That is not my reading of the history. My understanding is that Manitoba came into existence as a result of peaceful Metis activism and was to be a Metis "homeland." The violence only started when the federal government realized that maybe wealth and power was flowing to the "wrong" people and took action to "correct" that, culminating in the Battle of Batoche, where Metis took their last stand against land theft and further displacement.
I'm an old white guy, but was raised to view the Metis and their leaders as heroes in the struggle against Ottawa's exercise of unjust control over the Prairie Provinces. I'm about as far from a Western Separatist as can be, but I firmly believe that Western Separatism is a continuation of that struggle, despite now excluding those who fought and died and, yes, killed during the earliest days of that struggle.
I'm not a doomer because the problem is technically intractable (more on that later). Nor because I can't do enough to change our trajectory. Nor because we (society as a whole, including corporations and governments) can't do anything to change our trajectory.
Nope, I'm a doomer because dealing with this problem is a social problem with its foundations in evolution. It has not and never had been a technical problem. We have the technologies and have had many of them for 50 or even 100 years.
There was more than enough evidence by 1970 to support hypotheses going back to the 1800s; more than enough to justify global initiatives. Yet, by c. 1980, that evidence was being not just studiously ignored, but treated as nonsense. And that programme of dismissal didn't just continue, but grew ever more elaborate and normalized.
There were good ideas and technologies available in 1970 that, had they been acted upon and deployed would likely have greatly mitigated and possibly solved the problem. At the very least, we would have been on the right path 50 years ago instead of arguing about the best way to deal with what our inaction has turned into a crisis.
Now, at 67, I'm starting to think that the problem might be technically intractable for the simple reason that we've waited too long. But even if that is completely wrong, it's clear to me that it is not just socially intractable, but impossible.
While individual humans may have the necessary foresight and behaviour, collectively, as a species, we simply don't have what it takes to see and understand and act when there are compounding effects. Whether it's savings, debts, or ecological and environmental impact, our poor little brains cannot reliably deal with anything other than pure linearity as applied to small numbers and tightly constrained systems. Nor, it seems, are we capable of reliably deferring to those who have managed to acquire the necessary skills.
In the same ways that the very nature of a nonhuman species can lead to population collapse or extinction under changing circumstances, so are we doomed to play out a similar script. I just didn't anticipate that we'd hit the wall while there were still just 4 digits in our year or that we'd be at risk of succumbing to something so simple.
On the one hand, I think you need to put trigger warnings on that shit.
On the other, part of me is pissed that, at 67, I might not live long enough to say "I fucking told you so!" to all the idiots around me and have it mean anything.
Several years ago I came across a graph showing relative tax revenues collected from companies and individuals. I don't remember the details, but there was a time when the tax revenues came mostly (or maybe equally?) from corporate taxes and now they come mostly from personal income taxes.
It seems to me that going back to that would be a good place to start. Once we have companies paying for the systems that allow them to thrive, we can tackle personal wealth/income taxation disparities.
I didn't see any "shit journalism." I saw many references to external sources, including some from police forces themselves. That argues against confirmation bias, the more general bias that what doesn't meet expectations is more likely to get reported, and mere sensationalism.
Obviously, that does not mean that there was no selection bias in the choice of references. If you have alternative sources, use them or point us in the right direction so we can find them.
When recognizing that someone seems to be generalizing, it's worth asking whether that's because it is based on underlying facts or is just in service of an ulterior motive. My take (which may be just confirmation bias) is that the underlying facts argue in favour of some generalization.
Not all police are bad and neither are all departments and forces. But there are too many clear cases of bad behaviour to just ignore the possibility that there really is a general problem that must be dealt with.
I think that's a good point. Just off the top of my head, it strikes me that many political and activist slogans are like that. Maybe it's because short and pithy are antithetical to clarity or exclusivity.
One thing that the automatic summary missed is this important paragraph:
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party also echoed “river to the sea” phrasing in its founding charter as a way to say his government doesn’t recognize Gaza or the West Bank, according to Dr. Dagher, who was a Canadian government analyst overseeing Ottawa’s international aid to those occupied territories from 2007 to 2011. Still, she acknowledged that the phrase can be terrifying to Jewish people especially since Hamas has also placed the phrase in its charter as a call to erase Israel.
So both sides of the conflict have used the phrase as a way to dismiss the claims of the other, although it's origin is as a Palestinian slogan. According to this Wikipedia page, there have historically been multiple interpretations of exactly what is meant when using that phrase and those variations continue. In fact, as of this writing, neutrality of this article is disputed with the relevant talk page raising what could be conflicting concerns, most notably the issue of whether we take the meaning from the users' claims or from those holding opposing views.
So it is. I was reading that as being applicable to the general public, not necessarily including the political class. That's what I read, though, not what was said.
Been there, done that. Simply joining the political class is insufficient. I now work even earlier in the process: family, friends, acquaintances, and community groups.
You're right in that the solution is ultimately to change who belongs to the political class, but that requires a lot of organizing from outside the machine in order to develop the skills and programs and platforms.
I'm just disillusioned by the fact that too few people follow the science, understand the research, think logically, are willing to give new things an honest try, or show a modicum of decency.
While I don't disagree with the sentiment, there is more to duty to than showing up to vote. What about the duty of the political class to offer real alternatives and then pursue the realization of those alternatives? If the only choices are in the details of how we get screwed over, it's not exactly that big a deal whether we vote or not.
That sounds like the confectionary that stopped carrying a particular chocolate bar because they couldn't keep it stock. True story.
If they can't keep up to infractions, the solution is not to ignore infractions but to scale up. Or, in this case, put some traffic engineers on the case to see what's special about that stretch of road.
They could add it to the actual labour code instead of making it standalone. Anything in the federal code becomes the baseline for provincial labour code. For example, every provincially regulated industry must provide at least 1/26 annual earnings as vacation pay, because it's not legal to write a provincial code that is "less than" the federal code. Provinces like SK have bumped that to 3/52 for their provincially regulated industries, but cannot choose to reduce it below 1/26.
I can't imagine there being that many jobs critical to public health and safety where there aren't already mechanisms in place to allow for low-risk job action. It's not like there is a glut of suitably trained people just waiting around to work as scabs.
So, yes, the only purpose of this exception is to allow companies to play games with strange and wondrous definitions of what constitutes "public health and safety".
I'm retired from fire and rescue. I will never forget the words spoken during orientation on my first day: "The toughest decision you will face will be the one where you choose to not add to the death toll. Remember that there are only two ways to go a funeral: as a mourner or the mourned."
Training, equipment, a plan, a way out. If you don't have all four, you don't go in.
This is not a criticism of the would-be rescuers, but a warning to those present. If there is any blame, it should be placed at the feet of those so afraid of negative reaction that they don't make these points as part of any reporting on such tragedies. There is a duty to inform and educate that transcends how people react.
That is not my reading of the history. My understanding is that Manitoba came into existence as a result of peaceful Metis activism and was to be a Metis "homeland." The violence only started when the federal government realized that maybe wealth and power was flowing to the "wrong" people and took action to "correct" that, culminating in the Battle of Batoche, where Metis took their last stand against land theft and further displacement.
I'm an old white guy, but was raised to view the Metis and their leaders as heroes in the struggle against Ottawa's exercise of unjust control over the Prairie Provinces. I'm about as far from a Western Separatist as can be, but I firmly believe that Western Separatism is a continuation of that struggle, despite now excluding those who fought and died and, yes, killed during the earliest days of that struggle.