True, and Israel’s hunt for german nazi’s in foreign jurisdictions sets some precedent in handling that sort of thing.

To me it seems naive to think that the disparity between the people of Gaza, and the people of Israel, is not dissimilar to the wealth inequality of the poor, and the rich. People seem to gloss over how modern western democracies generally got going – through violent revolutions with lots of dead rich people. And those movements were often seeded by essentially the middle class military, who the rich had paid to outfit with the intent that they’d carry out the upper class’s orders. People like Cromwell didn’t exactly wake up one day, and just happen to trip across a bunch of Cannons to point at the British royalty. Until there’d been that blunder from the nobility giving the military too much autonomy, coupled with the advent of Canons, the ability for regular peasants to rise up against the nobility and their goon squads was pretty fuckin limited. For such a revolutionary figure to emerge from a poor, downtrodden and financially bereft area such as Gaza, would just be highly improbable.

Like China hired gangs of thugs with bats to beat the shit out of Democratic advocates during the crack down in Hong Kong, and has taken out bounties on people living abroad who advocate too vocally for human rights in the region. You can’t realistically look at what went on there, in my view, and say that the people didn’t try really hard to maintain their civil liberties – but were beaten down quite explicitly by force and the sheer scale of resources available to the CCP. Yes, if there was some mass uprising all across the country they could spontaneously change their systems of governance – but that’s practically unheard of in real world countries of note in modern times. Taking a more realistic view of the situation doesn’t make it any better, in that things will most likely continue to suck for most people, but it at least sets more reasonable expectations.

Right, by that reasoning the people of Gaza are willingly allowing themselves to be genocided. They should just rise up and declare a democracy in the region.

Oh, wait, the real world doesn’t work like that.

Your phrasing of “allowing” implies that these guys are in power through some sort of legitimate electoral process. They’re both dictators, who claimed power through force and intimidation. There’s no “let” about it, nor any “say” in the situation from people at large.

Just because dictators demand to be called by western elected official terminology in translations to english media, doesn’t make them same animal. It’s propaganda meant to normalize their rule.

“should” mark a turning point in the war. But likely won’t.

For most people around the world, I think it’s been clear that what Israel’s doing in Gaza is inhumane for quite a while now. But directly challenging the Israeli government risks the ire of the United States. We’ve watched them sanction UN officials for calling out the situation in Gaza. We’ve seen them jack up tariffs on their closest allies at the mere hint of recognising palestine’s plight. There’s basically no political will to take action, and definitely not enough to take action on a timeline that’ll matter. I mean, most of the USA is shrugging as Trump continues down a path of fascism; I can’t imagine them shrugging at that, yet taking up the cause of people in Gaza.

Anyone who speaks the language / can go through to that RTL site able to tell us the specifics of the poll done? Like what was used for a sample, confidence level, etc.

One thing I’ve seen in other areas are polls claiming broad support for right wing politics, based on internet polls that have huge bias / confidence issues – like in Canada, they claim Alberta’s suddenly separatist, based on online polls where they can’t verify the respondents were even in Alberta. Elevating that sort of non-poll to news-worthy story is likely a combination of click bait journalism and right-wing/US propaganda biased.

That’s true, until it isn’t. And given how far they’ve gone so far, there aren’t really that many people effectively opposing their course.

There are some nukes in the hands of the UK, and some in the hands of France. I don’t recall hearing any other NATO partner as having their own nukes.

Israel has more of a nuclear deterrent than a place like Canada or Spain. Turkey has a large army, but against nuclear armed aggressor countries that’s less of a deterrent. The NATO of yesteryear, was a united block with Article 5 basically meaning “If you’re part of NATO, you’re protected from nuclear armed aggressors due to the general principle of mutually assured destruction should shit hit the fan”. Now, it’s “Russia can attack anyone they want, and the USA will assist as best they can. The US will also pressure NATO countries to buy sub-standard weapons that cannot be used without US approval; this helps the US prevent its new ally, Russia, from losing any conflict”. Sorta like how there are US controlled nukes in some NATO countries, that they can’t use for their own defense without the US go-ahead.

And anyone that thinks Trump / the USA is gonna go against Russia, hasn’t been paying attention to all the Putin cock America’s been sucking lately.

At this point, why bother with NATO? The US is unlikely to take any action if its allies are attacked – hell, they’d prolly join in on attacking their own allies.

