Wish I was there. Mainly so I could go to the ski resort in the background on the right.

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?

I've not violated this rule at any point. I've every right to downvote comments in which unsupported epithets and slurs are being levied against me for no other reason than my viewpoints are judged as unfavorable to the interlocutor's preconceived biases.

If you think that my use of the comment downvote is in violation of the sift rules, then I'm sure you've sent the exact same message to the many other downvoters of my comments and those who have resorted to name-calling and ad hominem attacks instead of civility.

Unless, of course, you're just on a witch hunt, in which case, I welcome your abuse.
You better check yo self.

"Let's recap shall we?"

I'm not interested.

"But it's ok, I have no interest in debating with a petty child like you anyway. I'm done."

Name-calling, the last resort of the glaringly incompetent.

I drink pomegranate juice but can't stand the prices Pom charges for it. But I must say, their response was priceless. At least they didn't resort to suing . . .

*quality ! expressiveness without resorting to too much intense name calling or set back in mental development statements ? , see how that is done mr lara,

@ChaosEngine
there will always be snake oil salespeople out there but i do not think that is snipers motivation.

as i stated this is not a black and white paradigm and a healthy diet and early detection are paramount.i am not suggesting that stage 3 lung cancer can be treated by eating pot brownies and bean sprouts.

chemotherapy is a last resort.
it is a hail mary pass.
controlled poisoning is as barbaric as it is tragic.

i think what bothers me most about this subject is not the disagreement between people such as ourselves but rather the pathetic research into what causes cancer.

im not kidding.
go check the numbers on how much is spent on researching the causes on cancer versus the treatment of cancer.
the difference is abysmal and shameful.

the little research into the causes of cancer do tend to point to our diet.surprise surprise...the food we are eating is slowly poisoning us (as some research is suggesting).

check this talk out.super informative,if heavy on the vegan:
http://videosift.com/video/Uprooting-the-Leading-Causes-of-Death

*edit:i know this does not make me an expert but my family is in the medical field and my older sisters partner is an oncologist and HE avoids chemo whenever possible.so much of my opinion on this matter has been formed by my conversations with him.

As a Englishman I'm used to just watching the sport in front of me and we don't resort to audience participation.
So what the hell is this? I know American sports have loads of delays and gaps but is this an accepted way of filling it up? I can think of a few reasons why you might not want to do this and this guy has brought up one of them.

Can't they just bring on a juggler or two?

As "The Captive Mind" posits that the primary means of ensuring compliance from "the people" is not propaganda, but physical coercion. The state does not 'reason' or 'debate' with non-compliance. 'Students' are forced to go to school and learn the 'official' version of history, for example (home schooling aside), and accept it (i.e., the hierarchical "binge-purge" model of education in which regurgitation of ossified narratives is valued more highly than any independent or creative thought).

Propaganda serves as post-facto justification in order to give people some way to rationalize what goes on around them. This helps to allow the threat of violence to suffice as a means of maintaining control without the state having to resort to actual violence, in most cases.

In one of Stefan's other videos, he calls professional licensure a dog collar that you're forced wear. He calls modern folks 'free-range slaves'. The 'human farms,' as he calls states, are run by 'farmers' who have realized that free-range slaves are more productive than those kept in a more strict captivity. (And it undoubtedly is better for for everyone than the slavery-of-old.) He says that allowing a few slaves escape here and there creates a desired illusion of freedom. One could argue about the accuracy of Stefan's ideas, but I don't find that as useful as simply accepting it as Stefan's own aesthetic/philosophical position, or his worldview, and understanding it or interpreting it as you would for say, any other artist/philosopher. This brings to mind the understanding that the 1% consists mostly of "human farmers" (i.e., kleptocrats and cronies) and other escaped 'slaves'.

It seems that folks who tend to take issue with my comments here (@enoch, @ChaosEngine, @newtboy, @Taint, among others) have taken on the recent swell of anti-"libertarian" rhetoric as their own (particularly the more tabloid-like forms of it).

