Kids Channel by James Roe
Sandbox for Sift Tots. This is a realm for videos that are suitable for children to enjoy. Non-kid-friendly videos that simply happen to contain a kid do not belong here.

He is intentionally posting adult content on the channel reserved for children after repeated warnings by multiple sifters and a short hobbling for the same thing. Perhaps another longer one is in order?

And because he continuously misassigns videos about racism as war on terror......

War on Terror Channel by raven

This Channel is for the aggregation of all videos related to the "Global War on Terror"...
As defined by Wikipedia.org:
"The War on Terror (also known as the War on Terrorism) is a campaign initiated by the United States government under President George W. Bush which includes various military, political, and legal actions ostensibly taken to "curb the spread of terrorism," following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States... Both the phrase “War on Terror” and the policies it denotes have been a source of ongoing controversy, as critics argue it has been used to justify unilateral preemptive war, perpetual war, human rights abuses, and other violations of international law."

This Channel aims to become a place that will foster discussion of the war, and the numerous controversies surrounding it as well as the video material coming out of it; both in the form of News Media reports, and videos shot by the soldiers themselves.

Terrorist attacks are more multifaceted.

First, they are an opportunity to generate work for the defense industry.

Second, they are usually for a reason. Often some angst over our own actions in foreign countries. For example, the news says AQ is a bunch of crazies that hate freedom, however AQs demands prior to 9/11 were to get our military out of the holyland. While that's not an offense that deserves blowing up buildings, it is definitely not the same as some banal excuse like hating freedom.

Thirdly, they are often perpetrated by some persons/groups that we had a hand in creating. We install the mujahedin in Afghanistan, knowing full well what they'll do to women, and then use their treatment of women as one excuse to later invade. Saddam worked for us, was egged on to fight Iran, was egged on to suppress insurgents (the 'own people he gassed'), and we later used his actions as one excuse to invade.

At the time, the mujaheddin was useful for fighting Russia as a proxy. At the time, Saddam was useful for perpetuating a war where we sold arms to both sides. Afterwards, they were useful for scaremongering so we could perpetuate war when otherwise things got too quiet and folks would ask about why we're spending big $$$ on defense.. (In the mean time hand-waving the much more direct 9/11 Saudi connection).

... Plus if on the off chance things do 'settle down' in areas we invade, that creates new markets for US companies to peddle their wares. You can reopen the Khyber pass for western land trade with Asia, you can build an oil pipeline, and you can prevent a euro based oil exchange from opening in the middle east. All things that benefit our industry.

So in practice, as far as big industry is concerned, there's a utility in 'fighting terrorism' (and perpetuating terrorism) that just doesn't exist with internal shootings. As such, unless another 'evil empire' shows up, the terrorism cow is gonna get milked for the foreseeable future.

Sure, there's a rhetoric about preventing terrorism, but our actions do nothing to that effect. It's just a statement that's useful in manufacturing consent.

There's a particular irony, though. That is, that while such behavior is 'not very nice' (to put it mildly), it does however provide for our security by keeping our armed forces exercised, prepared, and up to date - such that if a real threat were to emerge, our military would be ready at that time. While that seems unlikely, when you look back in history at previous major conflicts, most were precipitated rather quickly, on the order of months (it takes many years to design and build equipment for a military, and the first ~half a year of any major war has been fought with what was on hand). So in a round-about, rather evolutionary way, perpetuating threats actually does make us safer as a whole.

To clarify the word 'evolutionary' : Take 10 microbes. All 10 have no militant nature. None are made for combat. It only takes 1 to mutate and become belligerent in order to erase all the others from existence. If some others also mutate to be combative, they will survive. The non combative are lost, their reproductive lines cut off. As there's always a chance to mutate to anything at any time, eventually, there is a combative mutation. So, all life on earth has a militant nature at some layer of abstraction - those that exist are those that successfully resisted some force (or parried the force to its benefit. Like plants that use a plant eater's dung to fertilize the seeds of the eaten fruit).

The relationship holds true at a biological level, interpersonal, societal, national, and international level. Societies that allow the kind of educational and military development that leads to victory, are those that have dominated the planet socially and economically. For example, Europe's centuries of infighting made it resistant to invasions from the Mongols, Caliphates, etc, and ultimately led to the age of colonialism. For the strengths built with infighting, are later leveraged for expansion. As such, the use of "terrorism" to perpetuate conflict, is ultimately an exercise in developing strength that can later be leveraged.

