[redacted]

Tags for this video have been changed from 'hip hop, will oldham, tractor, rural, south' to 'Galifianakis, kayne west, farmland, farm, will oldham, parody, hip hop, cornfield, cows' - edited by BoneRemake

Waste is an enormous problem, as is water supply. and those two don't intermingle well.
Consider that we are at peak oil now (in all likelihood) or we are past that...unless someone can come up with an adequate energy replacement in the next few hundred years, resource-wise, we are at or near peak capacity.
Not to mention the destructive forces on the ecosystem that come about when one species completely dominates the planet. Humans cannot dominate the planet without changing the ecosystem around them, likely for the very worst. In ecosystem terms, the stasis...or equilibrium of the ecosystem is already upset by the present dominance of one species. Pushing this imbalance much further seems like a really really dumb idea.
and farmland must be fallow at times in order to produce.

>> ^mgittle:

>> ^Sniper007:

A widely held but incorrect view. Limited global population MUST be the desired outcome or humans will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth. Relying on the promise of new technologies is a naive recipe for possible disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
If you want to talk assumption, you're assuming that maximum relative wealth is the desired outcome. Pretty selfish, eh?
Baby boomers leaving the workforce is really only a problem because of Social Security and health care costs and an unbalanced worker to retiree ratio. That ratio will change over time and we'll probably have a period of austerity as it changes back to something resembling equilibrium. The baby boom being correlated with economic growth/decline is really not proof that increased population causes increased wealth. There are many other factors involved which have nothing to do with population.
Wealth is obviously not directly tied to population, or the United States wouldn't have vastly higher wealth with such a relatively low population density compared to the rest of the world. If you mean overall world wealth, perhaps that's true, since more people = more work = more promises to pay back debts, but when you're talking about a closed loop system, it's all relative. So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment.


If there is a carrying capacity for the earth, humanity has not even come close to it. I'd say the limit is somewhere in the hundreds of trillions, based on the fact that it only takes 1/5 of a acre to feed an entire family a vegetarian diet. This is not a theoretical figure, it is currently being done. I'd say the earth is grossly underpopulated based on the obscene amount of lawn space (and golf courses) in existence.

Just drive somewhere (anywhere) for 10 miles, and tell me how much un-utilized, or under-utilized SPACE you see in your immediate vicinity. I'm not talking tilled, fertilized farmland. I'm talking empty parking lots, front lawns, abandoned buildings, etc. All those places need some human who is willing to engage in the proper behavior and responsibly utilize that space. The world is not overpopulated with bodies. It's 'over populated' with the wrong mindset and work ethic.

I didn't mean to imply that maximum relative wealth is a desired outcome. It is not.

I do agree, population growth is certainly NOT the only ingredient needed for an increase in sheer economic wealth. Though, for the families who engage in it, it can be the very definition and 'object' of their wealth and their increase in quality of life (though it may lead temporarily to a decrease in economic abundance). But the question of how to increase monetary wealth for most of the world is an entirely vain one that ought not to be entertained as it is relying on to many insidious assumptions.

It is sufficient to recognize that large families are NOT a plague, and go on living your own life as best as you know how. As to that discussion, ethical standards cannot be philosophically advanced by empirical data. Philosophy is inherently and necessarily theoretical.

It was very interesting to me to see that they both talked about area footprint of wind/solar, but that their figures were *vastly* different. There are some fairly readily apparent things that contribute to that discrepancy, but not enough to account for it all in my opinion.

First, the pro-nuclear guy was presenting footprint for those resources supplying enough energy for the world's total need, whereas the anti-stance was talking only about powering transportation in the US.

Second, pro-nuclear included spacing and physical arrangement conditions into account for his footprint figures, while anti only considered the area of the base of the tower. I think both of those reporting methods have some useful data; as mentioned the spacing area around the tower bases can be used for agriculture or other production (although there is inconvenience costs associated with that), but there is also the physical reality that you can't cram all of those towers into a condensed area merely the size of their own footprint without the rotors colliding.

Those discrepancies in their arguments remind me of pro and anti ethanol talking points. I come from Kansas, and my family operates a farm that produces wheat and corn. Ten years ago, basically 100% of the corn production from my family's farm was sold to feedlots as food for cattle. About 5 years ago, an ethanol plant was built fairly close to our farmland, and so since then an average of roughly 50% has gone there instead (that figure changes a lot over time, but over a sum total of the past 5 years I figure 50% is ballpark). The remainder still goes to the beef industry. We determine who to sell corn to without any thought for pro/anti beef-ethanol advocacy, and just consider sale price minus self-delivery and other costs (shipping further costs more, etc.)

