@dag

Depends on what goals you define Russia as wanting to achieve by that intervention.

Politically, intevening in Ukraine was a huge boon for Putin because his domestic media machine spun it into a irredentist initiative of national pride and basically suffocated his domestic political opposition. Diplomatically or economically, Russia has gained little from its intevention in Georgia, Ukraine and now Syria. If anything it has frayed alliances with Central Asian states and raised tensions with former Soviet Eastern European states, many of which have large minority Russian populations.

If the aim was to act as a bulwark to NATO or stem its expansion, he's preciptated the opposite. Countries neighboring Russia have every reason to fear they'll be next. Not that he had anything real to fear from NATO or the previously proposed anti-missile shield which was really proposed against Iran. I would say Putin's basically acting as a petulant child, throwing Russia's military around to reclaim some kind of atavastic relevance on the international stage to distract his people while he sinks the economy into the ground due to his government's corruption and cronyism.

Nice to see a lack of verbal abuse in a discussion like this. I appreciate it as I know I'm probably treading on thin ice in a lot of minds.

I disagree that texts are devoid of meaning until we give them some. The text itself if a collection of ideas and some of those ideas are horrendous. It generally is not an individual's qualities that determine the violence of the religion as much as the history of that religion's practice in the area they were raised. A peaceful and loving Aztec that was faithful would still have supported sacrificing slaves for all the same reasons, because they would have believed the underlying superstitions that made it a rational act given the premises.

I'm not sure Maher & co. view is as a strictly religious phenomenon. You really have to do a case by case analysis. Some make no sense but for religion, while other are very easy for my to sympathize with, even as an atheist. I have to admit I'm more familiar with Harris' views than Maher's, mind you, as I find Maher's presentation of his ideas can at times be half baked.

The reason why they specifically strap bombs to their chests is largely religious. Everyone else prefers living to kill another day. There's a religious reason why they are willing to sacrifice their children in this way. The reason that they behead people instead of other forms of killing them is because that form of murder is enshrined in their texts. All of these religious justifications lower the barrier for action. They make it that much easier for someone to accept that it's a reasonable course of action. And that's because of specific words in specific books.

I agree that is smells like apologist BS when Harris talks about western intervention having good intentions. I don't think the west has good intentions most of the time. However you have to acknowledge that there is something less reprehensible about trying to kill even a likely dangerous person (with the likelihood of innocent collateral damage) as compared with deliberately targeting exclusively innocent people. Yes the wedding party massacre was horrible. That was the worst case possible from our point of view, and some efforts will be made to avoid it happening again. If think that is morally significant. If you don't think intentions are relevant to morality, we will simply disagree.

Sweet Zombie Jesus!
What I said was "Good on the homeless man for saving the woman. Shame on Lawdeedaw for posting snuff", (an act that in the posting itself was insulting and snide to all other users of the site)....and you've completely lost it.
YOU started with the insults, claiming I'm unable to read, unable to comprehend the rules, and only making a personal attack (none of which is true, clearly), now you're going to whine to the moderators that someone's 'backhanded bullshit insult' (do you perhaps mean your own?) requires constant moderator intervention on your behalf, and because the moderator didn't agree with your miss-interpretation of the clearly written rule you clearly broke, now you threaten to force them to 'rule' on any and every video you can find that comes anywhere close to the rule, including all those that have already been ruled on?
WTF man. Grow up.

@Asmo

Don't really want to get a more general argument about the history of US foreign policy, I was talking more about the present day. The US's rationale for intervention during the Cold War was an exaggerated sense of the spread of communism and later to prevent anything that might precipitate an oil price spike like in the 1973-74/79. Nowadays with greatly expanded US shale oil supply and no Cold War I simply don't see any real incentive, if anything with the furore over debt, quite the opposite.

