nice to be wrong. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can keep being wrong. Schrödinger's idyllic beach life. He's smart, and he has a friend with no strings attached. He's smart, and he knows patience is not one of Alejandro's virtues.

Noah opens his eyes to gaze at the massive beast staring down at him.

Were his teeth always so sharp? Alejandro spoke of hunting, which implied he needed teeth sharp enough to rip into flesh. Noah had never really paid attention until he was looking at a full set of teeth, each the size of his hand. They grinned in a facsimile of a warm and inviting smile he was accustomed to.

Noah forced his gaze further upward to check if Alejandro's smile met his eyes. He recognized those eyes. When Alejandro had first started bringing his treasures, he would talk about them nonstop. Noah had tried to grab one of them to get a closer look. Alejandro had immediately retreated to the water, holding onto his treasure as if his own life depended on it. He'd felt an odd sense of something he later recognized as jealousy. Which was strange because it was jealousy over an object. But it was an object that had commanded Alejandro's full attention, full protection, full possession.

What a fool he'd been to feel jealous of something he was now the target of.

"What do you think?" Alejandro asked like a dog that had just brought home a dead cat and was now begging for praise. He closed the distance between them by bending down and slithering back to meet closer to Noah's level.

Noah's throat closed. He felt his face betray him as his ears and cheeks began to flush red. This is fear and a confused and conflated mixture of adrenaline and oxytocin brought forward by an intense situation, nothing more.His feet remained loyal. He backpedaled, only to be stopped by a soft wall that hadn't been there a second ago. He pressed a hand against the wall while maintaining eye contact with Alejandro. That was what you did with wild animals wasn't it? Certain ones at least. He didn't if it would work with eels. An electric eel will wrap itself around its prey, ensuring that there are at least two points of contact for maximum effectiveness. Once established, it will send a shock to incapacitate its prey before consuming it. If he wheels through facts he picked up about eels to prepare himself for this situation, he doesn't have to acknowledge that the wall that dwarfed him from behind was a hand.

"Noah, por favor." Alejandro purred. "We're amigos. I haven't forgotten the times we've spent together. They've been delightful! And so very informative."

Noah had been too concerned about protecting Alejandro from humans. He taught him how to read. He warned him where the people frequented. He taught him how modern ships run on electricity. Alejandro shared that he wished he could have met the ships he'd visited before something else had sent them to the bottom of the lake. All of these red flags only served as the pins and needles holding Noah in place.

"And more importantly, I made a promise to you! A Burromuerto never breaks their promises. Not even to humans." Alejandro suddenly tilted his hand forward, forcing Noah to stumble backwards into a cupped palm. He pulled Noah closer until his face engulfed the entirety of Noah's vision. He let out a breathy sigh right onto Noah. "It truly is a shame that you're a human in my new hunting grounds. I could allow you to simply stay if you weren't. I have no doubt you would enjoy literally ripping apart los estúpidos turistos with me just as you enjoy verbally ripping them apart."

Noah felt an index finger ruffle the top of his hair. On instinct, he moved his hand up to smack it away. His eyes widened as he realized what he'd just done, but Alejandro only chuckled. "See what I mean?" he continued. "But, sadly for both of us, I can't let it be known that I let a human go without a fight. I have a reputation to uphold. However, I will reward your hospitality with something I will never offer to another human again. Porque eres tan precioso para mí."

Alejandro carefully placed a thumb under Noah's chin to keep his gaze focused on the former. His claw rested against Noah's right cheek. The sharp tip faced away from him, but that could change at a moment's notice. "You have the privilege of convincing me why you deserve to live."

And Noah knew he would have to choose his next words very carefully.

[the-ravenist]

I feel as if the world is really ending too fucking fast

This is a debrief of all what I've been notified this morning before 11 am

The political debate: neither parties are good, it's just a bunch of children in old men disguises insulting one another

A Netherland athlete being able to participate in the Paris Olympics even though he's a convicted r*pist

A 20 sec segment of two girls eating ice cream on ESPN, shot by a perverted camera man

Women's chances of being drafted being higher than men

A reminder that the US is on Russia's hit list

An off duty cop shooting a man's dog for "attacking" her dog

....

I graduated practically a month ago, I haven't even started college yet. I don't have my associates degree. The threat of project 2025 is breathing down my neck. Millions are dying in Palestine, Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, and so many more.

