@coolhund
dude..chill.
while i totally respect and admire your passion,@dingens is correct in pointing out your ad-hom swipe.you made overly broad assumptions about him with zero evidence to back those assumptions up,at least on this thread there is no evidence.

i think you owe him an apology.

you appear,to me anyways,to be taking any opinions or criticisms as a personal attack upon you and your stance.

i do not really see people disagreeing with you,but rather pointing out the complex dynamics.this does not equate to disagreement,just a desire to refine the parameters of the discussion.

i totally get what you are trying to say and i agree with you,but in your (understandable) frustration you are lashing out at people who do not deserve your ire.

you are correct to point out that the elephant in the room is never questioned,never mind discussed.i.e:america creates the situation,then plays the victim.

which is your basic hegelian dialectic:problem-reaction-solution.

the real discussion is POWER vs POWERLESSNESS,and the abuses of power to the detriment of society,locally and globally.

at least thats how i was reading your commentary.i could have it all wrong but i do admire your passion.

if i could offer some unsolicited advice my friend:do not become so invested in your passions that you forget the plot.the people who have commented here are not your enemies.

they are just commenting,and maybe if you feel they are not understanding what you are laying down..clarify your position by engaging with these people to collectively formulate a better understanding.no need or reason to lash out at them,because maybe they just misunderstood what you were trying to say.

oh god...just realized i am that uncle on the holidays that tries to keep the peace by getting everyone drunk.

ok everybody!
beers on me!
lets go get drunk!

there many forms of enslavement,to wit most people are wholly unaware,either unwittingly or unwillingly.

"none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free" van goethe.

consider this my friends:
if you accept currency for your labors,where you toil for anothers financial gain.you are literally renting yourself.trading your time,creativity and labors for coin.you are a wage slave and a hundred years ago our ancestors were very aware of this and found it detestable.they literally saw it as a form of slavery.

now as @Lawdeedaw pointed out,there are some protections put forth by our government,along with other governments,but those were not just handed out.they had to be fought for,and many died for those protections.by whom? wage slaves,but in those days they KNEW thats what they were,and proceeded from that premise.

the philosophy of the matrix even addressed this very idea of slavery (yep,i went there).that the majority of the people had become so entrenched and immersed in the system,that to even question the system would illicit a violent and defensive response.they would fight to remain in the system.

just look at our friend @Barbar 's reaction.
even the term "slave" was enough for a visceral reaction.

i am reminded of a doug stanhope routine in where he states " at least i KNOW i am a slave,YOU,however..remain clueless".

so let us take the term "slave" off the table and instead use the dynamic of "power vs powerlessness".

the current systems of power have the majority of people running on hamster wheel of desperation.may it be "pay check to paycheck" or "mortgage and credit cards" or the subtle doctrine of "conform and obey".this could also be "all of the above".

the real question is this:
do you consider yourself free?
because a comfortable slave.....is still a slave.
the term may be dramatic,but it is accurate.

@Barbar

your comment is a non sequitur.
the video was not addressing those points but solely revealing the:employee/employer dynamic.

there is plenty of documentation that backs this videos claim that when people are given the illusion of being "free" they become far more productive.

there is nothing in your examples that the state gave out of benevolence.every example you posted were hard fought battles that were executed by the people.many died to earn those concessions,and they ARE concessions.

as for your final example of "quality of life".this just equates to more comfortable slaves.

the dynamic of employer/master/owner vs slave/peon/worker remains intact.

maybe it is the usage of the term slave that you find offensive?
ok..fair enough.the word is used for dramatic effect i agree.
how about we change the terminology to:power vs powerlessness.

in that context would you find this video more palatable?

@Trancecoach

nice article.
explains much in regards to the evolution of germanys social market economy,the reasons and motivations.was a rather enjoyable read.

it still does not excuse your own hackery,but it does explain how germanys more marxist socialism was failing and needed to be adapted to a more free market enterprise.that by itself,did not create a free market capitalism though,it changed the dynamic of a marxist socialist economy that was failing to meet the needs of a country that imported way more than it exported.

in the end it was still a social market economy with the market expanded.

we all need to evolve and adapt ,and elements of free market capitalism is well equipped to do just that.so bravo for germany.

figured i would take this discussion to your page.

in response to this post:kinda,you are close,in the ball park.

the main reason why i injected my opinion in that thread was to add a dynamic that was not being discussed.

i wasnt actually offering a counterpoint but rather adding to the already complicated dynamic.

so i do not think we disagree at all.
one of the reasons islam has not changed much is due to there not being a reformation.this lack of canonization and core central philosophical tenants has left islam to a wide array of problems,many of those problems we see play out everyday on the world stage.

