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> It's called "law enforcement". If you try to pull off a bunch of smash&grabs in Bandra or Colaba the cops will beat you with lathis.

Where I live thieves are often beaten to death. And the rate of theft is still high. I could point you to some studies about punishment not being an effective crime deterrent, but not sure it would change your mind. It's a complicated problem and law enforcement is a band-aid at best.

But unfortunately Minnesota consistently ranks among the worst regarding the disparity between white and minority educational achievement.

Why?

> I could be dirt poor in a third world country and people will not avoid me like I am some sort of defective, repugnant, morally challenged person; I am still normal.

Very good point. I have been living in a lower-middle class neighborhood in one of the world's poorest countries for around 3 years now, but I'm originally from the US. There are fewer inherent indications of wealth vs. poverty here, whereas in the US you can often tell at a single glance. Even if you literally strip away social indicators like clothing, I think I could gauge someone's economic status from their naked body (sadly), and if not that, then definitely from their dialect.

Now it's ~55 GB uncompressed and as you said that's without images, audio, and more.

You're really misinformed on this topic.

> The reason I think it's linked to Marijuana is how easy it was to obtain

Marijuana is easy to obtain just about everywhere on the planet. I knew around 20 drug dealers at one point in the US. I buy weed here in Cambodia from an old grandma. It's easy if you're looking.

> If these homeless people can get access to it, they probably wouldn't bother working to improve their lives. They can have an "awesome life" in their minds if they get to smoke pot.

Do you have some strong evidence that a homeless person's sole desire in life is to easy access to marijuana? Because if not it comes across as a sweeping, irrational judgement against a diverse group of people.

> That's why all countries ban drugs even though they don't ban Alcohol.

Many countries ban marijuana because the US used its leverage to compel those countries to do so.

But it's not clear why you think that homelessness in Vancouver is strongly connected to the availability of marijuana. Any evidence?

> But to me it makes no sense to allow anyone to profit from a substance that causes this much harm.

It's possible to use heroin daily for the remainder of your life and have a better health outcome than a cigarette smoker.

The drug war makes heroin use more dangerous. Now you have dirty needles, cut drugs, highly inconsistent doses, lack of free treatment/therapy, fear of police and the legal system that leads to reluctance to seek medical attention, etc. And of course black market violence still exists here and abroad.

"Like most opioids, unadulterated heroin does not cause many long-term complications other than dependence and constipation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#Adverse_effects

There is a phenomenon where individuals with hydrocephalus, a condition where the brain cavity is filled with fluid, can still exhibit normal intelligence. I suppose the two broad explanations are that brain matter is either denser in these individuals, or that a brain can still compute well with less brain matter at least in some cases (possibly by sacrificing on some other not-easily-measured mental faculties)

"There's a young student at this university," says Lorber, "who has an IQ of 126, has gained a first-class honors degree in mathematics, and is socially completely normal. And yet the boy has virtually no brain."

http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB6099/brainnecessary.pdf

I'll stick with "an area with many civilians" as my definition of a civilian area. These people weren't wealthy, and it's where they happened to own land and build houses. It becomes a choice between being homeless and impoverished, or staying where you are and taking the risk of being bombed.

I also have to add that there is no reasonable "why" to excuse bombing largely civilian areas. Undoubtably the VC were crossing over the border -- the Cambodian side of the Vietnam-Cambodia border is ethnically and linguistically a mixture of Khmer and Vietnamese, and that border has been fluid up until recent history -- but still most people there would have been civilians.

The bombing happened all over the country. A few weeks ago I was in Kompung Thom (right in the middle of Cambodia) and talked to quite a few people about this. The members of these communities were farmers, not combatants or VC sympathizers, and they didn't even have much awareness of why they were being bombed.

> Cambodia had help from U.S. on Khmer Rouge, too.

>> Never heard of this

It's true right up until the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh. Then US diplomats and officials were evacuated in helicopters, while the city was left for slaughter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Pull

The US provided training, enormous air power, and weapons including land mines to the Lon Nol government.

It may be in the realm of conspiracy theory still, but some would contend that the CIA installed the Lon Nol government and helped oust Norodom Sihanouk as king. Sihanouk himself wrote a book called "My War with the CIA" and as I understand it (haven't read it) his position is that this happened in retaliation for Cambodia remaining neutral in the Vietnam war.

I'm not sure to what extent this is true, or whether or not Sihanouk quietly supported the VC, but Cambodia was absolutely devastated by US bombing and it can only be described as evil. As a personal anecdote, I recently met some Cambodian men who subsisted as children by salvaging unexploded American bombs.

Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. dropped 2.7 million tons of explosives -- more than the Allies dropped in the entirety of World War II -- on Cambodia, whose population was then smaller than New York City's. Estimates of the number of people killed begin in the low hundreds of thousands and range up from there, but the truth is that no one has any idea.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/wha...

It's also that intentionally leaked information and special access tend to be given to journalists who share the views of the organization or individual at hand, and will be more likely to put a favorable spin on the story. Of course it's natural that people gravitate toward like-minded others and mutually beneficial relationships arise, but depending on the circumstances it should be illegal. Take a look at the emails where Hillary Clinton more or less dictates to Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic (a news source that is still IMO far less seedy than the most popular media organizations).

You are wrong, because this comes up ALL THE TIME, and the simple answer is that it's not off-topic if enough HN members find it interesting enough to upvote.

My girlfriend grew up poor, in a country that is one of the world's poorest, yet between the two of us I'm the one that obsesses over food.