Torero

I've listed some points on this particular in my eyes possible hoax in my first post. On the other topics; I am happy to discuss them either centrally or per hoax, but that's up to Mike and Stefan. This forum is about libertarianism/anarchism (according to not too few people also enough basis to come up with senseles labels as "conspiracy nutcase"). It's not my forum so it's their call. I can give you an anecdote (that you may or may not believe); last year's Christmas holidays that I spent in the Caribbean I spoke with a guy who was doing a PhD. in political sciences somewhere in the US (if I recall well it was in Pennsylvania, but it may have been another state). I didn't start bringing up the topic but what he said was "people use words like 'conspiracy theories', but what is called that way is just 'normal' political policies". Interesting fellow, I still regret having no contact details from him. Stefan has talked about many "mass conspiracies". The Mass Media are constantly bombarding us, people, with things that can be regarded as conspiracies. The social engineering stuff, the "race does not exist" stuff, the politicians (= professional liars) constantly and very openly twist and turn the truth to their advantages, the EU politicians are one of the most simple-minded bullshitters (Martin Schulz who has called for "democracy should be protected from opinions that disregard that democracy"). The list is endless. For a good start on the hoaxing (not meant as a discussion start here; this is about Germany) I suggest to research Sandy Hook. Especially the "grieving parents" (without tears yet smiles - Robbie Parker) and that very poor little actor Glenn Rosen should lead you in the right direction already. "Antropogenic Global Warming"/"Climate Change" is a mass conspiracy which is openly debated and discussed here on the forum. The WTF, NASA? thread shows many examples of the fakery on that terrain. It's a matter of research and understanding. It actually combines very well with anarchism; there are similar tricks that are played by the Elites to slander peaceful society movements as to research movements into "events" that "took place" in the world.

It would go wildly off topic to talk about those other "events" here. My intention is not to derail this; it's crucial enough to see the psychological operation of this event or "event". But I asked you 3 questions on this one. Your answer seems to be "I've seen footage". Is that an argument? I've seen Disney movies multiple times, does that mean Mickey Mouse is real?

I am open to be convinced that it's all real, honest and no fakery, but what usually happens with these kind of events is that the more time it takes, less convincing the stories become... Europe has had 2 highly played out and ridiculously fantastic hoaxes last year already, both in the same city, Paris: - Charly Hebdo - 7th January - Bataclan Theatre - Friday 13th November So to create a hoax of a smaller scale in Germany would be not so difficult to do. What makes you so certain these riots/attacks did occur [and were not orchestrated!]? What arguments do you have to say "from what it looks like"? - who do you mean with "people"? - what do you mean by "actually"? - if it "happens 'a lot' more" often than "people" think, how come you know that and those "people" not? The US (I saw you live in Texas) is really the master of disaster of hoaxing. In the last years there were so many faked "shootings", "bombings", "terrorist attacks" and all. Just to name a few: - 9/11 (the grandmaster of hoaxing, in front of millions of people on the streets and billions in front of the TV) - Sandy Hoax (this is the most dramatic "acting" I've seen of all the hoaxes) - Boston "Bombings" - Aurora Batman Cinema "Shooting" - Elliot Rodger "Shooting" - San Bernardino "Massacre" - Arizona Mass "Shooting" - etc. etc. In the Middle East they play it out with ridiculous green screen/CGI fakery like James Foley, ISIS in general, etc. In the US one of the main goals seems to be to enforce the gun control laws. Up to "children of 4 years old 'writing letters' to Obama himself to 'please enforce those gun laws'" and sooo much more of that completely hilarious yet crazy hoaxing theatre. Europe has been left alone for a while (Anders Breivik Utoya "shooting" was the last big one), but this "crisis" really has been the instigator of more hoaxes (see Paris). I expected an "attack" in Germany for 2016 after the Paris hoaxes (as Germany is Europe's leader on so many terrains). It's just the start; more and more of these psychological operations will be set-up to draw people to the State. And they do whatever it takes to make that happen.

