The Dreadful Chronology of Gaddafi’s Murder

"Much has been written about the catastrophe visited upon Libya following the murderous attack by France and the US—400,000 people driven from their homes, an endless cycle of terror and reprisal, the creation of yet another failed state in the wake of a US foreign policy initiative. But the real damage was done to Africa itself, for had Gaddafi’s proposal for a trans-African banking system reached fruition, that unhappy continent for the first time in centuries would have had true freedom and real independence within its grasp, a circumstance the Western powers could not abide. Freedom and justice were never part of the West’s agenda."

@newtboy: Trumps appeal to the LCD is successful mostly because the LCD has been allowed to grow so much in our post-Regan society. With inequality on the rise and decades of trickle-down government-by-the-wealthy-for-the-wealthy, those "left behind" have been growing faster and faster every year.

It Trump fails to win this go around then the pendulum may keep swinging further. My concern is that the next 'protest' candidate will be even worse than he.

@ChaosEngine:

We'll have to agree to disagree about some things. For me, as bad as Trump is, I'm not convinced that he is worse than what Hillary was revealted to be by the DNC Leaks...

...but perhaps instead of arguing about which shit sandwich is worse, it is more productive to work together to find out why there are only shit sandwiches on the menu?

On this:

"But things will never change until you fix your broken political system. You're barely a democracy these days."

I am in complete agreement.

When I first heard of the Brexit vote, I thought it was some nasty xenophobic/racist group that had somehow managed to capture 51% of a nation. But could Britian really be that full of xenophobes? It was in a bit of casual research on the subject when I discovered that J. Pie video I referenced in my earlier comment. I had to revise my first assumption about the group that voted to leave the E.U.. While there may have been an element of xenophobia involved, it was economic factors that was the driving force behind the Brexit vote.

People who have been screwed over by years of government for corporations which has only worsened since Glass–Steagall was repealed by Bill Clinton. The hold the wealthy have on government was tightened after Citizen's United.

Much of the support Trump has been able to marshal is a reaction to years of governance-for-the-wealthy-by-the-wealthy.

Lawrence Lessig's does a better job unpacking this quagmire in his talk: "We The People: the Republic We Must Reclaim" which has far too few views on YT or votes on the sift, IMO. For anyone who's ever been unhappy with the political system in the past number of years, I consider it a must-watch.


Link here:

http://videosift.com/video/lawrence-lessig-2016-will-have-two-elections-TED-talk

So I used an link affiliated with Alex Jones for an image of unhappy DNC delegates, and that makes the argument invalid? Do you think that image was staged?

Here. Is this better?

https://twitter.com/TheBradMielke/status/758820748811116546/photo/1

Where were these people at Hillary's coronation speech?

Do you think they suddenly changed their minds and started thumping their chests for Hillary?

So basically you're unhappy about everything. Par for the course really.

For the uninitated and are linux commands for face->unhappy() and face->meh(), respectively.

For the uninitated and are linux commands for face->unhappy() and face->meh(), respectively.

Edit: oops, didn't mean to reply directly to your profile. Doesn't look like I can delete it so I'll just leave it.

Again, you are misrepresenting the road tax. There is literally no way that you do not use the road or travel system in some fashion unless you walk everywhere cross-country and make no other trips other than for food and work. Even if you ride a bike on a road or take a bus/train, you are using the transport system and therefore should have to pay for it.

Most of the rest of your points about education and healthcare are opinions and I refuse to waste time on them.

The numbers I listed are per dollar per family. I fell I've been very transparent on this and the fact that you continue to rail against it is doing nothing to impress upon me that I am wrong. The numbers are accurate. As far as the middle class, it is still the largest portion of our class structure. Yes, it is shrinking and this should be addressed, but it is what it is at the moment. They are the average American still.

Some of them are happy with it. There are numerous articles from Norwegians discussing their unhappiness with the system, especially since they are having an influx of poor immigrants like the rest of Europe. They suddenly do not like having to pay for people who moved to their country, odd right?

The idea of being the same as everyone else is a fucking cultural meme in Norway and similar countries, its called the Law of Jante. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante. Again, I feel I have been very clear and open on this and you are pissing me off by picking at it like i'm making it up. I don't make stuff up, I find facts and I list them. If the facts do not agree with your viewpoint, that is not my problem.

Finally, we are so far off the topic at this point and you continue to nitpick my facts instead of disproving them, so I am done.

My advice would be to take them on an individual basis. If they look like this woman, already quite bothered and unhappy, just don't bother. You won't get a good response. If they are happy, look comfortable in their surroundings, and don't give you a dirty look when you catch their eye, just be a gentleman and not a smarmy asshole...at least that goes for any woman I would have liked to hang with.

As to 'marking yourself unavailable', I have to say, wearing a wedding ring (what I would call 'marking myself unavailable') actually had the opposite effect for me. Before I wore one, I was never hit on by a woman in an obvious way, afterwards it was almost silly how often women (and even totally inappropriately aged girls) just walked up to me and offered sex. Perhaps it's not the same for women, but I can't imagine most catcallers would care they were 'taken', and might actually be encouraged by it, oddly and sadly.
IF men and women would recognize and respect such a 'marking', I would wholeheartedly advocate it. It could eradicate a gaggle of issues.