@enoch

Successful US intervention in the previous century generally involved large sums of money, whether it be propping up a government (Zaire/Congo) or funding an insurgent militia (Guatemala). Same thing with the USSR (North Korea). The ability to influence public opinion or mount credible propaganda campaigns in my opinion is generally exaggerated especially in a large, modern and educated country like Iran. It's also the conspiratorial myth that repressive regimes (like Iran, Russia) frequently turn to when they need to discredit dissent. A good example is:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/11/arab-conspiracy-theories

I mention Russia because this is the line pushed aggressively to both his domestic audience by it's wholly state controlled television media and to a mix of foreign and expatriate audiences (of which Russia Today is most successful) through a web of shadowy funding and home grown sounding organisations (see link below for a nice overview, e.g. http://www.globalresearch.ca/). It's pretty important to view what he says as part of a narrative to vastly exaggerate US and western intervention in Ukraine and previously Georgia, because that allows him to construct his myth of being a counterbalance to present day western imperialism.

https://criticusnixalsverdruss.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/propagramm3.jpg

I have to admit that I'm partially on the "wrong" side of this one.

Housing, not being fired for being gay, that kind of stuff, I'm with John Oliver 100%.

But restaurants, bakers, etc. ... I dunno, I'm a little torn.

Places like Big Earl's in the clip put up a sign that says "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason". I tend to think that is a right that we should allow private businesses (NOT things that are set up for the public good like utilities, gas stations, govt. agencies, whatever) to have.

That is NOT to say that I approve of the way that these clowns exercise that right. Dude doesn't want to make cakes for same-sex weddings ... fine. You're a retard, passing up potential customers for a really stupid reason, and also possibly discouraging business from other people that empathize with those that you are denying service to, but ... hey, it is your goddamn business. If you don't want to make a cake for people who's name starts with a Q, I'd support your right to make that (equally dumbass) decision.

Kinda the same thing goes for Big Earl's. That might even be one of the cases where the comfort of your standard clientele (redneck bigots) is potentially more important/beneficial to your bottom line than the potential lost business that your discriminating policy causes. In other words, from a purely capitalistic viewpoint, the policy might be a net positive to the business. Maybe.


The one thing that gives me pause on those more private businesses being allowed to "deny service to anyone for any reason" is shifting from LGBT equality to race equality. If that cake maker refused to make cakes for a black wedding, I'd be more accepting that we need some government intervention. I know that my opinion should be the same in both instances, but I can only honestly admit that at the gut level, I have a different reaction to those 2 scenarios.

I sorta think that even the racist cake-maker should be allowed to continue to be racist (so long as we're talking cakes, and not something more *necessary* to public good), because a racist cake maker will probably put themselves out of business without the need for any government intervention. BUT, I'm sure there are places in the US where that wouldn't have been true (and where it wouldn't be true today), and we needed the push of federal mandate to force such people to remove heads from asses. Maybe the same thing is true for LGBT discrimination.

But I do still feel conflicted about it. Even though I know I shouldn't.

To a certain extent, but when you look at the most radicalised Arab/Muslim countries, they share a common factor.

Destabilisation due to western, and to a lesser extent USSR, influence prior to radicalisation. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine etc. Most of the Middle East has been a proxy battleground between the US and USSR, a target for "stabilisation" to ensure the oil can flow, or an incidental and unwilling participant in the establishment of Israel post the British ownership of Palestine stemming from WW1...

I'm not religious but the old adage "reap what you sow" comes to mind. You burn someones house to the ground with his wife and kids inside, how dafuq does he not become radicalised?? Religion offers the only succour in what is a horrible situation, it offers vengeance and the idea that you'll see your loved ones again in paradise. With nothing else to lose accept a painful life of loss, are we surprised that they strap on bombs and are willing to die?

Muslims killed 5k+ odd people in 911 and we haven't heard the end of it for over a decade. It was the trigger that caused at least 2 pointless and expensive wars, killed/displaced/destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people including American and other countries armed forces personnel, led the US down the path of openly torturing people and breaking even more humane laws that it claims separates it from the terrorists. But they aren't allowed to be angry in return?