It surely has the signs. My interest in it is too low to dive into it deeper, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were. They hoax "events" like this all the time (see for some examples my post). I am not claiming it's a hoax, 100% sure, nailed it, full proof. Therefore I simply lack enough data (and interest). I just listed some signs and reasoning why and how they set-up those psychological operations. It's all to draw people to the State. As is this whole "refugee crisis" in the first place. - it's not about race - it's not about religion - it's not about culture - it's about getting in more people who have to rely on the State System as much as possible and/or displace Germans from the workforce and get them sucked into the carrousel of state slavery (Hartz IV and other "social" programs) It's definitely orchestrated, but it's framed on irrelevant things (race, religion, culture) to keep people fighting over that and not see the real picture (the state power increase; both from the left and the right). On a larger scale it is also part of a bigger plan. That Joker Juncker has already lifted the veil; "the EU needs a European Army". The best way to enforce that is to create unrest among the population (hence those set-ups; mini proxywars if you like) and externally they seek conflicts with the Russian bear (also heavily propagandized in Europe, see MH17 -probably another hoax- as terrifying example) and Turkey. Then, when that European Army is in place, it's a piece of cake to go to a "Full Federal United States of Europe", as an army needs to have a state force to control it. The final plan is to finish the creation of the Superstate "European" "Union". Whatever it takes to get there, the Elites will do: - first a non-federal political union (EU) - then a central bank (ECB) - then an army (EDF - European Defence Force) - then a federal political union (US of E) State slavery 3.0.

There's a lot of propaganda (from outright lies to exaggerations) on this "refugee crisis" in the Mass Media. Both from the left and from the right. This story stinks. It has the signs of other psy-ops/hoaxes regarding this "crisis" (just an excuse for more and more and more and more state power). One of the most obvious examples of manipulation by the mass media was that "photo" of that "drowned boy" Ardan Turan on the beach last year. It was so obviously faked (either complete CGI or a puppet used) and everybody was in shock and awe about it. Here there are similar signs: - having a "story" ready before the investigations are over: "we know it has been done by Arab immigrants, but we don't know the details" - yeah, right - allegedly "thousands" of women were "assaulted" and "sexually harrassed" but there's only a handful of "witness accounts" (sounds like 9/11, Boston "bombings" and similar hoaxes/psy-ops carried out by the Elites all the time) - it neatly fits in with the agenda of the EU/German state to want to increase state power. First the left was drawn to the State "we have to take care for aaaalll those 'poor' people! Anyone who disagrees with boosting the Santa Claus 'social' system even more is a racist!1!!1" and now the right is "We have to have more police forces, more border controls, more state employees stopping this!1! Anyone who disagrees is a 'white genocidal' bastard!1!!" - videos are shot in VVS (Vertical Video Syndrome). That's odd; any normal person filming an event would film landscape, not portrait I wouldn't take those stories fabricated by media and easily set-up by using some puppet "muslims" as "proof" it was "real" too seriously. They want to spread fear among the civilians. And if they need some actors or complete fakery, they will do so. And that works...