I dunno. Whenever I see ‘separatist’ type polls out of ‘alberta’, the captions are almost always “this poll was done online, and we can’t actually verify that it was people from alberta responding. We can’t offer a confidence level in the data because it’s not a valid sample”.

So how keen alberta actually is on ditching Canada is, to me at least, still really wobbly. Could easily just be US interests who own media pushing a message (with the support of Danielle, since she’s a US oil industry lobbyist).

Wouldn’t designating a stall or two in the women’s as pee only, so that the pee’rs can go quicker without having to wait for people doin other stuff, basically rectify that… without needing to gum up the more efficient urinal situation men get? That way they’d have that ‘fast lane’ option, just like guys, while guys could still have the more convenient-for-their-body urinals to use. Maybe get an engineer to make like a pee-troth for women to squat along for peeing en masse, and designate half the bathroom to that, like how urinals are done in mens rooms.

Equity should generally be about improving the situation for the disadvantaged demo, without dragging everyone else down, no? Not causing added issue for existing people / setups is also an argument for lettin trans people go wherever they’re comfortable – cause it wouldn’t make sense to have to setup a bathroom for every gender identity out there.

You’re right, we likely won’t convince each other of the other’s view point, so not much point labouring over it in regards to Canada’s actions explicitly.

That said, back to the core point, I don’t think anything you’ve said changes my position that equating these two things cheapens the word Genocide.

To take a similar situation to clarify: Rape. Go back a decade or two, and Rape brought forward images of like, a guy hiding in a dark parking lot at night, jumping out and violently forcing himself on a woman. Or cases where the rapist broke into a single woman’s home and assaulted her. Now, in Canada for example, when a woman has an orgy with 5 guys, is recorded saying shit like “Get over here and fuck me you pussy”, and later decides she didn’t want to do that… it’s called rape. Or the Harvey situation, where women consenting to sex in exchange for power/privilege, is called rape. Advocacy groups make claims like over 50% of women have been raped, with the ‘broader’ understanding of the word. Even if some legal gits have structured arguments and bullshit so that the term ‘technically’ fits in the broader sense, people care a lot less now when someone like Trump is called a Rapist – the words been diluted to a point where its lost its power. If everyone’s a rapist, why be morally outraged?

Calling Canada’s actions over the course of more than a century a genocide does the same thing. Calling Canada’s actions a genocide, while dithering on whether Israel’s actions count, makes the term genocide far less impactful.

So do something similar in structure to the Dairy industry.

Also, supply/demand curves are very much capitalism. When demand goes down, and supply is high, price point goes down to maximize profit. If you want to maintain the price point when demand drops off, you limit supply – not by burning things you’ve already got, but by pulling back on logging / cutting down old growth trees. So, still a win if they go that route, though not as beneficial to Canadians in terms of building stuff.

Some of the cultural differences that got impacted included slavery amongst FN, particularly out towards BC’s coast – where about 25% of some bands were slaves from other groups. Outlawing slavery was something done around the initial forming of the country – basically as BC joined and at the start of it all with John A. Do you maintain it’s wrong to call the practice of slavery savage, and that Canada should’ve allowed such traditions to persist? The old systems often also maintained a hereditary chief setup, with the leaders being fixed / based on blood – something that doesn’t exactly mesh with democratic principles, such as all people being created equal, and deserving equal respect. The implementation of that principle is admittedly a work in progress, and has been since the country was formed: women not gettin a say till much later is proof enough of that. But just because the country didn’t recognise women’s rights from its initial founding, doesn’t make the whole country misogynistic. But I digress – should we go back to explicitly preferencing people based solely on their blood lines? Or are we wearing rose-colored glasses and absolving all the potential wrongs/ills of the earlier culture, in favour of only the positive elements we want to highlight today, to make it a one sided story?

215 bodies over 150+ years is bad, but it’s nothing compared to the 60k+ deaths occurring in Israel in the past year. Like the total number estimated to have died at residential schools is 6000 over the 150 years. That’s one tenth the number compared to what’s gone on in Israel in the past year – that 6000, would need to be closer to 9 million to have the same sort of scale. There weren’t even 9 million people in the entire country of Canada until sometime after the 1920s.

