I invite one of the two woman who spend more time on here than half the account-holders combined, to block both the Petsami.com and RussianDashCam.com websites in their browsers, and spend some of their sifting-time cleaning the place up

(Hold the potpourri and lampe bergers' and no scented-diffusers, please!)

It's an interesting conversation, one I wish we could all have in person as typing is so cumbersome at times.

It's not only about the testosterone which guides the male libido (The penis has nothing to do with it - unless the entire process actually leads to sex - which it can - but most often it doesn't)

It IS, as Enoch points out, about attention. As long as the process of flashing the colourful feathers, gets the attention that is needed, then the individual is validated.

Just a glance or a stare can be enough to bolster a girls confidence (from a male, a female, a family member, a boss or whoever.) And if wearing the right shoes does the trick the validation is achieved. If wearing designer labels works, then validation is achieved. If being seen in a Lamborghini does the trick, then validation is achieved. Everyone has triggers. Sometimes they are emotional triggers brought on by personal trauma - sometimes they are learned triggers brought on by advertizing and society.

Male or female, Validation is all anyone ever wants. Those that have had constant validation in their lives, may not be a slave to the process. But in a society where advertisers constantly try to make us feel like we are not good enough so that they can create a market based on everyone's self image this is the way things work.

If it didn't work so well, they wouldn't do it. I work in advertising. I have been trained to find a way to sell things to people that they don't need. The problem is, I'm a cynic and I can't do it. So every time I have to do it, I find a way around it. That's why I now work at a college (a microcosm of political correctness where I don't have to sell stuff using sex - in fact we go out of our way not to)

So there are two sides to this equation:
1). There is the side where everyone seeks validation either emotionally, physically or by accomplishment.
2). And there is the side where advertising exploits our biological AND emotional needs to sell stuff.

Although they are two very different things, they form a symbiotic relationship and feed off each other.

I know that @bareboards2, you are trying to say, that this "advertising" needs to stop. And ideally, you are right. If you find a way to stop it all let us know. But I also know that this type of marketing is so targeted to our needs at the most basic levels, that this type of thing will never go away. Our personal needs, and desires need it too badly.

To try to explain all this is difficult - I trained for 6-years in art school to manipulate what people see and how to make them see what I want them to see. How to lead them and bring them to my way of thinking through visual media. Advertising is an attack and a science into your needs, sensibilities, emotions and psychological image of your self.

I expect the only way to battle media is through media - The person with the most media and money wins. (it's a propaganda war)

If you want to delve deeper into the psychology of it all - It's an in-depth study - here is a place to start. Start with John Berger's, "Ways of Seeing".
http://videosift.com/video/John-Berger-Art-Critic-interview
http://videosift.com/video/Ways-of-seeing-John-Berger (first episode of four)
http://videosift.com/video/WAYS-OF-SEEING-final-episode-vertising (final episode - Advertising).
The book starts with classical art and leads right up into modern advertising. Check Amazon for reviews.

>> ^spawnflagger:

funny vid, but nothing to do with homeopathy. I think you mean "home remedies".


@messenger alrighty then ... I'm no Doctor! I'll change the title to Home Remedies ... just went with the YT description. Thanks for the heads up you two =o)

*dead -- "'Cat puke vid ...'
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Erik Allen Berger."

Tags for this video have been changed from 'norwegian news, norway, cross country, ski, lars berger' to 'norwegian news, norway, cross country, ski, lars berger, beejer' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'norwegian news, norway, cross country, ski' to 'norwegian news, norway, cross country, ski, lars berger' - edited by rasch187

For a start - this is personal for me. As a Muslim and someone who has had friends murdered by the IDF this is personal.

Once again QM I don't even know where to begin with what you say - if you are not an ignorant bigot yourself then you have been reading an awful lot of books by ignorant bigots. The website you seem to have got all your information from - http://factsandlogic.org (it should be called bigotry and propaganda) - is one of many pro-Israel, pro-militant zionism websites which attempts to rewrite history. Thankfully, although such websites have an enormous influence on American public opinion the rest of the world is not so ignorant to real history. The website you link states that its purpose is ". . . the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world." In reality it attempts to suppress any historically accurate accounts of the appalling mistreatment of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis. It does so in order to ensure that the American public continue not to question the blind support of their government for any crimes that the Israeli government chooses to commit.

"The concept that Jewish presence in Judea/Samaria is illegal and that the Jews are occupiers is bizarre. It just has been repeated so often and with such vigor that many people have come to accept it."

Unfortunately it is the Israeli version of history which has been repeated so often and with such vigor that many Americans have come to accept it as gospel. The truth about Israel's history can be found in the writing of non-Zionist Jews like Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, Norman Finkelstein, Tanya Reinhart, Tony Judt, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. Also read the following famous article published by Harvard University (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06) about the power of the Israel lobby in America.

"The concept of “Palestinians” as applied to Arabs and as a distinct nationality urgently in need of their own twenty-third Arab state, is a fairly new one; it was not invented until after 1948, when the State of Israel was founded."

A myth propgated by militant zionists to undermine the Palestinian people's legitimate claim to statehood and their own lands.

