WIP

Being an armchair philosopher is more about personality than it is about intellect or time available. Everybody has some free time, but even when we're busy, some of us are more introspective than others. And I don't think the percentage of the population that would be inclined towards creating their own philosophical framework is very large. Most people would rather look for a movement to join, one that appeals to them for largely aesthetic reasons. If people like a certain religion....especially if it's one they've grown up with, they'll ignore or gloss over any doctrinal inconsistencies if they feel that the religion is satisfying to them on a personal level and provides a sense of purpose. Like I said before, I don't usually get involved in religion-bashing like pulling out embarrassing verses, but this one was an example of how religious authorities are leading their people right straight back into the racial attitudes that are supposed to be in the past. That is also the point of the Texas Freedom Network too. I heard one their spokesmen interviewed on a freethought program, who's host wasn't happy that the organization doesn't broadly condemn religion, but instead focuses on issues where certain religions are trying to advance their books and push their doctrines in the schools.

Yeah sure they do! As long as you live in libertarian, survival-of-the-fittest lala land, they work just fine. What about out here in the real world, where a growing majority of middle class are being squeezed by the cost of living; costs of childrens' education rising, and the costs of elder care which leave a growing gap between pension, OAS and nursing home costs that will consume the estate of the aged and end up being the shared responsibility of the children just to keep them in a decent nursing home? Let's just say that aside from my company plan (which may be pilfered or embezzled before I can get to it), I haven't had anything left for "self funding" and "self managing." My own personal plan is to remain healthy enough to be able to work for as long as I can! And, let's not forget that Canada Pension and the Social Security in the U.S. were set up to deal with the things that aren't planned for: like early and unexpected disability, those who have lost most of their estate value in real estate collapse....as has happened in the U.S. and I'm told will be coming to Canada very soon now. There are many situations that can arise that would leave some people destitute in their old age....as was the pattern and the typical situation in days gone by, and that was the main reason for creating national pension plans with guaranteed benefits in the first place! If we allow the pension system to continually be inadequately funded and end up divied up and put in the casino investment system, then we will have gone full circle right back to the beginning when old people were likely to die from malnutrition if they weren't cared for by their families. So, maybe this is what rightwingers call their "pro family agenda." Government services get gutted for everything that the plutocrats don't need, and the rest of us have to turn to family again because there will be no other options even if you're dying.

I wouldn't even go so far as to call him the good guy! I am suspicious of all so called super soldiers and supercops who, unlike the average person in a freefire zone, show few if any symptoms of PTSD and can't wait to get out their in the action for the next adrenaline rush. Can't go on much aside from his gunnut causes and his capacity to earn a living in the rapidly growing private security business, and the fact that he was apparently so dense and clueless that he thought taking traumatized former soldiers on gun range outings was a good idea. What I am left with is the feeling that it's a nation of cowards that lionizes military heroes....as long as they keep their heroism over there and don't bring it back home with them and keep on killing for thrills. But the greatest price to pay for the U.S. by creating a state of perpetual war, where they train a 1% minority of their population to be their mercenaries and go off to fight their foreign enemies, while they live in a state of ignorance and indifference to the wars is that those soldiers....or at least most of those soldiers come home afterwards! Most who are traumatized by the magnitude and scale of death and injury that they have been exposed to, will internalize it and kill themselves - as we are seeing from statistics on suicide showing more returning veterans commit suicide than are killed in action. But, the war theatre is the playpen of the homicidal maniac; and if they don't advance up the ranks and remain part of the permanent war machine, some of them may come home and carry on with their violence and killing on the homefront. And all this, along with the medical costs of injured veterans has to be weighed against the deliberate policy decisions of the Bush and Obama Administrations to make war and the threat of war a permanent tool to intimidate adversaries and neutral parties that have not readily accepted resource development and trade terms from the West. There is a back story to how this "war on terror" is now permeating the African Continent and land, mining and oil are the unmentioned reasons behind creating and expanding AFRICOM and fighting terrorism in West Africa and the East Africa. Rather than living within its means, that costly, bloated military has just been too enticing for the mostly chickenhawks that inhabit the top levels of U.S. leadership to refrain from using. This is also the major part of the reason why defense will see minimal cuts as Republicans and Democrats cobble together their bipartisan "grand bargain" to gut Medicare and Social Security. Since the U.S. has by far, the largest military force in the world, it wants to use that force to seize resources when needed rather than put up with any policy of reducing consumption and sharing resources.....and that may just end up being the epitaph of civilization as we know it, since these wars can only go so far before someone starts launching nukes.

