an influx of thousands of people will eventually grow the size of the economy by the nature of the economic development required to accommodate them. you can't add thousands of people without creating thousands of jobs: you need more food, more housing, more transit, etc. that job creation should largely offset downward pressures on wages - especially of there's a minimum wage and service jobs are already at or near it.
but, let's take a step back. who says they want to stay forever?
syria has some problems with freedom of expression, but (under normal circumstances) it's not a place where people are starving. it's a secular country. it has a welfare state with social services. syrians would broadly be better off in syria, if it were properly functioning, than they would be in the united states. home is an intangible concept. and a lot of people will go home when it's safe. not everybody, but plenty.
the question is whether it will ever be safe. and it won't be if the united states continues to funnel weapons to isis through the saudis, and the saudis maintain their policies in the region. but, i don't think this is particularly amenable to pressure, even if it were to materialize. the saudi regime is not really a rational agent.
i don't like war, but my honest assessment is that a serious one is building in this region that will primarily pit the saudis against the turks, and that we will need to take the turks' side on - eventually. and, that's going to be extremely messy. the alliances in this region are quite complex. we tend to compare every conflict to world war two, because we're trained to. this one looks more like world war one, where it's not entirely clear who is fighting who or even why they're fighting when they are.
i don't think we can just accept the spread of salafism like this. but this is not the era of conscription. being a soldier in today's world requires a lot of training and a specific kind of mindset. we can't force people to fight. and, it's not in our recent history to do this, either. there is no circumstance where it is justifiable to give civilians guns and march them off as cannon fodder.
but, it doesn't change the reality that there is no clear, short-term answer. if we withdraw altogether, we're telling these people that they can never go home - because the extremists will have won. and, that merely sets up future battles. it's appeasement, and appeasement always fails. if we keep bombing like we are, we're just fueling an endless war. to get to the root causes means to get to the funding of these groups and cut them off. but, there's no political will to do this, and very little understanding of what it even means to do this.
i'm partial to the idea that accepting large amounts of refugees comes with the _obligation_ of helping them go home. not as an expulsion strategy. but, as a part of the humanitarian process of alleviating the problem. what's frustrating is the impossibility of following through with this obligation, given the current policies in washington.
www.cbc.ca/news/world/refugees-austria-germany-1.3217421
Never 4Get - Never 4Give....(The 1 Who Lies)
.... uh so by that rational I guess India with 1.2b people must be doing great...
Jessica Murray
again with your "most absurd possible" comparisons. i'd like to visit your planet some day to get a better understanding of it, but i'm sure glad i don't live there.
obviously, europe would have a hard time allowing 800 million people in at the same time. that's a lot more people than 800,000.
but, india's problems are not due entirely to overpopulation, either. that's a complicated discussion that i'm not going to bite on.
Western U.
What do you call recent history...because in WW2 conscription was in several countries...and right now if your in Israel, male or female you have to enlist...the States had conscription for Vietnam....Canada has had conscription...Germany sure did...as did Russia...don't know if they still do...all forces are cannon fodder...it is just a matter of who gives in first.
Jessica, it has been an endless war for centuries...it isn't going to change anytime soon, and I doubt in your lifetime...there are just some places on the planet that you don't plan a vacation and the Middle East is one of them.
Jessica Murray
canada has not had conscription in it's recent history, and it allowed americans who were conscripted against their will to settle here during vietnam. if you would prefer to live in a country with conscription, i would suggest migrating to north korea.
it hasn't been an endless war of this nature for centuries - there have been very long periods of stability and relative prosperity. some people will no doubt jump through hoops of rationalization that allow them to deduce that the levant belongs to the saudis, and they're carrying out their extremism in their sphere of influence. not only do i have a hard time doing that, i feel we should be helping the opposition forces in saudi arabia, proper. it's a regime that we shouldn't just not let spread but should be actively working against.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
so, i'm a pretty typical left-leaning liberal voter in a lot of ways. in other ways, i'm out of the spectrum. but, on budgets i think i represent that liberal-ndp split constituency.
the writer of this article sounds like a red tory. and, that's ok. but, let's be clear about a few things.
to begin with, the voters that the writer speaks of are conservatives. the liberals can hold them for a while, when the conservatives are riding low in the polls. but, unless the liberals decided to make a fundamental shift to the right, they cannot hold them in the long run. and, even if they do make a fundamental shift to the right, it is not clear that they will hold them; party allegiances are a messy truth. we know from years of polling and election results that the conservatives essentially never push under 30%. that means that for the liberals to make a strategy of holding these voters, they would limit themselves to the mid 20s in the polls. it's a formula for certain failure.
moving back from this may help harper a tad, sure. i'm not sure the dynamics of this election are such that harper can really get those votes back in the next month. next year, maybe. i think the red tories are broadly fed up right now and are swinging red. but, it's a dead-end for the liberals in the long run; once the red tories go back, they're back at ignatieff levels - or worse, because pushing balanced budgets for months is just bleeding them to death on the left.
so, by pushing balanced budgets and fiscal conservatism, the liberals will merely find themselves pushed up against a brick wall of tory support - whatever it is, in the worst case (for the tories). 27%. 25%. any further, and the party begins to fracture.
now, if there's a strategy there, it's that - to fracture the conservatives and try and walk in. but, as mentioned that is only feasible if it means becoming conservatives. progressive conservatives, perhaps. but, conservatives nonetheless. you can't command a conservative base unless you're a conservative party - it's a rational statement, but even if we accept that the world is not rational, it nonetheless holds due to the nature of conservative supporters. in fact, they'd even have to change their name. conservative supporters will never vote for the liberal party in the long term.
but what happens when they're fighting over the center-right vote, however small it is? if it's the red tory vote, it's about 8-10%. well, what happens is that the 30% of the vote on the left moves entirely to the ndp. and, gee, what did we see happen when he *was* walking around sounding like a fiscal conservative?
i don't think they're out of this. they're apparently beating the ndp pretty soundly in ontario. and, the numbers in quebec are misleading (mid to high 20s could triple their existing seat count).