Yes, I skipped that step because it complicates the story, but in essence it is irrelevant. The FED (or any other Central Bank) is just as "private" as a "free market consultant" hired by the State only; especially in Germany and Holland you have thousands of those people hired as consultants by the State; they are labeled "private", but if your only client is the State, it's just a construction to keep the number of Beamten down, nothing more; in essence those employed 100% by the State are just State employees. The "private" banks called "Central" are able to print money and the only force that allows them to do so (the force writing and controlling the laws) is the State. You and me cannot print money; counterfeiting. We are put in jail by the State for that. So if an entity is somehow granted that unique task, and the granting party is the State; in essence the State controls the money printing. If the state was printing money itself, the state wouldn't have any national debt. The reason why it's organized like that is, because a state that prints its own money would easily cause runaway inflation, while a state that has to "ask" a private bank for a loan, will get that loan only if the private bank estimates they will get the loan paid back. There's even loads of proof for this problem, in countries like Argentina where the state frequently prints itself into hyper inflation. So far so good, I'd say; not that I agree with the system, just go along with how you describe it. Therefore it's not the state stealing money, Huh? It is; through taxation (stealing in the present) and through state debt (stealing from next generations). it's a private bank that charges interest on loans, forcing the state to charge taxes that raise the money required to pay the interest, or in other words, a private bank is stealing from the people through the help of (bribed) politicians. No, the bank is not private. That's just a label. If the State is the only one that has the force to allow (or prevent) this scam, they are effectively the owners of this scheme. It kinda puzzles me, how you can blame someone completely drowned in debt for stealing from you. Isn't it absolutely obvious that the ones stealing are the ones who end up with your money in their hands? That there are more forces involved than 1 does not make it less stealing. It makes it even more stealing, but from different "parties" (which, in essence, as explained above, are the same force anyway). If you would take the politicians out of the picture, the thieves won't go away and I'm quite sure they would find new ways to keep the stealing going, through media propaganda like global warming and other stuff. Whoo, this is jumping from the Earth to the Moon (talking about media propaganda...) and back. It's not as simple as "taking politicians out of the picture"; libertarianism/anarchism is also about having a non-centrally controlled financial system, even with competing currencies. Bitcoin is a neat example, I'd say. To my mind the only way to stop the stealing would be politicians that cannot be corrupt, but I will admit, I don't have the slightest clue, how we could achieve that, because corruption is something like the foundation of politics. So you want to keep "politicians" (politicians are nothing more than professional liars) exactly why?? Why do you want to keep the force alive? And then in your OP you "suggest" to steal people's savings??? And you consider that a decent, moral, efficient "solution"? Heiner Flassbeck never was a politician, he was (for a lack of a better word) an accountant and an advisor, supposed to check the numbers of the Ministry of Finance and give them advice of how to proceed. He was the first pointing out that southern Europe would go bankrupt, but at first he mentioned that only internally within the Ministry. He got kicked out of his job, because politicians didn't want to hear about his prediction, because they didn't like the reason he gave of why this was happening. After that he went public with his predictions and he has become one of the harshest critics of politics, especially the economic policies of the state. I don't know the man, but you keep repeating state propaganda stories. Like he's some victim of some kind. Can't he just be part of the same corrupt clan and keep you following him by spreading such propaganda? He has gained quite some popularity in Europe, because his predictions have come true near precisely. Unfortunately almost all his work is in German, but here is a short part of his ideas in english, from a conference in Italy: I have no problems understanding German, but thanks for the link in English. I will take a look at it. People gain "popularity" all the time. "Popularity" is not an argument. That would make Justin Bieber suddenly some "musician" to take seriously... If you look into the latest press releases from the IMF and compare to what the IMF said 20 years ago, you will see, even the IMF has recently reversed its ideas and now adopted most of Flassbeck's theories. You are taking the ffs IMF press releases as proof? Also there; try to separate the propaganda from the real stuff. Do you really think the IMF is open about everything they do? The Mass Media are an enormous force in the Indoctrination by the State. In everything. Why should the IMF be saved from that?? If you believe there could be a state in the world, where the total balance of the 4 groups, private households, businesses, state and foreign countries, savings and debt don't add up to zero, give me an example where it's different, I don't know of a single one. Now you're reversing it. You claim something and then ask others to disprove your claims. That's not a fair debate; it's a fallacy. Either you give arguments for your claim, or you don't and it becomes a loose statement without any value. The calculation is quite simple, if you have access to the data. Take all the savings private households have anywhere, in investments like the stock market, account balance in the bank, pension plans and all that, subtract the debt they have for car loans, student loans, their homes and everythng and you get to a total for that group, which shows they are either net savers or net debtors. Do the very same calculation for the other 3 groups, find out which group is a net saver and which group is a net debtor. Add up all 4 groups and the result is zero. No, because those "4 groups" you identify are not the same. The household economy works according to the calculation you describe. But states do not work like that; they do not have a zero sum game. There's so much debt in the world that there's no money available to pay that back. In a zero sum environment that would be impossible. Due to fiat currency that is possible. I'm not going into your claim return on investment would be different from interest, I guess we won't get to common ground on that one, so let's skip that and talk about the things we might find common ground in. My "claim"?? It's not my claim. It's a definition question. I may paraphrase to make it simpler for both you and myself, notorious NON-economists, but you cannot equate "investment" with "interest". You didn't even take a few minutes to see the difference from my simple 10.000 euro example, did you?