There were definitely issues on this front, and there was a higher mortality rate amongst FN during the period, but for a time frame that goes back to “before phones / vaccines were common”, I honestly don’t think that’s so clear cut. School age kid mortality rates in general were around 1 in 250 back in the early 1900s - it wasn’t until fairly recently that the mortality rate dramatically improved, to like 1 in 4000, largely due to vaccines and advances in medicine. And old graves from 150+ years ago, or even from like 50+ years ago, not having headstones/markers isn’t that uncommon – I’ve no clue where my grandparents are buried, and I’m pretty sure they don’t still have headstones. There’s no specific reason to think that the bodies in old, unmarked graves weren’t treated with respect and dignity at the time of their passing, based on the customs of the time: or do you really think that old time priests who were super devout / wanting to spread the word of god, were doing disrespectful things to corpses of people they considered part of their flock, on a regular/systematic basis? That’d be one hell of a leap, and it’d need a lot more evidence to convince me. The level of dignity given to the dead in these two situations is very different, even if those missionaries at the time failed to follow the specific burial rights of the FN.

I looked up / read a bit more about the 60s scoop here - not sure if that’s a good source. One of the reasons development differed significantly between on reserve and off-reserve communities, I’d posit, is that non-reserve land allows for individual Canadians to ‘own’ the land. That ownership leads to development of that land, as you hope to pass it on to your kids. We see this sort of thing even today, with “leasehold” 99 year lease properties that are tied to FN groups being far less desirable / lower price than regular freehold properties. We also see it in the clear hesitation of many banks/FIs to lend to FN based on res properties/businesses, as there are no assurances that the band won’t just declare the land theirs and negate the security. As much of the development of industry is done by private sector, the government was ill-equipped to handle a huge number of under developed communities needing funds/infrastructure, and being wholly reliant on the gov for such things, without private sector interest. The lack of development on reserves translated to shit living conditions, with high mortality rates, particularly for kids. While we can look back and say it was wrong now, I’m not sure whether it would’ve been ‘better’ to leave the kids in those conditions to die / live in abject poverty, assuming that the government couldn’t instantaneously deploy infrastructure to those remote communities. Hell, our government can’t do anything of that sort even today. Realistically, one thing that’s missing from the discourse is “What should’ve been done better back then, given the real socio-economic situation of the time?”

I’d want a source for the RCMP comment, if you can? The history that I can see about it, does not align with your claim. I admit that the sources of that history could be biased though, so I wouldn’t refute your comment, but I won’t believe it either without some far more significant evidence. Like the RCMP site claims that the NWMP (precursor to the RCMP) first got started to basically defend FN from attacks by US Whiskey traders out west – seems a bit different than what you’re claiming, without a source… ? I mean, it’s basically the opposite, in that it was a response by Canada to try and defend/protect people in the west, specifically FN, with FN guides integrated into the force.

Does Canada’s history have issues? Sure. But it’s disingenuous to frame it entirely as a one sided thing, and to villainize one group while absolving the other. And in comparison to Israel’s actions in the past year, Canada has not, to my knowledge, ever done anything nearing that level of direct, pointed hostility / brutality. But by all means, prove me wrong – point me to the evidence that Canada rolled in to FN communities with the military, slaughtered everyone while laughing about it, and then dug mass graves to carelessly throw the dead babies in.

Equating what Canada did as part of its bumbling attempts at cultural integration to what Israel is doing today, or what Nazi germany did previously, is an inappropriate softening of the term Genocide. It cheapens and diminishes the moral insanity, the utter depravity, of what Israel is doing.

So … I live in the province that’s most impacted by this (BC), but not in a logging area. I gotta admit I’m not really sure how to think about this particular tariff area, despite all the media scare mongering over the years.

Like we hear about mills closing, and logs getting shipped 400km from small communities with closed mills, to get turned into pulp at big mills, generally for export to other countries. And those closures have been ongoing for like decades now, with a seemingly shrinking market presence north of the border despite our governments feigned attempts to take action, and all the free trade stuff that’s been in play. K.

We also hear about the high cost of construction, and have a serious housing problem – with the government saying they’re gonna try addressing that issue more in the next 5 or so years.

We’ll need lumber to make those houses. We can use lumber to make furniture for those houses. Hell, we can use lumber to make things like the towels/dishcloths that go into those houses. We use lumber for our ass paper in those houses. If the US doesn’t want to buy it as a result of them tariffing it to shit, why not sell it cheap to local manufacturers to supply local demand with local product?

