In the past tense, I'd agree but not today. For starters, First Nation people have 100% full Canadian citizenship and the only distinctions made based on a persons treaty status compared to a non-treaty neighbour in any Canadian city is additional rights and benefits that are potentially available to the treaty person. That is to say, First Nations people have all the full rights of everyone else in Canada, and in some situations bonuses as well.

That said, living conditions on Native Reserves in Canada are abysmal. The municipality I live in is just vastly better off than the nearby native reserves. Better access to education, policing, fire protection and health care. If that weren't bad enough, average family incomes in my municipality more than double those of neighbouring native reserve communities.

That abysmal divide in conditions though is NOT an example of we as Canadians treating First Nations terribly. If you take per capita taxes collected from community and take away per capita government dollars put back in, my community still gives more to the government than it gets back. The neighbouring reserves with far worse conditions receive far more money from the government than they pay it back. Systemically, the Canadian government is economically favouring the neighbouring reserves.

That begs the question why are conditions there so abysmal, and I can't claim to fully understand it myself. The components I DO know are at work though are many:
1.Reserves are NOT fit into government the same way as municipalities are. While my municipality is under Provincial jurisdiction, reserves are parallel with the provinces and fall directly under the federal government. The idea is reserves deserve greater autonomy to respect First Nations unique status and treaty obligations. In practice though, IMO they lose out. My community has education and health care handled by the province, which great benefits those kind of items. Reserves are responsible for those things on their own.
2. Reserves create segregation. The idea is again respecting treaty agreements and protecting First Nations culture from being overwhelmed and assimilated. In practice, that isolation is crippling the communities rather than helping them.
3. Historic abuses against previous generations of First Nations people at the hands of government get passed down to the next generation. This is amplified by the segregation on reserves.
4. Absence of accountability. The same transparency rules that apply to my municipality and all other municipalities nation wide do not apply on reserves. If my mayor spends millions of city dollars paying him or his family to do almost nothing it is more traceable than if a chief on a reserve did the same thing. Again, the idea is provide greater autonomy and not 'force' white beuracracy on First Nations, but the effect is to make it harder for them to hold their own leaders to account.

That's hardly a comprehensive list, but I think it highlights a lot of ways in which the current generation of Canadians running the country are very conscience of treating First Nations well and just failing at it through mutual mistakes. Any efforts to convert the failed reserve systems to municipality status will by fought the most by the very people living in the failed reserves. I wish knew how to move things forward to a better place, but the root is nothing as simple as 'treat First Nations better'.

Whatever. Being a statist is its own punishment. The institution of the state has too much popular support, even if the particular criminals who get "elected" sometimes lose their popularity after a few years. They get "replaced" by "new" more popular criminals and so the cycle repeats itself. Nothing will likely stop it, regardless of the nation, be it Israel, the U.S., or elsewhere... Except perhaps the economic collapse. So the good always comes with the bad and vice versa. Probably best to get out of the way as things fall apart. At least you can say there's drama constantly. Never boring.

And as someone has said about being a contrarian:
"Following the herd is a sure-fire way to mediocrity."



@newtboy writes: "well thought out complaints with follow through often DO get results, and even if they don't you'll know you tried the right thing first."

Yeah, "the right thing," eh? According to whom? You?

Even if you replace the cop (even if it happens which often doesn't), so what? Another one takes his place. It's the whole police system, these are not just "isolated" individuals who are out of control. A lot of people insist that these are just "bad apples." Then those people become victims themselves. Poetic justice.

I agree with a lot of this.

What I'd dispute is whether we know know for certain it is largely man-made. Again I would defer to NASA where it specifies it is "very likely due to human activities" that is the consensus. I study statistics and the hypothesis/ significance testing you could perform to test time periods before and after human activity would be very rigorous in determining a trend change, and there is certainly no lack of data.

As far predicting the benefit/harm and the most cost effective policy alternative if one is required, I agree it's debatable. There are organisations such as the Copenhagen Consensus that argue for technology based solutions such as stratospheric aerosol injection or carbon capture rather than pure taxes/reduced emissions.

My own (layman) take here is that mitigating a potentially large unknown is pragmatic. At the very least until such technologies are proven to be effective and feasible in reversing the trend. European colonists destroyed ecosystems through introducing but a handful of non-native species to a previously isolated habitats. I think it goes without saying we should not be naive about the unforeseen impacts of a global change like this and taking a conservative approach is warranted.

But you yourself have said that everyone is suspect and considered armed and dangerous until proven otherwise...so who is this 'everyone else'?
Small town cops also can be much more difficult to get along with, as they develop the 'us VS them' mentality faster and to a greater severity, being more isolated. That's why they think it's OK to do things like swab pepper spray into the eyes of helpless, immobilized, peaceful protestors.
It sounds like a better idea would be for cops to have to walk in the shoes of a 'suspect' a few times a year...as in having SWAT or other police (not the force that particular cop is part of) called on them and have them and their families treated like the violent armed suspect they treat everyone else as...then perhaps you and they might see the error of your ways (once they've been visited on you and yours, I doubt you would support the violence and angry escalations).