I would move to Canada but they have they're own shit going on right now. It takes practically a year to move anywhere else. I'm might actually throw up. I'm so nauseous as this all crashes down in me.

I know that Biden is a bad guy but please don't vote for Trump. Please.

Apparently I have to further explain myself. So for some clarification, I DO NOT want Biden to win. But as to see that our nation only cares about two parties, voting for the lesser of the two evils, Biden, is the second best option we have. Yes, Biden's son is a felon. But Trump, a running candidate and past president IS a felon. A felon who seems himself as God Almighty. Now this post was to be voicing my causes of my anxiety and fear for our nation but if you bigots want to twist my words instead of actually reading and understand that I'm concerned and anxious. Then you can kiss my ass. As a black, queer, neurodivergent, woman, with a single mother. I have every right to be nervous about politics and the future for the US, in which my generation and future generations will have to pick up the pieces from the doomed society that the older bigots of society left for us when they leave. Now personally I'm not voting for Trump but I'm not going to say who I'm voting for cause that's nobody's concern. Any bigot that comment on this post trying to justify trump will be blocked and reported. Kisses 😘

[stirringwinds]

Regarding ships, do you like canada x china?(it's very rarepair). China would find canada sweet, mature and refreshing individual compared to other nations.

well anon, i gotta be honest i haven't thought of it as a romantic ship at all? matt's got his strong points, but i don't really see him being more "mature" compared to other nations, especially since yao's been around plenty of other older nations (some of whom are still around). generally, my view of yao is that there's some jadedness he has from his long life: while he sometimes finds young nations refreshing and envies the lack of calluses they have (compared to him), other times he finds them frustratingly naive and inexperienced.

and at least in my headcanons, the way yao views matthew is to some degree influenced by arthur (and francis), especially since trade between britain and china began as early as the 17th century. and so this whole period from the 17th—early 20th century is one where a huge amount of canada's involvement in foreign policy is decided by arthur (after france formally ceded canada to britain in 1763). matthew, to yao, is seen very much through the prism of arthur as the british empire— and how matt is at times his father's swordhand. that's not to say matt doesn't have his own thoughts, differences and struggles with arthur, but how i think yao might see it. so mmm i personally don't think yao's impression of matthew is that he's "sweet"? because: 1) arthur manages a lot of foreign policy before dominions like matt get independence proper 2) a lot of what yao consequently sees is matt as a soldier by his father's side (even when they're ostensibly on the same side, such as during WWI). and needless to say, the earlier opium wars and century of humiliation shapes a lot of how yao views arthur (and everyone associated with him).

there are some differences with how i see yao and alfred, for example, mainly because alfred shows up at his door after the american revolutionary war as this ragtag young nation with tiny ass ships (what an irony, given what'll happen later on...) begging for trade—but deals with yao one-on-one as an independent nation nonetheless. from yao's pov, alfred is the rebellious crown prince who isn't content to walk in his father's shadow—while for the longest period, yao sees matt through the prism of "the second and filial son of the british empire". that's not to say there aren't different angles to explore re: chinese-canadian history or the diaspora, but that's ^ my personal take on it since i'm interested in mapping those imperial power dynamics onto relationships between nations.

[fatehbaz]

There are three reasons why an international audience should care about the otherwise insignificant Canadian city of Thunder Bay, a community of 120,000 souls 100km North of the American border right in the middle of the world’s second most spacious nation-state.

The first is that, as Canada’s murder and hate-crime capital, with the vast majority of these terrors directed at Indigenous people, roughly 13-20 percent of the population, its example has a lot to teach us about the dire failure of the Canadian model of liberal capitalism, corporate multiculturalism, and half-hearted “reconciliation.”

Second, as a troubled (post-)extractive and logistics-based economy in a “first-world” country — a country that exports and finances extractive industries around the world — its patterns of racist violence reveal something profound about capitalism today.

Finally, Thunder Bay’s problems demand, and are generating, the kind of radical, grassroots solutions that point towards the kind of transformations all communities need to embrace in the years to come to overcome the dangerous intertwined orders of contemporary colonialism and capitalism [...].

