Drowsy Emperor

The man was also, by most accounts, a sociopath. In the typical business world - egocentric, bleed your employees dry style. A corporate shark. It says a lot about the age we live in that the man is considered "great" by any measure of the word. His greatest contribution is selling the same thing everyone else is selling at twice the price. While an admirable trait for a salesman, I can't help but ask the question - so what? How is that relevant for anyone other than him? #ThingsDrowsydoesn'tunderstand

If I was american I'd vote for Trump. He's a piece of **** like the rest of them but he doesn't hide it. Compared to Hilary Clinton he's even charming, in the "I'm a rich bastard and enjoy it" kind of way.

William Yates's "Sailing to Byzantium" as is obvious from my sig and avatar & nickname

I do not think any of those is an inherent property of secular capitalist democracies. No, but they bring it to an extreme.

Yep. "We love America, except the millions of Americans composed of [whites/blacks/the poor/the rich/latte liberals/Republicans/Trump supporters/rapists/racists/etc/etc] that are not really American" is the basic move we see all over the world. We love us and we hate the other, except we make sure that everybody we hate can be moved to 'other' whenever we need to. Which is why we need to be careful about pretending that it's some kind of eternal classification that cannot be disobeyed. No one ever said the issue is actually logical. If you want to live in a more unified society (and one not necessarily enforced through terror or fear) you have to support that sort of social order. In secular capitalist democracies, where money can buy influence to say and do practically anything, where you're encouraged to say practically anything in the public sphere to get "one up" over your opponents and where there's no overarching moral system (not "in god we trust" written on money, lol) to guide society public discourse will always be a cesspool.

In a debate you can equate the two, but in practice that's how it works. Its a basic human concept. There's "us" and there is the "other" and the other as close to you as you define it yourself. Obviously when claiming participation to a group you're not self identifying with its pathological members, rather with the average or the best of such a group and that is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

Yet that is a very broad argument where everyone can draw their own line at will. Its nice to think of "us" in terms of "the whole of humanity", but that is at best a theoretical concept. Frankly "us" is how its defined day to day, epoch to epoch basis and even that is filled with injustice sometimes even in close family relations (aka some are more "us" than others), to speak nothing of the workplace, neighborhood, the tribe/religion/nation etc. In other words, its a flimsy social/psychological construct.

Cooperation has been a much greater contributor to the success of species than competitiveness. Kropotkin proved this a long time ago in his book "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution". Today's emphasis on "competitiveness" is the mentality of cut-throat capitalism and business forced onto everything else to make people better wage slaves and dissuade the kind of cooperation employers fear. Its seeping into everything, including individual's private lives does not make it an axiom that has always been present - at least not as much even if a degree of competitiveness is ingrained in human nature.

Conspiracies and false flag operations are a fact of life in politics just as much as anything else. Julius Caesar didn't stab himself after all. Neither was the Gulf of Tonkin incident much of an "incident". It is typical of the mass media/establishment to ridicule individuals to destroy their legitimacy by calling them "conspiracy theorists", which is much easier than engaging in rational debate, especially when you know the truth isn't on your side (the clearest use against people that are competent and educated like Chomsky - so that the accusation itself says more about the accuser than the accused) This however just doesn't look like a conspiracy or a false flag operation. And frankly, in 2015. the west (or anyone else) does not need to lift a finger for muslims to be considered dangerous and extremist. In fact there are more people in the west defending muslims then anywhere else - in China or India for example no one doubts their (local) extremism for a second. @Qisitina: if you want to be taken seriously at least check the "sources" you post.

He said "No its not him" as in I don't believe its him because, as he goes on to say "he's (Sayed) quiet, does not make any trouble". He does not mean literally "Its not him" and he never mentions any caucasian male shooters. You either do not understand conversational English well enough, or you're ignoring everything that doesn't fit your theory

Did you even watch the video. It doesn't remotely say what you say it does. The man expresses his surprise "No, its not him!" upon finding out that its Sayed because he knew him as a quiet person. Nowhere does he mention caucasian men or the supposed phone call that pressured him into saying it was Sayed. Instead he said someone called him and said it was Sayed doing the shooting. The entire article is based on nothing else with no other links or citations. Its literally nonsense (and i'm first to criticize media lies and fabrications).

