In the way that Charlie Chaplin's film, Modern Times offered a *parody-ied insight into the implications of the industrial revolution, so too did I notice here some interesting (albeit absurd and exaggerated) considerations posited on the impact of digital culture, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, et. al. on our humanity. With every technology comes an incomparable cost.

How many people has this fool killed or caused to be killed?

Zero.

How many people has islam murdered just in modern times?

Many. And they're just getting started.


Atheism has no exclusive patents on reason or intelligence. Put another way, the atheist's capacity for self-delusion is equal to that of religious folks, it just comes out differently.

>> ^COriolanus:

>> ^IronDwarf:
Can someone explain how one arrives at the title for this video from its content?

Have you ever seen a dead tree? Often you can see a dead tree still standing in a forest. Squirrels running up the tree, birds flying in and out etc.
But the tree is dead.
Much like the spirit that can produce a 1st Amendment; that spirit is dead amongst the analog class of Americans in modern times to the class of folks who gave us the 1st Amendment way back when.
The folks in charge now would not come up with a free republic if they had the opportunity to start from scratch today. We have the structural remnant of freedom, but the life force that animates that freedom is gone, at least among a certain class in America.
But you knew that, you were just being petulant, dick.


I'm the one being petulant? I was asking a serious question. But if you wanna just call each other names, I can do that too, cunt.

>> ^IronDwarf:

Can someone explain how one arrives at the title for this video from its content?


Have you ever seen a dead tree? Often you can see a dead tree still standing in a forest. Squirrels running up the tree, birds flying in and out etc.

But the tree is dead.

Much like the spirit that can produce a 1st Amendment; that spirit is dead amongst the analog class of Americans in modern times to the class of folks who gave us the 1st Amendment way back when.

The folks in charge now would not come up with a free republic if they had the opportunity to start from scratch today. We have the structural remnant of freedom, but the life force that animates that freedom is gone, at least among a certain class in America.

But you knew that, you were just being petulant, dick.

>> ^peggedbea:

fuck those hippies. if they had ALL gotten up and smashed shit, joined in the black bloc.. that really would have SAID something.
you're right to protest is a sham, expressing your dissent how the oppressors tell you you are allowed to express dissent changes nothing for future generations.. NOTHING. nothing changes without direct action, without disrupting business as usual and these lazy, self righteous hippies aren't changing shit.
on the other hand, that black bloc reminds people that they really are so sick of the status quo they do want to blow up military recruiting centers and smash cops cars with baseball bats, oh canada!


What kind of message does smashing shit send besides a general cry of discontent? What kind of constructive criticism or insight on the inequities of modern times does burning a police car provide? What positive change does it engender, what good does it do for the rest of humanity?

Societal problems are multifaceted and complex. Simply destroying something is not a solution. The world needs thinkers, not a bigger lynch mob. Fuck your senseless violence; It brings nothing but chaos and terror.

Taken from LiveLeak...

War with Iran has already been decided by the powers that be and the modern-day quasi-declaration happened last Thursday. Using the same legislative and propaganda playbook that led to the Iraq War, the U.S. Government has just officially declared War on Iran. Reuters reported "Congress on Thursday approved tough new unilateral sanctions aimed at squeezing Iran's energy and banking sectors, whic More..h could also hurt companies from other countries doing business with Tehran. The House of Representatives passed the bill 408-8 and sent it to President Barack Obama for signing into law. The Senate had approved it 99-0 earlier in the day."


Congress hasn't officially voted for a Declaration of War since World War II. In modern times they use creative wording in bills that authorize the broad use of force across borders in the sweeping "War on Terror." The Bush Doctrine of preemptively attacking countries because they may pose a threat to America in the future was universally trashed by progressives, but is alive and well under Obama, the Prince of Peace, without one dissenting vote in the Senate. This authority is what the Obama Administration claims also gives them the legal argument to bomb sovereign countries like Pakistan.

This unilateral decision by the United States Congress comes on the heels of a 12-2 U.N. Security Council vote on June 8th to impose a "modest tightening of sanctions" against Iran. Of course, Russia and China have been assured that sanctions won't apply to their energy needs in order to secure their votes. After the vote President Obama asserted that, "these sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy."

However, the United States preempted this embargo vote in Congress by taking up an aggressive posture in tandem with Israel by deploying an Armada of Battleships to the Red Sea. There are now reports from the Israeli National News that, "The Israeli Air Force recently unloaded military equipment at a Saudi Arabia base, a semi-official Iranian news agency claimed Wednesday, while a large American force has massed in Azerbaijan, which is on the northwest border of Iran."

