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comment by lil
lil  ·  3710 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Rob Ford has rare cancer, starting chemo

The War of 1812 is hugely misunderstood by most including me. Some see it as an American victory. At the end of the day, all land was returned and the native people realized that they couldn't trust all these nice folk who said they'd be friends.

The Shakespeare Festival is in Stratford Ontario, an hour and a half more or less from Toronto. I heard they were about to make DVDs of their best productions, like the set made by the BBC.





humanodon  ·  3710 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That is definitely a war I have no real knowledge of. I should fix that. I think that's true for so many wars though. For example the Vietnam War (or the American War, from their perspective) is widely considered to be a Vietnamese victory, even though Nike makes shoes there and has for a long time. Not only that, but in my experience Viet Nam is more capitalist than the U.S.

For example, there are no state provided services. Like, at all. People pay to send kids to school, for healthcare and a whole bunch of other stuff. In fact, there isn't even food in the hospitals, which require family members to provide food for patients. If that is not a possibility, there are many food carts and stands outside hospitals, none of which will typically have access to utilities. This is one reason why antibiotic-resistant TB is on the rise.

Additionally, no one can actually own land. Instead, people lease it from the government for 100 years (I think) with the caveat that the state can reclaim the land at any time, though they must give fair compensation for the property and the things on it. This is one reason why so many people have shops that do little to no business.

Anyway, using war to accomplish things doesn't seem to work very well, or at least the goals as outlined by the parties involved rarely seem to be what is actually gained.

user-inactivated  ·  3709 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks I just learned a bunch of stuff about Vietnam.