---

The isolation, the economic marginality, and the history of extraction and racial resentments all contribute to, but cannot completely explain, the staggering degree of racism in the city. [...] Like many police forces in Canada, officers in the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) have been known to drive Indigenous people out to the outskirts of town, take their shoes and coats, and leave them to walk back or freeze to death. Unlike most police forces in Canada, the TBPS has recently been found to be plagued with profound “systemic racism” by two independent and high-profile reports. [...] The real reason for the investigations was the deaths of seven Indigenous youth, most from remote Northern communities, most in the city to access high school education or medical services denied to them in their communities. [...]

---

As scholars Damien Lee and Jana-Rae Yerxa note, many precedents stand behind these fears. Indigenous people end up dead in Thunder Bay at staggering rates. [...] Just before the most recent police reports were issued, the mayor (a former Police Association president), the police chief (a fool) and the city’s most successful lawyer (a convicted child molestor) were all implicated in a scandal involving a blend of sexual abuse, extortion, and breach of trust. [...]

Meanwhile, just as I moved to the city in early 2017, an Indigenous woman was fatally injured in the street when one of a gang of white teenagers out joyriding threw a heavy metal trailer hitch at her from their speeding car. It took her several agonizing months to die from her internal injuries. [...]

---

The rank, racist and reactionary hypocrisy so common in Canada and in Thunder Bay is, unfortunately, often mistaken for merely a cultural anachronism, which can be solved through better public education, greater cultural sensitivity and more opportunities to celebrate diversity. This has, for instance, been the approach to the problems of racist policing in the city: another “cultural competency” workshop [...].

In spite of a great deal of rhetoric about “nation-to-nation” negotiations by the Trudeau government, it is profoundly clear, as Mi’Kmaq lawyer and professor Pam Palmater warns, that the State does not and cannot accept the idea that Indigenous people would be allowed to say “no” to, for instance, mines, forestry, corporate fishing or pipelines [...].

---

To this day Canada is a key player in a global capitalist imperium that specializes in extractive industries and extractive forms of debt.

The Mining Association of Canada reports that “the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and TSX Venture Exchange accounted for 57 percent of the global mining equity raised in 2016.” As Alain Deneault and William Sacher have noted, Canada has historically structured its laws and commercial norms to empower the theft of indigenous lands to be violently transformed into “resources” for export, a specialization that is now itself exported around the world as Canadian-owned or -funded corporations are called upon to “develop” mines and extractive projects globally.

Every Canadian with savings is necessarily complicit: almost all pension funds, banks and other investment vehicles here are wrapped up in the TSX and therefore the extractive industry. Meanwhile, as Peter Hudson illustrates, Canada also has a long legacy of renovating national, municipal and personal debt into a tool of neocolonialism, notably in the Caribbean where Canadian banks have enjoyed profound influence, even monopolies. [...]

The ruling class and international capital, working hand in glove, have consistently used divide-and-conquer techniques to sew the seeds of racism that undermine solidarity. Thunder Bay is only a particularly poignant example, a place so small and marginalized that it cannot sustain the veneer of polite, civil, cheerful liberalism that is the country’s brand.

---

Text by: Max Haiven. “The colonial secrets of Canada’s most racist city.” ROAR Magazine. 13 February 2019. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks added by me.]

[justforbooks]

With her book The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), the historian Natalie Zemon Davis, who has died aged 94, attracted a wide readership and inspired future historians. It came out of working as a historical consultant on a film of the same name released the previous year, starring Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye, and directed by Daniel Vigne.

Martin Guerre, a peasant farmer in the 16th-century Pyrenees, left his wife Bertrande to go on a journey, only to have his marital role usurped by an impostor who “returned” pretending to be him. After some years of cohabitation, Bertrande denounced the impostor, her testimony seemingly confirmed by the return of the real Martin Guerre. The impostor was duly tried and executed.

The film-makers’ questions about period detail and behaviour intrigued Davis. But other aspects of the movie genre troubled her, so she went back to the archives and wrote up her own compact account of 120 pages.

A gripping narrative and a lesson in method, Davis’s book raised questions about the reliability of evidence and the motives and worldviews of peasant men and women from a faraway place and time. It is an example of a microhistory, where historians turn away from the big canvas of kings, queens and battles to understand ordinary lives, often through a highly localised case study.

The Return of Martin Guerre was one of a series of works including Society and Culture in Early Modern France (1975), Fiction in the Archives (1987), Women on the Margins (1995) and The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (2000). Davis’s trademark was the longer essay or biographical study, often focused on marginal or misunderstood personalities, all spiced with a sharp attention to issues of religion, gender, sex, class, money and power. Historical records for her were never dull: she once described them as “a magic thread that links me to people long since dead and with situations that have crumbled to dust”.