Their standard of living is a direct result of Western intervention. Western intervention is kryptonite to the high standards of living that would allow education and comfort, but it's the perfect fertiliser for radical religious types and discontent. I am not religious in the slightest, and deplore what mobs like ISIS are doing, but I can understand why these people have landed where they are.

You make words like caveman!

YOU are the one being asinineningly stupid with ideologically rigid statements that simply do not match historical fact. I don't consider governmental involvement in society inherently good or bad. It can hurt; it can help. I never claimed any utopia whenever government gets involved. There are no easy answers. You said the private sector is ALWAYS better. That is absolutely ridiculous, and easily refutable.

You just said before that if you are dependent on government, than you have no self pride, and weren't brought up well. So I blew that idiotic argument out of the water by simply proving how you are dependent on government. Now you change your thesis to this chestnut - it's only good for government to do anything if it corrects a horrific problem within the private sector.

And this is also total utter complete bullcrap.

Tell me - what change in the last 150 years made the biggest change in literacy rates in the US? Compulsory education laws in conjunction with the formation of the public school system. Absolutely, without question, this is the case. You can complain all you want about the public school system today, but there is no denying the impact they had on making society more skilled and knowledgeable, and they were governmental institutions by enlarge, and still are today. This came about during the banning of child labor, but it goes well beyond outlawing gross negligence in the private sector, yet, it was absolutely a big net positive for society.

See? It's really not hard to find examples to kill delusions formed by ideological rigidness. You just have to not be so insanely blind, that you miss obvious historical examples of these kinds of things.

And once again, I NEVER said governmental intervention is always good. You however DID say that private sector solutions are always better, when they clearly aren't always better, and that anyone who depends on the government for anything lacks self pride.

And you're dead wrong. Even your analysis of the ACA is idiotic. If Obamacare is government overreach, and government overreach is what causes prices to go up, why then did cost increases slow as ACA came online? Why do so many countries with larger government overreach in the form of universal single payer health care have lower costs than we do? Mind you that I am NOT saying their health systems are better, but it's an absolute fact they cost less than ours.

You're full of crap!

You rely on the government for national defense, you idiot. You know why? Because in the real world you can't defend yourself from foreign armies and terrorists. You depend upon the police for protection no matter how many guns you might have.

Where the disconnect here is the idiotic notion that we don't need government for things like health care regulation. The reality is ACA didn't just come out of the blue. It came from an obvious systemic problem within the overwhelmingly market controlled system.

You can keep mindlessly babbling all you want that government intervention is always bad, but that is turning an idiotically blind eye to basic US history, where there are ridiculous number of examples the government getting involved to effectively regulate industries are undeniably good, like the Meat Inspection Act, Food and Drug Administration, making it illegal to put lead in paint, regulations for car safety, regulations on buildings so you can't for example put asbestos in the walls, requiring labels on food so you know what ingredients are in them, so you could avoid nuts if you have a deadly nut allergy.

You know why? Because, despite your delusions, you can't inspect all your food, wear a mask when you walk into every building you go into to protect from asbestos, know that the tires you are buying don't have an excessively high chance of blowing off your car and killing you, ensure the air you breathe doesn't have too much lead in it, etc. etc. etc.

You're dependent on the government for all that, and it has massively improved your quality of life, and it has nothing to do with your self pride or dignity, so cut the utter bullcrap.

Iraq Daily: Shia Militias Threaten Withdrawal from Tikrit Offensive After US Air Intervention: http://eaworldview.com/2015/03/iraq-daily-shia-militias-threaten-withdrawal-from-tikrit-offensive-after-us-air-intervention/

I'll agree too, they are toxic. I just had not said it before.

I only know about the whole gamer gate thing because of the reported insane threats that required police intervention and cutting off the youtube comments etc., and I don't think I'm odd in that respect (I know I am odd in many other respects). I never thought cutting off the comments had anything to do with stifling debate. I could be wrong, but I need to see evidence to convince me. EDIT: as I understood it, she only cut them off after the threats, not right after the criticism.

