Mink, to your point I think that some of this stuff is distracting to the "truther" movement. There are other, deeper, nefarious forces at work, we've had our dirty little fingers in other peoples pies forever. That being said, i've probably lurked a hundred 9/11 threads, and never participated until this one, because they all end the same. Everybody disregards half of the claims and calls the other fool. The only thing I know for sure is that I've been lied to before.

Edit: Okay, Not everybody disregard half the claims. Most ignore some and some ignore most.

Great, two assholes calling each other assholes. Who gives a crap? Oh, oh , not me!

Yeah, it's a screwy issue. I think the idea was to disarm the insult in the term by adopting it themselves. Mostly they deform the word, with a "er" ending it's an insult, with an "a" ending it's a term of endearment between friends. Often when a white was involved it became wigga to adopt them in but still recognize the difference.

Personally I think it's all pretty silly. People don't understand the distinctions and it just keeps the term in common use instead of letting them die out to become something we just don't call each other. I grew up in the DC area in the mid to late 70's as this stuff was developing and never much liked it myself. Was more or less the crazy white kid Dave mentions in another clip

Okay, first of all, calm down. There's no need to be calling out other sifters and if you want anyone to answer you kindly, I would advise that you edit your comments to Sometimes on her post.

To answer your first question, you CAN sift videos that have been discarded with the exact same URL, just not the same title.

Secondly, most of the sifters around here are happy to lend a hand and save a video if you just ask. I called Rembar in for a save just a while ago, and he was happy to oblige. Just look at who's voted and ask. You had Firefly and Grspec both vote for your post, I'm sure they could have done something for you. The queue can be weird sometimes, and a lot of it depends on who's looking at the time.

Thirdly, title has a lot to do with it. No offense, but your title could have been better. It wasn't eye catching, in fact, it just looked like a regular Sesame Street clip. That's not something I would be particularly interested in.

There's no way somebody is trolling a discard pile, because there is no discard pile, unless you count the "Recently Discarded" section. So the only way someone knew that you had submitted it is if they saw it, then banked on it dying in the queue. Not likely, as one would assume that a video they enjoy is probably going to make it to the front.

And yes, there is a very good chance they "stumbled" upon it. I don't know about the rest of everyone else, but I go to other websites (Digg, for instance) to sift my videos.

I like the bits about the Islamic Empire as a comparable to the Roman Empire in its influence on science, technology, and arts. But I wouldn't call the Ottoman Empire "great" for the same reason I wouldn't call any other empire great.

This video is overly reverent. It linguistically presumes Mohammad actually received "revelations". The act of a "religion of peace" being founded through forceful conquest of the known world is at best hypocritical.

Rather then re-re-re-interpreting scriptures to re-re-reconcile Islam with the changing moral zeitgeist, I'd rather read great philosophers like John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, and think about ethics as its own subject. A cosmic despot's declaration cannot affect the ethicality of a deed to which he is not a party.

Even to put myself in a theist's shoes, if God declared certain acts good and evil, he must have had reasons for doing so, and we should seek to understand those reasons. If we can, there's no need to rely on fallible scriptures based on fallible memory of fallible oral recitations from a fallible slave-owning illiterate merchant named Mohammad who might or might not have had a revelation.

To treat what was probably mere trickery or hallucination as if it were some unquestionably glorious thing is to me a bit offensive because I value truth above almost everything else. The video devotes only about three seconds to skepticism about Mohammad's alleged revelation in the part about the life of Mohammad and quickly dismisses it with Mohammad's own fallacious argument involving combat victories. This is plainly pro-religion bias.

Peace

Ok, where to start..

1) There´s a lot of racism in the german military. Fact.
2) What Spiff says is very true. Maybe hard to imagine for Americans, but there really are very few colored people (hope that doesn´t sound racist, it´s the translation of the polite german expression) in Germany compared to what i believe is the situation in America. At my school back in the days: only whites. I don´t remeber seeing any colored person in my home town (a few thousand inhabitants) ever. The first time i saw some colored persons on a regular basis was at university, of 3,000-3,500 students there were no more than a dozen.

Furthermore what´s a shame to see is the situation in the town where i´m living now (~1mio): If you are of very dark skin you WILL be checked by the police. I´ve seen that so many times. People tend to think that if you came from Africa to Germany you most certainly are a drug dealer. That´s a shame but seems to be quite normal over here. Makes me sick every time i see it.

The other thing Spiff says is also true in my eyes: The first impression youths in Germany get of African-american people does most probably not come from reality but from rap music videos. Gangster rap is VERY popular in Germany.

Which leads me to my next point: As i´ve stated before, it is VERY unlikely that you as a German will EVER encounter a gun in your life execpt of the military. We have very strict laws, prohibiting gun posession for private persons nearly completely. Though there´s a huge movement to copy US gangster rap in Germany, more and more german artists (especially the label "Aggro Berlin") glorify their so-called Ghetto life, where you could be shot every day (which is total BS in Germany), drug dealing etc.. There´s this 'ideal' of Ghetto, Gangster Life etc. They very much glorify that lifestyle and through that there´s a strange picture of colored people established. Some of the German (white!!!) rappers even call each other by the n-word and use that a lot in their lyrics (take artist King Kool Savas for example who is part German part Turkish).

As a part of that the term "Bronx" has become commonly used. I´ve encountered the use of that term in my time in the military, too. In 99% it doesn´t refer to the NY district but to any 'ghettoish' place. Doesn´t make it right, just to explain..

The German ignorance of the topic goes on: It is very common along the younger generation to speak of "Texaner" (german for Inhabitants of the US state Texas) when refering to people of most probable south american / mexican heritage.