I've coloured your text in red as I reached the maximum number of quote blocks... I see you're not an economist, but I won't hold that against you at all; I am light years away from an economist myself and like you I try to get my head around it. Overall I agree with RoseCodex's response (apart from the BS part, it's just thinking out loud from your side, which wouldn't be BS imo). But your premise is that current economy is a zero-sum game. It isn't. As far as my amateur mind understands state economics: 1 - money is created out of thin air, based on nothing more than "agreements" or "trust" - fiat currency 2 - states get money from 3 sources (1; the printing, 2; loans/bonds = leading to state slavery of the people, 3; taxation = taking money from the people) 3 - the money supply of states is thus endless as THEY are the powers who can make and control the laws, THEY have the guns to enforce them and THEY have the indoctrination to keep the people in line (using the media and education) So, comparing a normal household (with incoming cash from services done (Arbeit) or gains from others (Erbung or Lotteries) and outgoing cash flow; payments) with a state is senseless; we cannot print money and we cannot enforce others to pay back loans we take. (Those numbers aren't just some numbers he made up, but the official numbers he was working with, while he was a secretary of state for the German Ministry of Finance, they only kicked him out after he tried to warn them, Oh, if this guy you bring up as an authority figure to back up claims is/was a politician, I would be VERY cautious with him. Politicians are professional liars. Don't take his "word" that this poor moral soul wanted to warn the system/others and he was the victim of his moral stance... that the German policy of eternal trade surplus would ruin the rest of Europe, which by now we know, it actually did.) No, the greatest country of Europe (and possibly the world), Germany, is destroyed by corrupt ponzi schemes to pay corrupt Goldman Sachs and related crooks (and then in the media it is framed on the "lazy Greeks") and especially by the European Union (and the ECB). Stefan has produced an excellent video: The Truth about the Euro, watch it; it is very well backed up by research; his sources are always there to check them. I bet if you look up the numbers for any other country, you will see the very same zero balance between all savings and all debt. I "bet" that is not the case. There is no zero balance. And savings? Which savings? The state has no savings; it runs on debt. Depending on who puts the numbers together, you might find different values of who has how much, but in the overall total you will see a zero. How is that "zero" created? What numbers are you putting together? I really don't follow you... The fact that everyone wants interest I don't doubt, because if that wasn't true there wouldn't be banks, but exclusively money services like Paypal. In your OP you are mixing up "interest" (generation of money on money due to loans) with "investment". It cannot be true that "everyone wants..." A, B, or X, as all people are different and have different demands. I think you can safely say that many people want investment if they have money. But investment =/= interest. Investment is tangible, interest is shifting numbers. Of course there are people doing something for the fun of it, but nobody invests in a business, if he doesn't expect to get more out of it than he puts in. Why are you so absolutist in your claims? "Nobody" and "everyone" are completely non-sensical terms. People are all different. In general of course most people would want to gain from money they invest. But not everyone and especially not everyone in the same way. Charity is widely spread and has a very low (if any) return on investment. Whether or not the actual gain comes from launching your own business, or lending the money to another person who then launches a business, makes no difference, It does make a difference. Lending money to others is based on trust. Trust can only come with moral, ethical behaviour. You wouldn't lend money to someone who does not comply with paying back the loan, or else it would be useless, self-destructive. Trust is directly related to a free society. Forcing people to do things (or to not do them) makes people hesitant and suspicious. Force is directly the result of the immoral state system we have today. So as RoseCodex well explains; the basis; morality, actually makes this lending system better in a free society than in a society