Hahahaha, exactly why my absolute favorite Simpson's episode is the one where the two presidential candidates are revealed as evil aliens and then the people of America have no option but to vote one of them into office! I have seen no better jibe at how screwed up democracy has become in America.

Oh wait, i lied, my absolute favorite Simpson's episode is the 'tontine' one where Mr burns is trying to have Grandpa Simpson killed... shoots up the old persons home and the other old dude says "was that you or was that me?". That line nearly put me in hospital it cracked me up so much!!!

 

Edit: sorry been away for a while, got a bit behind in the conversation.

 

BoobzTwo, glad to hear you watched Amistad. There are some truly masterful works of cinematic wonder in this modern age, movies that hit so hard it is like you have just been punched through a brick wall and then you have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off,,,, i love that!

 

Well i have no particular urge to go into such great detail all for the purpose of not calling America a democracy. The two forms of government overlap, so it is all a bit ambiguous. But i will meet you half way and refer to America as a representative democracy, happy?

As for what you say about our so called 'spreading of democracy' around the world, i don't see your point at all? Clearly most if not all populations around the world seek democracy of some kind, so long as they have a say in who governs them. Just look at what happened in Egypt or Libya and even Syria! As for the third world, there is no third world country where the population has it any worse than the populations of medieval Europe (climate and overpopulation issues aside) as they go through the process of dragging themselves into the modern age. Western influences on the whole are very beneficial, but certainly we could and should do allot more!

 

 

 

 

 

BoobzTwo, there seems to be some confusion on De Beers so I will attempt to clarify.  It's actually a bit complicated and I'm just too lazy today to go into detail.  No, When I say blood diamond industry I'm not talking about the super valuable red rock you saw in the movie that everyone was fighting over, jokes aside.

De Beers themselves have put out a number of publications about the blood diamond industry and why De Beers is an absolute global necessity to protect us against it by making diamonds from illegitimate sources illegitimate.  Adopting policy standards like laser tagging and registration alongside maintaining their near monopoly for improved control is a central part in the strategy of course.  The strategy has changed since diamonds can now be made economically by machines and Russia has opened up its diamond vaults for the commercial market.  In response, De Beers has significantly adjusted the global supply by selling more to destroy the technology sector and drastically reduce any foreign profit margins.  This is in addition to giving away, as in free, special diamond testing equipment so the major dealers can tell the difference between De Beers and everyone else. The nature of the diamond market's value and profitability is tight control through supply and demand.  If you want to know more then I suggest you google or wikipedia it.

You want to hear anther little factoid?  To cut costs, the diamond cutting is starting to be outsourced into countries like India.

 

 

Personally I think it's a boring subject and just for the record the secularism sold onto us is a total sham most of the time.  Separation of church and state sure but it usually ends up being co opted into a united church of the religion Atheism.

Atheism technically is a religion. It's the religion of rejecting all other religions and the existence of a deity.

Nice ... good time for a laugh or two. When do you find the time to search out this stuff, hehehe!

 

I'm sorry too because your coming across as looking like a crackpot with this post! because despite the limitations of world media, i am quite certain America did not invade Egypt, Iran or Libya!! And if your referring to western propaganda stiring things up, well i think that is quite insulting to the intelligence of the people fighting for their freedom in those countries. Afghanistan and Iraq do not fit in with what i was talking about at all, because obviously there is massive western interference in those two countries and massive amounts of propaganda and misinformation, which is obvious and insulting to my intelligence if you think i cannot see that!

 

Edit: i did wonder what will ever become of Iraq, then when they had their big soccer win i immediately realized their going to make it! It is a truely remarkable feet and is similarly inspiring as the movie 'Invictus' And here is a quote from an old news report "Despite our misery in Sadr City, we came out in the streets to celebrate the victory," said Ibrahim Karim, a 44-year-old engineer. "We are happy now because we have forgotten for a while our sad situation."

Just throw in a bit more stuff on 'Invictus'from wikipedia

While incarcerated on Robben Island prison, Nelson Mandela recited the poem to other prisoners and was empowered by its message of self mastery.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

I glad you like Noam's work and OMG how did I miss this 1    x (where's the infinity key)

Notice how, what I would say is the most important YouTube video of our time has only 5000 hits. But I guess what movie stars do with there time and star trek reruns are a network priority.

What do you think would happen if this hit prime time?

