But believers demonstrably don't use the word of their god (or its earthy incarnation) as a moral compass. They all use their own morality and that of the culture they live in to judge which bits of their holy texts to ignore because they are immoral. The revulsion most humans have for genocide and slavery certainly does not come from the desert god Yahweh, who advocates both of those things in the New Testament and the Old. I would say that the opposite of what Harvey says is true: that using the Bible as a moral compass without tempering it with human morality is risky, and people who do so should be avoided.

What a surprise, the two Jewish panel members are anti-muslim.
Sam Harris pro-Israeli.
Bill Maher is racist. Pure and simple.
never heard him calling out Judaism for Israels genocide in Gaza.

I'll never watch his lame unfunny racist shit again.

Ahhh yes, the Culture / Star Trek / super happy awesome future ending.

It's possible this may come to pass. I'd love to think that we may even see the beginnings of it in my lifetime.

The way I look at it, there are essentially two issues that need solving.

1: population growth needs to actually reverse. Ideally over the next few generations, the population would drop by a few billion. (note for the idiots in the crowd, I'm not talking about genocide or some draconian laws, I mean simply that people will choose to have less kids and the population will drop naturally).

2: energy. We need fusion. There are no two ways about it. We either develop fusion or we abandon our energy rich lives (cars, electronics, media, home appliances, etc)

Both of these are tough tasks, but with enough political will and some ingenuity, they are not insurmountable.

I am simply not that optimistic that we as a species can get our shit together enough to see this come to pass. Collectively, we can pretty terrible at adapting to change... just look at the media or transport industries for an example.

Any new economic model will meet with extreme resistance.

In your opinion, what is "the right thing"?

This isn't a flame, just an attempt to understand your perspective.

My reason, and perspective, is because for many years I've seen what actions that Israel has taken, even through the American rose-colored-lens of media, as oppression-bordering-on-genocide. I also sincerely doubt that the Palestinian media has such a subversive hold on American media that it could launch as much propaganda as what I've seen over the last couple decades.

The US appears to have an unspoken mandate to support everything that Israel does. Even when I research US and world history, I don't fully understand why the US has taken this stance.

Regardless, terribly, ironically, the US seems to be supporting an organized regime of the like since we have not seen since the early 19th century. I try to listen to all channels of media because I feel it's healthy to be exposed to contradicting viewpoints, but I've never heard a single positive action that Israel has done in the name of its geographical area, history, or government, that wasn't entirely selfish in the name of biblical righteousness.

Anyway, I originally viewed this post because I was actually surprised that the US would condemn an action of Israels because I'm so used to the US government loading up the state of Israel with arms and supporting their militant actions. I've no idea what "WochIT" media is, but it would be a nice turning point for the US if their channel portrays a legitimate perspective.

In the meantime I won't hold my breath.

I'd down vote your comment if I could, fuck un-empathetic assholes that support more aggressive, expansionist, religious-based, terroristic, genocidal murder against defenseless imprisoned innocent civilians because they worship the wrong god....as if there's actually a right god that makes it OK to be evil...well, on reflection there is Satan but he's it.

I have found this insane for decades. They don't need our money, they just want it. We badly need that money, but those in power would rather give it away to groups that use it in ways that we don't agree with, making us a pariah to the rest of the world for supporting them, costing us more money to defend ourselves and our interests we may not have to defend if we didn't pay Israel to be offensive.
That 3 billion a year could pay for universal health care for all....or to repair all our infrastructure, creating jobs AND upgrading the country...or could pay for actual healthcare for vets, or could build a giant wall at the border, or.....well, the list goes on forever of the better things we could be doing with that money instead of supporting vicious baby murderers in their attempted genocide of their neighbors which costs us more money in the end AND downgrades our standing in the rest of the world's opinion.

We should be arguing that Israel needs to send the US aid.
#isolateisrael

Yeah, it's almost like I'm dumb enough to think that someone was seriously suggesting genocide.