but, you're right that it's not just about this election - it's about the viability of the party. there's nowhere to go on the right. because somebody like me will never vote for you if you're campaigning on balanced budgets.
and, what do i actually think about budgets?
it's a non-issue for me. i understand that it's mostly meaningless. so, i care about funding things first, and paying for it later. when somebody says "i'm going to balance the budget", what i hear is "i'm going to cut services". the budget itself is meaningless to me. it's the cutting services part that i don't like.
and, i don't think the polling on the issue is surprising. i don't think that stephen harper was elected in order to balance the budget. i think that stephen harper was elected because paul martin cut services to balance the budget, and a lot of liberal voters didn't like that. note that it's not that we didn't like the balanced budget. we didn't care about that at all. we didn't like the cut in services.
what i'm hoping is that the liberal party has had the epiphany they need. it might not win them this election. but, it seems like it has taken them off the road to collapse.
when it seemed certain that he was going to campaign on balanced budgets, i was thinking the ndp could hit 50% support with a bit of luck.
now that the situation has shifted, i think the race is really up in the air. and, we're going to watch the polls flip because of it.
and, again: it's not the budget itself. it's because "balanced budgets" is code for "cutting services". that's what we hear. and we don't like that. because we're not conservatives. we know conservatives like that, and that's fine. but we're not conservatives...
but, let's be clear: it is not *only* that trudeau walked away from the ideology (and that is what it really is) of balanced budgets.
it is *also* that mulcair drank the kool-aid.
if it's just one or the other, it's a wash. it's the difference that is going to result in some movement. because what voters (on the left, specifically) actually *hear* is that mulcair is going to cut services and trudeau isn't.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/05/trudeaus-deficit-gamble-and-the-fight-for-the-left/
(deleted post)
you know, i've been noticing this perspective quite a bit from ndp supporters, paid or not, and it's really rather amazing. i'm presenting a very informed perspective, here. you have a lot of gall to suggest that *i'm* the one that's lacking in intelligence. and, that's just a reflection of the facts in the case.
i'm not somebody that's going to go waving it around like a flag, but i'm actually somebody that's been identified as of extreme intelligence since i was in grade school. they had me at a grade 10 reading and math level when i was eight. every standardized test i've ever done is at the 99th percentile. they put me through all kinds of enriched programs as a kid. i have the equivalence of a masters degree in mathematics, a bachelor's degree in computer science and a number of minors in diverse subjects, including law - and it's rare to see somebody with degrees in both technical fields and literary fields. the competency testing i've done for employment purposes has also continuously been very high. i'm actually rather certain that the reason i couldn't get a job in the federal government is that my test scores are too high; i've been to several interviews where the interviewers can't believe the scores they're seeing, and have told me they've never seen anything like it.
and, you have the gall to question my intelligence, because i'm aware of the historical fact that ndp governments always slash spending, and that mulcair has in fact promised as much?
it's astounding.
and, it's the kind of arrogance that doesn't belong on the left.
dtgraham
Personally I've never doubted your almost unimaginable brilliance, but you might want to take a second look at the grammar, syntax, and sentence structure of the post you just left. It kind of detracts from someone who puts Pascal and Oppenheimer to shame.
deathtokoalas
this is another interesting perspective that i get a lot. it's funny that it rarely crosses people's mind that i may write the way i do entirely consciously; that i may actually reject certain rules of grammar out of principle, rather than out of ignorance.
consider capitalization, for example. you'll notice that i almost never capitalize anything - i will capitalize things sardonically from time to time, but that's about it. it's not some accident. it's not that i'm unaware of when things "should" be capitalized. it's that i reject the idea of capitalization. call me an anti-capitalist. or perhaps an alphabetical egalitarian. but, i am of the firm opinion that the way we use capitalization in every day writing is a process of enforcing hierarchical relationships in our minds. and, i would argue that changing the language is a part of changing the way we think about hierarchical relationships. when i refuse to capitalize the ceo or the prime minister or any other position of authority, there's a reason for it - and hopefully that seeps in a little, when people are reading what i write.
i'd also invite any linguist to really carefully analyze the way that i write, because there's an underlying recursive logic to it. the tendency to stop at a conjunction, for example. it's against the rules, and i know that, but it think it's a more expressive way to get across what i'm trying to get across in the way that i'm trying to get it across. i'll stop and start where i want, not where i'm ordered to.
by constructing rules of grammar into stone and forcing children to obey those rules, we're ordering their thoughts for them. we're setting the terms of how they think. if we want a really free thinking society, that's one of the first things we need to reverse.
grammar should be unique to the individual. we should all have our own idiosyncratic systems of grammar that uniquely reflect our own thoughts, and how we choose to express them.
that said, and as mentioned, you'll notice the writing is very logical in the way that it splits ideas into small pieces. you are really reacting to it's exaggerated underlying logic. but, this is forum writing, not formal writing - it is simple by nature. my essays, on the other hand, tend to be in the 30s in terms of flesch-kincaid readability scores.
but, this article is not about me. so, let's move on.
i just want to clarify what i said in the first post with concrete numbers.
base conservative support is around 30%
red tory swing support is around 8%.
so, if the conservatives are running around 30% and the liberals are running around 28%, that means you're looking at actual liberal support of the liberal party at somewhere around 20%. it's easy to understand this given current events. keep in mind that the liberals were running close to 40% in the late 90s, while the tory-reform vote combined to around 38%.
if the liberals were to run on balanced budgets (thereby further alienating it's left flank) and any kind of "event" were to happen that would swing red tory support back home, it would put them back in ignatieff territory.
further, there is almost no way they could poll much higher than 30% with that strategy, even in a worst case scenario for the conservatives.
it follows that the only way they have a chance of winning any election - this one or the next one - is to try and win back the huge number of voters they lost on the left.
it's really not even a choice.
