Taking that video at face value (as I don't have the time or expertise to evaluate it factually) that's so extraordinarily interesting tat it deserves an instant *promote.

In particular, it gives better explanations of of America's disgraceful treatment of Cuba, and the the environmentally terrible practice of fracking than I've ever seen, let alone from a single source.

Not only that, it's also demonstrated the value of a few practices I've personally seen in Russia (and read about elsewhere), such as the move from globalisation to self-sufficiency, and the value of control of boundaries/borders, regardless of the short-term and local impact.

What it doesn't go into is the American push to control the cultural narrative globally, particularly in the western hemisphere, but that's more a consequence of their supremacy in other areas, and doesn't depend on geography. i.e. while I ramble about further aspects, the video stayed expertly on topic. Bravo.

"sensitivity is more important than truth,
feelings are more important than facts"

Bill, the fact that you think those are "feminine" values illustrates exactly why feminism is still important.

Bill Burr continues to be an unfunnny throwback to the 80s and frankly, I wish he'd just fuck off.

Louis CK, OTOH, is still a comedic genius.

But here's the thing people. Comedians are great at comedy, but they're comedians, not philosophers or sociologists.

Comedy just doesn't really work with nuanced issues. There are tonnes of jokes about Trump because he's such an obvious combination of dickhead and idiot; there really isn't anything complex about him.

But you don't see much comedy about free trade vs. anti-globalisation because it's a fucking complicated issue that has pros and cons on both sides. Comedy is about hyperbole and exaggeration.

Earlier today, I was sent a link to an article in Bloomberg titled Why Workers Are Losing to Capitalists. Marx in Bloomberg? Impossibru!

But nevermind Marx. That opinion piece is 800 words, give or take, on labour's share of income. Yet it doesn't mention policy once. Not a single time. It's automation, it's globalisation, it's Gremlins. But not a single peep on policy.

Nothing on union busting. Nothing on taxes on capital vs taxes on labour. Nothing on minimum wages. Nothing on welfare. Nothing on the public sector.

If you read about inequality and related issues in these papers, there's rarely any agency. It's always something abstract like market forces, globalisation, innovation, etc. Nothing on decisions made by people in power, parliament first and foremost, that often had the explicit aim of reducing wages to "increase competitiveness".

The problem isn't me eating bacon, the problem is that my bacon is produced intertnationally. It's the industrial globalisation of of our food that's causing the biggest problems. Why do I see south african strawberries and argentinian beef in my supermarket? I live in middle europe, strawberries and cows have an awesome time here. Because it's cheaper, it costs the corporations less money to ship their product around the globe than producing it locally. There are less regulastions to follow. The local farmer takes too much money for his cow and strawberries don't grow here in January. We can't have the customer pay a Euro or two more for for his steak. We can't have the customers wait until April for strawberries. We want it now and as cheaply as possible. That's why we eat more meat than ever, that's why my steak damages the environment more than ever.
Globalisation is a wonderful thing but it isn't without consequences.

That if is a mighty big if.

And the lessons you think they "need to learn" from this election are probably different from the lessons that the professional class (credit to Thomas Frank) thinks the Democrats need to learn. To them, it's not about getting a candidate that has a higher favorability rating than a meteor strike, but to find a candidate that maintains their status in society. They are the winners of "free trade" (see Rigged by Dean Baker) and globalisation, while a vast number of people have been thrown into debt peonage, wage slavery or worse.

Unless the Democratic Party emancipates itself from the donors and the professional class, I don't see them becoming a home to champions of the people. Look at how the DNC conspired with the Clinton campaign to crush the Sanders candidacy -- lots of juicy bits about that in the Podesta emails. Look at Corbyn, who is basically caught up in a civil war within Labour, despite overwhelming support by the party base.

The Third Way (Social-)Democrats have bought into neoliberalism at such a fundamental level that I just cannot see anyone turning them into a vessel for social equality without getting utterly corrupted or even crushed along the way.

