Also interesting:

The town of Point Roberts Washington, just south of Vancouver, BC, as well as the not exactly populated Northwest Angle, in Minnesota, both American exclaves.

The only overland routes from America to either location require crossing two borders.

*related https://videosift.com/video/Canada-The-United-States-Bizarre-Borders-Part-2

Similarly, I find this to be a prime example of how borders are really, meant to be broken down. The only ones that truly care are xenophobes et al, politicians and corporations.

We had crazy hazy days here in Seattle area from those BC wildfires! Our air quality was worse than Beijing I think! It was really amazing to see in the video how far that smoke reached.

Yeah, wildfires up here in BC at the top left sucked this year.

Well, they always suck, but we approached neutron star sucking this past summer.

@newtboy

i think what bcglorf is suggesting,and correct me if i am wrong bc,is that the ideological intolerance that is permeating the far left,and creeping into the current media narrative...is turning people away from the left and driving them further right.

that how the ultra-left deals with criticism by labeling ALL criticism as an attack,and not a functioning dynamic of dialogue,is counter-productive and again..drives people further right.

so what is a moderate to do?

on the alt-right they have a choice of a grotesque and vulgar racist political philosophy akin to the "aryan supremacy" of the 30's dressed up as nationalism and patriotism.

and on the alt-left they have an equally grotesque group who subvert freedoms and liberties all in the name of "equality" and "tolerance".while single-handedly being the most intolerant of them all.

fascists to the left of me..
fascists to the right..
and here i am..
stuck in the middle...

I am so confused, because the URL in the video is to the West Van PD in BC. I mean, it says .ca and I followed the link.

I would just like to point out that, here in BC, right hand drive cars are 25% more likely to be in an accident than left hand drive cars.

It's unnatural.


Just sayin.

that was cool. If you are a snowboarder or skier, I couldn't recommend Blackcomb/Whistler in BC enough. Definitely, the best place I've ever skied.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's from here:
This quote is attributed to Nobel laureate Baruch Blumberg. In a late 80s PBS documentary, he said half of all human deaths 'may' have been due to malaria.

While it sounds astounding, it's plausible when you think about it. 93% of all humans ever born are dead. But it's a highly speculative business starting from how many people have ever lived.

Prof Carl Haub has come up with an estimate of 108 billion people since 50,000 BC. And only 6.5% of these are alive today. How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

So did malaria cause the death of roughly 54 billion people? We can speculate. More than 96 billion of these 108 billion lived between 8000 BC and 1900 AD. For malaria to have caused the death of 54 billion people, it should have kept up a phenomenal rate of 5.4 million deaths per year in the last 10,000 years.

WHO estimates of 650,000 deaths per year now seem wildly off the mark. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a study to find out how many deaths occur due to malaria in today's day and age. The number was 1.24 million in 2010! http://www.bbc.com/news/health-1...

So it's certainly plausible that malaria could have killed five times as many in an age pre-dating modern medicine when most of the world lived as communes along with their cattle and herds.

Also, the longevity of the parasite plasmodium, which causes malaria. Studies have revealed that it's been around since the time of the dinosaurs. And certainly been around from the beginning of our story. http://www.malaria.com/questions...

Entirely plausible!

https://www.quora.com/The-Human-Race-and-Condition-Is-it-true-that-mosquitoes-have-killed-more-than-half-of-all-the-people-who-have-ever-lived

I was going to call dupe on you but like he says at the end, he did an earlier video with Elizabeth.
*related=https://videosift.com/video/Solitary-Figure-Skater-On-a-BC-Mountain-Lake.

Solitary Figure Skater On a BC Mountain Lake has been added as a related post - related requested by nanrod.

Sounds ok, but I would prefer all of California, not just the far north where I am (and that's part of the cascadia fault zone). Also, is Canada OK with part of BC leaving? That seems like another fly in the ointment to me, but I would welcome them.

YES WE CAN!
I saw somewhere about Washington, Oregon and parts of BC becoming Cascadia awhile back.
I'm in!

@newtboy
you misunderstood.

respectable investigative journalists gain that respect by being consistent with their reporting.

chris hedges is such a journalist.

but,by your metric,him being on RT negates that respect.now this is an assumption on my part,but i am using your words to come to that assumed conclusion.you have yet to agree or disagree with what chris hedges is saying,choosing instead to attack the medium in which he is saying it.this is your right,i just happen to disagree with you on this matter.

i refer back to one of my original comments,and a point i tried (and i guess failed?) to reiterate:discernment is the key.

so in a sense..yes..it is our responsibility to do our due diligence to vette the veracity of an investigative reporter.

those "reporters" who shill for either the democrats or republicans reveal themselves as the whores they are fairly quickly.

demagogues can almost be instantly identified due to their constant appeals to emotion.(keith olbermans new youtube channel from GQ "the resistance" comes to mind).

and reporters who are simply bad or lazy are quickly revealed as well.by other reporters.