Now, it seems that the United States is working overtime to sell their war plans to potential allies. CIA chief, Leon Panetta appeared on ABC's This Week and announced that the Iranians, "have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons. They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable."

While world leaders negotiate their piece of the Iranian pie in G8 negotiations, the multinational fear campaign has begun. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that a CIA warning that Iran has enough uranium to build two atomic bombs was "worrying," and criticized Tehran's secrecy over its nuclear program. Gathered at the G8 Summit in Ottawa, world leaders now "fully believe" and are "worried" that a preemptive attack by Israel on Iran is inevitable. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters that "Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively."


Enforcing an unprovoked embargo on a sovereign nation has been historically defined as an act of war. Unfortunately, very few of our elected officials know or understand history and therefore overwhelmingly voted for the new sanctions. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), an outspoken critic of Iran sanctions, was one of the eight house members to vote against the measure. Here is Ron Paul from a few months ago comparing sanctions to an Act of War while discussing this bill; H.R. 2194 Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010.

The Bush-Obama Doctrine is the rule of tyrants. Clearly it looks like Israel and America are determined to preemptively strike Iran even though Iran has always maintained that their nuclear program is for peaceful energy production only. America has once again engaged in an Act of War on a sovereign nation that has not harmed, or even threatened to harm her. Iran's biggest crime appears to be sitting on a sea of crude at a time when oil-thirsty Neo-cons, who penned the Doctrine, rule the world. The coming war with Iran will not be pretty.

*Edit ^Gwiz said it much better than me... But I will keep my post up anyway... muahahaha...

* Disclaimer: This became a wall of text as I explained my reasoning. Also it is really really late so spelling might be off.
I hate to do this but winstonfield actually has one valid point even though his way of saying it was clumsy/not PC.
Reader's Digest: Wars are not winnable in modern times.

Full text:
Wars are not winnable in modern times as the populations are too big and know too much to simply accept a new ruler, even in backwater places like Afghanistan. Back in the day before proper nation states and democracy and all that a farmer could probably not care less who he paid his taxes to as long as he was left alone and had enough to feed himself and his family, and if he wasn't what could he do? The king was a king because God wanted it to be that way and he had knights and armies and the farmer did not. Today a 10 year old can mass produce home-made bombs that cost under 100 dollars a pop whilst a Military drops bombs that costs over 100 000 dollars a pop from 20 000 000 dollar aircrafts that land on 200 000 000 dollar Carriers. Today we know that wars cost money. We know that if you drag out a war long enough the populace of the invading force will most likely falter in their support, war weariness and all that (Vietnam anyone?). When the 100 000 US soldier dies by IED after 50 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq somehow I doubt that the support for the war will be there any more.

IMO if you want to win a war militarily you have to commit to total war and genocide and simply kill of all of the natives and move your own people in to settle the area. As long as one person remembers what it was like to be free from invaders they will fight. It is human nature. Just imagine if the USSR had invaded the US during the Cold War and conquered it militarily. Would the US citizens who survived the initial bombings just say, after a year or two or 8: "Oh, well. Guess I will stop fighting now and join the invading side. Seems like they have some things going for them..."? I doubt it.

Clarification:
Is this (Genocide and total war) something I advocate? No, but as Aldous Huxley said: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." IMO War serves no other purpose than to cull some of the human population. Nothing more and nothing less. It has served its purpose in the past, when countries could be conquered, but it has become obsolete in the modern world where populations are too large to control properly.

A couple of random thoughts:
To win a war today you have to break every single convention on warfare there is and use NBC weapons, or massive bombardments and just carpet bomb every inch of the country you are at war with, to annihilate the populace. If you are not prepared to do that you should not go to war as you cannot win, ever! (If you are prepared to do that I hope you never get into a position of power!)

Militaries are not for winning wars, they are for fighting them. When the politicians are bored of the fighting or it starts to affect their ratings negatively they sue for a peace treaty...

What is the definition of winning a war? Aren't wars supposed to be about conquest and getting new land and natural resources or perhaps vindication for a perceived insult to the crown or something? What would constitute a win in the Afghan and Iraqi wars? And is that a military goal or a political one?

How sad. TGH is supposed to be a genius and skilled martial artist. Instead of destroying the character so that Seth Rogen can handle it, they should have found an actor that could pull it off.

Also, pulling him into modern times makes him feel way too much like a Batman knockoff.