The lesson they learn might be to not nominate a member of a dynasty with so much baggage attached to them. Yet even that depends on them actually recognising the baggage in the first place, which they seemed unwilling to during this election cycle. Everything was brushed off.

And then you're still stuck with a representative of a system that doesn't work for a lot of people. The situation of the rust belt is not a result of anything particular to the current or previous candidates, but of the Washington Consensus and the widespread acceptance of neoliberalism as gospel.

Without major outside pressure, I don't see the party changing its ways sufficiently enough to become a representative of the people again. Maybe a Trump presidency is enough to create such movements, maybe not. Occupy was promising, yet crushed by the establishment in bipartisan consensus.

The one I know for sure was the anti-globalisation rally, where both sides were pretty unreasonable.

Now that you mention it, as for the other time, I remember seeing police holding protesters by the throat on TV another time or two apart from that, but I don't actually recall what it was about.

Now I'm not saying the protesters are the same each time, but the police certainly are.
In reply to this comment by Kofi:
What "last few episodes"?

I am asking this sincerely.

>> ^oritteropo:

Most of them actually left when told to, the 100 or so who stayed really have no-one to blame but themselves. It shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that our police are a bit heavy handed after the last few times this has happened.
Now as to whether the by-law they were violating is just is another question, but just remember our laws are NOT the same as in the U.S.
>> ^Kofi:
There was punching and kicking and pepper spray. This is from 1st hand eye witnesses and participants. Look at my other vid to see excessive force being used. You should have sympathy for them or else your moral compass is way off.
>> ^TheSofaKing:
Nobody being punched or kicked. No batons, no pepper spray, no tasers. I didn't even see anyone being handcuffed. I have no idea what the specific issue was at this location that prompted police to break up this demonstration and I can understand people not agreeing with that decision.... but to call this "shocking" is sadly melodramatic. Police officers were obviously told to break up the people in the specific area (people watching from the outer area appeared to be left alone). They did it professionally and did not appear to hurt anyone. The protesters screaming and carrying on (specifically the douche at 0:48) look like morons to me and I have no sympathy for them.

from teh youtube

There will be more children in the US this year with bankrupt parents than divorced parents. With around 120,000 people declared bankrupt each month, many of the squeezed middle-class see the American dream slipping away.

"Our national myth is changing", explains author and journalist Thomas Hartmann. Whereas hard work was once seen as the route to prosperity in the US, nowadays the best most people can hope for is a lottery win. Three generations of farmers in Vermont ring the changes of the past fifty years. Doug Lyford remembers that his parents never argued about money: "There were five of us and we all went to college. No farmer could afford that any more". Disenchanted with the mainstream politicians, who have not done enough to help them, many are turning to the traditionalist Tea Party. For others, such as bicycle shop manager Anthony Laskaris, hard times are only to be expected: "this is the effect of globalisation: our living standards go down a little, so that others' can rise".

@SDGundamX

Wow, where to start. Your reply to my latest comment illustrates how you (willingly or ignorantly?) continue to misconstrue the issue, building up strawman after strawman, putting words and notions in Harris' mouth and mine, while ignoring everything I post. And then you post an article that maliciously distorts the views of Harris and Hitchens, depicting them as solely intent on vilifying Islam. If that article really describes what you think than I should probably stop arguing with you and spend my time better, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

Yes, I read the book you linked, or at least what the preview offered, which was more than enough to show that it does not go against anything Harris or I argue, only against the strawmen you prop up. A few comments on the book nonetheless:

The introduction (the one not by the book's author) is full of wishy-washy 'everything-and-its-contraire' platitudes, and ironically refers to Muslims as a unified whole, which is exactly what you accuse H. and I of... that's a good start; it's okay to make sweeping generalizations if they're positive? But even this text recognises that the secular influence of the "West" upon Muslim modernists forces them away from the core tenets of Islam and it's sacred text, which then sees the rise of fundamentalist backlash. And then there's this tidbit in the conclusion:

"Muslims, we often forget, do not always act as Muslims or members of a religious community; rather, they respond to economic, social and political needs that may direct conduct more than ideological signposts do."