One thing I’ve often heard, is that BC exports raw stuff down south, and then we end up buying back processed goods, which seems kinda wrong to me. If those manufacturing facilities are generally south of the border currently… it can’t be that difficult to get em setup up here. I mean, shit, with all those closed mills… repurpose them, and repurpose the people who were in that industry, to be slightly further down that supply chain… no?

The UN declared Canada a genocidal country because over a period of about 150 years there was a higher mortality rate amongst FN, and the government forceably sent them to school to learn to read/write, which ended up screwing up things like their oral tradition culture. Personally, I’d argue that was more a matter of cultural integration, with a misguided/mismanaged school system lead by a religious group – and that religious group was definitely keen on indoctrinating people into their faith, as religious groups are, but they’re at semi-arms length from the regular population/government. Graveyards where people were buried didn’t have headstones after 150 years, resulting in constant media spam about unmarked graves, with some less than brilliant idiots equating unmarked graves to mass graves even to this day. But still, Canada’s history is basically genocidal right up until 2020 at least, according to the UN.

But they can’t seem to figure out that Israel’s mass graves with bulldozers just piling in corpses, explicit targeting of journalists and people seeking aid/food, flattening of whole neighbourhoods, killing crazy amounts of civilians, forced starvation complete with dying babies, and with a population on the Israeli side that’s openly saying shit like “We gotta kill the babies otherwise they’ll grow up to be terrorists. They’re all cockroaches”… on this one, we’re not so sure.

Someone make it make sense.

Shipping by rail is generally quicker, at a relatively low price point, and with far less ecological impact.

Shipping things like produce via sea to/from Mexico would likely result in a lot of spoiled food. Larger non-perishables it ‘might’ work, but you wouldn’t bother if you have a cheap, less damaging and quicker option available.

Canada’s economy has never been about using our resources, it’s been about trying to find ways to sell resources to others, so that they can make products and sell those products back to us.

And us applying tariffs on China is almost entirely about US interests, not Canadian. Just look at EVs, and how we block Chinese EVs to protect US auto makers, under the guise of a “Canadian industry” that doesn’t exist. Doug managed to screw the entire country out of cheap, high quality EVs by trotting out an “Arrow” vapourware car that was only ever intended to be used to prove to US/international auto makers that Canada can make the various components that go in to an EV – ie. a fancy brochure / proof of concept to try and suck up to US car makers.

There are agreements in place to facilitate the transit of goods via rail/truck through the USA, without onerous tariffs involved. Just like there are agreements in place to allow for transit of goods through Canada up to Alaska.

Could the fascists in the USA impact those trade routes? Sure. But they haven’t yet, and there’s been no explicit talk of it as far as I’ve seen at least. The most ‘noise’ on this front was caused, briefly, by the premier of BC saying they were going to tax trucks going to Alaska – a threat they backed down from almost immediately, as they realised what it’d likely open the doors for in terms of Canada / Mexico trade routes.

If you believe there were mass graves in a similar vein as you see in Israel, Nazi Germany, or other similar genocides, you haven’t looked into it all that much. There was no mass execution of First Nations. They had a higher rate of death among children as a demographic over a roughly 150 year period during the operation of the Residential schools. There were children that died while at residential schools – some who were buried in unmarked graves and/or buried in places their next of kin didn’t know. Even the headlines that get posted generally highlights that they’re “unmarked” graves, not “mass” graves in recognition of this fact. This was mostly during the earlier parts of that time line, where things like “phones” were less common (so you couldn’t call their parents), the older generation couldn’t read/write (so a letter to notify parents may’ve been sent but would be less effective), and moving a corpse across the country to a small remote community was incredibly expensive. The times journalists try to sensationalize it and claim it as a ‘mass grave’, they’re generally referring to an area with multiple unmarked graves, where the children were laid to rest by the church (individually) – basically a big graveyard without headstones, that formed over the 100+ year period, as the church buried kids incrementally one by one over that period.

But the Church was never rounding up and executing children by the hundreds in a planned approach to snuff out the lives of an entire people. The root of the ‘genocide’ is/was that the Church and Canada was (arguably) intentionally and systematically using the residential school system to convert FN into more western ways of thinking and cultures (“killing” the culture, not the people – sorta more like how Russia abducted a bunch of Ukrainian kids, and is systematically indoctrinating them into Russia). That, coupled with an aggregate statistic over a century, is what’s used to call Canada genocidal and lump the country in with what’s going on in Israel currently.