based on violence, like statism is. the fact stands, if it weren't for a return on investment, which is just another term for interest, nobody would launch a business. There are litterally millions of businesses in the world. They all work differently, have different ideas and outcomes. Your statement "return on investment is just another term for interest" is not true. If you work for me and I lend you 10.000 euros to do a specialization training that costs you 1 year, I gain back more when you are a higher valued worker which I can charge my clients for. That does not involve interest. Interest would be; I lend you 10.000 euros and in 1 year time you have to pay me back 11.000 (10% interest). Nothing more, nothing less. Me lending you 10.000 and getting back 10.000 after that year (the same amount I lend you) + a higher skilled employee does NOT involve interest, yet gives me a return on investment. The vast majority of private households bring their money to a bank, because they have only so small amounts, it isn't worth any other form of investment. I don't know about you, but I do not "bring my money to a bank"; my salary and other incoming cash is put into my bank account for safety (people not stealing it from under my mattress) and ease (I can just use my debit card for payments and take small amounts every time from ATMs). The bank then bundles a package and gives it as a loan to a debtor who pays interest on it, out of which the bank takes its fees and forwards a smaller interest to the savers. The banking system is a tad more complex than this. Watch some videos on YouTube about it. If there was no interest paid by anyone and/or if no one needed a loan anymore, banks would have to cover their expenses by charging the savers a fee, which means savers wouldn't bring their money to a bank anymore, but store it at home, where it doesn't cost any and that would kick all banks out of business, because if nobody brings them the money they could lend to debtors, they cannot give any loans to potential debtors, especially if you abolish fiat money they could print. You're running through it and I cannot follow. If there was no interest paid by anyone, it would be harder to get credits as credits are given based on the system of interest, this far I get it and yes, I am struggling with the same question. But see my example of the employee. Money is not purely interest-driven; it is investment-driven mostly (RoseCodex has pointed out that even in the corrupt crony-crooky-"capitalist" system of today 75% of the money is created by investments, not by interest). No matter how small the interst rate, there has to be an interest rate or else banks couldn't exist. A bank is just a place to store money (ideally, it doesn't work like that today of course). Why can a bank not exist like that? You have internet banks who have no office costs and very low other costs and they can have other businesses that can cover those (insurance, investments in real, tangible stuff, etc.). So does your picture of a free society include the abolishion of the banking system, or how do you see banks survive? To say "abolition" or "your picture of a free society" is using utopian trap propaganda. A stateless society is first small, it's not some "blueprint for the whole world", those are false claims done by statists who are afraid to have to behave morally and not violently. IFFF you see banks survive through interest rates charged on loans, you're right back at square one, where all savings and all debt always add up to zero and with the state out of the picture you have to name the group, either private households or businesses that shall become the debtors. No, without fiat currency (fake, printed money based on nothing), without bailouts (governments taking stolen money to prevent bankruptcies; corruption!) and without interest (creating money from money alone, no investments, nothing tangible, nothing real) the loan-debtor relation is much more simple than the currently flawed "system". So going from that to "banks will have to steal money from people who saved money" is a completely ridiculous leap. And directly in contradiction with a free society where just that violent force is not there... In the simple example I gave it DOES however mean that you have to spend your money WISELY. So yes, a free society would punish people who play tricks and games with someone elses money. I would say that's a good thing; now those tricks and games are actually facilitated AND encouraged even (debt is regarded a good thing).

