Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 4 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

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then we do agree.
always a pleasure my friend.
i may disagree with your arguments sometime but i always respect the way you present them and how you interact.
kudos.

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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult

Any group whose main commonality is adherence to cultural laws based on superstitious/ supernatural/metaphysical beliefs is part of a cult.

Tho like Gwiz said, the level of sanity amongst and within groups varies.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

wait. what religion isn't a cult?


Wait, are you really content to just say they are all 'equal'?

So, you don't see any utility in distinguishing between Koresh's Waco sect and Hindu's following in the approximate example of Ghandi?

I'm afraid you might find that such a ludicrously oversimplified world view is... inaccurate.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
Another unrelated trivia bit about this movie is that Stallone not only acted in it, but was also one of the writers .

Actually he's written a lot of his movies, including ALL of the Rocky's, Rambo's, Cliffhanger, Over the Top, and many, many more

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 3 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Dammit! I hope you know I meant to UPVOTE - not downvote - your comment below (@Throbbin)!!!

Oh no! Taking money from the "poor" rich people!!! You're so mean!

You can believe they would notice all you want - but when it comes to the difference between $1 billion in profits and $999,500,000 in profits I think most rational people would suggest it's a negligible amount. Obviously you are not among those people.

I will defend that the tax is nothing to those who pay it, and that it's billions for those that will benefit. It's no different form the tax I pay on the cup of coffee I buy - that is used to build roads and schools. In fact, the tax I pay on a cup of coffee is magnitudes bigger than this Robin Hood Tax. Some folks here in Canada scream 'Tyranny' and 'Big Government' at those taxes - and most people correctly identify those kooks for who they really are - zealots.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
Actually, I believe very strongly that they really would notice.

And don't tell me I'm the one playing semantics when the video goes on about how the tax is both virtually nothing and worth billions. The game is semantics, but I'm the one that's calling it out for that.

In reply to this comment by Throbbin:
I thought that aspect of it came through pretty clear. 0.05% in taxes is effectively nothing - it's harder to get less intrusive than that.

You play semantics when you know damn well the bankers would hardly notice.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
I'd prefer some honesty. You can't defend the tax on BOTH the fact it costs nothing AND that it will raise billions. Be honest and say it will take billions from the rich to give to the poor.


In reply to this comment by Throbbin:
Yes....hence the 'Robin Hood" theme. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Sounds like a completely legit idea to me.

Or would you prefer the poor rely on voluntary charity, seeing as how it has worked so well to date?

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
It costs nothing and it will raise billions!

Don't question it or think about it, just say it fast enough and it'll be true. Or, at least it will be true if the billions raised come out of somebody else's pockets, but truth like that doesn't sound as reasonable.

I thought that aspect of it came through pretty clear. 0.05% in taxes is effectively nothing - it's harder to get less intrusive than that.

You play semantics when you know damn well the bankers would hardly notice.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
I'd prefer some honesty. You can't defend the tax on BOTH the fact it costs nothing AND that it will raise billions. Be honest and say it will take billions from the rich to give to the poor.


In reply to this comment by Throbbin:
Yes....hence the 'Robin Hood" theme. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Sounds like a completely legit idea to me.

Or would you prefer the poor rely on voluntary charity, seeing as how it has worked so well to date?

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
It costs nothing and it will raise billions!

Don't question it or think about it, just say it fast enough and it'll be true. Or, at least it will be true if the billions raised come out of somebody else's pockets, but truth like that doesn't sound as reasonable.

Yes....hence the 'Robin Hood" theme. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Sounds like a completely legit idea to me.

Or would you prefer the poor rely on voluntary charity, seeing as how it has worked so well to date?

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
It costs nothing and it will raise billions!

Don't question it or think about it, just say it fast enough and it'll be true. Or, at least it will be true if the billions raised come out of somebody else's pockets, but truth like that doesn't sound as reasonable.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

I think if we want to rid the world of tyrants and human rights abusers, that's a noble goal. I'm just worried that without some sort of guiding body of law about how you sort the innocent from the guilty, and what sorts of consequences are appropriate for which kind of violation, it can easily wind up being just a handy casus belli to tell people whenever you feel like conquering some new territory.

After all, I could easily imagine our hawks here saying something along the lines of: Canada has single-payer health care, and that's socialism, and socialism is tyranny, so we must invade!

The American people might have been able to get behind a war waged purely for humanitarian purposes, especially if there was a good gruesome photo montage of evidence (like we had with Yugoslavia), and like there is with Darfur. But that's not the case that was made about Iraq. The case made for Iraq was that they presented a direct threat to the US's security, and some mumbling about how they were involved in 9/11.

If they'd been realistic about the costs of the war, in terms of lives, treasure, and just how long it was going to take, I would've said we need to find another way. Maybe if there had been some sort of Holocaust-level sort of abuses going on I'd have been able to agree with it, but then if there had been, the UN probably would have gone along with it too, and it would've been the whole world working to stop it.

I can't feel that the war was justified, no matter what good comes of it. Anything positive that happens there now doesn't justify the price of what it's taken to get there.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:

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.