Anyway, the pro-ethanol people will butter you up with talk about "freeing ourselves from foreign oil", say that ethanol is better for the environment, etc. etc. The anti people write letters claiming that ethanol production is actually an energy-draining exercise -- that we use more energy to produce 1 unit of ethanol that we can gain from using that unit as fuel.

My uncle (basically the boss of the family farm) was interested in that claim so he decided to try to calculate it out, making best-guess estimates where necessary. What he came up with was that the anti-ethanol people were correct -- for the first 1-5 years of operation of an ethanol plant, and only if they include absolutely every expenditure of fuel even remotely associated with the production of the corn or other input AND the construction and operation of the plant itself. For example, including the diesel fuel consumption of every tractor, combine, irrigation wells/motors, etc. and suggesting that all of that consumption is entirely devoted to ethanol production; ie. that that fuel would not be used if the crop produced wasn't being turned into ethanol.

I didn't do the calculations myself, and I don't even really mean to suggest that I stand by them being correct. What I do think is relevant is that it shows that it is very very easy to present a fairly compelling argument for or against essentially anything by being selective about what data is included and how it is presented. This is particularly true for anything that involves large amounts of data and is fairly complex. So basically, while I *wish* that being honest, open, and thorough provided the best results in terms of winning a debate such as this, there is a lot to be said about the potential utility for massaging the data and preying on complexity and ignorance.

(Sorry for the long babble.)

Dang… I was planning on hiking up there this summer but of course the bloody eruption stopped before I had the chance to go. I think the total and utter destruction of Icelandic agriculture (by covering our most fertile farmlands with ash) would have been well worth the trip.

The ash-covered landscape at :35 is awesome. I expect to see the timelapse-of-ashy-farmland shot in upcoming movies.

Myth: Hitler was a leftist.

Fact: Nearly all of Hitler's beliefs placed him on the far right.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm

Summary

Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.



Argument

To most people, Hitler's beliefs belong to the extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and you arrive at Hitler's warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To deflect such criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack, claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the political left, not the right.

The primary basis for this claim is that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word "National" evokes the state, and the word "Socialist" openly identifies itself as such.

However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this term: it was a misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Liberal Democrat" party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether Hitler called his party "socialist," but whether or not it actually was.

In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people -- after all, wasn't the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and political parties have called themselves "socialist," but none have actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few basic political terms.

Perhaps the primary concern of any political ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This includes factories, farmlands, machinery, etc. Generally there have been three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are excluded. The third (and untried) approach is socialism, where everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at the other.

Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own companies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production.

The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a "socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-socialist.

And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke. It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism. Technically, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of production. The Nazi "Charter of Labor" gave employers complete power over their workers. It established the employer as the "leader of the enterprise," and read: "The leader of the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise." (1)

The employer, however, was subject to the frequent orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed, making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following Keynesian-like policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful without resorting to dictatorship or war.)

Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:

"The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly 'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it." (2)

Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the "Labor Front" replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the Nazi party and did not represent workers. According to the law that created it, "Its task is to see that every individual should be able… to perform the maximum of work." Workers would indeed greatly boost their productivity under Nazi rule. But they also became exploited. Between 1932 and 1936, workers wages fell, from 20.4 to 19.5 cents an hour for skilled labor, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for unskilled labor. (3) Yet workers did not protest. This was partly because the Nazis had restored order to the economy, but an even bigger reason was that the Nazis would have cracked down on any protest.

There was no part of Nazism, therefore, that even remotely resembled socialism. But what about the political nature of Nazism in general? Did it belong to the left, or to the right? Let's take a closer look:

The politics of Nazism

The political right is popularly associated with the following principles. Of course, it goes without saying that these are generalizations, and not every person on the far right believes in every principle, or disbelieves its opposite. Most people's political beliefs are complex, and cannot be neatly pigeonholed. This is as true of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a leftist, it's worth reviewing the tenets popularly associated with the right. These include:

* Individualism over collectivism.
* Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.
* Eugenics over freedom of reproduction.
* Merit over equality.
* Competition over cooperation.
* Power politics and militarism over pacifism.
* One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.
* Capitalism over Marxism.
* Realism over idealism.
* Nationalism over internationalism.
* Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.
* Meat-eating over vegetarianism.
* Gun ownership over gun control
* Common sense over theory or science.
* Pragmatism over principle.
* Religion over secularism.