I think any threat to kill or rape someone in writing is serious. I remember it being reported that she was instructed to cancel personal appearances, that may have been inaccurate, but it's what I recall reading about the case.

Well, yes, you caught me being inadvertently sexist by saying 'single woman'. Mea Culpa. I should have said a person. Their sex and marital status is irrelevant, but I was thinking about her personally, not in general. I think death threats are serious, no matter who they're made against...same for rape threats, men get raped too. People bold enough to make public written threats should be taken seriously, IMO.

That is an awesome intervention by Land Rover. Quite touching.

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

I think it depends on the person. Some will see the 'admonishment' as a challenge offered by those with no power (remember Chingalera?) and take it as an invitation to become insanely abusive and outrageously vulgar. Others might see it as helpful to understand how their own actions are perceived by others and change the offending behavior.
It would be nice if Trance could admit why he did what he does (to himself at least), but it's far more important that he stop, understanding or not. IF he can't get the message from the community, the rules should be applied. He's had that clear message now, so the next time there should be no warning, just 2 week ban. If there's a next time after that, it's intentional or unconscious, either way that would indicate he won't stop, and at that point removal is the only option. I hope it doesn't come to that.
I don't like that many 'dissenting voices' have either left or been banned, but it's NEVER because of their viewpoint, it's because of their inappropriate actions (perhaps born from the frustration of being a lone dissenter on many topics? but that's a reason, not an excuse).
As for Dag/Lucky, I would hope their intervention is saved as a last resort, but having a Sift-Dad in charge to settle problems we can't settle amongst ourselves is a GOOD thing...if used in moderation.

What I said was mostly in jest, but I will entertain my learned colleague's well-reasoned arguments with a response.

"Squirrel fella didn't know what was going on"? That's right. He didn't. He didn't know the intentions of the human, other than his general instinct of "stay away from non-squirrels." His fear of him was totally justified.

Deus Ex Machina? There was no unexpected intervention which led to a happy ending here, that is my point. The squirrel expected the guy to grab him, he just didn't want him to. My point is that if the guy had kept on riding down the river, the squirrel would have been fine. But for his interference, the squirrel wouldn't have been drowning. His actions were negligent. His actions caused a situation of peril for that squirrel. If the squirrel had jumped toward the man and entered the calm part of the river and failed to swim, I might agree that intervention would have been necessary. Instead, the squirrel jumped in the exact opposite direction of the person, likely fearing for his life and choosing the most direct escape route, thus dooming himself. But he wouldn't have jumped that way if the guy hadn't been there. We can't know where he would have jumped, but I doubt it would have been in the most violent part of the river. Animal instincts aren't dumb, otherwise that squirrel would have been long dead.

Guy saved his life? Did he? Did we see a drowned squirrel swimming away from the rock before the guy even got there? Was there something that I missed in this video? Was the squirrel in imminent danger of being eaten by a vicious squirrel-eating miniature river-swimming orca? My point is the guy put the squirrel in danger simply by being there. Even after the squirrel jumped, it is not known that the squirrel would have drowned if the man had simply swam away. We assume because we think that squirrels are shitty swimmers.

Self-righteous? Did I say that I don't touch wildlife? Did I say that I might not have done the same thing in his position? No. I am simply saying that we should all abide by the general principle that wild animals do not need our help. Our interactions with them should be constrained to watching them pass and keeping them out of our areas when necessary and shooting and eating them when legal and not deleterious to the species. None of us should assume that our interactions with wildlife are anything other than a semi-masturbatory effort that serves the single purpose of entertaining us and making us feel good with little to no actual understanding of the animal's position.

He also forgot how to use the horn or headlights?

If you had alerted that lady she was driving that badly, she may very well have thought "Oh shit, I must be bad, better pull over".

I think many people have experienced feeling sleepy at the wheel and often you lose your judgement skills due to this tiredness, you really need some outside intervention to alert you and just filming it is really not the right thing to do.