That sort of plays into the fears of a lot of the religious community that separation between church and state means forcing religion out of any sort of public expression.

Thanks, and I can agree with you for the most part, since I have the same reservations about how religious narratives can be molded and shaped to suit some very destructive political goals - like being used to justifiy national and racial supremacy, sanctioning restrictive roles and opportunities for women, justifying persecution of minority groups that are outside the group....whether it's gays, different religions, atheists, other races etc.. There's always some passage in the Bible that can be pulled out by either a political demagogue or his clergy sidekick, who wears the robes of religious authority. On the other hand, there can be religious authorities who stand up to the despots and dictators, who stand for justice and equality, and encouraging their followers to be better people rather than judging those who are different and live in foreign countries. I doubt that most religious adherents are actually cherry-picking the Bible themselves. It's more likely that they have latched on to one or two trusted religious authorities and just repeat whatever they say. It's also very likely that they chose this religious authority already because it fit the political and economic ideology they already adhere to. My biggest bone of contention with today's rightwing christians is that they have tried to ignore or bury the entire social gospel of the old and new testaments. Instead they have turned the social gospel on its head and declared that unguided market forces of capitalism is divinely sanctioned by God and the results fall in to a meritocracy where those who get rich are blessed by God, while those who live in grinding poverty are either cursed by God or failed to receive the blessings. This sort of popular prosperity gospel is not only found among the Evangelicals; it pervades just about every form of Protestantism and the Catholic Church today as well. As a quick Catholic example, I would cite how the hierarchy has dealt with Catholic libertarians like Paul Ryan. The Church still makes noises about concern for the poor, but they are today persecuting the only Catholics who actually practice it - such as the nuns who are scorned for not rigidly enforcing the Church abstinence policies where it would be rejected. While they have said nothing about Ryan, his budget proposals gutting social spending and fawning adulation of the atheist crackpot and wannabee political philosopher - Ayn Rand. On the other hand, there are Christian and other religious traditions that have been trying to make the world a better place....which is getting more difficult as the years go by. The problem for us who have left and started charting our own course in the moral universe is that we have to either make our own maps as we go along or latch on to some secular system as the atheist version of religion.....I'm thinking primarily of humanist philosophies here. But, even if you are a moral person who is concerned for others, making moral decisions by using reasoning and evidence is a lot more difficult than it appears. It may work for the big decisions, but every day we have to make quick decisions on an intuitive level.....should we open a door for someone else rather than entering first....should we leave a tip for the counter clerk at the coffee shop....and all of the little examples of how we live in daily life that we do without having time to weigh evidence for or against, but just have to respond naturally. But, even if we do have a moral theory like using utilitarianism to decide moral and ethical issues, we are still going to arrive at different conclusions on various subjects....whether it's whether or not to eat meat, euthanasia, abortion, even infanticide, you'd be surprised how much variation there can be in the final decisions between different theorists. The religious adherents may be stuck having to support rules they do not get a vote on, but the challenge for secularists from atheist to vague pantheistic theists, but can we have a society with a shared moral order if we don't have some binding authority like religion to enforce it?