Yeah, it made me unhappy to think this guy is already walking free, but that woman will live with what he did to her for life. Not cool.
It seems that the club bears some responsibility here. First, they apparently over served her badly. Secondly, they allowed an unconscious person to simply be dragged out of their club with no question as to what was wrong or who was dragging her. They should have intervened and called an amberlamps, not let a near dead woman be dragged off by a stranger. I hope she owns the club now....and that her rapist is back in Peru after 3.5 years of being Bubba's girlfriend.

Straight up yes, just because your skin colour is white, doesn't mean you will be treated as a prince, I never intended to insinuate that at all, just look at the position of women throughout history, oppression works through many levels, class, sex, race, nationality, the list goes on, and I was only referring to race, and I should have really been writing in a manner which acknowledges intersections of oppression, so my bad, and good job chaos engine for calling out this failing.
This next thing is what bothers me, despite the anger and the vitriol expressed in this thread, all seem to agree with my central thesis of "don't diminish oppression which you don't experience" and "don't get your underwear in a twist when someone generalises about an oppressive group"

for example, I am English, and I will never try to diminish the perception of oppression that Irish faced, and still face today at the hands of the English. What's more if an Irish person says to me that the English treat them terribly, I would have to agree, throughout history and now, we have.

And this is the real crux: if an oppressed group says that another group that you belong to is oppressive, the proper reaction isn't go "OH I'M NOT LIKE THE OTHERS, PLEASE GIVE ME A GOLD STAR MR. OPPRESSED, ALSO SAYING THAT IS ACTUALLY RACIST/NATIONALIST/WHATEVER". The proper response is listen, so you can treat that person better, and hey if you are one of the good guys that stands up for oppressed groups good for you!, be happy with the notion that you are a good person, and not unhappy because you didn't get a pat on the back from said oppressed groups

Chock full of facts, but ultimately too polemic for my taste. The "small dogs look unhappy" comment put it over the line for me.

OR chiccorea, SHALL WE DRAG, the entire sift community into your fucking therapy sesson, and make a deal of it, which I am VERY want to do. You have shown your ass here with regard to myself, are shitting once-again, on one of my posts, my comments, and you have a fucking problem that may very well cause my account to be unilaterally by admins stripped from me, and I consider ALL of my actions art in my life, INCLUDING my participation on this website.

You are forcing me to be this dick sir, and you have some real problems which are detrimental to this forum. Calling you out once again you pathetic asshole, what's it gonna be??

I'd be more than unhappy to have my account stripped from me by someone who obviously needs some hard-core therapy. You're socially inept and incite these incursions unilaterally with a view to my demise and I take issue with it. Does this make me your whipping-bitch?? Fuck that and no sir, it does not.

All you do here is hunt new submissions to see if you can ban someone for violations of rules, hassle me, and otherwise make benign, one-line comments with a brown-nose-finish as a thematic device.


*edit: I'll let this thread lay fallow or not and then take chichorreas's bullshit to the sift talk forum, I'm tired of one user's mental illness fucking with my place here....

"Yes that's true and that's the point of this, to suggest that this isn't the way we should be interacting to one another." -Yogi

A suggestion in this pretentious form is intended as an imposition.

You don't know how people should be interacting, you want them to interact in the way that makes you happy. Fuck if that makes everyone else unhappy? Because you're right and this is the right way to live!

Or.

People live how they want.

"The Bloom Box is intended to replace the grid..."

I can guess that there might be a lot of people out there invested in current energy technology that would be unhappy about this succeeding....

This report is from 2010. Any news since?

@ChaosEngine, At least take the topic seriously. You can't really think Arizona and North Waziristan have meaningful similarities, can you? If you truly know that little about tribal Pakistan then you should go read up for a long time before rejoining the conversation.

Arizona citizens pay taxes to America, cast votes for American elections and have American funded schools, roads and police. Importantly, the police in Arizona enforce the laws of the American government. Same goes for Texas. The same DOES NOT go for North Waziristan. Pakistani police don't even try to enter most of North Waziristan because the TTP would kill them.

Militants from Arizona and Texas aren't sending weekly attacks against schools and civilians throughout the rest of America, killing hundreds of people every month. Meanwhile, that is exactly what militants from North Waziristan are doing throughout Pakistan today and for a very long time now.

In the even that militants in Arizona and Texas DID commit even one such act, the American police would go in and make arrests. In North Waziristan, the police can not as stated before. More significantly though, not even the Pakistani military is willing to go in and get the militants for the casualties they would take.

You can't just willy nilly decare those situations comparable if you expect your argument to be taken seriously. Given that ground situation, it doesn't take a brilliant leap in deduction to see the very high percentage of top TTP officials hit by drones and reach the conclusion that the Pakistani military isn't entirely unhappy about the strikes.

I again repeat that dropping bombs on another nation is an act of war. You have a good point about that not being something America should be able to do lightly. You are wrong though about why Pakistan isn't declaring war back on America. It isn't fear of America, it is convenience of America JOINING their side in a civil war they are unwilling to call by name.