That's not as important to me as the question of why there seems to be so much media attention given to these ideas of late? I think it may have to do with setting the stage for opposing a possible 2016 presidential run by Rand Paul (who has already been 'branded' as a 'libertarian' by opponents of both parties).* Or it may have to do with how technology (particularly in the Bay Area, where I live, but certainly in other places as well) is increasingly making individuals less reliant on the state, more self-sufficient, and more able to access the information they need to recognize their status as a serf, and/or plan their means of escape from the 'farm'.

*I guess the media cares less about an "ideological war" against "libertarianism" than they do about crafting a practical strategy of electoral politics. Hence their insistence in conflating conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, and even anarchists (which couldn't be more dissimilar at their core).

We are just animals, but some more so than others. Left to their own devices - and thinking they are not being observed - some people cast of the very slim veneer of civility, and resort to some disgusting habits. "Be true to thine own self," someone once said. A decent person is decent, even when no-one is watching. I tried to teach my kids that simple mantra.

Mayrhofen seems to be a ski resort town in Austria. Who knows if the drunk guys are actually Russian.

@chingalera
ill take a crack at that deconstruction.
@Sagemind was basically prefacing the fact that the few remaining jobs are low paying crap jobs,like walmart for instance.

but you are correct that it is NOT a job of last resort.
you dont HAVE to apply at walmart.
nobody is FORCING you to work for slave wages.

you could always suck a dick.
handjobs in the local gas station bathroom for a quick buck.
sell plasma,blood,semen.
sell a kidney.
sell drugs..but not weed..might as well work at walmart.

you could always sell your integrity.
i hear wall street is a good place for that,but they require your soul as well.
how about insurance fraud?
reverse mortgages? fuck those old people..they gonna die anyways.

ya gotta eat,so ya do what ya gotta do.

who am i kidding?
while i would never work at walmart nor any corporation,some people have to do what they have to do.
and sometimes its a short list and working at walmart is the trade off for them.

guess they dont like dick.

so im with @Sagemind or is my skewed line of non-reasoning still a retarded polemic?

because at the end of the day who are we to judge anybody for their choices?

Who'ses reality would be my first question, out of touch with 'WHO's' reality? Everyone has a 'choice' sir, and working at Walmart is FAR from any last resort-Don't know how or why anyone would desire to to deconstruct your skewed line of non-reasoning and retarded polemic...Suffice it to say that you have many other folks who are as developmentally-disabled as yourself with such horseshit thinking that at least you won't be lonely or have to enjoy your mind fucking itself in solitude.

Cheap prices they are able to "give?" Fuck that sorry noise. Walmart giveth unto itself and the machine that created it. So you understand the degree to which you are being ass-fucked and you are satisfied with that? No wonder the United States and the world is in such a de-evolving state...

Wow, so many of these people are so far out of touch with reality.
It's not a choice to work at Wall Mart - It's a last resort. If people had other options, they wouldn't be there. Few people chose to live in poverty

And Who cares about the cheap prices that Wal Mart is able to give. It's self serving. The largest employer keeps it's employees poor so they have no choice but to shop at their own store, which in turn just gives their wages back to employers. Sure other people reap the benefits of some cheap stuff, but let's stay real. It's cheap because the quality is often lowered to meet the competitive contracts targeted for manufacturers to be able to be Walmart's choice product. Nothing bought at WalMart lasts more than a year or two, you always end up re-buying it. So where is the cheap affordability now?

And while Wall Mart works hard to choke out the competition so they can raise their prices on certain products, their merchandising does the same thing. They only target certain manufacturers and give then the lion's share of the merchandising space on their shelves. Selection at Wal Mart is Slim. They are great at choosing your brands for you. The companies that play ball with WalMart. I have better selection on items at non department stores. Case in point Groceries. They have great prices on certain grocery items, but I don't have any choice on the brands I'm buying. And sooner or later, I'll still need to go to the grocery store, because WalMart just can't give me what I need to stock my kitchen with the basics. My Wall Mart doesn't even sell large bags of sugar.

That's what the buttons' for, like that warm glow from a surgically-sterile syringe filled with one's favorite drug...

Deconstructive criticisms' a motherfucker, eh??

Probably a good thing since you've resorted to personal attacks instead of trying to find the meat in a statement directed at a sentiment and habitual script rather than any particular individual. Ignorant of what sir, my own perception?