I implore everyone - disregard anything QM posts on this issue. If you truly care about Israel and Palestine - make your own mind up - don't let someone else make it up for you.

gwaan, I have been researching and reading this stuff for over a decade now. I am not anti-palestinian and I have even been enlightened over the last few years. I know that the palestinians were the ones to suffer as a result of arab countries attacking Israel in 1948. I know their situation is terrible because of the way they have been treated by their own people and Israel. But I do know that most of the stuff I hear about Israel is simply not true.

Believe me, I know a lot about whats going on in the middle east.



In reply to your comment:
“ My mind isn't closed - there are many fine Articles and videos on Israel/Palestine - many by Jews and Israelis - you just haven't posted any yet.

Read as much as you can on Israel-Palestine (and Islam). Read books by Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, Norman Finkelstein, Tanya Reinhart, Tony Judt, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. Read Jimmy Carter, Chomsky, Edward Said - and books by other Palestinians . As an American read the following famous article published by Harvard University (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06). Read books written by Zionists and those who opose Zionism. The American media is biased - as many of my Israeli friends will admit. Try reading the BBC website for a more objective view. Also read the Israeli press - their discussion of the issues involved is a lot freer than in America.

If you truly care about Israel and Palestine - make your own mind up - don't let someone else make it up for you.

In reply to your comment:
“It doesnt matter. I sent you articles. I could show you accounts from people. I could even get you personal interviews from palestinians who will tell you what's really going on but in the end you'll just say its anti-palestinian Israeli propoganda.

So what could I do. People believe what they want even if the truth is shoved in their faces.

You cant truly want peace with a closed mind. ””

My mind isn't closed - there are many fine Articles and videos on Israel/Palestine - many by Jews and Israelis - you just haven't posted any yet.

Read as much as you can on Israel-Palestine (and Islam). Read books by Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, Norman Finkelstein, Tanya Reinhart, Tony Judt, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. Read Jimmy Carter, Chomsky, Edward Said - and books by other Palestinians . As an American read the following famous article published by Harvard University (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06). Read books written by Zionists and those who opose Zionism. The American media is biased - as many of my Israeli friends will admit. Try reading the BBC website for a more objective view. Also read the Israeli press - their discussion of the issues involved is a lot freer than in America.

If you truly care about Israel and Palestine - make your own mind up - don't let someone else make it up for you.

In reply to your comment:
“It doesnt matter. I sent you articles. I could show you accounts from people. I could even get you personal interviews from palestinians who will tell you what's really going on but in the end you'll just say its anti-palestinian Israeli propoganda.

So what could I do. People believe what they want even if the truth is shoved in their faces.

You cant truly want peace with a closed mind. ”

My mind isn't closed - there are many fine Articles and videos on Israel/Palestine - many by Jews and Israelis - you just haven't posted any yet.

Read as much as you can on Israel-Palestine (and Islam). Read books by Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, Norman Finkelstein, Tanya Reinhart, Tony Judt, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. Read Jimmy Carter, Chomsky, Edward Said - and books by other Palestinians . As an American read the following famous article published by Harvard University (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06). Read books written by Zionists and those who opose Zionism. The American media is biased - as many of my Israeli friends will admit. Try reading the BBC website for a more objective view. Also read the Israeli press - their discussion of the issues involved is a lot freer than in America.

If you truly care about Israel and Palestine - make your own mind up - don't let someone else make it up for you.

quantumushroom - your understanding of history is deeply flawed and based more on propoganda than facts. Unfortunately for a long time the myth of Israel's creation that you advocate was accepted as historical truth in Israel and the rest of the world.

Thankfully the age of myth is passing. Non-Zionist Jews such as Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, and Norman Finkelstein have already published well-documented refutations of the official version of Israel's history.

More importantly, the standard myths about Israel's creation have started to be challenged by Israeli Jews — a younger generation of historians with impeccable credentials as Zionists, patriotic Israelis and scholars.

For example, Benny Morris was among the first of the younger Israeli scholars to receive widespread notice when he refuted Ben-Gurion's long-accepted assertion that the Palestinian refugees of 1947-48 left Palestine at the instruction of Arab leaders. In 'The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem', published in 1988, Morris concluded that Arab leaders had not urged the local population to leave but that the exodus was mainly the result of attacks by the official Jewish army, the Haganah, and the Irgun, a terrorist organisation headed by Menachem Begin that had carried out assassinations and bombings against both the British and the Palestinians during the British mandate.

Similarly Ilan Pappé, associate professor of Middle East history at the University of Haifa, emphasizes in 'In The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-51' the importance of Plan D in the creation of Israel. Plan Dalet, or Plan D, was adopted by the Israeli leadership to impliment their intention to expel the Palestinians from as much territory as possible and by whatever means necessary. From April 1, 1948 to the end of the war, Pappé writes, "Jewish operations were guided by the desire to occupy the greatest possible portion of Palestine." Pappé also writes that the Jewish army formally adopted the plan in early 1948 after Arabs protested a U.N. partition proposal that allocated to the Palestinians only 38 percent of mandatory Palestine although they made up more than 65 percent of the population.

Israel's apologists blame the Palestinians' misfortune on their opposition to partition, and especially to a Jewish state. If the Arabs chose to fight rather than share, then Israel would also fight—and take enough territory to insure its future security. But Pappé describes a more complex situation, in which blame is shared several ways - including a significant degree of blame for the Israeli leadership and armed forces who pursued what Pappé calls the "uprooting, expulsion, and pauperization of the Palestinians, with the clear purpose of taking firm control over Western Palestine."