WIP

NO, because I haven't offered solutions or strategies; just an honest confrontation with the problems we are collectively facing today...and the closer we get to societal breakdown, the more determined a lot of people are to just shut out the bad news and escape -- why else would more people be interested in following the latest celebrity trials than take a look at something that has significance for everyone living on the planet, like the latest IPSO Report on the World's oceans. What's offered up as solutions for our problems by both conservatives and liberals, are just slightly different versions of doing the same things over again and expecting different results. Both liberals and conservatives are arguing about how to restore economic growth. They take it as a given that economies must keep growing and people must have more and more products in their lives, even though sociological evidence compiled by people like Richard Wilkinson show that in present dollars, the peak income for raising quality of life stops in relatively equal societies where average income is about $12,000 per year! After that, there is no increase in lifespan, health, or perceived satisfaction with life. And, especially in more unequal societies, these numbers drop in spite of rising average income levels. We do know that modern technology played a big part in creating the consumer-driven economy that's eating up the planet's resources at an ever increasing scale. As a side note, when the subject of the Great Depression is mentioned, one of the causes that's never taken into account is that advertising and impulse-driven consumption were not big economic factors back in 1930 -- and the technological improvements of newer methods of steel production and assemblyline manufacturing that came of age in the 1920's, flooded the existing markets with too many products. It took a few decades before corporate marketing and television created the modern, borderline ADHD consumer! Yet the discussion going on by what we are told are the 'two sides of the debate' do not even recognize, let alone speak to the core problems. And there is that fundamental problem of how to square the demands for economic growth with the natural limits to growth that are already being imposed on us with increased energy costs, higher food prices and rising resource costs....the conservatives and the liberals have nothing to say to deal with these limits, so we may just continue merrily along until nature imposes a solution similar to the one the Mayans, the Easter Islanders, and many past empires suffered....the problem is that in our globalized world, the collapse will also be global this time, and it's anyone's guess what will emerge from the other side.

That's why the so called liberal media is so nauseating to listen to. This will get worse as the Obama re-election campaign starts to get underway. They toss a few crumbs off the table and call it reform, and are more harsh with voices on the left who criticize them, like the piling on against Cornel West for having the audacity to criticize Obama's weak efforts to end the wars, restore civil rights lost to the Patriot Act and other intrusive measures etc.

Let's stop and consider that the Germans who remained in Germany did not "move on." They allowed ramped up nationalism, notions of racial and cultural superiority, and desire for empire to give rise to Hitler and WWII. In all of your posts about Muslims, Palestinians or other Arabs, I don't see any consideration for basic human dignity -- you consider these people ignorant, violent, stupid and generally subhuman, and that's the first step to justifying any and all violence against them. It's okay to kill them and destroy their health through a continued blockade of a million and a half Gazans; while any attempts to break through what is fundamentally an illegal blockade are met with violence, more threats of violence, death, and excuses for causing death! If you don't consider them human, they just deserve it anyway, is the rationale here. I'll pull this from the snapshot definition in wikipedia by historian William E. Weeks three key themes were usually touched upon by advocates of Manifest Destiny: the virtue of the American people and their institutions; the mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the U.S.; and the destiny under God to do this work.[15] Sounds like little more than a mix of religion and racism to start with, and it's at the heart of the Afrikaanders founding myth, and the story of the Conquest of Canaan in the Old Testament....we're better than they are, and God told us to kill them and take the land etc. What are they going to do about all of the private roads and settlements dotting the West Bank? If those settlements which keep getting expanded, stay there, there is no serious effort allowing self-government on the West Bank. What's there today is a bunch of isolated little Palestinian Bantustans. Well, it wasn't exactly unoccupied, but awhile back there were stories of Zionist leaders being offered territory in Uganda by the British. Perhaps the British thought it would be better to displace that population since Lord Balfour screwed up Palestine by promising it to both the Arabs and the Jews.

That was 315 million, not billions! And Ariana sold out her unpaid bloggers...many of whom quit over this. I follow many climate bloggers, but you just cite the oil-funded propagandists who try to deny or obfuscate the growing evidence of climate change.

