Actually, it was Flavor Aid, not Kool-Aid, that the Jim Jones cult used to commit mass suicide.

Mask is spelled mask. Proofread your stuff. It will make you look more intelligent and believable. Or not.

Agreed on cult vs. religion. I wonder what this guy's endgame is?>> ^A10anis:

The difference between a cult and a religion? There is NO difference. Both take advantage of the weak, lonely, lost, vulnerable, and desperate people, who are easily brainwashed because of their condition.
How long -hopefully never- before another mass suicide is instigated by their "divine" leader?

The difference between a cult and a religion? There is NO difference. Both take advantage of the weak, lonely, lost, vulnerable, and desperate people, who are easily brainwashed because of their condition.
How long -hopefully never- before another mass suicide is instigated by their "divine" leader?

Obviously a religious cult trying to perform a mass suicide.

Cell phones are immoral, from the slave labor mining of precious metals to the sweat shop assembly, to the toxic waste shipped back to china.

Your sentiments are cliche and your herd mentality a detriment to the global herd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_burtynsky_on_manufactured_landscapes.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/foxconn-workers-threaten-mass-suicide-if-working-conditions-arent-fixed

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/26-4

In other news, Apple's overseas employees are protesting low pay, poor working conditions and cramped dormitory living conditions with the threat of mass suicide. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html

If American workers could only learn to be a bit more slave-y-er.

"New duet with K'Ronnika and LMFAO may cause mass suicides."

Larf!

He certainly had made no such assertion by the time you went nuts and I don't think he has since, but I might have missed something.

Lisa's death was negligent homicide at worst. I'm not saying that's ok, I'm just trying to keep it in perspective. Josephus's death is very strange, but there has been no evidence of foul play, that I'm aware of. It certainly doesn't look good for COS, but the evidence to claim they are responsible is not there either.

I don't have any love for COS, but I also see it as a drop in the bucket. It seems to get a disproportionate slice of the rage pie, to me.

The COS may well be insane, but it's neither illegal nor immoral to be insane. [side note: Is it really correct to refer to a mass suicide as a massacre?]

The problem isn't your indignance, it's your off-the-wall outrage at Yogi. Most of the things you're raging over aren't even things he's said; they're things you've put in his mouth. You repeatedly misrepresent his statements and then hulk out over what you yourself said.

Don't talk about Yogi's "weak arguments" when you've so far failed to make any arguments at all.

While this may be insulting, I hope you'll recognize it as a critique rather than an insult. You undercut your own position when you act like this in a debate, at least in the eyes of the people who matter: the opponents. Putting together a convincing argument in the eyes of the people who already agree with you may get you comment upvotes, but it doesn't make any progress when it comes to popularizing your views.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Look, the only reason I said anything was cause Yogi asserts that Scientology is unimportant & is no threat to humanity's well being, which clearly isn't true.
Look at these photos of Lisa McPherson and Josephus Havenith then tell me again that the Church of Scientology is "mostly innocuous".
It's quite evident that CoS's ideology is on par with Jonestown massacre level of insanity.
You're essentially stating that the terrified mothers & husbands clutching there babies willing committed suicide and we shouldn't waste our time with things like that.
Hence, the "sick fuck" comment.
So excuse me for being indignant, it just irritates the fuck out of me to hear a person defend the atrocious behaviors of any religion or abusive organization. Especially with such weak arguments.

Alright. Let's start with a few facts:

- Israel doesn't have the separation of church and state the US has. We study bible since elementary school, we learn a lot about Jewish history and so on.
- There have always been Rabbi in the IDF. Just like there are priests in the US army, the UK army and so on.
- Some Jews pray every morning (Sha'harit, or prayer of dawn) and every evening (Ar'vit, or prayer of evening). Some will put on a Ta'lit and T'filin during that prayer. Those prayers can be performed alone, but when possible, they would prefer to pray in groups of 10 or more, to have what's called a Min'yan.

Now that the scary Jews wrapped in weird shawls rocking back and forth look less intimidating with the cannons in the background, I'll concede a few points:

- Israel is a racist society. There are many ways this is expressed, but it's usually vs Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, which many Israelis regard as the same group.
- There are many "factions" in Judaism, not unlike the differences between Catholics, Protestants, Jehova's Witnesses, Mormons and any other faith that can still call itself Christian. Some of these factions in Judaism will take the bible very literally.
- The population in the settlements is extremely Jewish. They sort of have to be, to want to move to a place you have to hold by force, with the constant threat of being removed from your home by a government treaty. For those who already forgot, read a bit about the Disengagement plan of 2005, where the Israeli Army forcibly removed residents of Jewish settlements in Gaza.

--------------

Now that that's all out of the way, let's move on to the video at hand.

The video says the army is (or, was) "proudly secular". That's quite simply false. Every soldier who wants to can go to prayer every morning, even if it disrupts the normal schedule. Every base has a Rabbi and a synagogue. It's been that way since the IDF came to existence.