Let's review these spectrums one by one, and see where Hitler stood in his own words. Ultimately, Hitler's views are not monolithically conservative -- on a few issues, his views are complex and difficult to label. But as you will see, the vast majority of them belong on the far right:

Individualism over collectivism.

Many conservatives argue that Hitler was a leftist because he subjugated the individual to the state. However, this characterization is wrong, for several reasons.

The first error is in assuming that this is exclusively a liberal trait. Actually, U.S. conservatives take considerable pride in being patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed their lives for their country. The Marine Corps is a classic example: as every Marine knows, all sense of individuality is obliterated in the Marines Corps, and one is subject first, foremost and always to the group.

The second error is forgetting that all human beings subscribe to individualism and collectivism. If you believe that you are personally responsible for taking care of yourself, you are an individualist. If you freely belong and contribute to any group -- say, an employing business, church, club, family, nation, or cause -- then you are a collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a person inherently "liberal" or "conservative," and to claim that you are an "evil socialist" because you champion a particular group is not a serious argument.

Political scientists therefore do not label people "liberal" or "conservative" on the basis of their individualism or collectivism. Much more important is how they approach their individualism and collectivism. What groups does a person belong to? How is power distributed in the group? Does it practice one-person rule, minority rule, majority rule, or self-rule? Liberals believe in majority rule. Hitler practiced one-person rule. Thus, there is no comparison.

And on that score, conservatives might feel that they are off the hook, too, because they claim to prefer self-rule to one-person rule. But their actions say otherwise. Many of the institutions that conservatives favor are really quite dictatorial: the military, the church, the patriarchal family, the business firm.

Hitler himself downplayed all groups except for the state, which he raised to supreme significance in his writings. However, he did not identify the state as most people do, as a random collection of people in artificially drawn borders. Instead, he identified the German state as its racially pure stock of German or Aryan blood. In Mein Kampf, Hitler freely and interchangeably used the terms "Aryan race," "German culture" and "folkish state." To him they were synonyms, as the quotes below show. There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were not part of Hitler's state, while there were Germans outside Germany (for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that Hitler's political philosophy was not really based on "statism" as we know it today. It was actually based on racism -- again, a subject that hits uncomfortably closer to home for conservatives, not liberals.

As Hitler himself wrote:

"The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." (4)

"The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogenous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence as a race… Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the preservation of those original racial elements which bestow culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which… assures the preservation of this nationality…" (5)

"The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of raising them to a dominant position." (6)

And it was in the service of this racial state that Hitler encourage individuals to sacrifice themselves:

"In [the Aryan], the instinct for self-preservation has reached its noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands it, even sacrifices it." (7)

"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture." (8)

Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.

"All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan." (9)

"Aryan races -- often absurdly small numerically -- subject foreign peoples, and then… develop the intellectual and organizational capacities dormant within them." (10)

"If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop… Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up… the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture." (11)

"Every racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline of the hybrid product…" (12)

"It is the function above all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a fundamental halt to any further bastardization." (13)

"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood…" (14)

Eugenics over freedom of reproduction

"The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself…" (15)

"The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of all life. It must take care to keep it pure… It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the nation. Here the state… must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and therefore pass it on…" (16)

Merit over equality.

"The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence. But as in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from above, but must struggle through for themselves…" (17)

"It must not be lamented if so many men set out on the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will in this way be recognized, and will be the victor." (p. 512.)

Competition over cooperation.

"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." (18)

"It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions." (19)

"The idea of struggle is old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle… In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself in the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle… If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won." (20)

Power politics and militarism over pacifism.

Allan Bullock, probably the world's greatest Hitler historian, sums up Hitler's political method in one sentence:

"Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitler's ideas can be reduced to a simple claim for power which recognizes only one relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that of force." (21)

The following quotes by Hitler portray his rather stunning contempt for pacifism:

"If the German people in its historic development had possessed that herd unity [defined here by Hitler as racial solidarity] which other peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of the globe. World history would have taken a different course, and no one can distinguish whether in this way we would not have obtained what so many blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining and whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious sword of a master people, putting the world into the service of a higher culture." (22)

"We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost territories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms." (23)

"In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism." (24)

One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.