Somehow I can figure that if you're going to cocktail parties, you're in with a different crowd than I am! And, you're right that having children changes one's outlook on life. Conservatives will go on and on about how new parents become more conservative, at least on social issues, and that's true. Although I would point out that a lot of the conservatism comes from the excitement and fear of bringing a new baby into this world. We want everything to go perfect and are afraid of threats to their safety and of them making bad choices. Although it also needs to be pointed out that by the time the 2nd or 3rd kid comes around, most parents have learned to relax a little....so we end up back to being more liberal again, and that's where the story of the youngest being spoiled comes along. And, if we have children, we have to...or should have to...take a longer view of the future. I'm not sure if this applies too far, but I am a little dismayed at those who just want to leave present day dysfunctions for them to figure out. But again, that attitude does come more from those with no future, who have a hard time visualizing a world mid-21st century, since they won't be around to enjoy it themselves. Same with economic ideas from the right. I would guess that most libertarians are young men living in mom's basement, and that provides them the comfort of being completely selfish about life and their attitudes about the world.

And apparently your "FAITH" isn't informed by evidence! Though it does seem to be accompanied by rage and as close to swearing as you feel you are allowed to step. I am curious about human origins, but don't have a personal need for a perfect explanation. I am content with just letting the process of discovery go on and if there are mistakes and dead ends along the way, that's just part of finding the true story about who and what we are. So, the present controversy regarding Neanderthal's relation to us (which most feel is settled by recent mapping of the Neanderthal genome) is still disputed by at least a minority of geneticists. This is a dispute among experts on genetics that the rest of us will just have to wait for a clear consensus to develop again. But, regardless of whether there was some interbreeding of our ancestors with at least a few neanderthals or not, the story of human evolution gathered through fossil and genetic evidence can not be squeezed through a rigid fundamentalist adherence to Genesis...like the Texas school boards are trying to do! Whether modern day Christians want to consider Noah and his sons as real, living breathing people, if they go the next step and try to apply it to where whites, blacks, asians, aboriginals etc. come from, then they are leading children down a dangerous path that will make already bad race relations even worse! I've made the point time and time again, that I don't object religious faith in principle....although it's not something I live by in my own life. I have irritated more than a few atheists here who are dogmatic about making everyone choose science and naturalism over religion and supernatural beliefs, and been banned from one atheist forum for challenging notions like 'everyone's worldview should be as scientifically accurate as possible', or 'everyone will be happier and live better lives once religion disappears', and I learned that new atheists have coined a couple of derogatory terms for those like me or similar: "Faitheist" and "Accommodationist." So, on one side we have the dogmatic Christian extremists like you, and on the other side we have a small, vocal group of new atheists who are creating a secular version of fundamentalists! While most of us would like to live somewhere in the middle, or at least be open to the idea that different people have different needs in finding meaning and purpose in life. You want a stark contrast, where it's either my religion or no religion at all....just like your ideological enemies that you troll with on the other side. "And speaking of Star Trek!" Who the hell was speaking of star trek besides you? I am still not sure what the hell your point was with this reference and link back to an argument you had on the bible last year, except that Shwa....who seems to have bailed out this place over a year ago, made a similar point to you when you were claiming that science proves the bible, when you apparently offered up some flimsy fundamentalist tract about 51 "scientifically proven facts" in the bible, then he could counter that there are: more than than 51 "scientifically proven facts" in your average Star Trek novel, but I wouldn't be looking for Captain Kirk anytime soon. Which was a good point btw! The scientific accuracy of Star Trek would not justify claims that Star Trek characters actually exist, or will exist in our future.....but, apparently that went right over your head, like so much else does! I would go with a present day example that the fact that New York City exists, does not prove that Spiderman/Peter Parker is web-swinging his way among the skyscrapers in Manhattan or the Bronx. Which still has nothing to do with my objections to Texas fundamentalists trying to force schools to teach that the present day races are descendents of Noah's sons! There are reasons to be horrified by this reactionary development; and they go beyond denigrating science to rekindling the race theory that was used to justify enslaving Africans and colonialization of non-whites in the rest of the world. Texas is marching....or should I say: goose-stepping it's way back to back to white supremacism, and they may as well put their bedsheets back on if they're going to go down this road. And, in that comment by Shwa, that you consider so bad that you felt the need to resurrect it.... I noticed that he made a point about dogmatism on the other side when he referred to his own challenges to using science to establish morality.....but that flew right over your head again....or you just didn't want to consider it! Whatever, he hasn't posted anything here since 2011. The other object of your withering criticism - Canadien...who, if I recall correctly, is a liberal Catholic, hasn't posted in four months. So no wonder it seems like there is less of a rational middle ground here on science and religion! I have rarely gone to the members tab very often, since I don't come here to socialize, but the lists of members who maybe post a comment or two and then disappear is huge, while only a tiny minority are posting thousands of comments! Seems like most people join here and give up real fast; it's a topic for another discussion, but it would be worth opening it why it's only a tiny handful who stick around, and it seems like the best, most informed commenters, who were active for several years have just thrown in the towel and walked away.