You're forgetting that we're not liberals! I won't speak for Jack, but I would be classified today as a radical, because I want a new economic paradigm that works within the parameters we have today: an overpopulated planet that has dangerously altered the planet, and depleted natural resources available for the future. And liberals just want to tweak the dials of the system we have now. One other difference is that liberals are pacifists, and I'm not a pacifist! That's what's made Coulter's screeds about liberal academic tyranny in the book I'm most familiar with - Godless, a laughable example of vilifying a weak adversary for exactly what the right wing is doing - grabbing more and more power, and denying the rights of others. In his book:"Death Of The Liberal Class" former NY Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges explains what has been a mystery to many outsiders looking on, like where are demonstrations against the wars, the closing of factories and union-busting...back in the 60's, there were people in the streets every time something big was happening, but aside from the reaction against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the response has been anemic. And the reason is because the right has pretty much gotten everything on their wish list! They have destroyed the liberal institutions by underfunding the state universities, coopting the big unions, cutting the funding for public radio and television while allowing six corporations to create a rightwing media oligopoly...so what the F(*& is Ann Coulter complaining about? It's just simple minded propaganda to distribute to simple minded tea party activists! But, the shift to the right over the last 30 years may come at a high price if things start to get ugly in the future, because those moderate liberal voices have been cleared out of the way and a leftwing backlash will be a lot more ugly than what the oligarchs have been used to dealing with so far.

One difference between our society today and back in 1845, when luddites were fighting new technology, was that there was no social safety net back then...of course you libertarians are hard at work trying to destroy what we've got now...anyway, with nothing to fall back on, someone like a candle-maker was literally imperiled by a new technological development, just as much as outsourcing his job...which wasn't practical yet in 1845 before the era of mass production. If you want a world where money and production can move freely across borders, protected by the wide array of international trade and banking organizations, then another world body has to have the ability to protect what's not mobile and free to move -- the people working for the capitalist in search of cheaper production! So, both the workers in China, Malaysia or Bangladesh need a world body enforcing rules protecting the new factory workers, giving them the right to collective bargaining, health and safety protections, and fundamental protections against excessive labour abuses...such as Chinese factory workers forced to work more than 100 hours per week. And, over here...where the plants are closing...the people left behind in the rust belts need compensation for what's been taken away from them, in lost wages and the opportunities if they are young enough for retraining for decent careers that will provide a decent standard of living equivalent to what they've lost.

That's why this story strikes me as something similar to an arsonist accidentally setting himself on fire. There seem to be a lot of people further up the income and management ladder that were okay with globalization until they discovered that their ox was being gored also! What I find especially scary, after contemplating the reckless attitude - taking shortcuts which led to the BP Gulf Disaster, is that these greed-driven megalomaniacs are willing to roll the dice on ventures that can destroy entire ecosystems and kill and sicken entire populations living in the affected areas. We can see this in the energy-funded campaigns stalling efforts to move out of fossil fuels, and the reckless disregard of safety procedures by the operators of nuclear power stations -- just recently we learned that the operator of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant has been fighting against an NRC official who refused to back down from demands that they build higher flood protection barriers....if the plant operators had got their way, the flooding which almost breached flood containment would have left the U.S. with its own Fukashima Disaster to manage. Again and again, we see the same pattern -- the captains of industry, and their lackeys in government have no regard for the wider implications of their actions. One of the assumptions held by many climate activists is that our leaders will reign in their short term interests when they realize the disaster we are heading into over the coming decades. But this is not the case if we are ruled by psychopaths! There are a few psychologists and neurologists who study abnormal psychology, and make the point that the majority of antisocial types categorized as psychopathic or sociopathic are not serial killers or prison inmates! Prisons have the highest percentage of these misfits of course, but the majority of psychopaths are out there walking among us. And the more intelligent ones, who are immune to the restrictions of personal sentiment like loyalty, empathy etc. are free to slash and burn their ways to the top of the political and corporate ladders. The misfits who are leading the modern world are going to do more than destroy the middle class I'm afraid -- if there's no way for a democratic majority to reign in the rich and well connected, they are going to destroy life on Earth before they are done.