(deleted post)
what i'm pointing out here is that they can't win by campaigning on the right because they've already hit their maximal potential of red tory swing voters, and the barrier is around 30%. please re-read what i wrote and try harder to understand it.
the writer of this article sounds like a red tory. and, that's ok. but, let's be clear about a few things.
to begin with, the voters that the writer speaks of are conservatives. the liberals can hold them for a while, when the conservatives are riding low in the polls. but, unless the liberals decided to make a fundamental shift to the right, they cannot hold them in the long run. and, even if they do make a fundamental shift to the right, it is not clear that they will hold them; party allegiances are a messy truth. we know from years of polling and election results that the conservatives essentially never push under 30%. that means that for the liberals to make a strategy of holding these voters, they would limit themselves to the mid 20s in the polls. it's a formula for certain failure.
moving back from this may help harper a tad, sure. i'm not sure the dynamics of this election are such that harper can really get those votes back in the next month. next year, maybe. i think the red tories are broadly fed up right now and are swinging red. but, it's a dead-end for the liberals in the long run; once the red tories go back, they're back at ignatieff levels - or worse, because pushing balanced budgets for months is just bleeding them to death on the left.
so, by pushing balanced budgets and fiscal conservatism, the liberals will merely find themselves pushed up against a brick wall of tory support - whatever it is, in the worst case (for the tories). 27%. 25%. any further, and the party begins to fracture.
now, if there's a strategy there, it's that - to fracture the conservatives and try and walk in. but, as mentioned that is only feasible if it means becoming conservatives. progressive conservatives, perhaps. but, conservatives nonetheless. you can't command a conservative base unless you're a conservative party - it's a rational statement, but even if we accept that the world is not rational, it nonetheless holds due to the nature of conservative supporters. in fact, they'd even have to change their name. conservative supporters will never vote for the liberal party in the long term.
but what happens when they're fighting over the center-right vote, however small it is? if it's the red tory vote, it's about 8-10%. well, what happens is that the 30% of the vote on the left moves entirely to the ndp. and, gee, what did we see happen when he *was* walking around sounding like a fiscal conservative?
i don't think they're out of this. they're apparently beating the ndp pretty soundly in ontario. and, the numbers in quebec are misleading (mid to high 20s could triple their existing seat count).
but, you're right that it's not just about this election - it's about the viability of the party. there's nowhere to go on the right. because somebody like me will never vote for you if you're campaigning on balanced budgets.
and, what do i actually think about budgets?
it's a non-issue for me. i understand that it's mostly meaningless. so, i care about funding things first, and paying for it later. when somebody says "i'm going to balance the budget", what i hear is "i'm going to cut services". the budget itself is meaningless to me. it's the cutting services part that i don't like.
and, i don't think the polling on the issue is surprising. i don't think that stephen harper was elected in order to balance the budget. i think that stephen harper was elected because paul martin cut services to balance the budget, and a lot of liberal voters didn't like that. note that it's not that we didn't like the balanced budget. we didn't care about that at all. we didn't like the cut in services.
what i'm hoping is that the liberal party has had the epiphany they need. it might not win them this election. but, it seems like it has taken them off the road to collapse.
when it seemed certain that he was going to campaign on balanced budgets, i was thinking the ndp could hit 50% support with a bit of luck.
now that the situation has shifted, i think the race is really up in the air. and, we're going to watch the polls flip because of it.
and, again: it's not the budget itself. it's because "balanced budgets" is code for "cutting services". that's what we hear. and we don't like that. because we're not conservatives. we know conservatives like that, and that's fine. but we're not conservatives...
but, let's be clear: it is not *only* that trudeau walked away from the ideology (and that is what it really is) of balanced budgets.
it is *also* that mulcair drank the kool-aid.
if it's just one or the other, it's a wash. it's the difference that is going to result in some movement. because what voters (on the left, specifically) actually *hear* is that mulcair is going to cut services and trudeau isn't.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/05/trudeaus-deficit-gamble-and-the-fight-for-the-left/
(deleted post)
you know, i've been noticing this perspective quite a bit from ndp supporters, paid or not, and it's really rather amazing. i'm presenting a very informed perspective, here. you have a lot of gall to suggest that *i'm* the one that's lacking in intelligence. and, that's just a reflection of the facts in the case.
i'm not somebody that's going to go waving it around like a flag, but i'm actually somebody that's been identified as of extreme intelligence since i was in grade school. they had me at a grade 10 reading and math level when i was eight. every standardized test i've ever done is at the 99th percentile. they put me through all kinds of enriched programs as a kid. i have the equivalence of a masters degree in mathematics, a bachelor's degree in computer science and a number of minors in diverse subjects, including law - and it's rare to see somebody with degrees in both technical fields and literary fields. the competency testing i've done for employment purposes has also continuously been very high. i'm actually rather certain that the reason i couldn't get a job in the federal government is that my test scores are too high; i've been to several interviews where the interviewers can't believe the scores they're seeing, and have told me they've never seen anything like it.
and, you have the gall to question my intelligence, because i'm aware of the historical fact that ndp governments always slash spending, and that mulcair has in fact promised as much?
it's astounding.
and, it's the kind of arrogance that doesn't belong on the left.
dtgraham
Personally I've never doubted your almost unimaginable brilliance, but you might want to take a second look at the grammar, syntax, and sentence structure of the post you just left. It kind of detracts from someone who puts Pascal and Oppenheimer to shame.
deathtokoalas
this is another interesting perspective that i get a lot. it's funny that it rarely crosses people's mind that i may write the way i do entirely consciously; that i may actually reject certain rules of grammar out of principle, rather than out of ignorance.
consider capitalization, for example. you'll notice that i almost never capitalize anything - i will capitalize things sardonically from time to time, but that's about it. it's not some accident. it's not that i'm unaware of when things "should" be capitalized. it's that i reject the idea of capitalization. call me an anti-capitalist. or perhaps an alphabetical egalitarian. but, i am of the firm opinion that the way we use capitalization in every day writing is a process of enforcing hierarchical relationships in our minds. and, i would argue that changing the language is a part of changing the way we think about hierarchical relationships. when i refuse to capitalize the ceo or the prime minister or any other position of authority, there's a reason for it - and hopefully that seeps in a little, when people are reading what i write.