The video then goes on to show Rabbi going through a lecture during an officer training course. The video goes as far as calling them an "elite unit" within the IDF. By that logic, since I went through basic training and fired a rifle on about 5 separate occasions, I'm now a part of an elite commando team trained to fix computers behind enemy lines.
There are many courses at the officer training school (called Bahad 1). These men are going through a standard non-combatant officer training. It is required to get any form of officer rank.

The video loves showing you clips where the guys are either handling their rifle, or where the rifle is very visible. That doesn't mean anything regarding the training they receive. I had a rifle for the entire duration of my army training. I took it home every weekend, had to think of where it was all the time, and my greatest worry was "what if someone steals it". If I ever had to shoot it in a real situation, I'd probably drop the clip, get it jammed and throw it at someone before I actually managed to use it to shoot at them. Even if I had, I wouldn't hit anything.

The story of Masada isn't very proud, as far as I'm concerned. Read about it yourself, and make sure you notice the part where they commit mass suicide at the end. Masada in an army context is usually a site where a training course comes near the end of the training. The climb up from one of the sides is physically challenging, and there's a story of a small bunch of Jews standing up to the Roman army at the top. The ending is usually glossed over.

-------------

Now, Cast Lead. The one-year-old atrocity.
I wasn't in the Army at the time, and I don't know anyone who was called for reserve duty for it, so I can't speak from experience on that one. It is surprising to me that the army Rabbi actually went with the combat units into action, and I find it very hard to believe that it was the case with every combat unit. It would simply disrupt their combat operation too greatly to have someone with that little training there. It seems more likely that they went together during the initial entry to Gaza, which was mostly logistical, with very little resistance, and then stayed behind at the actual fighting. Again, though, this is pure speculation on my part.

As for more and more religious Jews joining the army, that's actually a stated goal, not "something the army is ashamed of and is making headlines in Israel". There's a law in place (known as the Tal law) that gave religious Jews an exemption from the three year mandatory army service. This created a great deal of resentment among the secular population, since they're now "carrying the load" for the religious ones.

-----------

That's basically it. The video gets lots of facts right, but some of the contexts wrong. It starts out with the premise that the army wasn't Jewish before, and is becoming Jewish now, and mixes irrelevant pieces of data to "prove" that. I'm just left wondering where the "Shocking news: Hamas is becoming more Islamic, if that was even possible" video.

Disclaimer: I'm an Atheist Jew living in Israel. I served for 3 years in the IDF as a non-combatant.

OK, I just watched the first 20 seconds and my bullshit meter blew up.

There is no science in this, not with that technobabble that started the video.

Holy crap, I just went to their website and read "It will be the degree to which we are able to translate and utilize this light code that will allow us to break the barriers of illusion set by this dualistic paradigm and the genetic modifications that are in resonance with it. It is because of this light influx that we are now able to answer the three most fundamental questions that define us as conscious Human entities: “Who am I? Where am I from? Why am I here?”"

The obviously subscribe to the school of thought of 'Use lots of big, impressive sounding words that actually mean nothing in an attempt to pull the wool over people's eyes'.

If this isn't just utter, utter, utter dribble, I don't know what is. SO does not belong in the science channel AT ALL.

I completely agree with volumptuous's channels.

Man, I have to not read any more of their website. They are a CULT plain and simple. Next group of people to commit mass suicide anyone? Either that, or just trying to be the next Scientology and scam as much money out of people as possible.

Dolphins 'mass suicide' alarms environmentalists

If it does, then the Democratic leadership is truly spineless. Hillary will probably not drop out officially, but I doubt she will continue to campaign with vigor.

I am so glad this is going to end, then the Clinton cultists can finally wake up and see what they're turning into. Visit Talk Left. Would you ever think that Democrats would be questioning their likely candidate's citizenship?

Or saying that they'd like to kiss Bill O'Reilly for standing up against Obama? I'm hoping there's no mass suicide after the convention in Denver.

I assumed this video to be false (well, at least the concept of animals getting drunk - especially zebras, giraffes, and elephants off rotten fruit) and some quick research suggests it to be so:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16555195

You can catalogue this video right beside the disney video of lemmings committing mass suicide.

Go for it.

In reply to this comment by therealblankman:
That's a brilliant idea! I think you should definitely post it and if you don't I'll definitely steal it and claim it as my own.
In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
If you are going to kill yourself, why not splurge and drink real Kool-Aid instead of Flavor-Aid? Heck, why bother with sugary crap at all? Why not go out with a nice tall pint of Newcastle?

Mass suicide tips and tricks would be a great topic for the cult blog.

Congrats on the new channel!

That's a brilliant idea! I think you should definitely post it and if you don't I'll definitely steal it and claim it as my own.
In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
If you are going to kill yourself, why not splurge and drink real Kool-Aid instead of Flavor-Aid? Heck, why bother with sugary crap at all? Why not go out with a nice tall pint of Newcastle?

Mass suicide tips and tricks would be a great topic for the cult blog.

Congrats on the new channel!