Yeah, what a gutless toady Obama turned out to be! But, that falls in the pattern of every other center-left politician who claimed that they would stop Free Trade or protect workers from losing jobs to outsourcing. No one begrudges new technologies, and free trade agreements would not have had the destructive impact on manufacturing if the new locations allowed collective bargaining, and had legislation protecting environment and employees health....but the corporatists created this structure to bring back the good old days that Charles Dickens wrote about.

The thread question itself is waste of time to begin with; since it implies that permanent Israeli Occupation and expulsion of Palestinians is justified if another historical example can be found somewhere else in the world. I have ancestors on my mother's side of the family who came from this area...which all used to be part of Prussia. Some of them left before the start of WWI, and some left after being forced out to create that Polish Corridor after the War. For whatever reasons, Germans are not Palestinians -- once they left, they did not harbour dreams or desires to return, like some old Palestinians who kept the door keys of their old houses and settled into a life of permanent refugee. Obviously religion is the core problem here, and yet these Hitchens-type Neocon atheists ignore the contributions to religious strife caused by Judaism, especially Orthodox Judaism -- how do you argue with someone who claims that your land was given to him by God and you have to get out? But despite its relatively secular beginnings, manifest destiny is what Zionism is all about! If it was just a matter of needing a place for a Jewish homeland, they could have just taken some unoccupied territory to set up their own state.

I think everyone who claims to be a rationalist has a special obligation to explore information from all sides of a conflict, and not just one sided propaganda.

The outrage should have come from your side of the border, so were you fighting to save the jobs of auto workers while production was being sent to our side to take advantage of our then lower dollar?

Except that in the case of this particular 1000 employees, they were part of the active decision-making process that outsourced the jobs of many who were lower on the income scale, and they likely considered themselves to important to have their jobs outsourced. I found much the same thing 10 or so years ago when all of the computer experts thought their skills meant that their jobs and their incomes were impervious to whatever else was going on in the economy. And back when the first Free Trade Agreement was being argued out in Parliament, a lot of manufacturing employees thought it was okay, because it was only menial jobs in textile manufacturing that would be lost. Globalization has created a race to the bottom because the international organizations and free trade agreements ruled out any effective labour, health and environment restrictions on imports. Today we are importing products that are being produced using dirty manufacturing processes that failed air, water and other environmental standards here. So we outsourced the production and imported the pollution through climate change.

There are many issues where both parties are out of step with the wishes of the majority of people. I think the Republican advantage is that their libertarian ideology allows them to be up front about their devotion to money and power...I'm thinking of Joe Barton's infamous apology to BP executives at Congressional hearings on the Gulf Oil Disaster. Democrats who collect big cheques from oil and coal companies have to try to hide it or make a lot more excuses to their supporters.

Right! It's a matter of trying to appear populist and working class while carrying out agendas that are largely corporate-driven. And, I think here in Canada, the NDP will morph and reposition itself as a center-left party, especially now that the Conservatives are cutting public campaign financing, and restrictions on corporate campaign financing will disappear, and reflect the American reality.

I was hoping you would recognize the irony of denying scientific evidence that doesn't mesh with ancient mythological stories of creation! And, if I wanted to be fundamentalist hardliner on divine creation, I would have to also accept a Cosmic description of a flat Earth at the center of the Cosmos, with the Sun and planets circling around underneath the Firmament. Allegorical explanations for flat earth descriptions had to be made by the time mariners started traveling long distances at sea, and noticed effects that showed a curvature of the surface of the Earth -- a ship's mast being visible before the lower portion of the ship can be viewed, would be one example. In Galileo's time, The Church was digging in its heels because of heliocentric cosmologies, and today it's the luddites who deny the fossil and genomic evidence for evolution from common origins. If that ever gets settled, the next big hurdle will be fundamentalists against modern neuroscience (Discovery Institute has already started working on this one) which has demolished traditional notions of dualism and free will....and judging from the reactionary movement against evolution, that could take a few centuries! According to Tom Bishop on the Flat Earth Forums, all of these pictures and videos from space are fake!....sounds convincing to me! Oh! I thought the Moon landings were already proven to have been staged at Area 51. Well, I didn't before, but now that I've seen the large bold type I'm convinced!