i'd also invite any linguist to really carefully analyze the way that i write, because there's an underlying recursive logic to it. the tendency to stop at a conjunction, for example. it's against the rules, and i know that, but it think it's a more expressive way to get across what i'm trying to get across in the way that i'm trying to get it across. i'll stop and start where i want, not where i'm ordered to.
by constructing rules of grammar into stone and forcing children to obey those rules, we're ordering their thoughts for them. we're setting the terms of how they think. if we want a really free thinking society, that's one of the first things we need to reverse.
grammar should be unique to the individual. we should all have our own idiosyncratic systems of grammar that uniquely reflect our own thoughts, and how we choose to express them.
that said, and as mentioned, you'll notice the writing is very logical in the way that it splits ideas into small pieces. you are really reacting to it's exaggerated underlying logic. but, this is forum writing, not formal writing - it is simple by nature. my essays, on the other hand, tend to be in the 30s in terms of flesch-kincaid readability scores.
but, this article is not about me. so, let's move on.
i just want to clarify what i said in the first post with concrete numbers.
base conservative support is around 30%
red tory swing support is around 8%.
so, if the conservatives are running around 30% and the liberals are running around 28%, that means you're looking at actual liberal support of the liberal party at somewhere around 20%. it's easy to understand this given current events. keep in mind that the liberals were running close to 40% in the late 90s, while the tory-reform vote combined to around 38%.
if the liberals were to run on balanced budgets (thereby further alienating it's left flank) and any kind of "event" were to happen that would swing red tory support back home, it would put them back in ignatieff territory.
further, there is almost no way they could poll much higher than 30% with that strategy, even in a worst case scenario for the conservatives.
it follows that the only way they have a chance of winning any election - this one or the next one - is to try and win back the huge number of voters they lost on the left.
it's really not even a choice.
(deleted post)
what i'm pointing out here is that they can't win by campaigning on the right because they've already hit their maximal potential of red tory swing voters, and the barrier is around 30%. please re-read what i wrote and try harder to understand it.
at
05:12
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
i didn't hear anything particularly confusing in this. non-enforcement and mandatory minimums are not mutually exclusive; it is possible to argue that you won't actively police it, but will enforce mandatory minimums when it is policed. like, if you've got a warrant for weapons and you find a gram. what that does, rather, is expose the legislation as toothless. and, in fact a lot of harper's legislation of this sort is toothless, redundant or unenforceable. it's designed to appeal to the base. it often looks scary on first glance, and may waste some people's time if they're unlucky enough to be the ones stuck fighting it to the supreme court, but it's got holes in it on purpose.
in that sense, what's eyebrow raising is that it's moving out of that base-revving space. but, she does still want them to donate money. of course.
www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/04/laureen-harper-marijuana_n_8090204.html
in that sense, what's eyebrow raising is that it's moving out of that base-revving space. but, she does still want them to donate money. of course.
www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/04/laureen-harper-marijuana_n_8090204.html
at
02:17
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
more lowest common denominator identity politics from the ndp. with each
passing day, they're digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole
with educated voters. i'd expect the next round of polls to show some
daylight for one of the other parties.
canadians are more interested in the qualifications of the candidates than they are in their genders.
this is flatly moronic.
"Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you."
www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/03/trudeau-questioned-on-optics-as-14-male-candidates-appear-at-quebec-city-event_n_8081150.html
canadians are more interested in the qualifications of the candidates than they are in their genders.
this is flatly moronic.
"Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you."
www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/03/trudeau-questioned-on-optics-as-14-male-candidates-appear-at-quebec-city-event_n_8081150.html
at
01:39
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
it's perhaps not entirely irrational to be fearful of the plague. but, i got sort of obsessed with it when i was a kid, and it's always the first thing that goes through my mind when i get sick.
if you think you've got the plague, get to a doctor immediately. and, when the people come around, make sure you promptly bring out your dead, too.
but, listen - we've got antibiotics that can get rid of this pretty effectively. with proper medical treatment, this is not the scary disease it once was. we can treat this.
if you think you've got the plague, get to a doctor immediately. and, when the people come around, make sure you promptly bring out your dead, too.
but, listen - we've got antibiotics that can get rid of this pretty effectively. with proper medical treatment, this is not the scary disease it once was. we can treat this.
at
01:04
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
he often points out this difference between indigenous peoples and "advanced peoples", but rather than attempt to explain it he just throws it out as a kind of a shock tactic. and, you know, i don't know how valid that presumption really is. i'd like to think we're beyond being shocked that the so-called inferior indigenous people are figuring this out better than we are. but, are we really? hey, he's the most cited writer ever, i'm just a youtube rambler. maybe he's more on point than i'd like to admit.
but, you really need to take it to the next level. because, it's not surprising and shouldn't be shocking. the judaic religions place human beings at the centre of the universe. the sun revolves around us, after all. and, so the eco-systems should revolve around us, too. shocking? far from it - it's what ought to be expected from the culmination of western culture. and, conversely, indigenous cultures tend to place themselves in a holistic balance with the systems around them. that's not to romanticize or exaggerate, but they don't take this judaic perspective of human beings being at the center of creation. they're consequently not warped by it.
---
John NoNameGibbon
Something curious about American culture regarding our weird settler-colony history is that we sort of gloss over the fact that we killed off all of our Natives. That's weird enough, but then we sort of exaggerate/distort the amount of Natives killed in neighboring countries like Mexico, to make ourselves seem better by comparison. We started calling people of native blood "latinos" to mask it recently, I noticed. The subject has always interested me. It shows our weird psychology.
xyZenTV
We call them 'Latinos' because they are no longer strictly native. Modern (Continental) Americans predominately have a mixture of Native American and European heritage. The real tragedy in all of this is not our ignorance of our history, but our ignorance of the ongoing difficulty facing modern Native Americans. It is a real tragedy that we are STILL turning a blind eye to the plight of the ancestors of the people from whom we stole our lands.