'American Sniper' author killed at Texas gun range Ex-Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and one other man fatally shot, sheriff says The motive for the shooting was unclear. There are unconfirmed reports that Kyle and Littlefield were helping a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder when they were shot. If that part is on track, does it make any sense to anyone except for gun nut whackado's to take someone with PTSD to a gun range in the first place?

I guess news is traveling real slow in rightwingworld these days if it's just coming out now that Al Gore sold Current TV to Al Jazeera! I would have assumed that Al Gore couldn't be trusted right from the time he managed to push his way onto the national stage - first by posing as a moderate Democrat to run for the House in a Democratic stronghold in Tennessee; then turning his ship to the right and running as the conservative Democrat, to run for an open Senate seat in his home state; then back to being a liberal again as Clinton's VP choice (abortion! I never said anything about abortion!); so where does Al Gore really stand? Likely the same place most politicians stand -- wherever the money is! He was right about the power of the fossil fuel industry, but back after Al Gore invented the Internet and discovered the environment, there were indications that oil companies would join the shift away from petroleum to invest in wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.....BP changing its name to 'Beyond Petroleum' for example, but, after the CEO (I forget his name) was fired for negligence re: either ignoring or not being aware of safety concerns at BP's Texas refinery after an explosion which killed several workers, the next boss was Tony Hayward....who is most infamous for his "damn the torpedoes" approach to warnings about the Deep Sea Horizon rig in the Gulf, but had been working behind the scenes to dump his former boss and scrap BP's green technology investment program and put all their money into going after those risky, deep sea oil deposits.....and the rest is history as they say. That quote from Al Gore's new book doesn't mean that he entered the global warming issue with the intention of taking on the oil companies and saving the planet. On the contrary, his motives were more likely along the lines of:'what the hell do I do now that my career in politics is over?' and 'I don't know how to do anything else!' It's just that he expected two things when he made that movie "An Inconvenient Truth" 1. Dealing with climate change would be easy if steps were taken back 10 years ago, and 2. Industry, especially the oil, gas and coal companies would join the shift because existing fossil fuel reserves were getting too risky - too dirty - and too expensive to develop. But, as we know now, their response was far more aggressive than anyone expected....even against the weak-assed initiatives of the green capitalists like Al Gore. No, if this quote is an example, Jon Stewart wasn't great...not even good! Because once again, like every other mainstream liberal, he missed the real point about Gore and his environment proposals: beginning with "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore presented a narrative that meshed nicely with the expectations of liberals like Stewart - that a global crisis caused by a capitalist system that did not place the full costs to the land, water and air that affects everyone onto the developers and consumers of that resource, could be solved primarily through voluntary initiatives that didn't challenge the system. And what's worse - Gore's solutions like inflating your tires to make your car more efficient, buying efficient light bulbs, and planting trees somewhere as "carbon offsets" shifted the responsibility for harms caused by major institutions onto every individual, regardless of their carbon footprint! Jon Stewart, like other MSM liberals, can't criticize the Big Green environmental spokesmen like Gore because he believes the exact same thing: that priority one must be preserving the present system. And every environmental concern can be fixed by tweaking the dials of capitalism through technological innovations and conservation. And those who believe that long term survival should be the highest priority (can't figure out why that's the radical concept here!) see the liberals and big greenies as marginally better than the psychopaths trying to drive us over the cliff! And possibly even worse than the degenerates like the Koch Brothers, because the liberal is pretending to be onside while proposing meaningless steps that will do little or nothing to stave off disaster.