That's an odd stance to take, since Hamas HAD stopped firing rockets, then Israel made up another 'reason' to start bombing them again mercilessly (a murder), while Israelis also got 'revenge' by burning a Palestinian boy alive. The homes of the accused (by Israel) murders, their families, and for good measure their political leaders and police leaders were bombed to 'retaliate' for the murder, but in Israel there's NO retaliation for the burned alive boy against families, political leaders, or police. The Hamas rockets didn't fire until AFTER Israel attacked in force again, killing mostly civilians.
Once again, FAIL.
Hamas is doing what it can to look like it's trying to protect it's people. Israel, with our help and support, has ensured their options are quite limited and basically useless.
All Israel has to do to protect it's people is turn on the iron dome defense system we gave them, and maybe stop bombing trapped civilian targets in a barrel of Israel's construction. Oh, and may stop slowly invading the already tiny, ever shrinking country to the left. Everyone seems to forget that Israel has consistently expanded into it's neighbors by force, then cried foul if anyone balks and starts bombing neighborhoods again. Over and over.
#isolate Israel. (since # free Palestine gets so much play and outrage lately)

Etymotic offers earphones with removable tips and the option for custom-fit tips. For those, you go to an Audiologist, get silicone impressions of your ears, then send those off to a place that'll turn the impressions into earbuds that are exactly the same as the inside of your ear. Perfect fit with incredible noise isolation.

It's as pricey as it sounds, but since they're just earphone tips, you can use them on other earphones and not have to redo the process.

There is no doubt that these people are disgusting, but thankfully they are also rare. Every society has their fringe crazies - the US has Westboro Baptist Church, for instance - and they generally get way more attention than they deserve by being controversial.

This isn't to say that there isn't a problem with Israeli society's attitude toward the Palestinians, it's just to say that I think it is a problem that is far more subtle and widespread. Focusing so much attention on a small percentage of religious fanatics can be important because it does represent a movement and ideology that is problematic, but it has very little direct relevance to the current conflict.

The real problem, in my opinion, is a unique mixture of nationalism and a lopsided insulation from the reality of the conflict that is very common in Israeli society.

Israeli society is uniquely coherent in a particular way that stems from the relatively homogenous cultural identity facilitated by Judaism, and this coherence is also strengthened by the fact that Israeli society was built in the face of and as a direct result of considerable adversity. I think that this does allow for a sort of groupthink that inhibits Israel's ability to treat the Palestinians in a humane manner, but the effect manifests itself through society as a sort of cultural blindness and it manifests through the political process as hawkish policy.

(Also, whether or not you think they had the right to build that society in the first place is beside the point right now, I'm only talking about the existence of the unifying influence of adversity, and the effect it has on policy and the national psyche)

The other component of it is the simple fact that Israelis are extremely insulated from the realities of the Palestinian sufferings.

Even in the heat of a conflict like this, Israelis can pretty much go about their lives unimpeded. It is true that the rocket attacks are disruptive and that there is on a whole an unacceptably high level of danger from external attacks, but Israelis have leveraged a security apparatus that minimizes these realities in day to day life to an astounding degree, all things considered, and this fact is a double edge sword that creates a perfect breeding ground for indifference.

One side of the sword is that these measures are extremely effective at improving the lives of Israelis in the short term. However the other side of the sword is that it obviously makes these measures popular and politically successful. Furthermore, with all the calm and prosperity, it is very easy to forget about the abysmal conditions being imposed on 1.8 million people just thirty kilometers or so from your doorstep. The only time they really have to deal with the issue is when there is an inevitable flareup of violence at which point, naturally, people tend to be less empathetic. The rest of the time, during the lulls, the prospect of empathy is just placed on the back burner.

These are the tendencies that need to be addressed.

However calling Israel the 4th Reich and placing so much focus on youtube videos that give Israel's religious fanatics undue prominence is just as useless and destructive as all the Israelis and Israel sympathizers who insist on viewing Palestinian society as an unchanging, violent monolith that is accurately represented by its extremist elements.

The fact of the matter is that there are significant movements within Israeli society that are in fact attempting to change these trends. The same is true of Palestinian society, however it is more difficult for those movements because of the repressions imposed by Hamas, culture and environment.

If there is to be any hope in this situation, Israel's role as the dominant, occupying force means that they have the first move. They will have to shift from focusing on isolation and self-preservation to one of empathy to the average Palestinian, an empathy that is so strong that they must be willing to take considerable personal risks and let up their stranglehold on Palestinian society and allow them to prosper.