if you going to read any book on islam.i highly recommend reza aslans "no god but god".the entire book is an argument FOR reformation and you may recognize some of the arguments in the book from my commentary.

as always my friend,
a pleasure engaging and discussing with you.
stay awesome.

what a fantastic discussion.
i would just like to add a few points:
1.religious texts are inert.they are neutral.
WE give them meaning.
so if you are a violent person,your religion will be violent.
if you are a peaceful and loving person,your religion will be peaceful and loving.
2.religion,along with nationalism,are the two greatest devices used by the state/tyrant/despot/king to instigate a populace to war/violence.
3.as @Barbar noted.islam is in serious need of reformation,much like the christian church experienced centuries ago.see:the end of the dark ages.
4.one of my problems with maher,harris and to a lesser extent dawkins,is that they view this strictly as a religious problem and ignore the cultural and social implications of the wests interventionism in the middle east.this is a dynamic and complicated situation,which goes back decades and to simply say that this is a problem with islam is just intellectually lazy.

there is a reason why these communities strap bombs to their chest.there is a reason why they behead people on youtube.there is a reason why salafism and wahabism are becoming more entrenched and communities are becoming more radicalized.

islam is NOT the reason.
islam is the justification.

the reason why liberals lose absofuckingalways,is because they not only feel they are,as @gorillaman pointed out,"good" but that they are somehow "better" than the rest of us.

sam harris is a supreme offender in this regard.that somehow the secular west has "better" or "good" intentions when we interfere with the middle east.that when a US drone strike wipes out a wedding party of 80 people is somehow less barbaric than the beheading of charlie hedbo.

yet BOTH are barbaric.

and BOTH utilize a device that justifies their actions.
one uses national security and/or some altruistic feelgood propaganda and the other uses islam.

yet only one is being occupied,oppressed,bombed and murdered.

this is basic.
there really is no controversy.
this is in our own history.
what is the only response when faced with an overwhelming and deadly military force,when your force is substantially weaker?
guerrilla warfare.

so the tactic of suicide bomber becomes more understandable when put in this context.
it is an act of desperation in the face of overwhelming military might to instill fear and terror upon those who wish to dominate and oppress.

and islam is the device used to justify these acts of terror.
just as nationalism and patriotism are used to justify OUR acts of terror.

thats my 2c anyways.
carry on peoples.

At least it's a lucky one in captivity and not one of the starving, emaciated polar bears with its bones showing.

How is that bike stable going backwards? Bike dynamics are weird.

edit: I suppose it isn't. She is just good at correcting the balance herself ;3

Huh, okay I can see the dynamic now. The initial video felt more like one of those 'fringe'/questionable shows/zoos in some southeast asian country (only because I've seen a lot of sad animal videos come out of there).

It makes me wonder if zoos frequently use dogs as surrogates as a regular alternative? Interesting!

I'm not going to pass judgement on them. It's not my place. I have no idea of what they might have been doing beforehand... perhaps they were having a group orgy on MDMA and then WHAM! Fireworks, everywhere. Oh good God I'm going to cum!

I'd say if it had been me standing there (sober) - I would have immediately shut my mouth and forgot about my phone and videoing the event. Instead going into survival mode since I would have believed that my life was severely in danger by this event unfolding and would have tried to get out of there as fast as possible- to a basement or somewhere else solid. But, that is only my theory and everyone is different, situations are different, the people you are with, the country you are in, dynamics. It's not like this was their fault. I also get a hint of the sobering magnitude beginning to sink into their voices by the end of the video...

Ah, but we do have the option to go back in time per Lucky and have a serious conversation over this and better script the reaction while this unseen event happens the second time around.

You know, I wish it wouldn't be. But I think American society is just more...savage...towards its disadvantaged---and that comes out, I think, in a sort of yell at the spouse, who hits the kid, who kicks the dog sort of way.

It's not a nice way to think about life the States. But I'm guilty of it.

Take, for example, just the question of basic health coverage---Canadians of all stripes and backgrounds know they have it, no questions asked. Or guns (this will be controversial). Even though the guy in the wheelchair was held up with guns, they are just not as prevalent as they are north of the border---and that changes the interpersonal dynamic of a lot of interactions with strangers.

Varoufakis' Op-Ed in the Guardian closes with a remark that should be featured much more prominently in any discussion about the EU or the EZ:

"Based on months of negotiation, my conviction is that the German finance minister wants Greece to be pushed out of the single currency to put the fear of God into the French and have them accept his model of a disciplinarian eurozone."

It is about the Franco-German dynamic within the EU and whether or not the monetarists in Germany -- the recession cult, as Bill Mitchell put it -- get to keep the rest of the EU in a permanent chokehold.