I most certainly would have been burned at the stake, had I lived at that time. I treat my family with herbs, before I rush them off to the doctor. I have helped other women give birth at home. I have had an abortion and practise birth control. What's interesting to me, living in modern times, is that even though I will not be burned at the stake for doing these things, if I was a devout catholic, I would still be considered a sinner and as a herbalist, I sometimes suffer the derision of people who do not see herbs as valid medicine. I don't think we are so far away from those times, after all.

>> ^joedirt:

she is an idiot.
You can find even worse examples in the Torah or Bible. So this is retarded. Yes, life WAS different hundreds of years ago.


Did you even watch the video? Whether or not life was different is irrelevant. Muslims look to the life of Muhammed as an example of how to live.

I admire Caesar and Genghis Khan as strategists and leaders, but at the same time I can recognise that both were guilty of what would be considered hideous atrocities in modern times. As such, I don't look to them for moral guidance. Unfortunately, Muhammed is not viewed with the same filter.

I would go further and say it's almost impossible NOT to screw up with American nation building. My point on Iraq is not that nation building there was sure to work. If anything, it was almost certainly doomed to the horrific failures we've been watching over the last years. My point was that spending those same years under Saddam's rule would've been worse, more and more as each year goes by. The majority of the problems in Iraq regarding infrastructure and the economy didn't start with the American invasion, but with Saddam's continuing construction of new palaces while sanctions starved the rest of the country. The reason the riots and mis-content America faced from the public hadn't boiled out when Saddam was in power was entirely a testament to the fear he had sown in people. If you were suspected of questioning Saddam, you might find the police knocking on the door the next day and handing you a video of your daughter being raped by them.


I'm also more than a little concerned that the country is going to dissolve about 15 minutes after the last troops leave.


Me too, but I'm confident that at least the Kurdish region will make out alright. I'm also hopeful the interest they show in working with the rest of the country will help keep it stable. In either event though I find it hard to imagine an Iraq that is worse than it was under Saddam.


To a large extent I think America needs to rethink the way it uses military power in modern times. Specifically, this idea that any trouble spot in the world should be dealt with by invasion and US-led regime change.
...
I definitely think going through the UN for problems of that scale is a good idea


I agree that America needs to be extremely careful with it's use of it's power. I also feel though that if America is never willing to use that power, then many nations are going to start acting that way. Look how many instances there are of nations that ignore all UN warnings, condemnations and rebukes over human rights violations and atrocities, content in the knowledge that it is all bark. For every wrong step America has made with military action you can point to an atrocity that went unchecked by inaction as well. In the line that needs to be walked between when to act and when not to, Iraq is an example of a fight that was put off too long, rather than jumped into too soon.


In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
I think we ended up getting lucky with Iraq. I don't think it's a testament to how it's somehow impossible to screw up with American nation building, I think it's a testament to how expensive in terms of both money and lives it can be, even when the country is theoretically low-hanging fruit in terms of nation building.

I'm also more than a little concerned that the country is going to dissolve about 15 minutes after the last troops leave.

I do want us more active in Sudan, but not militarily. I still think the fix for Sudan is for America to use its diplomatic ties to encourage China to stop supporting the Sudanese massacre.

I'm less certain of what to do about Congo. I certainly don't want us to roll in there with troops and tanks and tell them we're going to "help" them establish a stable government.

To a large extent I think America needs to rethink the way it uses military power in modern times. Specifically, this idea that any trouble spot in the world should be dealt with by invasion and US-led regime change. I didn't like us doing that during the Cold War, and I like it even less now.

I definitely think going through the UN for problems of that scale is a good idea. I don't think that means giving the UN a veto over US actions, but I definitely think we should be extremely careful about when and where we "go it alone."

For the moment, I think America's plate is past full. If the world comes to us begging for help, we should help, but I don't think we should be shopping for new places to invade, we should be getting disentangled from the countries we're currently in.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
I find the argument of 'why not country x' to be completely lacking in relevance. I'm not arguing that America chose to remove Saddam because it made the world a better place, especially for Iraqi's. I'm arguing that for whatever unknowable reasons America really chose to remove Saddam, that an Iraq free of Saddam is better for the region and the Iraqi people. So much better in fact that you'd be hard pressed to screw such a war up badly enough to make things worse when you were done. Now the Bush admin certainly tried very hard to screw it up, but thanks in large part to the Kurds the situation in Iraq today IS much brighter than it would have been with Saddam still in power.