Because only then will the environment be in any way conducive for Palestinians to take considerable personal risks and defy the status quo en masse. Only then will the false succor of violent religious extremism loose its appeal.

Until that happens, we'll the cycle seems to return to square one every two or three years and I expect to have this discussion again sometime around 2017.

Unfortunately, it is going to be a hard and unlikely road because it takes a lot of empathy and effort to rise up and take huge risks during the times of quiet when prosperity and security easily distract from the continuing plight of the Palestinians. These aren't common traits. Humans are a very tribal species and we're not good at this kind of stuff when it concerns someone different who you don't have to interact with. This challenge is hardly unique to the Jews.

I like him saying "I think we're more isolated today, you have facebook but do you go out and chat with your friends."

All I want to say is "Do You?" He seems to live a pretty solitary life, his partner is living in an entirely different house after all.

Your video, Alien Isolation on Oculus Rift - Jess Can't Cover Her Eyes, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

And since tagging it in the description probably doesn't insure it, *related=http://videosift.com/video/Alien-Isolation-on-Oculus-Rift-Jess-Cant-Cover-Her-Eyes

Alien Isolation on Oculus Rift - Andrew Freaks Out has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg on that post.

Alien Isolation on Oculus Rift - Jess Can't Cover Her Eyes has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

It's a clever rationalization of hypocrisy. If it's going to be taboo to observe patterns in groups of people demarcated by visible characteristics they were born with, be consistent about it. But I'd argue against that taboo.

What makes racism bad is treating people as specimens of a group rather than unique individuals. Group averages may differ slightly but there's tons of overlap. Common usage of the word "racism" unfortunately conflates a moral aspect (how to treat people) with an epistemological aspect (dogma that all groups are created exactly equal in every way). Epistemology shouldn't be moralized. I could give you lots of examples of sociological and psychological research getting muddled on account of an inflexible dogma that there couldn't be any heritable differences between groups other than the obvious superficial ones. I'd rather conceive of the word racism as a verb describing harmful actions towards people due to their group membership, not a noun denoting a thoughtcrime or speechcrime. Like church and state, or science and religion, epistemology and morality don't go together.

A priori based on generation times and mutation rates you should expect there could be 1/10 as much variation between historically isolated groups of humans as there is between breeds of dogs, since the most recent common ancestor of all domestic dogs is half as far back as humans' most recent common ancestor is (or rather was before 16th and 17th century explorers spread their sperm across the globe) but dogs breed a lot faster. Breeds of dogs demonstrably vary in many behavioral and psychological traits. It's not far fetched to suppose that a variety of environments over the past 100,000 years of humanity pushed population means of behavioral traits in various directions.

Clearly, these dogs did NOT spend their entire lives isolated in cages, or their muscles would have been atrophied to the point where they could barely move, let alone run around and socialize as they did when released into the yard for the first time. I'm not an apologist for animal experimentation, but let's be accurate, folks - these dogs all look to be in excellent physical and emotional condition.

@SDGundamX

Thanks!

@shveddy

Bit confused since you say there's a point of no return at the end, but yes your argument is not really about that.

People not meeting their nutritional needs right now is not due to an under supply but due to general poverty. If sufficient employment and income existed in impoverished countries the world supply of food would be able to cope. As far as a lack of balance, see my earlier point about bringing people out of poverty, closing global income gaps and all sharing the available resources.

I don't think you could characterise any of the global conflicts in the past 100 years as being primarily due to resource scarcity. Perhaps Japan's aggression in SE Asia around WWII because of its lack of energy resources but that's an isolated case in the post-Depression era brought about by misguided isolationist economic policies. If you really want to prevent resource wars, your best bet is to be a staunch advocate of free trade.

Large countries have gone to war because of personalities, territorial ambitions and a general desire for power, not out of necessity because of scarcity.

As far as a point of population balance, that's entirely subjective. Like I said before, his bandying around of exponential is completely unfounded. Population growth is rising at a much reduced rate, proportionate growth relative to current levels is much smaller than in the 1950s during the baby boomer period.

When you say 20Bn as an example, I don't think you appreciate how much we're going to plateau. Have a read of:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/06/daily-chart-10

9.6Bn by 2050
10.9Bn by 2100

There is a good chance we will never hit anywhere close to 20Bn short of life enhancing technology which at this point doesn't exist. If we do, then I could equally argue we will invent technology that will reduce our individual resource needs dramatically.

Do I wish population growth was lower and there were more for each of us? Sure. Louis CK has a great bit on it. Agreed on women's rights and education, but as with everything it's correlated to societal poverty. You may as well kill two birds with one stone by just focussing on that. Every policy action has an opportunity cost, given what I've said, I would rather focus on something more pressing.