Well hello captain Obvious! Either he's trying to address Christian right white trash, in which case he should use a bilboard instead of a book (I kid, I kid), or he takes his projected audience for fools. Or maybe he's building up to the sort of strawmen you seem so fond of attacking.

Now to the actual book: the author suggests that the world concentrates on "Arab" Islam, and ignores the rest. Not only is that false (at least where H. and I are concerned), not only does it carry racist undertones (yes, "Arab" is, for lack of a better word, a "race"; "Muslim" is not), but it purposefully ignores that the Middle East is Islam's birthplace, and still regarded as it's "Mecca" (haha). It's fine and dandy to put the blame that it deserves on European colonialism, but the author seems to forget that the spread of Islam is mostly due to, hey, Arabo-Islamic colonisation (and/or military conquest, sometimes with a healthy sprinkling of "cleansing", i.e. persecution of non-muslims 'till there were none left). But hey, Christianity did the same.
A really weird part is when the author somehow turns our quasi-universal use of the "Christian" calender into an illustration of Euro-American "structural violence and hegemony". Wow.
All in all, I learned nothing new whatsoever from what I read of that book, and cannot recommend it.

So there are modern/accomodationist interpretations of the Qur'an and Islamic doctrine? So not all Muslims are crazy male Saladins (I'm not making this up)? No one here is disputing that. So there are also other factors at work here? Not being denied either.

Neither are we arguing that muslims are more likely to commit violence than anyone else. By taking away the bold when citing me, you changed the meaning of the citation, creating one of the strawmen you also use to attack Harris: the key words are "in the name of" (or, to paraphrase "with the justification/motivation" of religion).

What is being argued is that Islam, i.e. the doctrines found in the Qur'an and Hadith, justify - render moral even - actions that are unethical, harmful, violent (the same is true of the Bible, from which Sharia law stems, but it is much less practiced than under Islam). That is why I quote the Qur'an, which - whether you like it or not - constitutes the core of the religion called "Islam" ("submission", btw... a pretty bad start). Nor can you deny that said religion demands that its holy text be considered the infallible and ultimate word of God (33:36). Many Muslims ignore the worser parts? Yay hooray! Doesn't change that some do not.

As for evidence (of which the book you cite, at least the parts accessible to me, contained none), you will never get it from me because you want evidence that supports the strawman arguments you put in H.'s mouth and mine, and there's no way you're getting that from either. What you do get, from the small sample of examples above (in a mess of html, i admit), is evidence that Islam today, more than any other religion, is at the source of (e.g. application of Sharia law) or aggravates (e.g. honour killing, fgm) acts of violence, discrimination and barbarity.

Is the fact that more than half of the active terrorist groups in existence today wear their Islamist agenda proudly, often including it in their name, not "evidency" enough for you?

Is the fact that unethical practices are condoned by Islamic (and almost only Islamic) regimes, even enshrined in civil law (which is also religious law), not evidence of Islam's virulence?

What more do you want? You say "You can't attack the religion without attacking the people who believe in that religion". You, and the author of that pathetic excuse of an article you just linked to, are trying to project a generalising, hate and fear-mongering view on people like Harris and myself, something I find both ignorant and insulting. Of course I can criticise an ideology, warn against its potential (and existing) negative consequences, without targeting every one of its adherents, or even the majority thereof. When Hitchens points out that the idea of vicarious redemption, central to Christianity, is unethical, and the Christian God's treatment of Abraham disgusting, is he saying that all Christian's are unethical and disgusting?

You say: Prove that people in Islamic countries are suffering because of Islam and not because we colonized them, used them as pawns in our own political games, got overthrown or kicked out, then either left them to rot or turned them into our oil suppliers while funding autocratic regimes and looking the other way as they tortured and killed their own people. Prove that it's Islam and not the appalling lack of medical care, education, political access, or access to a reliable legal system that accounts for the violence. Prove that the tenets of Islam are a significant factor in the violence and not just lipservice paid to justify it.