"The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects… a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion." (25)

"The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!" (26)

"By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature…" (27)

"For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards." (28)

"There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word 'council' must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man." (29)

"When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes." (30)

"The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism…" (31)

"Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to comprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy." (32)

Capitalism over Marxism.

Bullock writes of Hitler's views on Marxism:

"While Hitler's attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt, towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility… Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he detested -- mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism." (33)

As Hitler himself would write:

"The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism." (34)

"In the years 1913 and 1914, I… expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism." (35)

"In the economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the political sphere." (36)

"The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extinction." (37)

"Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews." (38)

"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight." (39)

Realism over idealism.

Hitler was hardly an "idealist" in the sense that political scientists use the term. The standard definition of an idealist is someone who believes that cooperation and peaceful coexistence can occur among peoples. A realist, however, is someone who sees the world as an unstable and dangerous place, and prepares for war, if not to deter it, then to survive it. It goes without saying that Hitler was one of the greatest realists of all time. Nonetheless, Hitler had his own twisted utopia, which he described:

"We are not simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever be possible to bring about a perfect era. But this relieves no one of the obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome weaknesses, and strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own accord will create only too many limitations. For that very reason, however, man must try to serve the ultimate goal, and failures must not deter him, any more than he can abandon a system of justice merely because mistakes creep into it…" (40)

"The same boy who feels like throwing up when he hears the tirades of a pacifist 'idealist' is ready to give up his life for the ideal of his nationality." (41)

Nationalism over internationalism.

"The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when… their international poisoners are exterminated." (42)

"The severest obstacle to the present-day worker's approach to the national community lies not in the defense of his class interests, but in his international leadership and attitude which are hostile to the people and the fatherland." (43)

"Thus, the reservoir from which the young [Nazi] movement must gather its supporters will primarily be the masses of our workers. Its work will be to tear these away from the international delusion… and lead them to the national community…" (44)

Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.

"Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on earth." (45)

"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others." (46)

Meat-eating over vegetarianism.

It may seem ridiculous to include this issue in a review of Hitler's politics, but, believe it or not, conservatives on the Internet frequently equate Hitler's vegetarianism with the vegetarianism practised by liberals concerned about the environment and the ethical treatment of animals.

Hitler's vegetarianism had nothing to do with his political beliefs. He became a vegetarian shortly after the death of his girlfriend and half-niece, Geli Raubal. Their relationship was a stormy one, and it ended in her apparent suicide. There were rumors that Hitler had arranged her murder, but Hitler would remain deeply distraught over her loss for the rest of his life. As one historian writes:

"Curiously, shortly after her death, Hitler looked with disdain on a piece of ham being served during breakfast and refused to eat it, saying it was like eating a corpse. From that moment on, he refused to eat meat." (47)

Hitler's vegetarianism, then, was no more than a phobia, triggered by an association with his niece's death.

Gun ownership over gun control

Perhaps one of the pro-gun lobby's favorite arguments is that if German citizens had had the right to keep and bear arms, Hitler would have never been able to tyrannize the country. And to this effect, pro-gun advocates often quote the following:

"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." - Adolf Hitler

However, this quote is almost certainly a fraud. There is no reputable record of him ever making it: neither at the Nuremberg rallies, nor in any of his weekly radio addresses. Furthermore, there was no reason for him to even make such a statement; for Germany already had strict gun control as a term of surrender in the Treaty of Versailles. The Allies had wanted to make Germany as impotent as possible, and one of the ways they did that was to disarm its citizenry. Only a handful of local authorities were allowed arms at all, and the few German citizens who did possess weapons were already subject to full gun registration. Seen in this light, the above quote makes no sense whatsoever.

The Firearms Policy Journal (January 1997) writes:

"The Nazi Party did not ride to power confiscating guns. They rode to power on the inability of the Weimar Republic to confiscate their guns. They did not consolidate their power confiscating guns either. There is no historical evidence that Nazis ever went door to door in Germany confiscating guns. The Germans had a fetish about paperwork and documented everything. These searches and confiscations would have been carefully recorded. If the documents are there, let them be presented as evidence."

On April 12, 1928, five years before Hitler seized power, Germany passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition. This law substantially tightened restrictions on gun ownership in an effort to curb street violence between Nazis and Communists. The law was ineffectual and poorly enforced. It was not until March 18, 1938 -- five years after Hitler came to power -- that the Nazis passed the German Weapons Law, their first known change in the firearm code. And this law actually relaxed restrictions on citizen firearms.

