if you're building a peaceful nuclear facility to provide electricity to a civilian population, you don't build the thing deep underground.
Unless you have a neighbour called Israel with no problems whatsoever in blowing the crap out said facility because it might be the eventual precursor to the hypothetic ability to create nuclear weapons that could be used to eventually destroy something.
Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency has found evidence that Iran is pursuing work on a bomb.
unless you think the idea of a radical theocracy armed with nuclear-tipped ICBMs is a potential threat.
I think your confusing warheads with delivery vectors. Iran doesn't possess ICBMs. Even if they could get a bomb, they wouldn't be able to deliver it very far, most definitely not to the US. What about a radical raceocracy armed with nuclear weapons? Isn't that a threat as well?
But how does that not happen with a pure representative system? A lot of people seem to assume the only laws voted for in parliaments are laws that the majority of the population supports. I don't see that. I see quite the contrary: laws go to parliament first, and then the partisan groups start the public "education" campaign to mobilize the people to their positions. Hardly any law representatives come up with is proposed by the People, they come instead from interest groups and lobbies and more often than not they damage public interest. So, look at it as a lobbying system for the People.
Excuse me but, I fail to see how that is any different of what exists today. There will still be a Constitution or equivalent, that laws - any law, has to respect. And in the particular Finnish case, as pointed already, proposals are voted for in the parliament. But the things that you mention can as easily happen with a representative system.
If you are right about people. remember representatives are people too, therefore as stupid and evil as any other, possibly more.
Anyway, I think you're wrong. I don't see how direct democracy works any worse than representative democracy.
Yeah really. Nazi camps had all that too. Even swimming pools. They were also "high security prisons". It's not the prison that matters, is your policy for putting people there.
Wars today are usually either over oil, religion, race, or about freedom - inside of small, punk regimes with crazy men at the helm.
If by oil, religion, race, and freedom you mean natural resources, then yeah. If by small, punk regimes with crazy men at the helm, you mean non-nuclear countries, then yes too.
I guess the next logical step in your reasoning is "Bomb Iran", eh?
and the NSA can not easily target a US national without a federal judge seeing solid information about what the individual is doing, and it has to be related to terrorism essentially
I guess what people are trying to say is that, although what you say probably applies in theory and even most times, these agencies have no problems in skipping that particular step involving the judge if they (or a particular someone in there with enough power) really, really want to know something about a US citizen. Cops do it frequently with wiretaps, so I'd assume big bureaucratic agencies that operate in secrecy have little difficulty in pulling that out. The lack of public interest and things like the PATRIOT act only help to that surely. I think most of times they don't really expect anyone to come looking anyway.
Out of those 13 headlines in your post, 7 are about people that pleaded guilty. Somehow, I find that odd. 5 of them are about providing or attempting to provide, or conspiring to provide,material support to "terrorists" or terrorist orgs like al Shabaab (interestingly, Al Qaeda seems to be démodé these days, Al Shabaab is the new rage). Now my question is, the FBI seems quite successful in arresting people providing material support to terrorists but, where are the terrorists themselves?
Furthermore, Gitmo is a concentration camp. So your comparison actually makes sense. In fact, not only it is a concentration camp, it's one on foreign ground too, a fact which allows evading US laws. Is it one of the worst things ever? People are detained there without accusation or trial for years on end, so, yes.
Doesn't that mean that you end up never actually voting for anyone?
In other words, can we really expect to find the ideal candidate for every election, as in, the one that represents every (or even most) of one's opinions on all issues?
For some of the rich, the poor are always terrorists threatening to use democracy to take away the psychopathic power of the said rich.
instead. Being rich is pretty much a relative thing. I'm sure you're rich compared to somebody on this planet. That doesn't make you bad or a psychopath, but it does empower your evilness and psychopathy. But then so does having a public mandate or a large public willing to listen to you. But you most likely know this already.
It's unfair and simplistic to put the blame on the rich or the politicians only. People often claim for democracy and freedom, but the when they get it they proceed to elect the shadiest people to office. When under a dictatorship it's easy to find responsibilities: they're all concentrated on the dictator. In a democracy, the responsibility is on the elector, like it or not. So when we start criticising corrupt politicians, we should finish by criticising the corrupt people that vote for them.
The only thing I believe in is science. But saying that religion corrupts minds does seem to me a vicious or vitriolic attack, as I doubt any causation or correlation between 'religious minds' and 'corrupt minds' has ever been established.
Sexual orientation can not be a meme as it exists in species that do not have the capacity for memes. It can not be a meme because it is observed to occur spontaneously in species where no prior behavior has occurred.
How do you know which species have the capacity for memes? What kind of memes? How can a meme occur in the first place if not spontaneously?
The idea that it is a genetic defect would require that non heterosexuality causes harm
No it wouldn't. It would only require that phenotypes displaying it are less favoured by natural selection than ones displaying heterosexuality. No one is passing moral judgement here.
You don't need to know precisely what causes it to be able to objectively demonstrate that certain causes are not valid.