No, the ancient Hebrew conception of the Cosmos, which was consistent all across the Middle East, was of a circular flat Earth that rested on pillars above the abode of the dead - Sheol (all the dead went to sheol in the earlier accounts). And yes, above the Earth is a vaulted metal roof translated in English as "firmament," which had the waters of heaven that could be rained down on Earth, as on the occasion when Yahweh decided to open the floodgates of the heavens for 40 days and 40 nights. The stars of heaven hung from the firmament - as described in the Book of Job, and above the heavens that were visible and the firmament, were the abodes of the angels and Yahweh himself. Some ancient artists conceptualized the firmament as dome shaped in at least one crude depiction of a man traveling such a far distance that he arrived at the ends of the Earth where the walls of the firmament rested on the Earth. It's worth a mention that the circular Earth was not the only Cosmic depiction -- a square Earth must have been the idea of some Old Testament writers who use terms like "four corners of the earth" and "the four winds" that blow from them. Incidentally, the fundamentalists who keep trotting out Isaiah 40:22 verse...which describes Yahweh sitting on a throne above the "circle of the earth," try to conflate circle to mean sphere; when in fact Hebrew had two separate words for circle and sphere. If the writer of Isaiah really thought the Earth was a sphere, he would have used the proper term in his description of the Cosmos

Yeah, just like those people who are trying to force us to believe we live on a round earth! The flat earth theory should also be taught in schools.

Goldman Sachs is going to fire employees in the U.S. and some other countries so that it can hire 1,000 in Singapore, where it's cheaper. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-is-firing-employees-in-the-us-so-it-can-hire-1000-in-singapore-2011-6#ixzz1R20cQIHN Yes, first they told us it was only those working in more labour-intensive industries like textiles who had to worry about losing their jobs to outsourcing...then they came for the manufacturing line workers...then they came for the skilled tradesmen...then white caller jobs, starting with telephone sales and product service personnel lost their jobs to call centers in Mumbai...then the computer programmers and software designers who thought they had the new, innovative skills to make them secure in the age of globalization...goodbye! unless you can work in our new office in India! Well, who's going to shed any tears for these hotshot, big money bankers and investment analysts who made a killing swimming in the proverbial "sea of smiling sharks?"

Yes, Maher is pretty notorious for trying to live out the playboy lifestyle, having lots of girlfriends and dissing marriage. Coulter never married either, and has dated some other interesting characters like Bob Guccione jr. -- which made it a hard sell five years ago when she started doing the god talk all of a sudden.

Yes, but his cautious language, especially when he talks about one "glaring exception," makes it something less than the ringing endorsement that usually gets handed out by these flaks. And that's a big problem for Ann Coulter, since she is crafting her books for the hard right lunatic audience, not the average reader. I suspect that the writer is well aware that Coulter has written almost the same story in each book, with changing bogeymen. Each time, it's always some liberal scapegoat being accused of doing what the conservative right is doing in real life: suppressing free speech, denying rights, hurling accusations of elitism etc. But as long as her book as some wealthy, conservative backers, she will still make money off it because conservative sugardaddies buy up thousands of copies of books from Coulter, Palin, Hannity, O'Reilly, the Limbaughs etc., so that they are guaranteed a bestseller sticker. Free copies are given away as bonus gifts to new members who join various conservative organizations. The problem here is that her book sales are dropping with each bombastic offering, and less than enthusiastic reviews will push her further back in the pack of conservative celebrities...and eventually in to total obscurity. you identified him as a freeper, and I took this to mean more than being a contributor to CFC, which is for the most part, just a news aggregator site. In its heyday, the Free Republic Forums were the big meeting place for what has mostly turned into tea party activist groups. They referred to themselves as "freepers," and there is a small Canadian sub group that runs Free Dominion Forums. I'm not up on what's going on in these places of late; I try to avoid these lunatics nowadays.