Sadly I agree about Malalai but what Noam talked about Pakistan destabilizing and giving radicals nukes scared the crap out of me. I live to close to NYC. Southern Ontario Canada near Toronto.

 

You might notice i used the word 'seek' in reply number 29. And the reason for that word is because I'm not making any claim as to what they actually 'get' in terms of government. My point is that people the world over who do not have any say in who governs them always have very strong desires to change that situation so that they do have a say in who governs them! This is true regardless of what intricacies you may dig up "through the last 50 years"

I'm also talking about western 'countries' and how they support and give guidance to the developing world and could be doing allot more!

But your trying to whack that on the head with things to do with the self serving foreign policies of individual western governments over the last 50 years or so and the usual propaganda that goes with it. That was never what i was talking about.

In Australia it is actually compulsory to vote, and i do tend to grumble come voting time that i have to vote when there are no options available that i have any great respect of or who inspire me that they will bring real change. Then when i see dirt poor people on TV getting a vote for the first time in their lives (admittedly media staged, depending on the show) and how valuable it is too them, i do feel rather guilty! From my perspective, it is practically impossible for me to grasp in my mind how the right to vote can actually mean so much to people??

I suppose if our country ever suddenly had a remarkable leader appear.... similarly to Obama (in the beginning) i might actually feel something inside about it?? and actually be excited to vote???

But remarkable leaders is another important aspect of real change for a nation. This is why the world remembers the names of people such as Gandhi or Nelsen Mandela, and many others throughout history! So this then begs the question? Can a struggling nation such as Afghanistan recover without having its own Gandhi or it's own Nelsen Mandela? And such a person, if there is one, will be identified by the population, no one else! So i just hope the Coalition forces are listening, if not then it is a total waste of time.

There had to be WMDs in Iraq. The USG tortured people into admitting it. 

Ohh I know. The secret railroad smuggled them all into Iran. 

I had said allot more about Iraq etc etc in some other thread/forum but i cannot find it? I thought i might have been you BoobzTwo who i was discussing with? I made some point about how America needs to learn to sit back and let the world community experience the consequences of its decisions, be they good or bad? This is in the context of the reason given to us by the USG to Invade Iraq the second time. The world community chose to leave him in power after the first round, therefore the world community is responsible for whatever  Sadam may or may not do from that day forward. And it is the world communities responsibility to form a consensus in response to treaty violations.

But when it comes to a situation where an aggressor, in this case Iraq, is defeated and put under restrictive treaty, when you have that situation, everyone remembers the restrictive treaties put on Germany after WW1 and what happened when those treaties were not enforced!

But hindsight is a wonderful thing and the reality is, there are precious few wars we did not start that we should have started - Hitler being the only real exception i can think of? Of all the other dictators around the world that have posed a threat in modern times, whom we did not go to war with, in all those cases hindsight has proven the right choice was not to go to war.

 

But there is one other issue that confounds me? Wars that the west initiates or gets involved in on humanitarian grounds? There is Somalia, Serbia, probably a few i forget and now Libya. I was quite surprised to see how quickly the world community pounced on Gadafi when large numbers of civilians started getting wiped out? And what makes Somalia or Serbia or Lybia different to civilians getting wiped out in North Korea and the west does not invade? I'm utterly confused??

Humm ... at what point in our / your discussions did Iraq become the aggressor, just asking?

The world community did not have the authority to invade another country or they might have. Besides, Bush 1 was not as stupid as his son and realized the likely outcome. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the two had this discussion. Geeze … let’s just blame the world community for the actions of the USG, don’t work for me.

Every war ever fought by the American Government was a war of humanitarianism and freedom and democracy. American diplomacy has changed little. Our expansion west was nothing but an ethnic cleansing of the natives. And the Louisiana Purchase neglected to discuss the hundreds of tribes that had lived there for who knows how long. Yep … ethnic cleansing again. I think this was all to educate the savages and force European civility and culture on them. Democracy USG style is never a good thing to be on the receiving end of and is always costly in lives and property. Then of course, we had to teach the Mexicans how costly it was to get between the USG and the west coast. Yep, ethnic cleansing, democratic style. So we stole their land too and kicked them off, just because. If one is inclined to go back in time, well you might be surprised at what the USG has kept out of the school books … but not the archives and reliable records.

Do not tryto come up with all the answers at one time ... you just need to start somewhere and just follow where that leads you. Believe me, nobody can make much sense of all the messes in the world, you and I included.