Again, I can't seem to pull up the full text of your article through google scholar. Even your summary though states an additional warming contribution of 0.3C by 2100. Sorry, but I don't class that as catastrophic. What's more, simply doing a google scholar search for articles on "permafrost methane climate" and taking the first four full articles give the following, with absolutely zero effort taken to pluck out ones that support my particular claim:

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/4/045016/fulltext/
According to our results, by mid-21st century the annual net flux of methane from Russian permafrost regions may increase by 6–8 Mt, depending on climatic scenario. If other sinks and sources of methane remain unchanged, this may increase the overall content of methane in the atmosphere by approximately 100 Mt, or 0.04 ppm, and lead to 0.012 °C global temperature rise.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010RG000326/full
It's a more sweeping assessment so it doesn't have a nice short quotable for our particular point. It's most concise point is in Figure 7 which I'm not sure how to link into here as an image. You can check for yourself though that even the highest error margins on methane releases touch natural emissions till long, long after 2100, matching the IPCC millenial timescale statement I cited earlier.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018680/full
A detailed study of one mire show that the permafrost and vegetation changes have been associated with increases in landscape scale CH4 emissions in the range of 22–66% over the period 1970 to 2000.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/36/14769.full
We attempted to incorporate in this study some of the latest mechanistic understanding about the mechanisms controlling soil CO2 respiration and wetland CH4 emissions, but uncertainties remain large, due to incomplete understanding of biogeochemical and physical processes and our ability to encapsulate them in large-scale models. In particular, small-scale hydrological effects (36) and interactions between warming and hydrological processes are only crudely represented in the current generation of terrestrial biosphere models. Fundamental processes such as thermokarst erosion (37) or the effects of drying on peatland CO2 emissions (e.g., ref. 38) are lacking here, causing uncertainty on future high-latitude carbon-climate feedbacks. In addition, large uncertainty arises from our ability to model wetland dynamics or the microbial processes that govern CH4 emissions, and in particular how the complicated dynamics of permafrost thaw would affect these processes.

The control of changes in the carbon balance of terrestrial regions by production vs. decomposition has been explored by a number of authors, with differing estimates of whether vegetation or soil changes have the largest overall effect on carbon storage changes (39–41). These results demonstrate that with the inclusion of two well-observed mechanisms: the relative inhibition of respiration by soil freezing (42) and the vertical motion in Arctic soils that buries old but labile carbon in deeper permafrost horizons, which can be remobilized by warming (3), the high-latitude terrestrial carbon response to warming can tip from near equilibrium to a sustained source of CO2 by the mid-21st century. We repeat that uncertainties on these estimates of CO2 and CH4 balance are large, due to the complexity of high-latitude ecosystems vs. the simplified process treatment used here.

And I was able to find the full PDF for your own original sink on the subject:
here
We conclude that the ice-free area of
northeastGreenland acts as a net sink of atmosphericmethane,
and suggest that this sink will probably be enhanced under
future warmer climatic conditions.

All of the above seem to fairly well corroborate my earlier citation to the IPCC's own summary of the current knowledge on permafrost and northern methane impact on future warming:
However modelling studies and expert judgment indicate that CH4 and CO2 emissions will increase under Arctic warming, and that they will provide a positive climate feedback. Over centuries, this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
From FAQ 6.1

If you want to more simply claim that there exist studies, with noted high uncertainties, that under the worst case emission scenarios that show a possible significant release of methan prior to 2100 and possible catatrophic releases after, then I agree. If you want to claim that the consensus is we are facing catastrophe in our lifetime, as your first post claimed, then I most point to the overwhelming scientific evidence linked above that simply does not agree, once again chosen at random and with no effort to cherry pick only results that match what I want. I must note I lack surprise though as the IPCC had already been claiming the same of the literature and existing evidence.

This is a side light, but one of the reasons why I like the score to the first 5" of the video (Daybreak by Overwerk), even though I've heard it too many times (GoPro anyone?), is that it has dynamics to its structure; quiet (pianissimo) to loud (forte), constrained within its rhythms. Honestly, what makes me go crazy is music that never varies.

Oh, and jets. Lots of jets. That's good.

*promote

This is what I imagine the future of transport will be like - I get in my electric vehicle in the morning, and sit down as it takes off toward the destination I want to go. I spend the ride checking email, listening to music, or just relaxing, as the correct route is dynamically updated to avoid construction, traffic jams, etc. At the end of the journey that's cost me very little, gotten me safely to my destination, and had minimal environmental impact, my vehicle moves on to pick up other passengers BECAUSE IT'S A GODDAMN BUS AND BUSES HAVE ALWAYS WORKED LIKE THIS.