Our national policy is largely developed in think tanks, and those organizations are planning lifetimes ahead. So these kinds of considerations are very relevant.

TL/DR : Yes, agreed, the terrorism thing is B.S. on many levels.

-scheherazade

I don't know enough about the situation in Palestine, or what kinds of laws are imposed from outside there, but just hypothetically, I wonder: what if they renounced all initiation of violence altogether, and just dropped the push to set up their own state? What if, instead they declared their territories to be "state-free" and "tax free havens?" Maybe they could open some casinos a la Native Americans; and provide some tax-free banking; let tech giants set up tax-free research centers there without all of the immigration restrictions that seem to impose so many unnecessary challenges.. And what if, instead of waging war or attacking Israel, they simply used any military capabilities they had to set up private security firms, and secure their banking system, maybe provide some safe gold depositories? In a generation or two, the Israelis would see that they are the ones living in a prison/tax farm, not the Palestinians. I wonder if they could get away with it...


It's interesting to me how some folks tend to (more or less) "take sides" in defense of states (or would-be states) in conflicts like this one. As if states somehow had "rights" or as if states somehow represented "the people" within each state. That is simply, prima facie, false: For one thing, I think armed conflict on any sort of large scale inflicts violence against innocent parties on both sides; who, in their own rights, have reason to see the other side's violent acts as aggression (or at least as material threats to their human rights).

So I certainly agree that Israelis have a right not to have rockets coming at them, but it also seems to me that individual Palestinians have a right not to be collateral damage in Israel's bombings. Surely the hundreds who've lost family in Gaza have reason to be angry at Hamas, but you could see why they too would want to defend themselves.

The logic of war often leads to a situation where if you can defend one side fighting, you have to see why the other side would fight as well. And so we can condemn both sides, or sympathize with the innocent victims of both sides, but I don't see any simple formulation that shows why people who happen to live on one side of an arbitrary line have more of a "right" to respond violently to attacks that threaten their lives than the other side has.

The United States commits many forms of aggression quite frequently. In revenge, terrorists murdered innocent Americans on 9/11. Those Americans had a right not to be attacked and as Americans, we have a right to defend ourselves. But if tactics our government employs hurt third parties, doesn't it seem that the logic of collective self defense could easily be used to justify perpetual war?

None of what I say relies on any assumption that Hamas is any less criminal than the Israeli state. Even if it's much more criminal than the Israeli state, it seems to me that collective defense = perpetual war, because of the innocents on both sides who seem to have no way of striking against belligerents without violence that itself puts innocent people in harm's way.

Ron Paul regularly stands up in front of large crowds and tells them that we are being attacked by terrorists as a result of our own actions.

Ron Paul regularly stands up in front of large crowds and tells them that Israel has done reprehensible things in their battles with the Palestinians.

Ron Paul regularly stands up in front of large crowds and tells them that our military and our empire is weakening our country and bankrupting us and that we need to stop fighting perpetual wars.

He is often booed viciously for these comments and he goes on saying them anyway. So I have a hard time imagining that he's afraid to admit that he once said black kids run fast. A lot of the same people who boo the above statements would erupt in applause if he were to blame some shit on black people. That's a popular statement with diehard Republicans, particularly with Obama in office.

Why would Ron Paul, who is known for saying exactly what he thinks whether it's what people want to hear or not, suddenly be shy about this?

That's not to say he's free and clear on the newsletters. He dropped the ball and it's a blemish on his name but if he says these are not his positions then I see little reason to doubt him.

The issue definitely needed to be brought up and Paul needed to answer for it but, now that he has, I don't see the point in continuing to ask about it unless something new surfaces.

>> ^bareboards2:

@marbles, what you are missing is that if you have FUCKING INCOME, it is okay to pay taxes. The middle class has indeed shared in the Bush tax cuts. They didn't gain as much as the multi-bucks people, but still they gained.
So what if EVERYONE pays a little more? There is a FUCKING DEFICIT AND TWO FUCKING WARS.
If you are poor or unemployed, truly hurt by the recession of the last couple of years? Guess what. YOU DON'T HAVE ANY INCOME. You won't pay "more" taxes.
I am sick to my bones of this weird anti-tax sentiment. It is childish, puerile, short-sighted, and KILLING THIS COUNTRY as everyone grasps more for ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.
Are there other issues? Sure. THE WORLD IS A COMPLICATED PLACE. Reducing complex and inter-related topics down to one thing is.... childish, puerile, short-sighted and KILLING THIS COUNTRY.