Seriously, though... grammar nazism?

I know that wit, originality, intelligence, decency, understanding, honesty, modesty, acumen, empathy, humour, logic, hygiene, taste, insight, imagination, integrity, courage, resourcefulness and self-awareness are not on your list of positive attributes, but you could at least try to come up with something vaguely approaching a decent comeback.

Well now we know how you "handle" disagreement with anyone who doesn't agree with you.

Good luck with your genocide.

I realize everyone is foaming at the mouth and positive of what happened here, but it should be noted that Israel denies hitting the hospital, and that the United Nations had not confirmed the source of the blasts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/world/middleeast/despite-talk-of-a-cease-fire-no-lull-in-gaza-fighting.html?_r=0

Everyone wants to paint Israel like this giant monster, but things are being way overstated. Let's get serious. If Israel was embarking on a program of "ethnic cleansing" they could easily kill every last person in Gaza. Seems clear enough to anyone that this is not what they're trying to do.

If Hamas was in Mexico shooting rockets at Texas half the people shouting genocide at Israel would be wearing little yellow ribbons hoping our soldiers all come back safe from our Mexican invasion.

I have a hard time imagining, or believing, that anyone purposely bombed a hospital full of children. But I can easily believe accidents of all kinds will happen in a battleground the size of Detroit.

And Israel once again shows it's true colors. They seem bolder daily about committing genocide.

Clinton is worse than Obama. Kicking people off welfare, supporting one genocide and enforcing another. Clinton was way worse.

@newtboy,

Who'd of thought our back and forth would wind up the civil portion of the thread?

On veracity, accuracy and demonstrable evidence please note I twice provided external links beyond my own day so. The last being to a thoroughly researched and documented account from Human Rights Watch. The only claimed verbatim quote I included was italicized to make clear what was quote versus a shorten in my own words summary. I included a link to the full document so anyone questioning my summary is very to call me out on specifics. Thus far the only in accuracy in aware of has been corrected. If you believe I'm in any other way mischaracterizing events as HRW documented it ask you to point it more specifically or failing that cease insisting that my account is anything less than very thoroughly backed by very well evidenced research.

By way of declaring lesser evils, I would ask you to be specific about worst ISIS has done that you feel so trumps the million dead of the Iran Iraq war and Saddam's multiple genocidal campaigns.

Lastly on ISIL, I don't think they are specifically the ones to stay up at night over anyways. Nouri Al-Maliki's credentials as a brutal thug are underestimated quite widely IMO and I very much expect the real nastiness will come from his crushing of Sunni Iraqis in the guise of stopping ISIL. Ugly times ahead, but I fear the guys your worried about are going to be taking it more than dishing it out, sadly leaving more Sunni Iraqi civilians dead than anyone else.

From the reports so far (no clue to the veracity of them, just as there's no clue to the veracity of your 'reports') a group of about 5000 have so far, taken nearly 1/2 the country and 'informed' the populace that if they are the wrong sect of Muslim they must leave (or be killed)...they have massacred, raped, punished, tortured, and on...publicly and proudly (which makes them more dangerous, because they don't consider what they do is wrong, Saddam did but did it anyway). EDIT: they are gaining in numbers and power FAST...if they reached the level of power Saddam had and follow through on their 'promises', there will be millions killed and far more displaced.
Fuck you with your insulting BS, because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I'm ignorant. I know full well of the atrocities committed by Saddam, repeatedly, over decades, with and without our support and acceptance. You, on the other hand, claim Saddam was as bad as Hitler and Pol Pot, so I'll parrot your insult and say YOU must be ignorant of history. I repeatedly said gassing was not the only crime Saddam committed, but was obviously the worst SINGLE crime...genocides are multiple crimes over time, gassing is a single act at a single time, and the worst one he did. Understand now?
I would not accept Saddam's records to make your arguments, he was a well known insane liar.
for instance, which is it...4500 villages, or 7500 villages destroyed? Your 'information' claimed both, perhaps you should READ the information you cut and paste before deriding others for 'being ignorant of it'?
When you are forming your opinions ABOUT American policy, it makes no sense to ignore American policy.
I don't share your view about removing 'the bad man' from power because it never works. Without a reasonable, well liked, popular, intelligent government to 'take over' for the despotic leaders, and few if any zealots willing to destroy everything if they can't control it, you always end up with smaller despotic leaders fighting over the power or civil war, which has nearly always been worse (at least in the short term) than the despot. Because it never happens that the reasonable replacement government is ready before the expulsion of the despot, or that there are no zealots grasping for the power that's suddenly up for grabs, simply removing despots is usually worse than leaving them in power.
If it were done thoughtfully and thoroughly, I would support replacing them, but it's not done that way. At best, it seems the follow up is an after thought, which usually leads to disaster.