Would it be 'better' if America had put the same effort into Sudan or the DR Congo? Maybe, the atrocities in the Congo shock the conscience, but it would also be harder to stabilize than even post-Saddam Iraq. I find it hard to use that as an argument against what America did in Iraq. To play that argument out in a fair way, I would point the finger at the whole 1st world and blame them all for doing nothing to help the people of Sudan and the DR Congo. I would give a slight nod to the Americans though in understanding that they were tied up in Iraq and that their actions there had at least helped a different humanitarian disaster.

I think we ended up getting lucky with Iraq. I don't think it's a testament to how it's somehow impossible to screw up with American nation building, I think it's a testament to how expensive in terms of both money and lives it can be, even when the country is theoretically low-hanging fruit in terms of nation building.

I'm also more than a little concerned that the country is going to dissolve about 15 minutes after the last troops leave.

I do want us more active in Sudan, but not militarily. I still think the fix for Sudan is for America to use its diplomatic ties to encourage China to stop supporting the Sudanese massacre.

I'm less certain of what to do about Congo. I certainly don't want us to roll in there with troops and tanks and tell them we're going to "help" them establish a stable government.

To a large extent I think America needs to rethink the way it uses military power in modern times. Specifically, this idea that any trouble spot in the world should be dealt with by invasion and US-led regime change. I didn't like us doing that during the Cold War, and I like it even less now.

I definitely think going through the UN for problems of that scale is a good idea. I don't think that means giving the UN a veto over US actions, but I definitely think we should be extremely careful about when and where we "go it alone."

For the moment, I think America's plate is past full. If the world comes to us begging for help, we should help, but I don't think we should be shopping for new places to invade, we should be getting disentangled from the countries we're currently in.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
I find the argument of 'why not country x' to be completely lacking in relevance. I'm not arguing that America chose to remove Saddam because it made the world a better place, especially for Iraqi's. I'm arguing that for whatever unknowable reasons America really chose to remove Saddam, that an Iraq free of Saddam is better for the region and the Iraqi people. So much better in fact that you'd be hard pressed to screw such a war up badly enough to make things worse when you were done. Now the Bush admin certainly tried very hard to screw it up, but thanks in large part to the Kurds the situation in Iraq today IS much brighter than it would have been with Saddam still in power.

Would it be 'better' if America had put the same effort into Sudan or the DR Congo? Maybe, the atrocities in the Congo shock the conscience, but it would also be harder to stabilize than even post-Saddam Iraq. I find it hard to use that as an argument against what America did in Iraq. To play that argument out in a fair way, I would point the finger at the whole 1st world and blame them all for doing nothing to help the people of Sudan and the DR Congo. I would give a slight nod to the Americans though in understanding that they were tied up in Iraq and that their actions there had at least helped a different humanitarian disaster.

Chances are that no distributor currently thinks that they would make enough money from the movie for it to be worth their time. There is also no information on how many (if any) distributors were even approached with the idea.

Religulous was created by a well-known public figure and took place in modern times. How many people would pay to see Creation in theaters? America is about entertainment... explosions and flashy visuals. Put some huge robots destroying cities in a movie and it will make money no matter how shitty it is.

In the olden days, people without tech savvy used to film their televisions so that they could post the videos on youtube.
In modern times, the the younger siblings of those people film youtube videos shown on their computer monitors and then repost these videos to youtube.

SPOILERS IN THIS POST (for the devil's advocate)

>> ^gwiz665:
I thought this whole scene was freaking great. I always love the Lucifers. Same thing in The Prophecy where Viggo Mortensen plays him.
I liked Gabriel through the whole movie too.


I absolutely *LOVE* the religion warring in the modern day type films, they really appeal to me. And like you, i have a massive crush on these lucifers. I think john abruzzi (lol) does a great job in this film as lucifer, there's something almost reptilian about his looks to kick off with, and the way he speaks reminds me of G-man from the half life series. It's just all great.

And aragorn was pretty good as well, i'll admit, but i think you missed on one of the greatest showing of the devil in modern times - pacino. Don't get me wrong, i think pacino has been a bit of a hasbeen for a long time, his heart just isn't in the job anymore and he's become a stereotype of himself. But in "The Devil's Advocate", he hits the nail RIGHT on the head. Before you realise he's the devil, he comes across excellently. You know there's something wrong with him but you're not quite sure what, because although he's a nice guy with the people you see him with, he has odd quirks and mannerisms that blow the cover of 'normal guy'. And finally when he shows that he's the devil, his attitude is just fantastic.

Oh, and as for this film - i loved it, i thought it was one of the better films of the time that didn't recieve a lot of attention (at least, over here). Never read the comics.