I could continue forever.. I don´t want to defend anything here, I just thought you guys might find some of this interesting. As always I´m open for opinions, suggestions, critcs, questions and whatever :-)

3) I don´t know why that´s of relevance but: Krumzy, you´re right. It´s a MG3. That´s not the standard weapon but the "bigger" version of standard G3. The G3 (7,62x51) is more and more replaced by G36 (5,56x45) which hasn´t a bigger brother anymore but comes with a seperate mount for MG-use.

Oh and very important: I don´t think Germans are any more racist than other people, it´s just a little bunch of idiots that make it into the news. Just like the KKK etc. Remember Football World Cup 2006? ;-) [that´s soccer for you American guys...]

"Code Pink"

* is the group that championed military deserters
* cheered Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez
* traipsed around the Jordan-Iraq border last year condemning America
* prayed for the "people of Fallujah"
* doled out $600,000 in aid to what they called "the other side" (terrorists killing U.S. Troops)
* was founded by Medea Benjamin, a communist considered to be a chief organizing force behind the 1999 Seattle riots that caused millions of dollars worth of senseless destruction
* hides its true beliefs, just like modern-day liberals hide what they really stand for, until (foolishly) elected

Liberals own defeat. They want America to lose this war, to be humiliated.

Their reasons for FEELING this way are varied: IMO it's an admixutre of callow rebel posturing, idolizing Hollywood dumbasses, ignorance of history and in America, 12+ years of liberal propaganda in government-run socialist schools.

The only reason more people aren't outraged by the moonbats is they can't or won't believe fellow Americans would think or act against their own country, hoping for its defeat against islamofascist thugs or whomever else.

If you want to know which ideology treats people like toys to be thrown away, to the tune of 100 million murdered, google communism.

I love the bits on the website about Aryan heritage.
why?
The term basically means person from the persia/india regions.
in sanscrit and persian, it has additional meaning of "noble/spiritual one" attached to it. However, this is much like Rome calling every other non-roman civilization "barbarians".

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

The Old Persian form of *Aryāna- appears as Æryānam Väejāh "Aryan Expanse" in Avestan,[1] in Middle Persian as Ērān, and in Modern Persian as Īrān.[2] Similarly, Northern India was referred to by the tatpurusha Aryavarta "Arya-abode" in ancient times.

Armenians to this day refer to themselves as Aryaee, or Aryan(meaning pure blood).
[...]
In ancient India, the term Aryavarta, meaning "abode of the Aryans", was used to refer to the northern Indian subcontinent.
[...]
Since ancient times, Persians have used the term Aryan as a racial designation in an ethnic sense to describe their lineage and their language, and this tradition has continued into the present day amongst modern Iranians (Encyclopedia Iranica, p. 681, Arya). In fact, the name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and means "Land of the Aryans."
[...]
In 1967, Iran's Pahlavi dynasty (overthrown in the 1979 Iranian revolution) added the title Āryāmehr "Light of the Aryans" to those of the monarch, known at the time as the Shahanshah (King of Kings).

Clear, concise, and well thought out. Things you won't find when listening to so called religious "leaders" as they call for others to "take him out" while talking about leaders of other countries.

viz a viz Robertson and Chavez

It does represent that era. Can we all agree that posting guideline #2 is dead, dead, dead for the purpose of preemptively discarding 'historical' racist documents (put it to the vote!) because, ultimately, viewing such 'historical' racist documents inspires a warm feeling of how nice, fuzzy, and tolerant our society has become?

BUT

Posting guideline #2 still stands for non-historical racist documents (i.e. white Clemson students partying in blackface, drinking malt liquor and calling each other the word that Paul Mooney no longer says but choggie is brave enough to) because those 'non-historical' racist documents are just such a fucking downer, ruining the giddy high that we received from viewing the 'historical' racist pieces.

farhad: I agree that Scandanavian countries are much cleaner than the rest of the west (the only vague examples I could struggle to think of earlier). However, the recent Pirate Bay scandal in Sweden should proove two points: they aren't scot-free in these countries; and the US (and its industries) throws its weight around like a champion sumo wrestler.

For those that don't know: the US & its MPAA forced the Swedish government (via threats of sanctions) to close down the worlds largest BitTorrent site. In Sweden, the government is entirely seperate to the police; they have no right to get the police to investigate anyone (never mind illegally shutting them down with no charge/reason). I state this, as it's in fact NOT illegal to have a website hosting torrents according to their own laws; plus the police witholding its servers, which other (also legal) companies use - is blatantly wrong.

Wumpus: presidents calling each other names isn't entirely what the issue is here (besides, Bush never speaks about foreign policy without Evil being in the speech somewhere: EG Axis of Evil, anyone?) The US president backing yet another illegal overthrow of a democratically elected government in South America IS. This is a persistent theme in US foreign politics over the past four plus decades - plus the rest of the world too (smells of religous-based rascism to me).

Also, as ren said: the UN is a neutral international site - even though it's in New York (not America's house - that's in Washington). And again, as ren said: the US has by far more violations of international (and its own) laws than Hugo Chavez could ever get away with. Think before you type please Wumpus (or even better: read some of Chomskys' books) I found that earlier comment insulting - and I'm a bland caucasian Brit...

[quote]I can't recall Rush or Bill ever abushing someone and calling them murders and calling for others to be taken off the air.[/quote]


I guess, "SHUT UP!" and "CUT HIS MIC!" doesnt count then

As opposed to whom?

I can't recall Rush or Bill ever abushing someone and calling them murders and calling for others to be taken off the air. Despite what you've been led to believe.