What you are missing is WHY we have a fucking deficit every year and WHY we have a world stage of perpetual wars.

Now you're just admitting that we need tax increases on the middle class to pay more to Wall Street banks in interest and more to Wall Street government contractors to fuel the war machine to go destroy life and land.

So not only is the rhetoric about taxing millionaires and corporations a complete sham, but we're actually taking the tax revenues from the middle class and small business owners and giving it to the very criminals that got us here to begin with.

Stealing from the middle class to feed the corporate shadow government. And you partisan drones want to brand it as a "tax on millionaires"? LOL

@chipunderwood

What do they have to gain from this though?

A covert deal with the military industrial complex to perpetuate war? Then why announce it at all, stretch it out for decades and decades. If this was purely a GOP deal, then to revert on it this far into a Democratic presidency seems entirely arbitrary. Political opportunism? I see no reason Bush wouldn't have announced it before leaving office to boost his party's flailing 2008 chances.

As it is I simply don't see any logical motivation for this line of reasoning.

So fucking good. That perpetual war bit was fantastic. Is there somewhere we can get weezer voted for some sort of nobel prize for internetz? They never let me down! Brb watching pork n beans!

>> ^NetRunner:
This was more of a "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" clip.


Was this part of a greater video guide to playing Risk then?

Agree the notion of assymetrical casualties sounded a bit unfounded but I think the greater issue he was trying to make was that in a state of mind of perpetual struggle against, still perhaps in the mindset of many Israelis, people they believe they have not wronged in any way, any form of retaliation, and therefore any degree of loss of life on behalf of the Palestinians that may result is entirely justifiable. Whether that belief comes from some kind of religious validation or a selective historical outlook that ignores the occupation since 1967, or some other justification is uncertain. The main point though is, if it's a perpetual war and there is supposedly no perspective for a ceasefire, then casuality numbers lose any relevance in an endless struggle.

As much as I would like to hope that the Israeli people and their politicans will see through the counterproductive effect of their continued occupation and further building of settlements, I'm much more inclined to believe that people stuck in a particular situation simply become more deadset in their views and develop a more rigid us versus them mentality that prohibits any form of comprimise.

Try coming to Palestine and honestly telling me that Hamas is a terrorist organization and not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the State of Israel.
Israel reaps the seeds that it has sowed itself.


Your world view must like perpetual war and violence. Do you really wish to defend a group that sends it's own children as suicide bombers against it's enemies, because the enemies sowed the seeds?

Would you honestly accept that Zionism is simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Europeans? I reject that notion as soundly as your own allegations towards Hamas.

Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon? Do you accept defending Israel's actions as Arabs reaping the seeds they sowed?

Should we go back further, and declare the Arab attacks on Israel simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Britain. Do we defend the Arab attacks on the basis of Britain and her allies reaping what was sown?

Do you realize that rationalization is the whole reason the hatred and warfare in the region seems to be a never ending circle?

Here's where I stand, and have stated numerous times before. I condemn war crimes committed by any nation or group, Israel included. There's a lot of undeniable evidence the IDF need to be prosecuted for crimes committed in the recent offensive. Hamas kills more Arabs than Israelis and that is their greatest crime. Yes I condemn them for deliberately targeting Israeli civilians, I condemn them for stating in their charter the elimination of the Israeli state as one of their goals. Their worst crimes though are using Palestinian civilians as human shields to launch their attacks, using child soldiers and suicide bombers and generally using the bodies of their own people as their primary weapon. I refuse to accept the defense of 'Israel deserves it', or 'the Arabs deserve it' when defending war crimes and atrocities.

Israel lost this conflict. It didn't destroy Hamas. It didn't stop the attacks. It only fermented stronger resistance against itself. That is a strategic and political failure.

It's main weapon of psychologically scaring the Arab world with superior firepower has again amounted to nothing, first with Hezboallah and now with Hamas.

A superior technologically sophisticated armed forces could not destroy a small guerrilla army within an enclosed area. Israel pounded Gaza, a third of the causalities were civilians. It was essentially teaching the 'natives' a lesson.

To simply state that all Palestinians want nothing but perpetual war is to ignore what Israel has continuously done for the last 60 years. It's not surprising. It reaps the seeds that itself has sowed over the many years of unilateral military actions and assassinations.