Quite simple really: compare pre-Islamic revolution Iran with post-Islamic revolution Iran. Compare the twin fates of Pakistan and India, the former being "created" as an Islamic nation. Which of the two bears the record for honour killings (the Sihks and Hindus try hard to catch up, I know)? Which of the two was hiding the world's most famous terrorist and Islamic fundamentalist? Which of the two has one of the lowest rates of literacy for women? In which of these two countries, whose post-colonial fate is practically identical, do you have 7/10 chances to be sexually abused in a police station if you are a women? I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Colonialism and its modern forms (globalisation, etc.) have a lot of blame to shoulder, no doubt whatsoever. But that does not diminish in any way the import and effect of Islam's doctrines. Did colonialists invent sharia law, for example, or demand it be enforced? No. Mohamed and his ideology did.
Blaming everything on colonialism and "western" influence is a twisted form of pretentiousness, as if only the "west" could come up with bad stuff. Arabs, Asians, Africans, etc. are people too, they too can be atrocious, it's not just reserved for the whiteys! It's as wrong as blaming slavery entirely on Europe and the American colonies. The slave trade in Africa and the Middle East was going on long before "westerners" became buyers, and guess who was doing the trading?

As long as you insist on blinding yourself to the influence of Islam in the world today, or at least to its negative aspects, you will have a skewed and prejudiced view, exactly what you are accusing others of. Of course it is only one factor among many, but it is an important factor, whether that suits your guilt-by-association-ridden conscience or not.

ETFs are flexible enough depending on the risk you want to take on. You could buy into a fund that literally holds the gold reserves for you remotely or you could buy into one that tracks the price through derivatives. Obviously the fund manager adds some kind of risk regardless of their discretion. I'm sure you probably know all this. Point is, I think it's hard to deny that buying into a fund rather than being an individual investor cuts down on transaction and obviously shipping cost. You say that you keep your holdings in a safe, and that adds an additional expense for the security you would otherwise not need.

As for liquidity, ETFs allow the liquidation of holdings on the appropriate stock exchange on the internet instantly. Comparatively for local storefronts, imagine if the price began dropping precipitously and on the assumption that they would be overpaying currently, those storefronts decided to temporarily stop buying. In that case you would have a far better chance finding a willing buyer in a deeper globalised stock exchange.

My point is, that kind of negative scenario is far more plausible than losing your holdings through stock market collapse.
>> ^dgandhi:

It's not just the doomsday scenario, it the mismanagement scenario. Any of the ETFs could be subject to abuse or mismanagement, whereas coins in my floorboard safe are much more in my control.
Since I got the whole minting cost of the coins I bought back, it's not as though it cost me any money to hold coins.
As to liquidity, How fast can you get cash in hand from liquidation of ETF shares? I can turn a 1oz coin to cash in 15min at any number of nearby storefront resellers.
>> ^RedSky:
Don't waste your money on a less liquid form of the same commodity investment based on the prediction of some highly unlikely doomsday scenario.

@rougy

If you nationalize their economy you're essentially expropriating the domestic capital owned by these corporations. This will put an end to all other foreign direct investment for obvious reasons. That will result in the long term in much fewer jobs, innovation, and access to lower variety of products and technology.

In the long term and with good governance, there is no reason living standards wouldn't improve. Low wages versus no employment will push down birth rates, and will reduce poverty. Good use of the tax revenue that comes from this employment could improve education and infrastructure, and create a workforce which is then sufficient trained to take on more specialized and higher paying professions, with the infrastructure in place to support new industries.

Beyond incidents where executives have undue power over the board of directors, the fact is the reason these executives are paid such high salaries is because they are short in supply and have rare skills. Nobody likes the fact there are such outrageous salary disparities between different corporate tiers, but education and training are they key to bridging this gap rather than mandates which in a globalised world are simply counter-productive.

Funny how BreakstheEarth calls the other guy, whoever he is, a fundamentalist apologist when his vid is of Hitchens standing there excusing western abuses of power.