Please do give us a closer look at ISIS is doing. Massacres, torture, rape, collective punishment and on, correct? Maybe killing what, 100 people at a time in the worst instances? That doesn't distinguish them from Saddam. Within Saddam's rule those crimes are what guys like yourself colloquially referred to as Saddam's 'firm' hand. They are his, so to speak, lesser and more routine crimes. I'd left them beneath mention thus far.

If you must insist on parroting your ignorance of Saddams al-Anfal campaign I'll resort to posting excerpts as evidence that the gassing was but a small part of it.

4,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed by Saddam, that's entire villages turned to rubble.
182,000 dead civilians by counts gleaned from Saddam's own records of how many Kurds his forces had succeeded in eliminating.
The concentration camps Saddam ran were pretty clearly modeled after Hitler's:
With only minor variations ... the standard pattern for sorting new arrivals [at Topzawa was as follows]. Men and women were segregated on the spot as soon as the trucks had rolled to a halt in the base's large central courtyard or parade ground. The process was brutal ... A little later, the men were further divided by age, small children were kept with their mothers, and the elderly and infirm were shunted off to separate quarters. Men and teenage boys considered to be of an age to use a weapon were herded together.

The conditions within the camp were terrible and torture, abuse and beatings were routine. The men of fighting age though were sorted for the express purpose to later drive them out into the desert by bus or truck for mass execution. This is how Saddam carried his genocide of the inhabitants of the 4,500 villages he'd destroyed.

Anyone interested in more or questioning the veracity of the above account can find more and endless references and evidence here:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/index.htm#TopOfPage

As for American policy, I don't quite see where I suddenly bear personal responsibility to clean up the world if I choose to form my opinions on world events independently of it's 'fit' to American policy.

I don't care much if it was Bush or Putin that took Saddam out of power aside from hedging on which would leave a better Iraq, either would be tough not to be an improvement from Saddam. Similarly for Sudan or the Congo, I'd be rather glad if world powers finally cared enough to try and spare the people there suffering under brutal military repression and endless war crimes. I'm not quite sure why you wouldn't share such a view?

Gassing them was considered the worst part of what he did by most, agreed he did evil for decades, and that equated to more than a single (or campaign) of gassing, but as far as single events go, it was the worst.
As I said, just give ISIS time, they are more hard line and eager to kill than Saddam seemed, and on the rise fast. If YOU want to champion ISIS as a lesser evil, you should bother to study what THEY are doing now, with an insanely smaller group and less power than Saddam, if they gain power and people, I see them as likely being worse.
American policy should concern anyone who's discussing it, which is what we've been doing. If American policy doesn't matter to you, why are you not on your way to the Sudan or Congo to remove those dictators that are committing genocide yourself? When discussing what America's military did and does, American policy matters.
All Iraqi's live in fear today, as do their neighboring countries.
Saddam wasn't 1/10th the 'evil dictator' Pol Pot or Hitler were, and was never a threat to anyone but his neighbors. If you really think he was (1) I must assume you spent the 90's in Iraq trying to assassinate him, right? and (2) you really need to read some history.