True. But we're still lacking a scientific explanation for multiple sexual orientations. All I'm saying is that is seems more likely to me that it has memetic (or psychological or nurture), rather than a genetic (or nature origin). That doesn't mean people can at any point choose their sexual orientation just like they can't choose many of their personality traits. I am also suggesting that religious people might have trouble choosing not to be religious without external help. The main difference would be that, if I'm right, the meme for sexual orientation acts on much more primitive and deep way in our brain than the religious one, hence in a way rather unaccessible to our conscious experience. That would also mean the the meme could act on most large animals with which we share the most primitive part of the brain.
I couldn't care less what the sexual orientation of people is (unless I'm sexually interested in them). But I would definitely like to see a scientific explanation for the undeniable fact that multiple sexual orientations do exist.
Sexuality is natural yes. That is pretty much a tautology. But who says sexual orientation is not a meme? A powerful and primitive one yes, but a meme still? It surely makes more sense to me than to think it's some sort of genetic feature, in which case homosexuality would be a defect that managed to elude hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection, or that is so common a mutation as to suddenly re-appear with so much frequency (if this is the case, then it should be quite easy to pinpoint genetically).
The fact that religion (or some sort of mystical worldview) has sprouted pretty much in every human culture independently suggests that there probably is some natural propensity to be religious. In fact, it takes education and training in critical thinking to effectively shut down the religious meme.
So, you could reasonably argue that both phenomena are not that different. That both are memes. And both have, like it or not, an influence and power that can profoundly affect the basic core of human society. And if sexual orientation is not a choice, the fact that a supernatural worldview might creep in your head might not be a choice either. So maybe you should be more careful with the vitriolic attacks on religion, as you might be discriminating people for something that they can't control (without some help at least).
But hey, I know these days it's so PC to defend the right to sexual orientation and it's so fashionable to attack religion... Not that I'm claiming you do it for these reasons. But I find it curious how we so suddenly jumped from homosexuality being a taboo sickness to being an unattackable right (while at the same time not being a choice). It seems to me no one is trying to understand it anymore, which, in turn, means it can suddenly become a taboo disease again, should the winds change direction again. But oh well, this is just me ranting...
My point is, we actually don't know where sexual orientation comes from (and apparently no one cares) and we also don't know where religion comes from (or why it's so hard to make it go away), therefore, viciously attacking one while piously defending the other (seems to me it) is probably a bad idea.
I will take just one of the so called "facts" that you write about
Yes. I knew you would choose that one. Let us consider, however, how it all played out according to the article I posted:
Hayb was convicted of manslaughter and obstruction of justice by an Israeli military court in April 2005 and sentenced to eight years in prison.
From the Wikipedia article on manslaughter:
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder.
manslaughter (...) requires a lack of any prior intention to kill or create a deadly situation.
Back to Hurndall:
The IDF initially refused more than a routine internal inquiry, which concluded that Hurndall was shot accidentally in the crossfire, and suggested that his group's members were essentially functioning as human shields. (...) Hurndall's parents demanded an investigation.
As pressure from the parents mounted, supported in part by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in October 2003 Israel's Judge Advocate General Menachem Finkelstein ordered the IDF to open a further military police investigation into Hurndall's death.
Idier Wahid Taysir Hayb (or al-Heib), claimed, he had shot at a man in military fatigues although photographic evidence clearly showed Hurndall was wearing a bright orange jacket denoting he was a foreigner. Hayb was an award-winning marksman and his rifle had a telescopic sight. He claimed to have aimed four inches from Hurndall's head, "but he moved". Hayb said a policy of shooting at unarmed civilians existed at the time.
On 10 April 2006, a British inquest jury at St Pancras coroner's court in London found that Hurndall had been "unlawfully killed". (...) The lawyer representing the family, Michael Mansfield QC, stated:
Make no mistake about it, the Israeli defence force have today been found culpable by this jury of murder.
A week earlier, an inquest found that the British journalist James Miller had been killed by an Israeli soldier just three weeks after Mr. Hurndall was shot, a mile away from Hurndall's position.
So, while your compatriot was charged and convicted with manslaughter, what really happened was murder. Unless an award-winning marksman shot a head on top of a bright orange jacket near some children without intention to kill or unaware he was creating a deadly situation.
And yes, I I take time to carefully write most of my posts because that's how I think everybody should do. But I take extra care when replying to people like you, so that everybody here sees who the delusional person is.
This has nothing to do with reality and you know it.
No he doesn't. Neither do I or the majority of people that don't depend on Fox News et al. for their news. In fact, what we do know, is that your country actively represses Palestinians and destroys or steals their homes, depriving entire families of shelter, as any random photo shoot of a Palestinian protest will show. Moreover, even foreign citizens (even if they're Jewish and American, which btw pay for your 'security') are targets of repression or evenmurder for protesting about the appalling situation that you impose on the Palestinian people.
Your country murders, abducts and steals from unarmed foreign citizens (including journalists) on international waters in what amounts to piracy if not even an act of war. Your country trapped the people of Gaza and conducted warfare against it, in what can be described only as collective punishment which is completely forbidden by the Geneva Convention to which Israel adhered, for no reason except disagreement with the outcome of a democratic process.
Also, while Iran may or may not be procuring nuclear weapons, the fact is that your country does have a sizeable nuclear arsenal and hasn't even signed the Treaty for Nuclear Non-Proliferation, and doesn't allow inspectors from the IAEA in your nuclear facilities.