let's take @bcglorf review of chomsky,and how chomsky is singular in his constant criticism of american foreign policy and asks the question "why can't he,just for once,speak on the positives that america has done in the world,or speculate on what could have happened had american not intervened in third world country A or B".(paraphrased)

now this is not an entirely unfair question,and in chomsky's books..he does address the very specifics that bcglorf would like to see chomsky address,but in lectures you are lucky to get a sentence in regards to such subjects.

but notice that while bcglorf would like to see chomsky speak in more broad terms,he never once questions the veracity of the details chomsky is laying down.

do you know why?
because chomsky does his homework,and backs up everything he says.

bcglorf respects chomsky for this,while simultaneously wishing he changed the channel once in awhile.

bcglorf utilized discernment to come to the conclusion that chomsky is a worthy,if infuriating,read/listen.

i do not mean to be speaking for Bc,and maybe i am missing the mark by a long shot using him as an example (if i did,please forgive Bc).

but my basic point is that we ALL discriminate and discern using our own subjective tools,our experiences and ultimately our understandings.

the problem here,and it is the underlying message on this thread,is confirmation bias.

we all know about this,and this election cycle REALLY brought this up to the forefront.

what i find interesting,and always makes me giggle,is how people will point to the "mainstream media" as an outlet for:propaganda,fake news,biased and slanted news ..but..it is NEVER the news THEY consume.the news THEY consume is hard hitting journalism.

so when i see people dismiss a piece that may happen to be on a questionable outlet..i laugh..because MOST outlets are ALL questionable.

so yes my friend,it is up to us to discern what is valid and what is bullshit.secondary sources help.concrete,trackable sources help and discussing and talking with one another is probably the greatest help of all.

but if you reside in an echo chamber,and everybody is just smelling each other farts.then some information may come as a shock.

my faith dictates my politics.
i am a dissident,and a radical.
the dynamic is always "power vs powerlessness",and i am always on the side of the powerless.

so it should be no surprise that on my list are people such as chomsky or hedges.

because they criticize power.

@bcglorf
i was gonna respond,and most likely fail,in expressing what @radx nailed.

which,again,embarasses the fuck out of me,because @radx is german and english is his second language and he STILL beats me to a pulp when talking about these matters.

but i will add that we NEED dissenting voices.
we NEED people critical of power,the excesses of power and the abuse of power.

i totally agree with you Bc that we need balance,but for that balance to even EXIST,we have to have all voices heard.

how can you or i come to a well reasoned,and rationale conclusion if parts of the book are not even being allowed to be spoken out loud?
because it just happens to conflict with a current narrative the political elite are trying to shove down our throats.

the dynamic is NOT republican vs democrat,nor liberal vs conservative.

the dynamic is power vs powerlessness.

and let me be clear,because maybe some here are misunderstanding my support of hedges as somehow translating to supporting putin.

this is false.
i support hedges because of his stellar work.
putin is a thug who murders political enemies and challengers,and russia itself is dominated by oligarchs.russia is a fucking mess.

these are two separate issues,and to conflate them and apply that metric to my words is simply wrong.

I would say that Stalin, the Kin Jong's, Various African Tribal Genocides, and Pol Pot might disagree with your account of wholesale slaughter being reserved for the 'white' Europeans and their descendants. That is just to name a few. Also, what is a 'white' European? I mean the southern Europeans have quite a bit of Moorish blood in them, do they still count as 'white'?

All sarcasm aside, your argument is extremely flawed. Conquerors tend to lay waste to the societies they conquer, not always in terms of total lives lost, but in terms of cultural death. The reason why 'white' people are vilified for this lately is because for the past several hundred years they have been the ones expanding and taking over the regions you speak of. This is not exclusive to a skin color or originating locale, it is absolutely a core of our human nature.

I gave some examples earlier of non-European conquerors, but they are fairly recent. If we look in history at other groups, we find the same meme. The Steppe Horse Tribes were BRUTAL to cities and countries that did not capitulate. Look up "Measuring against the linchpin". That saying came from the fact that if you resisted Mongol rule, they would slaughter every male taller than the linchpin of a wagon wheel. The Aztecs and Mayans ruled southern American empires through great brutality, including human sacrifice for 'religious' purposes. Recent discoveries even indicate that it was considered a good omen if the sacrifices were crying in pain before they were to die. Remains recently found showed "All shared one feature: serious cavities, abscesses or bone infections painful enough to make them cry."

Slavery originated as early as human recorded history, if not sooner. Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations. Mass slavery requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Although slavery in some form or another existed in most European countries, it wasn't until after contact with the Arabic African slave traders that it soared in the 15th and 16th centuries.

tl;dr

You are referring to recent history to make an example while completely ignoring THOUSANDS of years of similar history. All humanity is flawed, narrowing it down to a singular group with cherry picked data is not going to persuade anyone with a brain.