Common sense over theory or science.

Hitler was notorious for his anti-intellectualism:

"The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again… In many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and earning his living in a definite field." (48)

"Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life." (49)

"The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling." (50)

"A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth." (51)

Pragmatism over principle.

"The question of the movement's inner organization is one of expediency and not of principle." (52)

Religion over secularism.

Hitler's views on religion were complex. Although ostensibly an atheist, he considered himself a cultural Catholic, and frequently evoked God, the Creator and Providence in his writings. Throughout his life he would remain an envious admirer of the Christian Church and its power over the masses. Here is but one example:

"We can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice… comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that its power of resistance does not lie in its lesser or greater adaptation to the scientific findings of the moment, which in reality are always fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once established, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of faith. And so it stands today more firmly than ever." (53)

Hitler also saw a useful purpose for the Church:

"The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, [religious] faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude… For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute. As long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by fools or criminals." (54)

Hitler thus advocated freedom of religious belief. Although he would later press churches into the service of Nazism, often at the point of a gun, Hitler did not attempt to impose a state religion or mandate the basic philosophical content of German religions. As long as they did not interfere with his program, he allowed them to continue fuctioning. And this policy was foreshadowed in his writings:

"For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else he has no right to be in politics…" (55)

"Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties." (56)

"Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends." (57)

"Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other." (58)

Hitler was raised a Catholic, even going to school for two years at the monastery at Lambauch, Austria. As late as 24 he still called himself a Catholic, but somewhere along the way he became an atheist. It is highly doubtful that this was an intellectual decision, as a reading of his disordered thoughts in Mein Kampf will attest. The decision was most likely a pragmatic one, based on power and personal ambition. Bullock reveals an interesting anecdote showing how these considerations worked on the young Hitler. After five years of eking out a miserable existence in Vienna and four years of war, Hitler walked into his first German Worker's Party meeting:

"'Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas-lamp I could see four people sitting around a table…' As Hitler frankly acknowledges, this very obscurity was an attraction. It was only in a party which, like himself, was beginning at the bottom that he had any prospect of playing a leading part and imposing his ideas. In the established parties there was no room for him, he would be a nobody." (59)

Hitler probably realized that a frustrated artist and pipe-dreamer like himself would have no chance of achieving power in the world-wide, 2000-year old Christian Church. It was most likely for this reason that he rejected Christianity and pursued a political life instead. Yet, curiously enough, he never renounced his membership in the Catholic Church, and the Church never excommunicated him. Nor did the Church place his Mein Kampf on the Index of Prohibited Books, in spite of its knowledge of his atrocities. Later the Church would come under intense criticism for its friendly and cooperative relationship with Hitler. A brief review of this history is instructive.

In 1933, the Catholic Center Party cast its large and decisive vote in favor of Hitler's Enabling Bill. This bill essentially gave Chancellor Hitler the sweeping dictatorial powers he was seeking. Historian Guenter Lewy describes a meeting between Hitler and the German Catholic authorities shortly afterwards:

"On 26 April 1933 Hitler had a conversation with Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann [the Catholic leadership in Germany]. The subject was the common fight against liberalism, Socialism and Bolshevism, discussed in the friendliest terms. In the course of the conversation Hitler said that he was only doing to the Jews what the church had done to them over the past fifteen hundred years. The prelates did not contradict him." (60)

As anyone familiar with Christian history knows, the Church has always been a primary source of anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism therefore found a receptive audience among Catholic authorities. The Church also had an intense fear and hatred of Russian communism, and Hitler's attack on Russia was the best that could have happened. The Jesuit Michael Serafin wrote: "It cannot be denied that [Pope] Pius XII's closest advisors for some time regarded Hitler's armoured divisions as the right hand of God." (61) As Pope Pius himself would say after Germany conquered Poland: "Let us end this war between brothers and unite our forces against the common enemy of atheism" -- Russia. (62)

Once Hitler assumed power, he signed a Concordat, or agreement, with the Catholic Church. Eugenio Pacelli (the man who would eventually become Pope Pius XII) was the Vatican diplomat who drew up the Concordat, and he considered it a triumph. In return for promises which Hitler increasingly broke, the Church dissolved all Catholic organizations in Germany, including the Catholic Center Party. Bishops were to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clergy were to see to the pastoral care of Germany's armed forces (regardless of what those armed forces did). (63)