I've mentioned at least a time or two that I'm not interested in the back and forth of who did this/who did that. If I see any argument based on the position that one nation is 100% right and the other side is 100% wrong then I can't take it seriously right from the start. The point is where are we now and if we are allowing ourselves to be drawn into the Middle East as non-critical Israeli ally, how does this benefit Canada? Or what is the end game for the conflict or Canadian participation - even if it's just at an economic and political level? I don't see any plus side for Canada by joining the Israeli lobby; just sinister motives of Harper, making sure we are right on side whatever the U.S. happens to be doing, and keeping wealthy right wing Jews in Canada happy who own so much of this Country's private media, and get those evangelical Christian zionists to work for the federal tories at the local level. So far, Harper has mostly treated social conservative issues as a third rail that he doesn't want to touch. So, agreeing with every crazy, stupid thing Netanyahu says is his way of ingratiating himself with the right wing church crowd. It's already been mentioned, but to elaborate as much as I can, the U.S. took one of those jihad terrorist groups - the M.E.K. off their terrorist list because they need them to try to topple the Assad Government in Syria right now. Maybe after the job is done, they'll go right back to 'the threat of Islamist terrorists' again! And, you wonder why I am cynical about all this War On Terror crap? A superficial glossing over of the history provides no context for how things got to the state their in today. The Islamic World doesn't seem to take to economic and cultural encroachment from outsiders as well as Latin Americans for example. They put up with a lot more shit and took a lot longer to rise up against U.S.-backed puppet regimes. Even today, as one of the primary offenders - Reagans' favourite - Ephraim Rios Montt is finally dragged before a court to answer for the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Guatemala, there are other nations in the region (like Honduras) where the U.S. deliberately set up one of their School of the America's graduates to overthrow the democratic government because they were doing things that foreign companies and landowners didn't like. This sort of policy gets a lot more blowback from the Muslim World, but the takeaway for me is that if the U.S. wasn't trying to enforce their economic conditions on these countries, they wouldn't have an Al Qaeda to deal with in the first place!

Are the oligarchs starting to get worried that the great unwashed teeming masses may be starting to focus their wrath upon them? You might think so judging from the links cited in this post on the Progressive Economics Forum with the author noting that the wealth class's favourite attack dogs have been unleashed to spin the story away from the 1%. It's always entertaining to read about Terence Corcoran bleating about "class warfare," while he goes about trying to do his part sowing division among that large 99% and keep everyone at each other's throats!