So if there actually is a threat, the threat is Israel. No country (including your closest ally and financier, the USA) can trust that your military or secret services will not attack, abduct or murder any of it's citizens anywhere in the world, as all this has happened before. You claim to be a democracy but you restrain the rights of your own women to exercise their religion like men do. You restrain the right of Palestinians to become citizens of your country by marriage, which I think is unique in all claimed democracies in this world, and can be classified as nothing but racist. Perhaps the rest of the world, say Turkey for example, should do a preemptive strike on Israel lest you murder every Turkish on international waters... But we know what would happen then wouldn't we?
In conclusion, if there is such thing as a rogue state, then Israel is one by any objective consideration. Your victimising is no longer effective as people get alternatives to traditional news sources that are not under the payroll of your efficient lobbies, and actually witness what is happening in Palestine. Like the man said "You can't fool everyone all the time". Because of your nuclear WMDs your country is in effect militarily untouchable, but if you persist on your arrogant, contemptuous and delusional attitude towards the rest of the world you'll get more and more isolated internationally and you'll end up like North Korea, a pariah nuclear threat looming over the Middle East, Europe and the world.
Everyone knows what they (the Iranians) are doing. The Americans know it, the Europeans know it, the Russians know it and yes the Israelis know it too
Yes we all see it. They're minding their own business. Which happens to be nuclear power. So, lets hear again why shouldn't Iran have nuclear power, military or otherwise?
I'll anticipate the answer: "Why, because they are Islamic fundamentalists and raving lunatics and they'll use it to wipe Israel off the map!!!!111!!"
Let's see, they are 1) Islamic fundamentalists - I don't see the problem, so is Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. (and to a much worse degree), but they're considered good friends of the US. I wonder why... Anyway, Islamic fundamentalism has never got in the way of being on the good graces of the West. 2) They're raving lunatics - well I wish the whole world was raving lunatic like they are, given they haven't invaded any country in centuries. Don't see why that would suddenly change now. 3) They want to wipe Israel off the map - ahh, now we're getting somewhere aren't we. But, in fact, that is completely baseless and pretty much amounts to deception. What the president of Iran said, was that Israel should disappear from the maps. The 'we'll wipe it off the map' thing was a (deliberate) deceptive translation from Farsi by MEMRI which is a shill for Israeli interests and provides translations of Muslim media, carefully tailored to their master's objectives. It is, by no means, an unbiased news source. And even if it was, their translation is wrong.
The question now is: Do you see what the US and Israeli elite are doing? Everyone knows. Anyone who cares to look can see this. They're leaving a pretty unmissable breadcrumb trail, and it passes through Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan. Except they're not using breadcrumbs. They're using cluster bombs.
I don't know if you're American, but if you are, they're using your tax money for it while at the same time claiming they can't pay for your healthcare. Anyone can see this. For a lot of people indeed, it was the last thing they ever saw. Why can't you?
I laid my arguments on a reply above, so if you care to know you can read them.
But I'll reply on some things you wrote because you seem to have misunderstood my point and taken offense, and that wasn't my intention.
I'm sorry, but government by the people means us people, not the entire world telling us how we ought to live. You have the same right to self government in your country, so trying to tell me that I shouldn't is, well, ridiculous.
Almost no one is telling you how to live, much less me or my compatriots, and we couldn't even if we wanted to. What we want, and I think the majority of the people in the world, is that you realize, because of the power your country projects, that your government's decisions matter no only to you and your People, but also to the rest of us. But, for now, almost only you and your People have the power to control your government. That's why we need you to think about us and care because we obviously can't do much.
I see. Because I don't think you ought to have a say in how this country is run, you don't like my opinion. That's fine. I don't have any say in how your country is run, and I don't expect to have a say. If you think you should have a say here, then I don't think much of your attitude, either.
First of all, you do have a saying on how my country is run. In fact, that pretty much applies for almost every other country in the world. Not you directly, but your government which is accountable to you, among others. So I'm already at a disadvantage. Now you can think whatever you want about who ought to have a say in how your country is run. That's fine with me. What I don't like in your opinion is that you don't care what other countries' people think about you or what you do, because that means you won't factor that in your own thinking, therefore voting. Normally that would be ok. But because of the power your country possesses, that entails potentially catastrophic scenarios for the rest of us, as many people from various countries around the world can perfectly illustrate to you.
That's not what I said. "You don't get a say in our government" is not "I don't give a shit".
I don't care what people in Germany think of the US, just as I don't expect them to care what I think about how Germany is run
Looks like "I don't give a shit" to me. But maybe I'm wrong.
They already do. You aren't paying attention.
If you don't care, how do you know? Besides, you still don't have to give a shit. Let's see how you fancy it when you do.
To conclude, I'm not trying to take your sovereignty away. I couldn't even if I wanted to. I merely think that, because of the power on which you have some measure of control, you should perhaps care a little more about how it affects other people. That means caring about what other people think of the US.
PS: there is a country that already took your sovereignty away to a large extent. It controls your legislative branch almost completely, lured your country into two pointless wars and absorbs quite a share of the taxes you pay. Perhaps the time when you have to care is not so far.