I'm not going to go into details on past CO2 levels, since I've posted this at least 4 or 5 times previously: Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report. The findings were based on a new, more accurate method of determining CO2 levels from analysis of tiny marine algae shells over a period of 20 million years. What is crucial for us today are that the implications of CO2 timeline are that sustaining the present carbon dioxide levels, means that there are more climate changes in the pipeline even if further increases in CO2 were stopped! At the time CO2 was last sustained at present levels -- "global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland," -- so, even as it stands now, we have a total loss of sea ice and disappearance of most of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctic to look forward to. The corresponding increase in sea level of that magnitude, would wipe out the world's coastal cities, and flood many low-lying land masses...considering all of the people that would have to be moved, added to the chaos beginning already with increasingly extreme and chaotic weather, and it's a no-brainer that carbon dioxide levels are already too high to sustain a system of agriculture that can sustain a population of nearly 7 billion.

Who doesn't know that? And the facts are that CO2 has never exceeded 300ppm during the last 10,000 years. And that the one third increase in CO2 over the last 100 or so years has already caused so much damage, should tell you that we cannot live for much longer at the present CO2 levels...let alone higher amounts.

I'm sure your Government is already at work trying to shut down Haaretz, or force them to tow the line. I'm noticing that liberal voices from Israel are fewer and harder to find than they were a few years ago. Do you have any evidence for this? Or do you just take the word of your spokesmen? I also heard claims that the Government spokesmen claim some of the dead were killed by stepping Syrian landmines, but haven't provided evidence to confirm their story. The only reason they could have known is if they already knew the orthodox zealots that moved in to Gush Katif were liars, and would not "fight to the death" as they were claiming beforehand. Their rhetoric and actions before their removal sure made them appear to be a serious hostile threat. Yet they got the kid glove treatment in comparison, because they are part of that growing extreme rightwing orthodox group that the politicians are afraid of. There is a pattern established here, and we haven't even got to the Gaza Blockade yet...a blockade of a civilian population that is tacitly supported by the U.S. and other major powers. The last time an attempt was made to break the blockade by boat, 9 were killed, including a U.S. citizen, whom the U.S. Government has apparently done nothing to try to investigate, let alone redress. Cameras and all recording devices were confiscated from passengers on the boats to hinder any unbiased, independent investigation. So what's going to happen this time, when this new boatlift sets sail from Greece. They have already been warned by Hillary Clinton that the U.S. Government will do nothing to protect them from harm, and there are Americans with access to media, such as CNN commentator - Eric Ericson, who are encouraging killing of Americans if the attempts so far to bribe Greece to stop the flotilla are unsuccessful. Now, I already know what you're going to say. You're going to give me the same old argument that the Arabs can't be trusted to abide by any peaceful settlement, and Israel has to do whatever it takes to defend itself. Well, if that's what it boils down to, it's time to start admitting that talk of two-state solutions is a fraud, just as much as the equivalent separate homelands policy of the former South African Government were fraudulent. But, Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders keep this charade going because they know that most of the West is going to look for a way to cut Israel loose if there is not even an attempt to bring the wars and occupations to an end. And, it seems like most of the Jews who have seen a future of endless war with implacable enemies have already left. The ones who are moving there, or remain in Israel are willing to fight to the bitter end (although some of them have exemptions from military service).

I used to feel a little disheartened when I drove across the border and seen every other house (at least in the suburbs) was flying the flag -- while on our side, the flag is hardly found except for in front of government buildings. Over the last 10 years it seems that patriotism and flag waving is a very useful tool for those who profit from war and building the machines of war. You may not like it, but the main reason why a lot of Democrats keep caving on these issues is because they are so scared to be called unpatriotic.

Did you notice that this Canadian Freeper is treating her work with caution -- gleaning through for the stuff that might be useful, rather than giving her work an unqualified endorsement? That's likely because she has been caught plagiarizing the work of others in many of her previous books, and some educated rightwingers already suspected that some of her shifts...especially her sudden jump from libertarian partygirl to Christian conservative five years ago (that stupid book "Godless") likely means she is just another fraud with no real core beliefs...let alone a moral compass...who will say anything to try to impress her rightwing audience. Her star has certainly fallen from where she was five or ten years ago. Maybe she will try to reinvent herself as a liberal, like Ariana Huffington did!