The Concordat eliminated all Catholic resistance to Hitler; after this, the German bishops gave Hitler their full and unqualified support. A bishops' conference at Fulda, 1933, resulted in agreement with Hitler's case for extending Lebensraum, or German territory. (64) Bishop Bornewasser told a congregation of Catholic young people at Trier: "With our heads high and with firm steps we have entered the new Reich and are ready to serve it body and soul." (65) Vicar-General Steinman greeted each Berlin mass with the shout, "Heil Hitler!" (66)

Hitler, on the other hand, kept up his attack on the Church. Nazi bands stormed into the few remaining Catholic institutions, beat up Catholic youths and arrested Catholic officials. The Vatican was dismayed, but it did not protest. (67) In some instances, it was hard to tell if the Church supported its own persecution. Hitler muzzled the independent Catholic press (about 400 daily papers in 1933) and subordinated it to Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. Yet soon the Catholic Press was doing more than what the Nazis required of it -- for example, coordinating their Nazi propaganda to prepare the people for the 1940 offensive against the West. (68) Throughout the war, the Catholic press would remain one of the Third Reich's best disseminators of propaganda.

Pacelli became the new Pope Pius XII in 1939, and he immediately improved relations with Hitler. He broke protocol by personally signing a letter in German to Hitler expressing warm hopes of friendly relations. Shortly afterwards, the Church celebrated Hitler's birthday by ringing bells, flying swastika flags from church towers and holding thanksgiving services for the Fuhrer. (69) Ringing church bells to celebrate and affirm the bishops' allegiance to the Reich would become quite common throughout the war; after the German army conquered France, the church bells rang for an entire week, and swastikas flew over the churches for ten days.

But perhaps the greatest failure of Pope Pius XII was his silence over the Holocaust, even though he knew it was in progress. Although there are many heroic stories of Catholics helping Jews survive the Holocaust, they do not include Pope Pius, the Holy See, or the German Catholic authorities. When a reporter asked Pius why he did not protest the liquidation of the Jews, the Pope answered, "Dear friend, do not forget that millions of Catholics are serving in the German armies. Am I to involve them in a conflict of conscience?" (70) As perhaps the world's greatest moral leader, he was charged with precisely that responsibility.

The history of Hitler and the Church reveals a relationship built on mutual distrust and philosophical rejection, but also shared goals, benefits, admiration, envy, friendliness, and ultimate alliance.

Cenk kinda falls apart with the "why global warming is bad" thing, but mostly it's concerns about negative effects on the amount of: farmland, access to drinkable water, biodiversity in ecologies everywhere, sea levels, and the overall stability of weather itself.

Incidentally, I'm sure Doocy wasn't joking about how lame the Republican claims of "global cooling" were when it was pretty much short-sleeve weather through November and well into December this year.

We'll be waaaay past the point of no return if it ever fails to get cold in winter, especially in the northern midwest.

*eco

The only economies of scale that continue to gain efficiency from having more than 6 billion customers are those where the cost of R&D dominates. Most products where the cost of R&D dominates are rather bourgeois, not what most people in poor countries need to stop being malnourished to the point of mental retardation.

The problem isn't present population - it's growth. For every increase in population, new infrastructure has to be built -- roads, schools, houses, markets, water treatment plants etc. When a country already cannot provide basic infrastructure for its current population, growth only makes their financial situation worse. When the average age is 15, there aren't enough adults around to teach or feed the noobs, and this further impoverishes the society. Vast tracts of virgin rainforest are razed to produce new farmland and new settlements -- this is a problem. Earth has enough people on it; population growth must stop.

In reply to this comment by Gibletses:
This is the cost of maintaining almost 7 billion humans. It's the cost. Pay it or perish.

When the US incorporated (1776), there were only one tenth the number of people there are now. Eliminate the factory farms and destructive ag then watch five billion people eat YOU.

For the veganoids; destructive ag (deep-till, fertilize, gm seed, irrigate, harvest, repeat) -- the process used to produce your tasty soy curd -- kills more animals than all of the factory meat production combined. Mostly through destruction of habitat. Most species extinction results from loss of habitat to farming so that you have food that makes you smug and makes other people assume you're feeble minded. (Guess what...)