In a sense you still don't give a shit about what the people of that other country think, just what they and their government do
Oh but I do! What other country's people and government do, necessarily stems from what the country's people think (in democracies at least). It may be through direct or less direct ways but a country's actions always depends on the People's thinking (or lack thereof). The fact that the US can and will project it's power all over the world in multiple domains and through multiple vectors, makes it crucial for everyone to keep a close eye on American thinking.
And in any case in that scenario all you can control/influence is what your own country does
Me, perhaps. But you, you can do more. Because your country can control what other countries do, it follows necessarily that you can control what other countries do too. Therefore, it seems to me that you have a bigger responsibility of trying to know what people in other countries think, since you have the power to influence their lives. Additionally, and because we in other countries are subject to that power in many ways, common sense would dictate that we care quite a lot about what the wielders of such power think.
And I happily stand firm on the platform that the government of the US is solely beholden to the people of the US and nobody else. I don't care what people in Germany think of the US, just as I don't expect them to care what I think about how Germany is run. I wish our current occupent of the whitehouse felt the same.
I wish you wouldn't think like that. Because, you know, the government that you elect makes decisions which directly and indirectly affect how the rest of us live in other countries, so is the power that it wields. So, you might not care about what Germans think of the US, but the rest of the world does care about what Americans think. And let me tell you, the rest of us don't think much of what you people seem to think (although that is changing somewhat lately). Maybe precisely because of that attitude you seem to be displaying. The "I don't give a shit" attitude. Well, the people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Central America, South America, Europe and Africa do give a shit. Because they can't afford not to.
Perhaps the day will come when you'll also be forced to give a shit about what some other country thinks about yours. Let's hope they're not going to think like you.
What OP means, is that it is quite obvious that something is changing. I remember seasons being a lot more regular than they are now. And my grandparents even more so. Spring (weather) started March 21, give or take a day or two. Now, it's give or take two months, perhaps even more random in other places.
You can argue that it's natural, that it's some sort of natural cycle. Other people argue that it's god punishing us. The fact remains that the climate is changing, and therefore so is the weather, becoming more and more unpredictable and with more and more extreme phenomena happening all around the world. It doesn't take rocket science, ballistics or fluid dynamics to figure out the consequences to agriculture worldwide.
Not that I have a problem with your jocose pedantry, but OP is the one that should have 5, Insightful.
you've chosen to resort to personal attacks in lieu of a rational argument
That's right. I did. And given that you actually bothered to go through my comment history, you surely noticed that this is something I don't do many times. Especially on these kinds of subjects.
The reason I chose to do so is that, simply, I find it quite impossible to debate rationally with people that hold the beliefs and world-view that you obviously do. The fact that you simply parrot propaganda that has been shown over and over again to be just plain false and mischievous, and would do so even to the point where you would try to push it to someone that has been to (and I assume is from: user "the entropy" ) a country that has been savagely devastated only 5 years ago by the people whose actions and intentions you seek to defend, is pretty much revealing that rational argument is not possible. You will simply deny any objective facts presented and ultimately launch the definite ad-hominem attack of anti-semitism, compared to which my simple remark pales. You see, there's a pattern you people follow.
Before I proceed to actually comment on the links you posted, let me tell you this: you are very lucky that it is me doing the ad hominem attack. Israeli ad hominem attacks are normally in the form of letal high speed lead projectiles, otherwise known as bullets. Any Palestinian or Lebanese person will be able to confirm this to you, if you ever have the courage to confront these people in person, without having them at gunpoint.
The links you posted are ridiculous. The Israeli Declaration of Independence is meaningless to the purposes of this discussion, not to mention that it is hardly an independent and unbiased source of information.
About the other link you posted on the partition of territory, I assume you intend to emphasise this part:
During the first 6 months of 1949, negotiations between the belligerents came to terms over armistice lines that delimited Israel's borders. On the other side, no Palestinian Arab state was founded: Jordan annexed the Arab territories of the Mandatory regions of Samaria and Judea (today known as the West Bank), as well as East Jerusalem, while the Gaza strip came under Egyptian administration. During this time, Jordan and Egypt did not normalize the living conditions for the Palestinian refugees, neither did Israel after 1967. All Jewish inhabitants were expelled from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip until the Israel occupation in 1967.[citation needed]
You'll want to notice the [citation needed] indicator. It means that anyone could have written this (it could have been you, AFAIK) and it is not referenced from any source, therefore it holds zero credibility.
In the remote chance that you'd actually be interested in learning the truth about this conflict, I recommend the works of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. Bear in mind that this is probably forbidden literature in your political circles and that if your propaganda masters find you reading this, they'll take away your good-boy badge. Read at your own risk:
I don't know how you can expect to tell such baseless lies and not be challenged on them.
Well I could say the exact same about you. But I will actually challenge you. Please provide references for your claims. Oh, and by the way, Zionist handbooks are NOT the public record.
You inform us in your signature that you are not American. That's right. You're just an asshole. Now show us that public record.
Slashdot Mirror
if you're building a peaceful nuclear facility to provide electricity to a civilian population, you don't build the thing deep underground.