Why were you asking it as a hypothetical question? I was assuming you were trying to be ironic while perching on that fence in the middle of the road. I've mentioned at least once previously that sociologists who focus on status in social hierarchies, find that most people are more concerned with the lives (especially the earnings) of those just above them and below them on the social ladder, and not those who are too far ahead in wealth and income. When inequality increases the divides in a population, competition becomes more ruthless, and envy of those perceived slightly ahead, as well as fear of those just behind and catching up, increases. In a more equal society - like we had 40 years ago, where there is a broad middle class, people tend not to as conscious of the differences as they see most people around them at or near the same level. But in this day and age, few of us have any peers because income stratification has stretched out the pack and made virtually everyone either in front, or behind everyone else. This status consciousness even affects the obscenely wealthy.....unless they're number one, there is always some other billionaire who is front of them! But, the issue here is how most in the middle see the public sector workers. I've noticed whenever these issues have come up locally, nationally or in U.S. states, that in every example, the public sector workers are not getting richer, they are just better able to hold their own against cuts to wages and pensions and benefits that have decimated the private sector working class since the 80's -- as outsourcing removed heavy industry - the main center of private sector unions. As manufacturing jobs left, service sector and light manufacturing jobs (which remained mostly non-union) had no bargaining power to improve their wages and working conditions....even though corporate profits and CEO salaries continued climbing exponentially. So, after effectively busting the private sector unions, Republicans and now Conservatives over here, have turned their guns on the public sector unions. And once the public sector unions are decertified or effectively ruined, those in the private sector today will see even further attacks against their earning power. But the response of a lot of low-wattage, dimwitted working class people, is to join the attack on the public sector workers every time they see a misleading propaganda story against government workers in the newspaper. And I suspect the motives have nothing to do with anything factual....they usually know next to nothing aside from a headline on the front page of the Sun! It's back to those underlying concerns about social status....where admit it or not, the donut shop clerk will feel a little better about themselves if one more group ahead of them is knocked down to their level. It doesn't improve their lives....on the contrary, the risk of losing a good employee if he or she decides to join the police force, fire dept., become a teacher etc. disappears once those jobs are turned into crap like everyone else's jobs! Then the deck is stacked with all of the cards in favour of the business owner, and just about everyone will be working for minimum wage with no benefits!

Yes, the U.S. spilt blood in many cases as they pushed the original inhabitants west (that's how the Cherokees ended up halfway across the Country in Oklahoma!) or were marginalized to lands that the Americans didn't think they would need. After the Civil War ended it was time to tear up all the treaties with the plains tribes and those in the Southwest and send soldiers to enforce the reservation policy on all the territories by the end of the 19th century. My point....while I was wasting my time trying to reason with people who've never picked up a book on our Canadian history....is that we (both the French and the English) made much more generous arrangements with the locals because we had one tenth the numbers of white Europeans as the Americans did, and made agreements and signed treaties that the Federal and provincial governments want to tear up today....or just pretend that they don't exist. Which is worse? The U.S. treatment of natives or the Canadian story? Hard to say...they're both abysmal, and that's why patriotic flagwavers in Canada and the U.S. are so adamant about sweeping all of this under the rug today and pretending that it never happened!

See, this is what sickens me about you liberals! For some reason, having the approval of conservatives is so important, you are willing to carry water for them rather than examine the demonization of public sector workers across our border in the U.S. - Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Texas, Ohio, New York, California, New Jersey etc. etc.. Rather than ask:'why have my wages declined against the cost of living compared to public sector wages and benefits?' the low voltage, dimwitted low wage worker over there, would rather cut the teachers, police, fire dept., public works etc. down to their miserable level. How has that been working out for them lately?

And what the capitalist fails to take into account is that most of this so called innovation is for the purpose of marketing - to create an unnecessarily complex array of similar products with slightly varying product features, all intended to dazzle and confuse the potential buyer so that they have to finally shut down their higher level reasoning and critical thinking skills and make a purchase based on gut instinct. The modern capitalist system has created a glut of products, and for purposes of creating demand for the products, their marketing divisions employ increasingly sophisticated neuromarketing techniques, often based on expensive and sophisticated psychological and neuroscience studies on test groups. And, this sorryassed system that creates mostly impulsive, neurotic, unhappy consumers spending themselves into debt to buy the latest....whatever the hell the latest big thing is....is about to come crashing down at our feet! Because a system of banking and commerce that has been designed to function on the basis of endless, continuous growth is out of synch with the reality of living on a finite planet with finite resources! This should be a no-brainer to even the most clueless, but the inevitable end to modern capitalism is a concept that is never mentioned on mainstream media, whatever it calls its political stance. Really! Some Venezuelans would beg to differ: Why was there no concern for poverty in Venezuela during all those years that a corrupt light-skinned Spanish ruling class consumed most of the money in royalties from foreign oil companies? For decades, Venezuela's indigenous population had been one of the poorest and most exploited in the Americas. Despite the vast oil wealth and other resources, Venezuela was characterized by extreme poverty. This situation began to change with the ascendance of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. And how has Chavez been doing in recent years? On balance, it seems he's done a lot better than the U.S., Europe and other western nations you would want them to emulate. In the last ten years, the number of Venezuelans living in extreme poverty (those who experience two of the five indicators of poverty) has decreased from 11.36% to 6.97%, a reduction of almost one half. At the same time, life expectancy and total population have increased significantly, showing the impact of better and more comprehensive health care services. So, if there's corruption and pilfering in Chavez's Government, it's a lot less than before - when it had the CIA-approved governments. And, the oil wealth is being distributed to the population much more equitably than most other oil-rich nations.