Care for your own before everyone else, it's a reasonable thing to do - most of the time people care more about their blood relations than some dude on the street Hazarding a guess, also people hate having to mind others or in some way feel like they are being punished for getting ahead. How accurate those are when it comes to making society fair, depends on circumstance and implementation. The morality behind running a state is different from the ethics of relations between individuals. If you see someone collapse on the street calling an ambulance is plainly the "right thing to do" regardless of whether he's white, black, muslim or whatever. But when you're running a state, the livelihood of millions of people is at stake and there are many more things to consider. The reasons for not accepting what is essentially a mass influx of economic migrants from the muslim world have been repeated ad nauseam, and I'm pretty sure that if referendums were made they'd show that the majority of the public is against it too. But it was yet another dubious decision motivated by "humanism", in the same way that bombing Serbia in '99 was motivated by "human rights" of Albanians (yet accepting Serbian refugees was "not" the right thing to do all the way through the Yugoslav wars?). In other words, even a child can deduce that its a cover for other motivations. An excused designed to put its proponents on the "good" side of the debate while actually stifling any opposition. What the actual reasons are, other than cheap labor and population replacement I can't even begin to fathom. If Cthulhu was running Brussels it would be easier to understand what's going on there.

Its an ideological award, like Obama receiving the Nobel Peace prize for being a black president (because he sure as hell didn't do anything else to deserve it). Completely meaningless, except in the inevitable, depressing, conclusion that certain circles in the US are supporting the implosion of Europe.

God I love that guy

I keep on hoping they're not.

He doesn't really mean that

You read the books?

Real nonsense there about gun laws. They didn't prevent the Paris attackers from being armed to the teeth did they? Proves you can get just about anything if you're dedicated enough (cue Breivik's solo operation). But they did prevent anyone in the crowd from being able to react with anything more than harsh language.

If he really did this for his next election then he's a complete idiot and probably desperate too. I wouldn't be surprised if he's so deep in criminal dealings that he simply cannot step down and must do anything and everything to remain in power.

Its a little simplistic and perhaps unbecoming in tone from a university professor but he is quite correct. I don't understand where the rabid, knee-jerk hatred of Christianity, nationalism and any form of traditionalism is coming from but if you define those as your sole "enemies" then turning a blind eye to Islamic extremism (even though its exactly what you're supposedly fighting against - and significantly more extreme than your chosen foe in every regard) makes sense. Europe is in a similar situation. Just look at Sweden, that's accepting a horde of refugees in spite of the fact that a large segment of the native population doesn't want them there - where the entire parliament united to limit the influence of a single dissenting party of the right. Islamic extremism is okay (even vs the swedish Jews for example, that are leaving the country "This new hatred comes from Muslim immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid now."), anti-immigration anti-multiculturalism attitudes aren't - deserving of public vilification, ridicule and punishment.

Apparently wikileaks has something on Erdogan planning this thing weeks in advance as a pre-election stunt

What's the point of any Martin's character story anymore. Fixed that for you.

You should try Dark Matter then. For all the cheesy plot and B movie acting I did enjoy the entire first season. Defiance seemed a lot more ambitious but its got too much drama and too little sci-fi for my tastes - and I just didn't buy into the setting. I also tried watching Killjoys but it was a bit too... cheap... for my tastes. I hoped it was something like Cowboy Bebop, but the characters don't have much in the way of charisma so I didn't get past the second episode. And then there's the upcoming "The Expanse", which looks promising.

Ash VS Evil Dead. Its exactly what you might expect it to be, no more, no less.

Why bomb a christian cathedral when there's an identical Ottoman one in Istanbul.