John NoNameGibbon
No country is strictly anything, but the vast majority are in fact Native. Which is the point. A more recent study on Mexico, for example, found that about sixty percent of the people tested were just Native. Thirty percent had some European in them, but it ranged from half to much less. Plus, even if they were half white, which really isn't the case for most people living south of us, they'd still be half Native. Most of the people we acknowledge as Native in our own reservations are much less than half. Yet we still consider them "Native". Why are they any different?
We apply a double standard to Mexicans and other Latin Americans, in my view, as an attempt to hide the obvious fact that they're by and large indigenous. It's kind of self-evident, yet we hide it. "Latino" still implies they're something other than Native.
And guess what? After hearing the terms Latino and Hispanic for the last half century, people have actually began denying the obvious. Most Mexicans and Latin Americans are offended when they hear that most people in the region are Native. It's a type of self-shaming that was encouraged by the terms.
They are no longer strictly Native in the same way Jamaicans and Haitians aren't strictly black. But most are. In my view that's an attempt to blow smoke and distort the obvious. And it works.
xyZenTV
That's interesting. Do you have sources for your claims that the majority in Mexican nationals are predominately native, and that most counted as natives on US reservations have only a small percentage of actual native heritage? I'd love to learn more about how much of the native population actually remains, and where they actually are.
John NoNameGibbon
A lot of this isn't and hasn't really been studied too well because as Chomsky would say, it's not the right question to ask in our society. You're suppose to assume that our Indians are Indians and theirs are somehow fake or illegitimate. And that's the way it's framed.
My reasoning comes from a study I read earlier this year by an American doctor (I think) living in Mexico who wanted to know their genetic makeup for medical reasons. I'll post it separately if I can find it again today, but I'm afraid Google might get rid of the comment because it has a link in it. And Google hates links. They assume it's spam.
As for our Natives actually being the real Mestizos (or much less than that), I arrived at the conclusion by studying our tribal blood quantum laws for Native Reservations. Often the standards are extremely laxed, bordering on absurd.
I'm not bashing US Natives and I understand that there is more to tribal affiliation than blood ties, but I can' help but see some purposeful distortion of facts there. It makes us feel better about exploiting their labor, I guess.
Yes, most of the Americas are still indigenous, though you won't hear that outside of a few anthropology circles that are in the know. It's sort of suppressed by both sides.
John willow
Don't forget that the U.S. basically stole about a third of Mexico. Of course, it offered Mexico a choice - sell us what is now the Southwest or we'll invade you and take it anyway.
John NoNameGibbon
Exactly. A lot of people say "Hey, John, we paid for that land fair and square, why do you frame it that way?"
And I have to remind them that we did it at gunpoint. Like all conquerors.
Code Python
C'mon John. We could have taken it all. Instead we paid 15 million for the southwest. Add in the 100 million to wage the war (not to mention about 14,000 lives lost) and we got the entire southwest for the bargain basement price of about $3.5 billion in today's dollars. But that was when imperialism paid. Today we spend 2-3 trillion dollars on one country in the middle east and have nothing to show for it except a lot of extra debt.
Curious? What do you mean curious? Kind of like we committed genocide on an entire race of millions like Hitler, but pretty much completed the job? Or curious like we did it all in the name of god like a jihadist would?
John NoNameGibbon
Curious like we casual dismiss it ever occurred and ironically act like our more Native neighbors to the south were somehow guiltier of Indian killing than us, despite us being white and them being Indian still.
Curious as in insane. Perhaps like a fox.
Jared Lupton
if we killed them all off, how are they still here. But I get your point- most of them were killed off.
John NoNameGibbon
We virtually killed them all off, which is a feat that would make Hitler blush. Latin Americans were saved because they were outside of our borders. Notice most of our more pure looking American reservations used to be Mexican?
Douglas Jack
What is at stake in how people of the whole world view ourselves. Whether we consider ourselves from within the very recent colonial 'exogenous' (Latin 'other-generated') submissive frame or from all humanity's true ancient roots as 'indigenous' (L 'self-generating') peoples in our traditions of free & equal sovereignty. Europeans forget our indigenous Celtic traditions pre-Semite, Greek & Roman violence and we in turn have beat it out of just about everyone & everywhere we have gone as ecological-economic refugees from our war-torn Europe. Rediscovering our ancestor's indigenous knowledge of abundant polyculture orchards & peaceful relations is what we need to restore the earth & peace among us. If humanity musters only colonial subservience, then life is lost. www.indigenecommunity.info
John NoNameGibbon
You're referring to first nations style cultures? Yes, they, ironically, seem to be the only ones interested in democracy and preserving nature. And, yes, I study Iberian history (Southwestern Europe) and though people tend to view them as Latin Europeans, they're actually originally Celts. And that is the bedrock of where Spain developed its anarchistic traditions. They almost beat Rome without a central government. And Rome stole a lot of technology and battle formations from them shamelessly. So that runs deep in Western European culture. But it was beaten out of most of the culture in Britain and Ireland.
Douglas Jack
Please share more about your studies of the Celtic Appenine & Iberian peninsula's before their original colonization & perversion into violent empires. Humanity's worldwide 'sylvalizations' were sustainable, abundant, peaceful & collectively-intelligent The problem of violent colonization has subverted human memory & will to unjust hierarchy. Never before in human history have people known so little about human heritage & how to pilot spaceship earth & its life support systems. Here's a section on Economic Democracy upon which all indigenous peoples founded political democracy as a subset. @8
John NoNameGibbon
I've been studying the region mostly for fun since I was in high school. I noticed that a lot of the history of Spain was buried by England and we inherited English history and their slant on it, so most Americans know very little of the region. We study Britain, but never Spain.
The thing that stood out to me about the anarchistic nature of Spain's early Celtic culture was the fabled kingdom of Tartessos. Archaeologists are baffled by it since they can't find much about it other than a few accounts of it's splendor and wealth, but not too much evidence other than a lot of scatter sources. Then it turned out that the reason for this was because they were not one kingdom, but more like a loose patchwork of advanced tribes. In other words, what Chomsky often mentions. This is the bedrock that Iberian Anarchism was formed from. It can be found in pre-English Ireland, as well. Before the Flight of the Earls to Spain, Ireland had less centralized government. And a lot of their textile technology was stolen by England.