Born in Detroit, Natalie was the daughter of Helen (nee Lamport) and Julian Zemon, a textile trader, both children of east European Jewish immigrants to the US. While studying at Smith College, Massachusetts, at the age of 19 she fell in love with Chandler Davis, a brilliant mathematician and socialist activist; they married in 1948 and went on to have a son and two daughters. Her first degree, from Smith (1949), was followed by a master’s at Radcliffe College (1950).

Her life with Davis was productive and fulfilling but also complicated her early career, as his principled stances against McCarthy-era restrictions on political expression led to both him and her being barred from a number of posts, and from travelling abroad. This she needed to do for her doctorate on 16th-century France.

After finally gaining her PhD at Michigan University in 1959, Davis went on to hold positions at Toronto, moved in 1971 to the University of California, Berkeley, where she was appointed professor, and in 1978 to Princeton, retiring in 1996. She became only the second woman to serve as president of the American Historical Association (1987), and the first to serve as Eastman professor at Oxford (1994). In 2012 she was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada, and in the US was awarded a National Humanities Medal.

Davis helped establish programmes in women’s studies and taught courses on history and film. Her AHA presidential address, History’s Two Bodies (1988), summed up her thinking about gender in history. It was also the first such address to be printed with illustrations. Her book Slaves on Screen (2002) was one of the first in-depth treatments of this topic by a professional historian.

In her last two books, Davis returned to the exploration of mixed identities. Trickster Travels (2006) was about the 16th-century scholar Leo Africanus, whose complicated Jewish and Muslim roots in North Africa she expertly unpicked. Listening to the Languages of the People (2022) focused on the 19th-century scholar Lazare Sainéan, a Romanian-Jewish folklorist and lexicographer who published one of the world’s first serious studies of Yiddish, but had to abandon his Romanian homeland for Paris in 1901.

At the time of her death, Davis was completing a study of slave families in colonial Suriname: it is hoped this will appear under the announced title of Braided Histories. In this way she continued to explore unconventional topics, going against the grain of Eurocentric history and looking instead at the boundaries of identity and belonging in very different settings.

Visiting many universities and research centres in her retirement, Davis encouraged younger scholars by conveying the potential of history to inspire empathy and hope for change. While at my own institution, the University of Amsterdam, in 2016, she made it her main aim to talk to students rather than to other professors. In 2022-23 she presented her latest work in online seminars, and wrote and corresponded actively until shortly before her death from cancer.

Chandler died in 2022. Natalie is survived by her three children, Aaron, Hannah and Simone; four grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a brother, Stanley.

🔔 Natalie Zemon Davis, historian, born 8 November 1928; died 21 October 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[museeeuuuum]

How does one get a job at a museum? I already have a relevant degree with honours and work experience at several archives/art galleries, but I don’t know how to get started with museums. Is there some secret site where museum jobs are posted? Something all good applications have? A secret knock??

(PS love your channel and work, I love this discipline of museum studies and curation and can’t wait to properly work in this field!)

Howdy!

It sounds like you already have a great head start with your experience and degree!

As far as where jobs are posted, this depends on where you live. I would suggest seeing if there is a local museum association and/or comb job boards. It can be tedious, but you can also check out the career pages of the museums you want to work for. As I am currently on the job hunt, I have found that a lot of jobs have been shared to Indeed, but I am also on Canada's West coast and other museums in other parts of the world may use a different engine. There really isn't a knack, except to gain as much experience as you can (even if it's not directly related to museums) and to network with people. Go to events, conferences, and connect with people online, whether it is through LinkedIn or Instagram. You just have to jump up and down and let people know that you exist and have relevant experience.

With all this being said: this field is not easy. The pay is usually shit. Jobs are difficult to find. If curatorship is your end goal, a PhD is necessary, and even then, you are fighting tooth and nail with other PhD's. Heritage, history, and museums are brutally underfunded.

Being a part of this field nowadays means that you have to be active in your local museum community and advocate for these places. Visit your local spot and ask questions. Learn! As much as you can! And be present.

Thank you for your kind words, and if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

[jordanianroyals]

Congratulations, Aoun Juma!