In order for you to be smug behind a steamy pile of curd, thousands of animals are killed outright or die from habitat loss. The great plains now produce wheat, soy, and corn (for now...until the topsoil is gone). Do you realize how many elk, bison, wolves, foxes, voles, skunks, etc. were killed to do this? Do you know what the run-off from those crops does to streams, rivers, and the ocean? Death on a massive scale, that's what. Vegans are the worst hypocrites of them all.

I'm sorry, but your argument makes no sense. The bulk of current soy and corn crops right now are used for animal feed, in a process that only produces 1 calorie of meat for every 7 calories of vegetables used. Reducing, or removing, meat production could effectively halve the amount of farmland which needs to be sowed and maintained.

Livestock is the most ineffective way to produce food and nutrition. By reducing it you could effectively support larger populations of humans with fewer crops grown.

Just to hammer the point in, a lifestyle focused on less meat and more vegetables would require LESS farmland and agriculture, not MORE.

[redacted]

And the angel of the lord came unto me, snatching me up from my place of slumber. And took me on high, and higher still until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself. And he brought me into a vast farmlands of our own midwest. And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil. One thousand, nay a million voices full of fear. And terror possesed me then. And I begged, "Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?" And the angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Poolcleaner, tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust." And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared, "Hear me now, I have seen the light! They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the chickens wear glasses! Save our brothers!" Can I get an amen? Can I get a hallelujah? Thank you Jesus.

This is necessary --
LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE

>> ^notarobot:
I appreciate Brand's appeal for rational global-problem solving as well as his research and his organization of information, but I share almost none of his enthusiasm for the topics he discussed.
Genetic engineering presumes that humans, in our 50-70 year life span know better than nature. Nature has been at the game of shaping genes, of us and every living thing on the Earth, for a long time. Once a gene has been modified it can stay way for eternity. There is no undo. It is arrogant for any human to believe that even the knowledge of how to meddle with genes should be the same as carrying the wisdom to wield that knowledge without error.

If you think something shouldn't be done, because nature knows best, you could carry that same argument to all aspects of our technology, and I doubt you want us to live in pre-stoneage time again. I don't see how nature knows anything, or cares about anything. Nature just functions through mutation and selection. At any time an invasive or disruptive species could evolve. The only safeguard on nature is that evolution moves quite slow.
We have been genetically modifying animals since the first wolf was domesticated. Just look at what kind of freaky dogs we have created since. Or highly productive farm animals that couldn't function in the wild, a dairy cow for example. Now we have the ability to speed up and improve this process. And granted, there is a difference, because now we can move genes into an organism that never were there before, like jellyfish genes in a mammal.
Most if not all species that we engineer have no competitive advantage in nature and will only thrive in our carefully managed farmlands. For potentially more dangerous applications, we need to take adequate precautions and thoroughly test species or build in kill genes that we could trigger. Or just make them infertile.

Though it is true that warheads can be dismantled (with significant effort) for use in nuclear power stations, the fact that the bi-product of fission reactors is weapons-grade material remains lost on most people.

This fact is not lost on many engineers. Many modern reactor designs cannot make weapons grade materials. The reason that many old nuclear plants can do this is because they were specifically designed to make the bomb material and produce energy in the process.
Weapons grade material can also be made without reactors by extracting the fissile component of natural uranium.

Geo engineering is the product of similar arrogance of as genetic engineering. It is fueled by a desire for a static environment. The fact is that the Earth has never stood still, and will never do so (except for that one time in film..).

Of course the Earth doesn't care what we do, it and life will go on no matter what we do, even after a full out nuclear war. The point could be made that we have been geoengineering for a long time now. Just look at our cities, farmland and pollution. The only problem is that some of our geoengineering is potentially harmful to us and nature. Therefore deliberate geoengineering is proposed to mitigate these problems. From a humanitarian view one would want to mitigate these problems to relieve human suffering, just like we try to eradicate horrible diseases.

TEHERAN - AN IRANIAN airliner crashed into farmland in the north-west of the country on Wednesday, killing all 168 people on board, state media reported. Witnesses said the plane exploded after it dropped out of the sky, and state TV footage showed a deep crater littered with smoking wreckage and debris, including a large chunk of a wing.

The Caspian Airlines' Russian TU-154 plane crashed near the city of Qazvin, about 120km north-west of the capital, shortly after takeoff from Teheran's Imam Khomeini international airport.

Those on board
AMONG those on board the plane were about 25 Armenians, according to an airline representative in Yerevan, while Iranian officials said they included 10 members of Iran's junior national judo team.

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Very very sad