After Rome occupied the Celts of Spain, they finally admitted that they were never really Barbarians. According to a Greek/Roman historian they lived too well to be labeled as such and were more advanced in the metal works than Rome proper. And for the last golden years of Rome's history most of it's best leaders were of Iberian (Celtic) heritage.
It's a good bit of Celtic history that often goes unacknowledged because it's tied to Spain. And Spain's been all but wiped out of English and American history for a myriad of reasons.
Douglas Jack
Wonderful research. I'd like to add the 'economic' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'gift or service') engine of indigenous Celtic & all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') peoples, which is based in systematic intentionally planned: 1) multihome (Longhouse/apartment, Pueblo/townhouse & Kanata/village) living with designed privacy in the proximity of a critical mass of 100 people for collective female-male intergenerational collaboration. 2) time-based human-resource accounting on the string-shell (accounting tool & value measure) based in the specialized Production-Society/Guilds with universal progressive ownership for all over the course of their lifetimes. These 2 are the foundation of what the 'Haudenosaunee' (Iroquois 'People of the extended rafters or welcome') in NE US & Canada call the 'Kaianerekowa' ('Great-good-way-of-kindness') or the Nguni of southern Africa call 'Human-kindness'. Kindness forms the basis of indigenous nation constitutions. Petr Kropotkin (anarchist) correctly describes the Guild aspects of these in his descriptions of Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. @2 I'd love to look at this in detail with you. douglasf.jack@gmail.com
Douglas Jack
This website had trouble with the last weblinks which I included, but here they are again. If they don't work send me an email to douglasf.jack@gmail.com Celtic @3 Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. @2
John NoNameGibbon
That view is frankly ridiculous and backwards. Considering the vast majority of Americans today are White and Mexicans are clearly indigenous. I'd say the population that was wiped out was obviously those in English speaking America, not Mexico and Central America. Why do you think they aren't white? Magic?
That's a very strange view found in the US.
We romanticize our Natives because they barely exists. When we are confronted by swarms of ingenious people south of the border we pretend they aren't native as to rob them of their culture. That's called denial.
The very reason we don't like Mexicans is because they're too Indian looking.
Douglas Jack
1491 & 1493 are 2 books by Charles C. Mann who gives an ethnohistorical account collected from 1st Nation sources on the history of the Americas North, South & Central before & after invasion. These serve as a good overview with excellent references, upon which we can understand some substance beyond the colonial propaganda which negates 1st Nation sovereignty with 1000s of lies. Indigene Community compiles humanity's universal worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') heritage including economy, food-growing & balances for peace & prosperity. The road forward is back-to-the-future.
John NoNameGibbon
Yes, but you have to see how bizarre claiming that our Natives (which makes no sense because they had more in common with our neighbors to the south than us culturally) are somehow more valiant and fought harder considering we have almost none left, while Mexico is chock-full of indigenous people. So much so that people there brag about having a distant white relative, while we here brag about a distant, often mythical, Native great grandparent.
It's just funny how backwards it all was.
Douglas Jack
I don't identify with the "valiant" statement. The invasion genocide brutality here on Turtle-Island, North-America still is atrocious in terms of 10s of 1000s of years of heritage, we disavow & try to erase. All humanity's 'indigenous' heritage is the core of being integral parts of life on earth. Each of us for that part of us from Europe or elsewhere in the world, need to understand the pain & tragedy which we carry around inside of us for the great loss of life capacity we have experienced & continue to grieve unconsciously. All US, Canadian, NATO, Israel violence which we create for others in our colonial consumption of the earth, is based in our subconscious desire to recreate the pain we have suffered in an attempt to make it tangible. Our goal should be to understand our stewardship role as primates on earth. Humans as primates are the stewards of the Polyculture Orchard, which is the operating climate-control, food, water, energy, materials, co-pilot species diversity system for spaceship earth.
deathtokoalas
you're on to something, but you're missing the thing we gloss over the most: there was actually large amounts of interbreeding between settlers and colonists - and on both sides of the frontier. instead of accepting this, we pretend we killed them all and replaced them. and, we certainly did kill a lot of them. but, we assimilated even more of them.
if you study the genetics in the native american population on the east coast, some populations have european genotypes of astonishing frequencies - upwards of 80% in some cases. the first giveaway is the r1b that dominates western europe and could not have come from any other source. the second is the blood types, which show influence from both europe and africa. if you look at colonial history carefully, you will see this constant stream of largely forgotten stories of europeans escaping the colonies to "join the indians". it was something that happened from the day we set foot here, this tendency to flee european civilization and escape into the wilderness. it's consistently kept track of in the margins - but there is never any attention drawn to it. and, it's left a dramatic genetic footprint. the english and french merged with the natives as much or more than we slaughtered them. but, it is immensely important that we don't know this, that we maintain the mental hierarchical separation of colonizer and colonized.
by contrast, the spaniards would not intermarry with anybody. they just slaughtered whole populations outright (under warped religious justifications), and enslaved what was left. and, they didn't really settle the areas to the same extent, either, and when they did it was to set up systems of exploitation that were broadly always seen as temporary. so, the natives were able to maintain their own identity, repopulate and eventually become majorities again in their own land, while in the north they became assimilated and have largely forgotten their identity.
if you take a walk through canada, and you know what to look for, it is easy to see that the so-called white population is almost entirely metis.
but, you really need to take it to the next level. because, it's not surprising and shouldn't be shocking. the judaic religions place human beings at the centre of the universe. the sun revolves around us, after all. and, so the eco-systems should revolve around us, too. shocking? far from it - it's what ought to be expected from the culmination of western culture. and, conversely, indigenous cultures tend to place themselves in a holistic balance with the systems around them. that's not to romanticize or exaggerate, but they don't take this judaic perspective of human beings being at the center of creation. they're consequently not warped by it.