Aoun Juma, the eldest son of Princess Aisha bint Al Hussein of Jordan and Zeid Juma, got engaged in 2024. The nephew of King Abdullah II was born on 27 May 1992. Like his own mother and other family members, Aoun graduated from the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst in 2017.

The 28-year-old bride-to-be, Lena bint Wail Abbas, is a Palestinian residing in Qatar & a family member of Mahmoud Abbas, President of Palestine. Lena was born on 18 May 1996. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from McGill University in Canada. From 2017-2018 at McGill, she also served as the Vice President (Academic) at the Economics Students' Association. She now works as a director at her family business. Lena speaks Arabic, English and French.

[sub-at-omicsteminist]

Shabnam Akhtari

Shabnam Akhtari is a Canadian-Iranian mathematician specialising in number theory, and in particular in Diophantine equations, Thue equations, and the geometry of numbers. Akhtari graduated from the Sharif University of Technology in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. She went to the University of British Columbia for graduate study in mathematics, completing her Ph.D. and her dissertation, Thue Equations and Related Topics there in 2008

She was a postdoctoral researcher at Queen's University at Kingston in Canada, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Germany and the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques in Canada before joining the University of Oregon faculty as an assistant professor of mathematics in 2012. She was tenured as an associate professor there in 2018

number theory

Diophantine equation

Thue equation

Geometry of numbers

[qqueenofhades]

US-centric racial bullshit is even a problem in Canada. We LOVE pretending that we’re so much better than the United States and that our prejudices aren’t nearly as bad, but the way we’ve treated indigenous peoples has been abysmal for centuries, and most Canadians who aren’t Gen Z weren’t even aware of the worst of it until 2021. I’m not sure how many people outside of Canada know this but in 2021 they found a mass grave of 215 indigenous children outside an old residential school in Kamloops in BC, and everyone was scandalized for approximately two weeks. They’ve since searched like maybe five more schools out of over a hundred and found thousands of more bodies, and the initiative to even look has kind of fizzled out. This was my parents’ first exposure to the idea of residential schools, we’ve been sweeping this shit under the rug for decades, and we still get off to “not being the US”.

All this to say that Canadian history isn’t as flashy as the US but is still worth taking a look at. There’s a lot of harmful institutions still in place left over from like 1873 that symbolize incredibly tense political situations that continue to this day. And even our black history gets boiled down to “Underground Railroad”, oh aren’t we nice, when that’s really not all that happened.

Because I read international news and follow international politics, I am personally aware of the Canadian residential schools scandal, but it absolutely is something that fizzled out after a few weeks and was attempted to be covered up with a few boilerplate apologies and nothing in the way of real change or action. I would therefore gently question your phrasing of "US-centric racial bullshit," since the whole point of your ask is that while Canada pretends to be better than the US, it has its own specific racial and cultural blind spots relating to its own practice of racism. So would this not be more accurately called "Canada-centric racial bullshit?" After all, you're talking about something that happened in Canada, was perpetrated by Canadians, is directly related to the modern Canadian state, and as such as has been denied by white Canadians. After all, the big Trucker March of right-wingers that shut down Toronto took place in Canada, not the US. So yes, there's definitely a need to talk about Canadian racism in and of itself, and not just Canadian racism as a corollary of the US.

Canada is likewise a white settler-colonial state founded by Europeans (English and French, a split still prominent in modern Canada), and that therefore involved equally horrendous legacies of displacement and genocide against the First Nations people. Because Canada is so much smaller population-wise (300 million+ in the US vs just 38 million in Canada), it has thus to some degree been forced to expand its population by relying on immigrants and refugees. And to its credit, it has been more proactive about accepting refugees than the US. But there are still plenty of right-wingers who think that a geographically enormous and empty country like Canada, with only 38 million people, is getting too "crowded" with "foreigners." Likewise, Canada is still officially a part of the Commonwealth, aka the lightly rebranded British Empire, so its formal head of state is the UK monarch. And to the best of my knowledge, there haven't been any serious conversations about breaking that link and reorganizing as a republic, the way there have been in Caribbean Commonwealth countries like Jamaica and Barbados (which in fact just did it). That is because white first-world Canadians can see association with the British Empire as a "prestige," instead of the legacy of slavery and exploitation that was the British Empire against majority-black countries in the Caribbean.