Hitchens's arrogance is mind blowing.
Yeah, we gave the Indonesians weapons knowing full well what they were intended for but thats ok because thirty years later we stopped the killing. THIRTY FUCKING YEARS!!?

He admits that history yet still feels like the west has some sort of moral superiority over a human surplus of young, poor, uneducated, jobless fundamentalists.

We should know better is my point.

The first guy had it right. Islamic "terrorism" is a predictable outcome of the west fucking with the autonomy of other nations. In fact military and political strategists are planning for an increase in such attacks as the engine of globalisation warms up and the great un-washed, un-moneyed masses of the world become increasingly marginalised from society.

Hitchens is just a fat, rich, pompous, warmongering git from the states. quite unlikeable

but "globalisation" is what ron paul wants, just not of government. trade only globalisation is good... well... not if you are american because you are gonna have to compete fairly and share resources.

problem is the dollar is so fucked, most people's opinions about the future are gonna change dramatically.

remind them that if they don't support ron paul, they support spending trillions on occupying an empire. Remind them how well that worked for Rome and Britain.



In reply to this comment by Jordass:
I was able to show my parents some of the Ron Paul videos, not the cheesy ones but the ones i thought got his message across best and they watched the NH debates. They said they like a good deal of what he says but he is still batshit crazy. They are old and jaded and see him as an ultra idealist to where its foolish in todays age. They see the world as inevitably moving toward globalization and to resist it is naive. It was the best i could do

i am still really 50/50 about globalisation.

all i can tell you is that freedom of travel in the EU is great, and that i think it would be much harder for any "dark forces" to control us if we mingle more.

my current guess is that the higher ups like globalisation because it makes trade easier and less of their profit goes on bureaucracy and crap.

also consider this example: i am in lithuania. i have a young musician friend in poland from the internet, he wanted to come to lithuania to play in one of my parties, but he couldn't because of problems with his passport and an alcoholic father. Now thanks to shengen he can come without a passport. i think that's good.

living in europe (not uk or usa) i have got much more confident about man's ability to retain his own culture while mixing with others. also i think the cultural gene pool NEEDS mixing.

i am more worried about google world domination than anything else.

just interested what you think on that.

:

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Yes, it's a scary time, because the Executive Branch is acting outside the powers given to them by the Constitution. The President cannot make treaties with other countries without the Senate's approval. Currently, these deals between the US, Canada and Mexico are being passed off as trade agreements, not treaties. But a dissolution of our borders is not a trade agreement.

Welcome to the sift, by the way.

In reply to this comment by Jordass:
Wasnt endorsing Globalization just wanted to know more. Thanks for all the information, it was very informative and more people should familiarize themseleves with the organizations you metioned

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Well, the reason for the US Dollar losing it's value is a separate issue, altogether, and we don't need a North American Union to increase its value. That aside, this debate really comes down to whether you'd prefer to remain a sovereign nation or not. The borders between Canada, the US and Mexico will effectively disappear if there's a NAU, because the NAU goes much further than just currency and trade. The purpose of our Declaration of Independence was to claim our Union of States' independence. The NAU will render that document obsolete, and shortly thereafter the Constitution would be obsolete, because it cannot exist without our DoI. This isn't something to shrug at, because the changes won't come hard and fast, and most likely the general population would never notice their liberties and freedoms being taken away.

If you'd prefer the notion of a one world government (the true end to the globilization means), then you should be for the NAU, because that is step number two. Step number one was the EU, and next will be the Asian Union, then the African Union. Eventually, all of the "Unions" will probably become a one world union. And, if you still think all the nations that used to be sovereign would retain their "current governments" or "identities", as you put it, then I don't know what else I can say to you other than support globalization because, boy oh boy, does it sound nifty.

Take a little time to research the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement, (NAFTA), and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). While you're at it, research the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and see how many of the current candidates are part of the CFR. If, after all of that, you still don't see how globalization is a bad idea for our sovereign nation, then, well support globalization. Support a one world government. A one world police force. Oh, what a happier utopia this world will be.

jmzero's got it on spot...for many nations, globalisation = westernisation = Americanisation.