Yehoshua, you don't disagree so much as you peddle forth the same BS spit out by the Israel media to justify the actions of the IDF. Shit your name is the Jewish pronounciation of Jesus for goddsakes.

And its not like you bring forth any objectivity to the discussion, not to mention that your comments are woefully ignorant or rather malicious in their reading of history and the conflict at large.

Hamas was elected not only because of it being terrorist, shit the Americans voted in Bush should we condemn all Americans to die for their unlawful unilateral military actions? Hamas provided the Palestinian people with a government that provided schools and hospitals when Fatah was too busy with infighting over who controls what after Yasser Araft died who ran the thing as his personal mob business more then any government institution that cared for its people.

Hamas is a reflection and embodiment of the bitterness that Isreal has wrought on the Palestinian people over the last 60 years, it is foolish and stupidity to simply relegate peoples actions to terrorism without thinking about what exactly drives a populace or a single person to resist and fight to the death.

To say that Israel is conducting this 'war' as safely as possible is the dumbest shit I ever heard, you yourself claim that war is hell yet at the same time you really believe that bombing and killing civilians will suddenly enlight them and turn them into docile democratic people. How is Israel showing care by telling Gazans to basically internally flee within the open air prison they set up with blockades, necessitating the tunnels that smuggle goods in. The Gazan blockade has been in effect since June of last year, something that Israel has claimed was to destroy Hamas as well by applying collective punishment of all Gazans, a war crime under Geneva conventions. Violence simply begets violence see the current destabilized Iraq and Afghanistan as a whole.

As a military strategy its disconnected with what Livni claims of peace and ending Hamas, the Lebanese war showed that all of Israel's military power could not destroy Hezboallah and what was the cost of this failure? The utter devastation of most of Lebanon. How did that work out for Israel? A great success? Will this hostile action cease the attacks or simply create even more fundamentalism in a people who see right that the world at large care not for their plight.

Countless cases have shown that COIN works best in fighting terrorism that is allying yourself with the general population to seek a common objective, this was shown to work in several locations in Iraq such as Mosul. However Israel has no common objective with the Palestinian people who they have shoved into smaller and smaller enclaves through slow acquisition of lands by 'settlers'. The west bank looks like fucking swiss cheese now. Israel seeks simply to acquire and hold land. It's military power assures even though civilian deaths will occur through hostile action, in the long term the land will become theirs.

But this is what Israel wants and needs, a perpetual war to keep its population in check and to continue having American support. To claim its fighting the good fight killing mostly civilians so that it can win elections.

But hell what do you care you come simply to shill propagandistic bullshit and by lines of the Israel apologist media who don't even cover Gaza because IDF does not allow reporters in.

I could on and on deconstructing your thinly veiled apologizes for what are essentially war crimes.

Think of the analogy of what is happening in Gaza, The US is being bombed by Russia because Russia is sick and tired of the nuclear threat America presents. Russia is full justified in assuring its national security and hopes that by bombing major population centers of America, the American people will rise up and over throw their tyrannical government that they voted in.

kthxbye.

I dispise anarchy.. nothing good comes from complete anarchy unless it's used as a temporary means to overthrow a corrupt government (and even this is not true anarchy because it would take organization)... It's really just a label that is misued often. Anarchy is NOT a form of government!!!!

Let me put it this way...War is anarchy.. perpetual war is insane... temporary war or anarchy can be used to fight off other anarchous invasions or corrupt governments but would be detrimental to the human race if it were not followed by an organized establishment of proper and just government. (i.e. : The revolutionary war).

Yeah, what kind of mentality won't embrace the police state and Our Leader, and just disrespects them instead? Why do you insult good Christian values, like perpetual war and torture?

There comes a time when you have to ask yourself, "What would Jack Bauer do?" And if you're going to betray the free market and a Christopathic president by saying that waterboarding is bad then the Islamomarxistchicanofeministsocialistbleedingheartartistfascists have already won. And I wonder what that word even means...but I don't wonder that much.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Don't ask a question if you're not prepared for an answer you might not like. Don't post a sift unless you're prepared for sifters to comment on it.
I wonder at the mentality that continually insults the President, maligns the country, disrespects police and the military, assaults religion (except radical islam) and then dares to be outraged that anyone might oppose these points-of-view...but I don't wonder that much.
Pleasant journey.
In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
^We'd all be widowers by now if we abused our significant others every time you said something stupid.

I disagree with that, countless times in history various parties have pronouced the end of war due to intellectualism, idealism or economic factors yet war and the concept of enemies remained.