Anyway: Canadians are always stereotyped as the nice people who apologize for everything and mind their business, and yes, the flaming dumpster fire of America would make anyone feel superior about not being that. But it doesn't mean there's no problems or that it's a perfect society free of its own flaws and failures, and Americans are also definitely guilty of treating it as some magical escape valve: witness the "I'm going to move to Canada" refrain when something political goes wrong here. In some ways, yes, that would be preferable, viz. free healthcare and strict gun laws. But yeah.

[onecornerface]

Some criticisms of Washington Post's terrible article about Portugal's drug decriminalization

About a month ago, the Washington Post ran a terrible article about Portugal’s drug decriminalization. There are numerous bizarre and unreasonable aspects to the article. I can only make a first-pass overview of the problems here

To be clear, I think many pro-decrim people oversimplify the situation of Portugal, and overstate its importance to the case for decrim. Moreover, there is a lot I simply don’t know about Portugal, especially regarding developments in recent years. So I can’t currently insist, with much confidence, that the article is factually incorrect about many of its particular claims. Nor can I confidently give my own well-grounded overview of what exactly is going on in Portugal or why. Also, I don’t know the authors’ policy views or intentions. Anthony Faiola at least does not seem to have a track record on WP of conservative fearmongering, but that’s what this specific article ultimately is.

Here's what I can say confidently right now. From start to finish, the article has a certain strong pattern—in what topics it mentions vs. omits, what questions it asks vs. erases, what statistics it provides vs. omits, whose concerns it emphasizes vs. marginalizes/ignores, what proposals it spends more time discussing vs. less time, what experts it cites at length vs. briefly or not at all, etc.

Regardless of intent, and despite a few counterinstances to this trend, the article overwhelmingly functions as propaganda which will predictably encourage its readers to think irrationally, to support vicious agendas, and to make the world even worse for people who are already among the worst-off.

From start to finish, the article continually insinuates that Portugal’s police should be allowed to drastically increase how many drug users they can arrest. The details are mostly left unspecified, and the rationale is mostly left unspecified. But basically the idea seems to be (1) the police should be able to arrest drug users on a wider variety of *grounds* (mainly but not limited to public drug use/possession), and (2) after arresting them, the police should be able to coerce these drug users in more ways or to a greater degree.

In any case, the end result is supposed to be some serious reduction in prevalence of various actual or putative bad stuff—e.g. addiction, public drug use, drug-associated crime, homelessness, and/or suchlike. Supposedly, all or many of these problems have increased in recent years. And supposedly, the only solution requires that police be enabled to drastically increase their coercive powers—presumably as a route to force drug addicts into addiction treatment. I’ll call this, roughly, the pro-crackdown thesis.

The authors don’t directly argue for the pro-crackdown thesis. But the overall pattern of the article is clearly to promote the pro-crackdown thesis regarding Portugal—and I think, by further implication, to suggest something in the ballpark of the pro-crackdown thesis for other reform-leaning countries such as the USA. The article should be read in context of the broader conservative “tough on crime” backlash which has been occurring in the USA & Canada for the last couple of years.

To a first approximation, the article alleges that Portugal’s drug problem (or drug-related problems) has gotten worse in recent years. This sounds to me like it is probably basically true and largely agreed-on, so I don’t challenge it, although I note that the article fails to much explain or clarify it. The article mostly relies on anecdotes, and occasionally on a smattering of no-context statistics, which don’t allow much of a sense of what exactly has gotten worse, or over what timeframe—let alone why. Still, actual experts do seem to agree that things have gotten worse overall.

The article insinuates that the police need to arrest lots of drug users in order to seriously mitigate the problem. But the article provides extremely little evidence that this is true. Most of the article’s evidence is too vague and decontextualized for us to interpret its relevance to the pro-crackdown thesis.

Throughout much of the article, the pro-crackdown thesis sounds vaguely like repealing decriminalization, though occasionally it is (very slightly) clarified that it isn't supposed to repeal decriminalization outright but only implement some more limited re-criminalization. Again the details are left remarkably vague. I’m not certain without further research, but it sounds to me like fake moderation that provides cover for extreme changes. The article is obviously pushing for the arrests of quite a lot of people who aren’t currently being arrested.

Most shockingly, the article occasionally mentions evidence which (if true) challenges or even refutes its own pro-crackdown thesis—yet the article mostly ignores the relevance of all this.