John NoNameGibbon
Something curious about American culture regarding our weird settler-colony history is that we sort of gloss over the fact that we killed off all of our Natives. That's weird enough, but then we sort of exaggerate/distort the amount of Natives killed in neighboring countries like Mexico, to make ourselves seem better by comparison. We started calling people of native blood "latinos" to mask it recently, I noticed. The subject has always interested me. It shows our weird psychology.
xyZenTV
We call them 'Latinos' because they are no longer strictly native. Modern (Continental) Americans predominately have a mixture of Native American and European heritage. The real tragedy in all of this is not our ignorance of our history, but our ignorance of the ongoing difficulty facing modern Native Americans. It is a real tragedy that we are STILL turning a blind eye to the plight of the ancestors of the people from whom we stole our lands.
John NoNameGibbon
No country is strictly anything, but the vast majority are in fact Native. Which is the point. A more recent study on Mexico, for example, found that about sixty percent of the people tested were just Native. Thirty percent had some European in them, but it ranged from half to much less. Plus, even if they were half white, which really isn't the case for most people living south of us, they'd still be half Native. Most of the people we acknowledge as Native in our own reservations are much less than half. Yet we still consider them "Native". Why are they any different?
We apply a double standard to Mexicans and other Latin Americans, in my view, as an attempt to hide the obvious fact that they're by and large indigenous. It's kind of self-evident, yet we hide it. "Latino" still implies they're something other than Native.
And guess what? After hearing the terms Latino and Hispanic for the last half century, people have actually began denying the obvious. Most Mexicans and Latin Americans are offended when they hear that most people in the region are Native. It's a type of self-shaming that was encouraged by the terms.
They are no longer strictly Native in the same way Jamaicans and Haitians aren't strictly black. But most are. In my view that's an attempt to blow smoke and distort the obvious. And it works.
xyZenTV
That's interesting. Do you have sources for your claims that the majority in Mexican nationals are predominately native, and that most counted as natives on US reservations have only a small percentage of actual native heritage? I'd love to learn more about how much of the native population actually remains, and where they actually are.
John NoNameGibbon
A lot of this isn't and hasn't really been studied too well because as Chomsky would say, it's not the right question to ask in our society. You're suppose to assume that our Indians are Indians and theirs are somehow fake or illegitimate. And that's the way it's framed.
My reasoning comes from a study I read earlier this year by an American doctor (I think) living in Mexico who wanted to know their genetic makeup for medical reasons. I'll post it separately if I can find it again today, but I'm afraid Google might get rid of the comment because it has a link in it. And Google hates links. They assume it's spam.
As for our Natives actually being the real Mestizos (or much less than that), I arrived at the conclusion by studying our tribal blood quantum laws for Native Reservations. Often the standards are extremely laxed, bordering on absurd.
I'm not bashing US Natives and I understand that there is more to tribal affiliation than blood ties, but I can' help but see some purposeful distortion of facts there. It makes us feel better about exploiting their labor, I guess.
Yes, most of the Americas are still indigenous, though you won't hear that outside of a few anthropology circles that are in the know. It's sort of suppressed by both sides.
John willow
Don't forget that the U.S. basically stole about a third of Mexico. Of course, it offered Mexico a choice - sell us what is now the Southwest or we'll invade you and take it anyway.
John NoNameGibbon
Exactly. A lot of people say "Hey, John, we paid for that land fair and square, why do you frame it that way?"
And I have to remind them that we did it at gunpoint. Like all conquerors.
Code Python
C'mon John. We could have taken it all. Instead we paid 15 million for the southwest. Add in the 100 million to wage the war (not to mention about 14,000 lives lost) and we got the entire southwest for the bargain basement price of about $3.5 billion in today's dollars. But that was when imperialism paid. Today we spend 2-3 trillion dollars on one country in the middle east and have nothing to show for it except a lot of extra debt.
Curious? What do you mean curious? Kind of like we committed genocide on an entire race of millions like Hitler, but pretty much completed the job? Or curious like we did it all in the name of god like a jihadist would?
John NoNameGibbon
Curious like we casual dismiss it ever occurred and ironically act like our more Native neighbors to the south were somehow guiltier of Indian killing than us, despite us being white and them being Indian still.
Curious as in insane. Perhaps like a fox.
Jared Lupton
if we killed them all off, how are they still here. But I get your point- most of them were killed off.
John NoNameGibbon
We virtually killed them all off, which is a feat that would make Hitler blush. Latin Americans were saved because they were outside of our borders. Notice most of our more pure looking American reservations used to be Mexican?
Douglas Jack
What is at stake in how people of the whole world view ourselves. Whether we consider ourselves from within the very recent colonial 'exogenous' (Latin 'other-generated') submissive frame or from all humanity's true ancient roots as 'indigenous' (L 'self-generating') peoples in our traditions of free & equal sovereignty. Europeans forget our indigenous Celtic traditions pre-Semite, Greek & Roman violence and we in turn have beat it out of just about everyone & everywhere we have gone as ecological-economic refugees from our war-torn Europe. Rediscovering our ancestor's indigenous knowledge of abundant polyculture orchards & peaceful relations is what we need to restore the earth & peace among us. If humanity musters only colonial subservience, then life is lost. www.indigenecommunity.info
John NoNameGibbon
You're referring to first nations style cultures? Yes, they, ironically, seem to be the only ones interested in democracy and preserving nature. And, yes, I study Iberian history (Southwestern Europe) and though people tend to view them as Latin Europeans, they're actually originally Celts. And that is the bedrock of where Spain developed its anarchistic traditions. They almost beat Rome without a central government. And Rome stole a lot of technology and battle formations from them shamelessly. So that runs deep in Western European culture. But it was beaten out of most of the culture in Britain and Ireland.
Douglas Jack
Please share more about your studies of the Celtic Appenine & Iberian peninsula's before their original colonization & perversion into violent empires. Humanity's worldwide 'sylvalizations' were sustainable, abundant, peaceful & collectively-intelligent The problem of violent colonization has subverted human memory & will to unjust hierarchy. Never before in human history have people known so little about human heritage & how to pilot spaceship earth & its life support systems. Here's a section on Economic Democracy upon which all indigenous peoples founded political democracy as a subset. @8
John NoNameGibbon
I've been studying the region mostly for fun since I was in high school. I noticed that a lot of the history of Spain was buried by England and we inherited English history and their slant on it, so most Americans know very little of the region. We study Britain, but never Spain.