Unless you have a neighbour called Israel with no problems whatsoever in blowing the crap out said facility because it might be the eventual precursor to the hypothetic ability to create nuclear weapons that could be used to eventually destroy something.
Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency has found evidence that Iran is pursuing work on a bomb.
Uh, no. It didn't, actually.
unless you think the idea of a radical theocracy armed with nuclear-tipped ICBMs is a potential threat.
I think your confusing warheads with delivery vectors. Iran doesn't possess ICBMs. Even if they could get a bomb, they wouldn't be able to deliver it very far, most definitely not to the US. What about a radical raceocracy armed with nuclear weapons? Isn't that a threat as well?
lol
Isn't that exactly what I said?
Wouldn't an evil government look stupid until you finally realize it's actually evil?
But how does that not happen with a pure representative system? A lot of people seem to assume the only laws voted for in parliaments are laws that the majority of the population supports. I don't see that. I see quite the contrary: laws go to parliament first, and then the partisan groups start the public "education" campaign to mobilize the people to their positions. Hardly any law representatives come up with is proposed by the People, they come instead from interest groups and lobbies and more often than not they damage public interest. So, look at it as a lobbying system for the People.
I would consider those factor as requisites for any democracy.
Excuse me but, I fail to see how that is any different of what exists today. There will still be a Constitution or equivalent, that laws - any law, has to respect. And in the particular Finnish case, as pointed already, proposals are voted for in the parliament. But the things that you mention can as easily happen with a representative system.
If you are right about people. remember representatives are people too, therefore as stupid and evil as any other, possibly more.
Anyway, I think you're wrong. I don't see how direct democracy works any worse than representative democracy.
Yeah really. Nazi camps had all that too. Even swimming pools. They were also "high security prisons". It's not the prison that matters, is your policy for putting people there.
Wars today are usually either over oil, religion, race, or about freedom - inside of small, punk regimes with crazy men at the helm.
If by oil, religion, race, and freedom you mean natural resources, then yeah. If by small, punk regimes with crazy men at the helm, you mean non-nuclear countries, then yes too.
I guess the next logical step in your reasoning is "Bomb Iran", eh?
and the NSA can not easily target a US national without a federal judge seeing solid information about what the individual is doing, and it has to be related to terrorism essentially
I guess what people are trying to say is that, although what you say probably applies in theory and even most times, these agencies have no problems in skipping that particular step involving the judge if they (or a particular someone in there with enough power) really, really want to know something about a US citizen. Cops do it frequently with wiretaps, so I'd assume big bureaucratic agencies that operate in secrecy have little difficulty in pulling that out. The lack of public interest and things like the PATRIOT act only help to that surely. I think most of times they don't really expect anyone to come looking anyway.
Out of those 13 headlines in your post, 7 are about people that pleaded guilty. Somehow, I find that odd. 5 of them are about providing or attempting to provide, or conspiring to provide,material support to "terrorists" or terrorist orgs like al Shabaab (interestingly, Al Qaeda seems to be démodé these days, Al Shabaab is the new rage). Now my question is, the FBI seems quite successful in arresting people providing material support to terrorists but, where are the terrorists themselves?
Furthermore, Gitmo is a concentration camp. So your comparison actually makes sense. In fact, not only it is a concentration camp, it's one on foreign ground too, a fact which allows evading US laws. Is it one of the worst things ever? People are detained there without accusation or trial for years on end, so, yes.
Doesn't that mean that you end up never actually voting for anyone?
In other words, can we really expect to find the ideal candidate for every election, as in, the one that represents every (or even most) of one's opinions on all issues?
I think you might want to say
For some of the rich, the poor are always terrorists threatening to use democracy to take away the psychopathic power of the said rich.
instead.
Being rich is pretty much a relative thing. I'm sure you're rich compared to somebody on this planet. That doesn't make you bad or a psychopath, but it does empower your evilness and psychopathy. But then so does having a public mandate or a large public willing to listen to you. But you most likely know this already.
It's unfair and simplistic to put the blame on the rich or the politicians only. People often claim for democracy and freedom, but the when they get it they proceed to elect the shadiest people to office. When under a dictatorship it's easy to find responsibilities: they're all concentrated on the dictator. In a democracy, the responsibility is on the elector, like it or not. So when we start criticising corrupt politicians, we should finish by criticising the corrupt people that vote for them.
The only thing I believe in is science. But saying that religion corrupts minds does seem to me a vicious or vitriolic attack, as I doubt any causation or correlation between 'religious minds' and 'corrupt minds' has ever been established.
Sexual orientation can not be a meme as it exists in species that do not have the capacity for memes. It can not be a meme because it is observed to occur spontaneously in species where no prior behavior has occurred.
How do you know which species have the capacity for memes? What kind of memes? How can a meme occur in the first place if not spontaneously?
The idea that it is a genetic defect would require that non heterosexuality causes harm
No it wouldn't. It would only require that phenotypes displaying it are less favoured by natural selection than ones displaying heterosexuality. No one is passing moral judgement here.
You don't need to know precisely what causes it to be able to objectively demonstrate that certain causes are not valid.