On a preliminary note, the article never specifies whether police enforcement powers have actually changed in recent years, in terms of what the police are and aren't allowed to do. Has there been any contraction in the grounds on which police can make arrests? Has there been any reduction in what police can do to coerce those whom they’ve arrested? I don’t think the article indicates any such thing. If the police’s powers stayed the same, but the drug problems got worse, then it would be at least a little surprising if the solution is to change the police’s powers. Of course, decriminalization itself reduced the police’s powers—but decriminalization occurred some 20 years ago, whereas things only started getting worse in the last several years or so. So decriminalization in itself can’t be the cause. So then, what was the cause?

More significantly, the article occasionally mentions that a decade or so ago, Portugal suffered an economic crisis and then drastically cut addiction treatment funding. Near the end of the article, this is briefly discussed in a few paragraphs—but then the article continues and concludes as if this discussion never happened.

So, if and insofar as drug problems got worse in the last several years, the article presents no evidence whatsoever that decriminalization or enforcement changes had anything to do with it. But rather, the article actually presents an obviously salient and severe set of events (economic crisis + funding cuts) that could easily account for the increase in drug problems—seemingly meeting conditions of (1) plausible causal mechanisms & (2) relevant timeframe.

This is not mentioned until late in the article, and the article concludes by ignoring it. The large bulk of the article instead argues for (or insinuates, implicitly arguing for) the pro-crackdown thesis.

If the pro-crackdown thesis is true, how would it work? How would arresting lots of drug users solve the problem? Mostly the article avoids any exploration of the mechanisms that would need to be involved. But insofar as the article *does* suggest a mechanism, it is that the police need to arrest drug users specifically in order to force them into addiction treatment.

The argument presupposes that addiction treatment is crucial for solving the drug problem, and that Portugal needs to get lots more drug users to attend treatment, and that the best way to increase attendance is by empowering the police to arrest lots more of them, on a wider variety of grounds, and coerce them more severely.

Now, there are a lot of unspoken empirical premises that need to be true in order for this argument to have any chance of succeeding. Many such empirical premises are already false or dubious, which I will ignore. But notice that the argument requires, at minimum, that the addiction treatment system be capable of taking in many, many new patients within a short timeframe—i.e. the many addicted drug users whom the police should be newly allowed to arrest & coerce.

So here’s where the argument gets even worse and dumber. Very briefly, early on, the article seemingly mentions that Portugal’s addiction treatment system is basically at capacity, cannot take on new patients readily, and has extremely long wait-lists.

Here’s the key quote: “there are year-long waits for state-funded rehabilitation treatment even as the number of people seeking help has fallen dramatically.” There are tons of variables left unspecified, but the picture given here (and indirectly supported further on, in the section on funding cuts) seems to be a serious problem in treatment capacity. Another quote: “The number of users being funneled into drug treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen, going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the most recent year available.” Why did this happen? Obviously there could be many variables involved, not suggested by the article.

The drastic funding cuts would likely cause a severe reduction in capacity. And the article never mentions any relevant post-decrim changes to drug laws. There’s no indication that the police used to be allowed to force many people into treatment and no longer are. So, for all the article says, this sounds mostly due to funding cuts. Yet the article barely suggests increasing funding, and rather spends most of its time supporting a drastic increase in police powers.

But the article’s own arguments suggest there needs to be a drastic increase in addiction treatment funding FIRST. Otherwise, what are the police supposed to do with all the drug addicts they’re expected to arrest? They CANNOT force them into treatment, because there is NO CAPACITY for so many new patients.

For the moment, let’s ignore the facts that (1) many scholars have cast doubt on the benefits of forced treatment, (2) many scholars argue that forced treatment causes many direct & indirect harms (which may compete with or outweigh the benefits), and (3) many scholars argue that forced treatment would be unethical or ethically dubious even if it worked and did not cause other harms. (These facts are easy to forget, because the article never mentions or remotely alludes to any of them, other than selectively quoting some vague and easy-to-dismiss appeal to rights.)

Even setting all this aside, the simple fact—acknowledged or strongly implied by the article itself—is that Portugal’s addiction treatment system cannot presently take on many new patients. So, by the article’s own lights, arresting lots of drug users to force them into treatment is *impossible*. Or at least it is impossible unless there were a drastic expansion in addiction treatment capacity first—which the article barely discusses, and clearly considers much lower priority than empowering the police to crack down on drug users. To the extent that any actual experts on drug policy (such as Alex Stevens) have commented on the article, they seem to agree that Portugal needs to re-invest in treatment and/or social programs, not any kind of re-criminalization.