Your warped version of history ignores the fact that the Arabs living in Palestine had legitimate objections: such as huge tracts of land purchased by zionists were bought from absentee landlords of the old Ottoman Empire who often didn't have legitimate title to the land that they sold Jews arriving in Palestine were European...bringing European culture and attitudes, that weren't welcomed by the locals. In some cities like Jerusalem, there had already been a Jewish community living there for centuries, who were tolerated....otherwise they would not have been there....until more and more Jews arrived, bringing in numbers that indicated they would take over by mass migration. Don't pretend this "world cop" motif is legitimate. It's plain bullshit! The U.S. isn't playing policeman trying to keep world peace; the U.S. is using its military to enforce banking and commerce policies, as well as setting up proxies to act on America's behalf: in South America, Columbia is the primary U.S. enforcer. Using the excuse of fighting against Columbian revolutionaries, Columbia has sent troops across its borders into Ecuador and Venezuela several times over the last 10 years, using money and armaments supplied by the U.S. for their War on Drugs. In Africa, U.S. commercial interests have risen in priorty, leading to the creation of AFRICOM, and setting up the oil-funded government in Nigeria as their main enforcer in West Africa, with Ethiopia, Uganda, and to a lesser extent - Rwanda, being used as proxies to invade Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, the Congo...and I'm sure there are other examples where the U.S. uses its military force along with their proxy forces to back up business interests....especially the oil. And then there's the Middle East, where the U.S. has it's allies: Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain in an increasingly desperate gambit to overthrow the Assad Government, so they can cut the chain of Shia and Shia-allied nations from Lebanon - Syria - Iraq to Iran. In case anyone has noticed of late - the U.S. has their Sunni mercenaries (the Awakening Council) reactivated and fighting with the Shia-dominated central government, committing terrorist attacks, attacking convoys of supplies and refugees traveling the highway that connects Iraq with Syria. America's Empire of Bases the-new-war-in-iraq-us-occupation-shifts-to-proxy-subversion The African Union: A tool of Western rule And all the time I was growing up, we were led to believe that the problem with Russia and their satellite republics in the former Soviet Union was communism! So, they abandon communism, adopt Friedmanomics and they are still the enemy! Could it be that different countries are going to have their own, competing national interests regardless of what form of government they have? It's a moot point anyway.....at least until the American Empire collapses!

Why do you think? Not that it has anything to do with the topic, but Russians lost more soldiers and civilians in WWII than anyone else, and they recovered national prestige lost by the disasters of WWI and a retreat that Lenin had no choice on even if he wanted to fight a war with Germany. As for today: where does Russia rank compared to the U.S. in military spending? According to a recent factoid, the U.S. spends more than the next 13 nations combined, who are either allies or neutral parties, not direct threats to the U.S.. So what is the purpose of all that spending which will soon bankrupt the U.S.?

