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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?

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.