The thing that stood out to me about the anarchistic nature of Spain's early Celtic culture was the fabled kingdom of Tartessos. Archaeologists are baffled by it since they can't find much about it other than a few accounts of it's splendor and wealth, but not too much evidence other than a lot of scatter sources. Then it turned out that the reason for this was because they were not one kingdom, but more like a loose patchwork of advanced tribes. In other words, what Chomsky often mentions. This is the bedrock that Iberian Anarchism was formed from. It can be found in pre-English Ireland, as well. Before the Flight of the Earls to Spain, Ireland had less centralized government. And a lot of their textile technology was stolen by England.
After Rome occupied the Celts of Spain, they finally admitted that they were never really Barbarians. According to a Greek/Roman historian they lived too well to be labeled as such and were more advanced in the metal works than Rome proper. And for the last golden years of Rome's history most of it's best leaders were of Iberian (Celtic) heritage.
It's a good bit of Celtic history that often goes unacknowledged because it's tied to Spain. And Spain's been all but wiped out of English and American history for a myriad of reasons.
Douglas Jack
Wonderful research. I'd like to add the 'economic' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'gift or service') engine of indigenous Celtic & all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') peoples, which is based in systematic intentionally planned: 1) multihome (Longhouse/apartment, Pueblo/townhouse & Kanata/village) living with designed privacy in the proximity of a critical mass of 100 people for collective female-male intergenerational collaboration. 2) time-based human-resource accounting on the string-shell (accounting tool & value measure) based in the specialized Production-Society/Guilds with universal progressive ownership for all over the course of their lifetimes. These 2 are the foundation of what the 'Haudenosaunee' (Iroquois 'People of the extended rafters or welcome') in NE US & Canada call the 'Kaianerekowa' ('Great-good-way-of-kindness') or the Nguni of southern Africa call 'Human-kindness'. Kindness forms the basis of indigenous nation constitutions. Petr Kropotkin (anarchist) correctly describes the Guild aspects of these in his descriptions of Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. @2 I'd love to look at this in detail with you. douglasf.jack@gmail.com
Douglas Jack
This website had trouble with the last weblinks which I included, but here they are again. If they don't work send me an email to douglasf.jack@gmail.com Celtic @3 Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. @2
John NoNameGibbon
That view is frankly ridiculous and backwards. Considering the vast majority of Americans today are White and Mexicans are clearly indigenous. I'd say the population that was wiped out was obviously those in English speaking America, not Mexico and Central America. Why do you think they aren't white? Magic?
That's a very strange view found in the US.
We romanticize our Natives because they barely exists. When we are confronted by swarms of ingenious people south of the border we pretend they aren't native as to rob them of their culture. That's called denial.
The very reason we don't like Mexicans is because they're too Indian looking.
Douglas Jack
1491 & 1493 are 2 books by Charles C. Mann who gives an ethnohistorical account collected from 1st Nation sources on the history of the Americas North, South & Central before & after invasion. These serve as a good overview with excellent references, upon which we can understand some substance beyond the colonial propaganda which negates 1st Nation sovereignty with 1000s of lies. Indigene Community compiles humanity's universal worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') heritage including economy, food-growing & balances for peace & prosperity. The road forward is back-to-the-future.
John NoNameGibbon
Yes, but you have to see how bizarre claiming that our Natives (which makes no sense because they had more in common with our neighbors to the south than us culturally) are somehow more valiant and fought harder considering we have almost none left, while Mexico is chock-full of indigenous people. So much so that people there brag about having a distant white relative, while we here brag about a distant, often mythical, Native great grandparent.
It's just funny how backwards it all was.
Douglas Jack
I don't identify with the "valiant" statement. The invasion genocide brutality here on Turtle-Island, North-America still is atrocious in terms of 10s of 1000s of years of heritage, we disavow & try to erase. All humanity's 'indigenous' heritage is the core of being integral parts of life on earth. Each of us for that part of us from Europe or elsewhere in the world, need to understand the pain & tragedy which we carry around inside of us for the great loss of life capacity we have experienced & continue to grieve unconsciously. All US, Canadian, NATO, Israel violence which we create for others in our colonial consumption of the earth, is based in our subconscious desire to recreate the pain we have suffered in an attempt to make it tangible. Our goal should be to understand our stewardship role as primates on earth. Humans as primates are the stewards of the Polyculture Orchard, which is the operating climate-control, food, water, energy, materials, co-pilot species diversity system for spaceship earth.
deathtokoalas
you're on to something, but you're missing the thing we gloss over the most: there was actually large amounts of interbreeding between settlers and colonists - and on both sides of the frontier. instead of accepting this, we pretend we killed them all and replaced them. and, we certainly did kill a lot of them. but, we assimilated even more of them.
if you study the genetics in the native american population on the east coast, some populations have european genotypes of astonishing frequencies - upwards of 80% in some cases. the first giveaway is the r1b that dominates western europe and could not have come from any other source. the second is the blood types, which show influence from both europe and africa. if you look at colonial history carefully, you will see this constant stream of largely forgotten stories of europeans escaping the colonies to "join the indians". it was something that happened from the day we set foot here, this tendency to flee european civilization and escape into the wilderness. it's consistently kept track of in the margins - but there is never any attention drawn to it. and, it's left a dramatic genetic footprint. the english and french merged with the natives as much or more than we slaughtered them. but, it is immensely important that we don't know this, that we maintain the mental hierarchical separation of colonizer and colonized.
by contrast, the spaniards would not intermarry with anybody. they just slaughtered whole populations outright (under warped religious justifications), and enslaved what was left. and, they didn't really settle the areas to the same extent, either, and when they did it was to set up systems of exploitation that were broadly always seen as temporary. so, the natives were able to maintain their own identity, repopulate and eventually become majorities again in their own land, while in the north they became assimilated and have largely forgotten their identity.
if you take a walk through canada, and you know what to look for, it is easy to see that the so-called white population is almost entirely metis.
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