Yes ideally we should be able to differentiate between enemies as a populace and enemies as organizations, but we are fallible, and most do not see it that way. This is helped on by the administration that hopes to push forward a perpetual war, remember how ominously it would proclaim not just a war on terrorism but a wider clash of cultures between Islam and Christianity. Not helped at all by President Bush's constant usage of Judeo-Christian concepts in his speeches at the start of the war.

The majority of the population does not see the differentiation at all, most Americans have no seen foreigners unless you happen to live in multicultural cities and along the coastal areas. Further feelings of xenophobia abound, as well as racism, how many people have I seen fidget nervously on airplanes at the site of a Muslim wearing the dishdasha.

Popular culture does not shy away from these concepts, rather it utilizes them to build upon preconceived notions. The administration never says we are fighting against a particular person, we are always against Iran or North Korea acquiring nuclear material, as if the entire population of those countries is hell bent upon that singular issue. The wider contextualized story is never presented, such as the aspects of why such nations would choose to be so hostile to the US.

I do not believe that people are inherently evil or inherently good either, I believe people are inherently selfish, the concepts of good and evil are simply built upon by social influence most of the time, it is better to be good because of law individually, but the morality compass can sway either direction depending on how it would benefit your actions. People are far more motivated by fear then any other emotion. This is manifested in fear of Islam, fear of terrorism, fear of death and so on. Again factors used in manipulation of the masses.

I also disagree with your thinking that religion or philosophy is in any way the driving force behind the conflicts we witness today, those are merely facilitators of acquisition of power.

I recently read Ahmed Rashid's Taliban, which chronicled the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it was clear that the Islam created was a fallacy, it wasn't Islam more as it was Pushtan tribal traditions coated around an Islamic undertones, stripped of over 2000 years of Islamic scholarship to something totally alien. This is not real Islam as its world participators know it but a sabotaged form of it.

I would agree that wealth dissipates war but not entirely, consider Saudi Arabia, a country that is the largest exporter of Oil, yet most of its population lives in utter subjugation due to a fundamentalist strict Wahhabi version of Islam that sustains the Saudi Royal family in power and in control of the oil resources while rich its wealth does not reach most of its population who are then converted to anti-western sentiment by the government controlled religious schools who preach it so that criticism of the Royal family never flourishes. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. But there is a benefit to the US and Saudi Arabia of this going on, because the US assures defense and support despite a brutal and authoritarian regime, SA assures the supply of oil and foreign funds to the US.

This is a case of economic development still fostering conflict in the future, the same is for the Western actions when it comes to dealing with nations like Iran and North Korea, mainly by marginalizing them and cutting them off from economic development by way of sanctions.

Globalism might assure more reasons not to commit to war in the future, but it will not prevent it, because war is not derived from ideology but from power, western capitalism depends on a imbalance of power to thrive and if the scales are tipped in the favor of power in the hands of one nation over others it will lead to eventual conflict.

jwray stated: "Electing him (Ron Paul) would risk another conservative appointment to the supreme court."

I trust him for what decisions he would make for any appointments to government positions. He's not like the neocons, jwray. He wouldn't put a crazy unqualified person like Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court like Bush tried to do. Remember - Ron Paul is a Libertarian.

I also agree that Dennis Kucinich would be an excellent choice - another honest candidate. You stated that Clinton or Obama would be preferrable to all of the Republican candidates. I disagree... Ron Paul would be preferrable to them because Clinton is elite neocon trash that takes her orders from the NWO agenda of the CFR and Bilderbergers. Obama is also a CFR member but I'm not sure to the true extent of his possible corruption. It's clear that they both are going to keep us in the perpetual war that the Bush administration got us into.

Ultimately this is a bad thing for America... many of our soldiers die each day in a land which we have no claim to - so that Cheney's Halliburton can tap the oil resources of the region. Meanwhile the auto industry developed hundreds of electric cars and as momentum for these cars and the advancement of the technology was taking root in California, they decided to remove these leased vehicles from their owners and destroy them all. Yes, they crushed them and are preventing us from using non-petrolium dependent vehicles. Watch http://www.videosift.com/video/Who-Killed-The-Electric-Car-1 -- All of these things tie together you know. This is the result of the domination of the petrolium industry. Including the war.

Ultimately though, your probably right, Kucinich may not make it past the primaries because most people are on the 1stTube and are fed a streaming neocon diet. This may be the ultimate downfall of our Country.