True. But we're still lacking a scientific explanation for multiple sexual orientations. All I'm saying is that is seems more likely to me that it has memetic (or psychological or nurture), rather than a genetic (or nature origin). That doesn't mean people can at any point choose their sexual orientation just like they can't choose many of their personality traits. I am also suggesting that religious people might have trouble choosing not to be religious without external help. The main difference would be that, if I'm right, the meme for sexual orientation acts on much more primitive and deep way in our brain than the religious one, hence in a way rather unaccessible to our conscious experience. That would also mean the the meme could act on most large animals with which we share the most primitive part of the brain.
I couldn't care less what the sexual orientation of people is (unless I'm sexually interested in them). But I would definitely like to see a scientific explanation for the undeniable fact that multiple sexual orientations do exist.
Sexuality is natural yes. That is pretty much a tautology. But who says sexual orientation is not a meme? A powerful and primitive one yes, but a meme still? It surely makes more sense to me than to think it's some sort of genetic feature, in which case homosexuality would be a defect that managed to elude hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection, or that is so common a mutation as to suddenly re-appear with so much frequency (if this is the case, then it should be quite easy to pinpoint genetically).
The fact that religion (or some sort of mystical worldview) has sprouted pretty much in every human culture independently suggests that there probably is some natural propensity to be religious. In fact, it takes education and training in critical thinking to effectively shut down the religious meme.
So, you could reasonably argue that both phenomena are not that different. That both are memes. And both have, like it or not, an influence and power that can profoundly affect the basic core of human society. And if sexual orientation is not a choice, the fact that a supernatural worldview might creep in your head might not be a choice either. So maybe you should be more careful with the vitriolic attacks on religion, as you might be discriminating people for something that they can't control (without some help at least).
But hey, I know these days it's so PC to defend the right to sexual orientation and it's so fashionable to attack religion... Not that I'm claiming you do it for these reasons. But I find it curious how we so suddenly jumped from homosexuality being a taboo sickness to being an unattackable right (while at the same time not being a choice). It seems to me no one is trying to understand it anymore, which, in turn, means it can suddenly become a taboo disease again, should the winds change direction again. But oh well, this is just me ranting...
My point is, we actually don't know where sexual orientation comes from (and apparently no one cares) and we also don't know where religion comes from (or why it's so hard to make it go away), therefore, viciously attacking one while piously defending the other (seems to me it) is probably a bad idea.
I will take just one of the so called "facts" that you write about
Yes. I knew you would choose that one. Let us consider, however, how it all played out according to the article I posted:
Hayb was convicted of manslaughter and obstruction of justice by an Israeli military court in April 2005 and sentenced to eight years in prison.
From the Wikipedia article on manslaughter:
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder.
manslaughter (...) requires a lack of any prior intention to kill or create a deadly situation.
Back to Hurndall:
The IDF initially refused more than a routine internal inquiry, which concluded that Hurndall was shot accidentally in the crossfire, and suggested that his group's members were essentially functioning as human shields. (...) Hurndall's parents demanded an investigation.
As pressure from the parents mounted, supported in part by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in October 2003 Israel's Judge Advocate General Menachem Finkelstein ordered the IDF to open a further military police investigation into Hurndall's death.
Idier Wahid Taysir Hayb (or al-Heib), claimed, he had shot at a man in military fatigues although photographic evidence clearly showed Hurndall was wearing a bright orange jacket denoting he was a foreigner. Hayb was an award-winning marksman and his rifle had a telescopic sight. He claimed to have aimed four inches from Hurndall's head, "but he moved". Hayb said a policy of shooting at unarmed civilians existed at the time.
On 10 April 2006, a British inquest jury at St Pancras coroner's court in London found that Hurndall had been "unlawfully killed". (...) The lawyer representing the family, Michael Mansfield QC, stated:
Make no mistake about it, the Israeli defence force have today been found culpable by this jury of murder.
A week earlier, an inquest found that the British journalist James Miller had been killed by an Israeli soldier just three weeks after Mr. Hurndall was shot, a mile away from Hurndall's position.
So, while your compatriot was charged and convicted with manslaughter, what really happened was murder. Unless an award-winning marksman shot a head on top of a bright orange jacket near some children without intention to kill or unaware he was creating a deadly situation.
And yes, I I take time to carefully write most of my posts because that's how I think everybody should do. But I take extra care when replying to people like you, so that everybody here sees who the delusional person is.
Wanna choose another 'fact' I'm lying about?
This has nothing to do with reality and you know it.
No he doesn't. Neither do I or the majority of people that don't depend on Fox News et al. for their news. In fact, what we do know, is that your country actively represses Palestinians and destroys or steals their homes, depriving entire families of shelter, as any random photo shoot of a Palestinian protest will show. Moreover, even foreign citizens (even if they're Jewish and American, which btw pay for your 'security') are targets of repression or even murder for protesting about the appalling situation that you impose on the Palestinian people.
Your country murders, abducts and steals from unarmed foreign citizens (including journalists) on international waters in what amounts to piracy if not even an act of war. Your country trapped the people of Gaza and conducted warfare against it, in what can be described only as collective punishment which is completely forbidden by the Geneva Convention to which Israel adhered, for no reason except disagreement with the outcome of a democratic process.
Also, while Iran may or may not be procuring nuclear weapons, the fact is that your country does have a sizeable nuclear arsenal and hasn't even signed the Treaty for Nuclear Non-Proliferation, and doesn't allow inspectors from the IAEA in your nuclear facilities.