It is at best an open question whether arresting people would be a good way to improve treatment attendance *after* drastically expanding addiction treatment capacity. Perhaps the expansion of addiction treatment would be enough by itself, or perhaps not. But the article’s own brief discussion of Portugal’s history during ca. 2000-2010 suggests the already-successful solution was expanded addiction treatment *without* police coercion. Now, this may or may not be accurate. And I think it is plausible that all sides are inclined to overstate the importance of addiction treatment. It wouldn’t surprise me if other changes to Portugal’s society, e.g. investment in infrastructure other than addiction treatment (e.g. housing, healthcare, etc.), played a bigger role than the addiction treatment itself. But setting that aside, by the article’s own evidence, everything here tends to logically support the solution of expanding addiction treatment without empowering the police. Yet the article instead insists, illogically, on empowering the police and putting treatment at a distant second-place.

One of many elephants in the room: There are also many possible policy domains OTHER than police OR treatment, which could well have a big impact on drug problems—such as housing, job programs, etc. The article avoids all these topics, of course, despite the obvious opportunity presented by the mention of the economic crisis. And so far I have ignored the matter of homelessness, which I’ll briefly return to further down.

In the meantime, absent such a big expansion of addiction treatment capacity, the suggestion of seriously increasing police powers as a way to increase treatment attendance is OBVIOUSLY INSANE. If the police were to empowered to arrest lots of drug users immediately, without other massive changes first, then it would just lock most of them up without treatment anytime soon.

But I think that’s the real agenda here, regarding the thrust of the article in itself and in the broader ongoing context. The real agenda supported by the article, at least functionally, is to support a combination of policies that prioritize getting (some) drug users off the streets and out of sight of wealthy people—that’s basically it. This agenda may need to be artificially propped up by vague appeals to the notion of helping the drug users by forcing them into treatment. But it doesn’t really matter whether this is logistically feasible in terms of scale (it’s not) or typically overall beneficial to the user (it’s not) or ethical (it’s not). The agenda, first and foremost, is to remove some marked underclass of people from the sight and mind of a more wealthy and powerful class of people.

Those are some of the main problems with the article. Even without knowing much about what’s really going on in Portugal in recent years, I can recognize that the article is making an invalid argument for an insane conclusion that obviously clashes with the evidence already provided in the very same article—and in the service of moral priorities that are vicious. But even beyond this, the problems with the article go much, much deeper.

The article is continually unclear about the exact targets of its complaints. Most of the discussion is ostensibly on drug use and/or addiction—but a ton of the article seems really to be complaining about homeless people (possibly even including homeless people who don’t use drugs). I have been simplifying my discussion for the sake of argument as if this were about “drug users” or possibly “addicted drug users,” but a great many aspects of the article simply cannot be interpreted other than being about homeless people.

This raises layer upon layer of issues that I haven't even touched on, all of which make the article worse and worse. Among other things, it raises the question of whether and how much homelessness in Portugal has increased, and why. Although I need to research this a lot more, there are all kinds of debates on the causal relation between homelessness and addiction. The article is clearly premised on the notion that addiction is pretty much the main cause of homelessness—despite the fact that any simple version of this theory cannot be true. The article avoids discussing any other contributors to homelessness.

This in turn is obviously an opportunity to discuss housing policy. I have many serious questions about all this, which I’ll need to research at length. But the article has no interest whatsoever in any of this—except to repeatedly encourage the reader to find homeless people scary and insinuate that the police should be given more power to arrest them en masse.

Yet more problems abound. The article continually casts aspersion against harm reduction services—without acknowledging (or, at most, barely acknowledging) that lots of research and health authorities support these services on the grounds of consistently positive evidence. No evidence or arguments are presented against harm reduction services, nor does the article directly condemn them—but it consistently depicts them negatively, largely using emotional rhetorical techniques.

Notably, the article provides no reason whatsoever to reconsider decriminalization. And, while I’ll need to look into the specifics more to say for sure, I don’t think there is any serious chance that its vaguely described “limited re-criminalization” has any merit.

I have many more complaints besides these, and a lot of possible elaboration on many of these. I have multiple complaints about nearly every paragraph. Nevertheless, by reading it I have gained a better sense of where I need to do more research into Portugal’s policy and society, especially over the last 15 years or so.