Right. They knew who was working and who wasn't, and they really didn't care either way because the money -- and I'm going on the basis that Countrywide was created by the Bank of America as an arm's length mortgager to clients they didn't want to deal with directly -- the money was ultimately created out of thin air like most of the money 'loaned' out by banks: "When a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower." This is from chapter one of Web Of Debt, by Ellen Hodgson Brown, quoting a former U.S. Treasury Secretary - Robert B. Anderson, explaining how the modern banking system works in an interview with a reporter back in 1959. The conservative simpletons are bamboozled by the propaganda from right wing apologists of the banks because they don't understand this core principle of how the fractional reserve banking system has been functioning for at least the last two centuries. It actually started clandestinely long ago, when everyone was supposed to be backing their coin and paper currencies with gold reserves. The whole system was a fraud, and has grown into a larger and larger fraud as the decades have gone by, because just like Bernie Madoff's celebrated ponzi scheme and so many others (anyone who lived in the Niagara Peninsula may recall Peter Fallon and the Falloncrest scam as our local example), as long as the economy keeps growing and new money is continuously being created, the ponzi banking scheme can keep on making new money and pretend that they are giving the borrower actual money that belongs to the bank or to depositers putting their savings in the bank. When the economy stops growing, creating new money....like the U.S. is doing right now by having the Federal Reserve debt finance the empire and foreign wars, and having the Federal Reserve create new billions to buy worthless derivatives off of favoured banks to take them off the bank balance sheets, the economy starts to decline, unemployment rises, people start to default on those mortgages -- and properties are seized at bargain basement prices with mortgagers still owing for those liar loans till the end of time. So right from the start, the banks risk nothing and either get payed by re-selling the original mortgages to third parties, or getting payed back manyfold if the buyer spends the next 20 to 30 years making mortgage payments to the original banker. And if they default, the bank can seize real assets or sell the right to seize those assets to another third party. The bank wins every time regardless of what happens in the real world.

I don't know South Africa's situation today, but Palestine has been turned into something similar to those Bantustans of Apartheid-era South Africa....I said it again....so if you set up a state or a territory or whatever you want to call it, but make sure that it does not allow free movement or transportation within its borders, or control its own necessary water resources, have access to trade without having to go through a hostile foreign nation, how can you expect it to be economically viable in the first place?

Sure they would! They are the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and that's the official aid. Thanks to the power of AIPAC and associated pro-Israel lobbies, they receive many indirect subsidies that are not given to any other nations, as well as special tax deferments set up to give Israeli exporters an advantage; U.S. military hardware sold to Israel at low cost has often been resold to third parties like China and even Iraq - during the Saddam Hussein era; so besides the direct subsidies, there are likely many more indirect subsidies of Israel that have been obscured by other labels. And I don't think Israel would be trying so hard to manipulate U.S. elections if they really were as independent as you claim. And that was a long time ago! I was a child when the Six Day War happened, and still in high school when they had the Yom Kippur War. Those wars have been used as the justification for turning Israel into a modern day version of the ancient Greek "city of soldiers" - Sparta. The Israeli military-industrial complex is the main game in town now, and a big part of the reason why the last thing Israeli policy makers would want is for peace to break out.

So, you started a thread using the South African term for separating tribes as a comparison with the Israeli/Palestinian divide, but tried to keep out any comparisons with the South African situation! If you use an incendiary term like Apartheid to start the title, you should expect the comparison from all sides whether you want it or not.

And not just evangelicals. For some reason nazi sites like Stormfront and Vanguard were also running with that story....they seem to really get bent out of shape by the prospect of Europeans having some Neanderthal blood for some reason also. Now, if I recall, the issue is that Texas public school boards are promoting pseudoscience in the classroom, like teaching that all human races are Noah's descendents. You have never elaborated on your theory of human origins, so maybe you'd like to tell us how Neanderthals and Denisovans fit into the picture. Are they descendents of Adam and Eve or did God create these other human races before them. Or, are these human relatives descendents of either of Noah's three sons......can't wait to find out.

He gets paid by a news organization that has never been profitable in its entire life since lord black created it; so if the corporate donors crack the whip, these guys all have to jump regardless of how high minded and intellectual they think they are!

Really! So, I guess we have another rape defender here! What's the matter: Palin Derangement Syndrome?