So if there actually is a threat, the threat is Israel. No country (including your closest ally and financier, the USA) can trust that your military or secret services will not attack, abduct or murder any of it's citizens anywhere in the world, as all this has happened before. You claim to be a democracy but you restrain the rights of your own women to exercise their religion like men do. You restrain the right of Palestinians to become citizens of your country by marriage, which I think is unique in all claimed democracies in this world, and can be classified as nothing but racist. Perhaps the rest of the world, say Turkey for example, should do a preemptive strike on Israel lest you murder every Turkish on international waters... But we know what would happen then wouldn't we?
In conclusion, if there is such thing as a rogue state, then Israel is one by any objective consideration. Your victimising is no longer effective as people get alternatives to traditional news sources that are not under the payroll of your efficient lobbies, and actually witness what is happening in Palestine. Like the man said "You can't fool everyone all the time". Because of your nuclear WMDs your country is in effect militarily untouchable, but if you persist on your arrogant, contemptuous and delusional attitude towards the rest of the world you'll get more and more isolated internationally and you'll end up like North Korea, a pariah nuclear threat looming over the Middle East, Europe and the world.
Go on, cry anti-semitism now.
Everyone knows what they (the Iranians) are doing. The Americans know it, the Europeans know it, the Russians know it and yes the Israelis know it too
Yes we all see it. They're minding their own business. Which happens to be nuclear power. So, lets hear again why shouldn't Iran have nuclear power, military or otherwise?
I'll anticipate the answer: "Why, because they are Islamic fundamentalists and raving lunatics and they'll use it to wipe Israel off the map!!!!111!!"
Let's see, they are 1) Islamic fundamentalists - I don't see the problem, so is Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. (and to a much worse degree), but they're considered good friends of the US. I wonder why... Anyway, Islamic fundamentalism has never got in the way of being on the good graces of the West. 2) They're raving lunatics - well I wish the whole world was raving lunatic like they are, given they haven't invaded any country in centuries. Don't see why that would suddenly change now. 3) They want to wipe Israel off the map - ahh, now we're getting somewhere aren't we. But, in fact, that is completely baseless and pretty much amounts to deception. What the president of Iran said, was that Israel should disappear from the maps. The 'we'll wipe it off the map' thing was a (deliberate) deceptive translation from Farsi by MEMRI which is a shill for Israeli interests and provides translations of Muslim media, carefully tailored to their master's objectives. It is, by no means, an unbiased news source. And even if it was, their translation is wrong.
The question now is: Do you see what the US and Israeli elite are doing? Everyone knows. Anyone who cares to look can see this. They're leaving a pretty unmissable breadcrumb trail, and it passes through Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan. Except they're not using breadcrumbs. They're using cluster bombs.
I don't know if you're American, but if you are, they're using your tax money for it while at the same time claiming they can't pay for your healthcare. Anyone can see this. For a lot of people indeed, it was the last thing they ever saw. Why can't you?
You think right.
I laid my arguments on a reply above, so if you care to know you can read them.
But I'll reply on some things you wrote because you seem to have misunderstood my point and taken offense, and that wasn't my intention.
I'm sorry, but government by the people means us people, not the entire world telling us how we ought to live. You have the same right to self government in your country, so trying to tell me that I shouldn't is, well, ridiculous.
Almost no one is telling you how to live, much less me or my compatriots, and we couldn't even if we wanted to. What we want, and I think the majority of the people in the world, is that you realize, because of the power your country projects, that your government's decisions matter no only to you and your People, but also to the rest of us. But, for now, almost only you and your People have the power to control your government. That's why we need you to think about us and care because we obviously can't do much.
I see. Because I don't think you ought to have a say in how this country is run, you don't like my opinion. That's fine. I don't have any say in how your country is run, and I don't expect to have a say. If you think you should have a say here, then I don't think much of your attitude, either.
First of all, you do have a saying on how my country is run. In fact, that pretty much applies for almost every other country in the world. Not you directly, but your government which is accountable to you, among others. So I'm already at a disadvantage. Now you can think whatever you want about who ought to have a say in how your country is run. That's fine with me. What I don't like in your opinion is that you don't care what other countries' people think about you or what you do, because that means you won't factor that in your own thinking, therefore voting. Normally that would be ok. But because of the power your country possesses, that entails potentially catastrophic scenarios for the rest of us, as many people from various countries around the world can perfectly illustrate to you.
That's not what I said. "You don't get a say in our government" is not "I don't give a shit".
I don't care what people in Germany think of the US, just as I don't expect them to care what I think about how Germany is run
Looks like "I don't give a shit" to me. But maybe I'm wrong.
They already do. You aren't paying attention.
If you don't care, how do you know? Besides, you still don't have to give a shit. Let's see how you fancy it when you do.
To conclude, I'm not trying to take your sovereignty away. I couldn't even if I wanted to. I merely think that, because of the power on which you have some measure of control, you should perhaps care a little more about how it affects other people. That means caring about what other people think of the US.
PS: there is a country that already took your sovereignty away to a large extent. It controls your legislative branch almost completely, lured your country into two pointless wars and absorbs quite a share of the taxes you pay. Perhaps the time when you have to care is not so far.
In a sense you still don't give a shit about what the people of that other country think, just what they and their government do
Oh but I do! What other country's people and government do, necessarily stems from what the country's people think (in democracies at least). It may be through direct or less direct ways but a country's actions always depends on the People's thinking (or lack thereof). The fact that the US can and will project it's power all over the world in multiple domains and through multiple vectors, makes it crucial for everyone to keep a close eye on American thinking.
And in any case in that scenario all you can control/influence is what your own country does
Me, perhaps. But you, you can do more. Because your country can control what other countries do, it follows necessarily that you can control what other countries do too. Therefore, it seems to me that you have a bigger responsibility of trying to know what people in other countries think, since you have the power to influence their lives. Additionally, and because we in other countries are subject to that power in many ways, common sense would dictate that we care quite a lot about what the wielders of such power think.
And I happily stand firm on the platform that the government of the US is solely beholden to the people of the US and nobody else. I don't care what people in Germany think of the US, just as I don't expect them to care what I think about how Germany is run. I wish our current occupent of the whitehouse felt the same.
I wish you wouldn't think like that. Because, you know, the government that you elect makes decisions which directly and indirectly affect how the rest of us live in other countries, so is the power that it wields. So, you might not care about what Germans think of the US, but the rest of the world does care about what Americans think. And let me tell you, the rest of us don't think much of what you people seem to think (although that is changing somewhat lately). Maybe precisely because of that attitude you seem to be displaying. The "I don't give a shit" attitude. Well, the people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Central America, South America, Europe and Africa do give a shit. Because they can't afford not to.
Perhaps the day will come when you'll also be forced to give a shit about what some other country thinks about yours. Let's hope they're not going to think like you.
What OP means, is that it is quite obvious that something is changing. I remember seasons being a lot more regular than they are now. And my grandparents even more so. Spring (weather) started March 21, give or take a day or two. Now, it's give or take two months, perhaps even more random in other places.
You can argue that it's natural, that it's some sort of natural cycle. Other people argue that it's god punishing us. The fact remains that the climate is changing, and therefore so is the weather, becoming more and more unpredictable and with more and more extreme phenomena happening all around the world. It doesn't take rocket science, ballistics or fluid dynamics to figure out the consequences to agriculture worldwide.
Not that I have a problem with your jocose pedantry, but OP is the one that should have 5, Insightful.
I think the keyword there is almost. So, not all will accept. Which in turn means it's effectively unpredictable who will accept.
you've chosen to resort to personal attacks in lieu of a rational argument
That's right. I did. And given that you actually bothered to go through my comment history, you surely noticed that this is something I don't do many times. Especially on these kinds of subjects.
The reason I chose to do so is that, simply, I find it quite impossible to debate rationally with people that hold the beliefs and world-view that you obviously do. The fact that you simply parrot propaganda that has been shown over and over again to be just plain false and mischievous, and would do so even to the point where you would try to push it to someone that has been to (and I assume is from: user "the entropy" ) a country that has been savagely devastated only 5 years ago by the people whose actions and intentions you seek to defend, is pretty much revealing that rational argument is not possible. You will simply deny any objective facts presented and ultimately launch the definite ad-hominem attack of anti-semitism, compared to which my simple remark pales. You see, there's a pattern you people follow.
Before I proceed to actually comment on the links you posted, let me tell you this: you are very lucky that it is me doing the ad hominem attack. Israeli ad hominem attacks are normally in the form of letal high speed lead projectiles, otherwise known as bullets. Any Palestinian or Lebanese person will be able to confirm this to you, if you ever have the courage to confront these people in person, without having them at gunpoint.
The links you posted are ridiculous. The Israeli Declaration of Independence is meaningless to the purposes of this discussion, not to mention that it is hardly an independent and unbiased source of information.
About the other link you posted on the partition of territory, I assume you intend to emphasise this part:
During the first 6 months of 1949, negotiations between the belligerents came to terms over armistice lines that delimited Israel's borders. On the other side, no Palestinian Arab state was founded: Jordan annexed the Arab territories of the Mandatory regions of Samaria and Judea (today known as the West Bank), as well as East Jerusalem, while the Gaza strip came under Egyptian administration. During this time, Jordan and Egypt did not normalize the living conditions for the Palestinian refugees, neither did Israel after 1967. All Jewish inhabitants were expelled from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip until the Israel occupation in 1967.[citation needed]
You'll want to notice the [citation needed] indicator. It means that anyone could have written this (it could have been you, AFAIK) and it is not referenced from any source, therefore it holds zero credibility.
In the remote chance that you'd actually be interested in learning the truth about this conflict, I recommend the works of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. Bear in mind that this is probably forbidden literature in your political circles and that if your propaganda masters find you reading this, they'll take away your good-boy badge. Read at your own risk:
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians
I don't know how you can expect to tell such baseless lies and not be challenged on them.
Well I could say the exact same about you. But I will actually challenge you. Please provide references for your claims. Oh, and by the way, Zionist handbooks are NOT the public record.
You inform us in your signature that you are not American. That's right. You're just an asshole. Now show us that public record.