Great, that makes us neighbours. Nobody, not even the very best psychiatrist with an additional degree in neurology can ever claim "to know how other people think", so that's an irrational unscientific, almost religious start. Which force do you think is more efficient and thus dangerous; the one led by Correa or by the Pope? Poppy has no guns and no laws. He only has words (indoctrination). The socialists have all three. And have you ever been called "Satanic" by your friends or extended family? Or how do you know they see you like that? And wouldn't it be time to ostracize them then? If my not less catholic friends of the northern neighbouring country of yours would start giving those signs, to me that would be the signal to ostracize....

Neither am I a lamb, nor are they butchers. So your analogy fails on both sides. Haha, you really believe that your amateur armchair "psychology" about people you do not even want to acquaint with has more value than "hands-on fieldwork, traveling and actually talking to real people in the real world?, eh? And do you realize that anti-theist propaganda is well-established in pro-statist societies? So who's the lamb assisting the butchers now?

Anyone, but a climate "scientist" in particular, who calls carbon dioxide a "pollutant" is insane and does not understand nature. Everybody, not 1 single oxygen-based lifeform excluded, is exhaling CO2 every second of their lives. To call exhaling "pollution" is utter insanity and merely shows a complete lack of understanding of how nature works. Not to mention that mankind is incapable of changing climate on a large scale. On a small scale (microclimate) we do it all the time; urbanization and deforestation/changing the course of surface waters are changing microclimates but that does not mean we have any influence on "global climate". That does not even exist; a coined term by politicians as "global warming" simply cannot exist. I am studying our beautiful planet for many years and System Earth is far far far beyond our reach of change by human hands (or exhausts, for that matter). It's already impossible to burn all the fossil fuel on Earth (recovery factors of oil fields barely reach 45%!) but even if we could, it would not change any climate; nature does simply what it always does; re-equilibrate based on new input.

sharp. Read your own text again and then think about this; The problems you describe are directly related to statism, not religion. I think you have no problems finding agreements here on the forum about the dangers of statism... Secondly, you mix two problems of statism now; - minority-driven leadership - majority-based democratic voting Indeed, both are problems of statism but not interchangeable. Leave statism out of all of this and "religion" just becomes something like taste of music, preference for a certain body type or smoking cigarettes; irrational and at most self-damaging; a horrible thing for left-wing statists but a right in a free society. Thanks for your illustrative post; you exactly underline what I say; fight Statism (useful), not Religion (useless).

Good question Donnadogstooth and I am shocked by the answers given by so-called "freedom lovers"... wow. People who want to infringe their own rational thinking method on others who have other methods; anti-theists disguised as "libertarians". Reading the replies it seems they want an increase in children taken away from parents while in my definition of a free society that number would decrease... My answer would be that as long as you're not damaging your children's health, there's no rational reason to take away your children. Taking away someone else's offspring based on irrationality itself is directly contradicting a rational society. Also the vast majority of religious people are not extremists who close themselves off from rational thinking. It's not necessarily religious but circumcision is a practice that in a free society should have been voluntarily abolished so the question becomes rather irrelevant on that specific topic.

Is anyone being "desillusional" (my atheist and your label) "dangerous"? Not necessarily. She and sooo many other religious people I happen to have encountered in my life posed no threat, no danger to me. Their words were along the lines of "may god bless you", "only god knows why event X happened" or "may the love of god guide you". Those words are not threatening, dangerous or damaging in any way. I may disagree with the premise, as I see Nature as the guiding force (what I like in Stefans presentations as well), but if somebody else replaces that "force" with "god" that doesn't change anything. My comment about statism was more about efficiency. To fight religion in my opinion is a useless fight and a lost cause. It is so deeply rooted in someones personality that it makes no sense to oppose it. Directing our arrows at pseudo-rationality like statism is, is much more efficient and useful. Statism is much more dangerous as it hides behind a non-superstitial mask while it intrinsically is superstitious in its core. I remember a video of Stefan called "apologies to christianity" or something like that (mobile now so sorry for missing the exact words) and there was a lot of value in that. Fighting a rational war (as is what we're doing) on two fronts is less efficient than focusing on just that front that is directly damaging others, thus more dangerous.

I just met with a youth friend of my fiancee, a very catholic Colombian warm-hearted woman. According to some here I should have called her a "nazi" or any other horrible label. Statists are so much more dangerous than religious people. They defend Law, Guns and Indoctrination. Religion only has the latter. So who's more dangerous (both to mankind and to the FDR cause)??

Really Alan, you are normally so optimistic? Trump is a troll; the wheelbarrow for Hillary who cannot enter the White House on her own force. Trump will lose just as George W. Bush "won" in 2004... Anyway, thinking a hypersuccessful entrepreneur like Donald would aspire a chained position like US President is pretty hilarious...

On anarchism/libertarianism: - more exposure - more FDR listeners - and especially more of the eternal optimism rooted in humanitarianism of Stefans convincing talks On a personal level: - 2 happy marriages of my sister and myself (yes, my girlfriend, now fiancee accepted the proposal) - changes for the better and again new experiences and countries A great New Year to you all!

Because a nazi speaks from hate. Hate because I happen to have a jewish name, although I am not jewish. On my proposal I was talking about in the Gold Donator forum which happened yesterday my mother-in-law called upon god to bless me. It's purely coming from good, nothing from bad or hate. Hence the ridiculousness of comparing nazism with religion a priori. So what? Love, taste and preferences are not based on any of those things in general. People are emotional beings, no robots who only base everything on reason, logic or evidence. Like I said; other people may have other experiences. You've outlined the horrors from your childhood in detail and I can only feel sorry for you that you had to experience that... But negative experiences from person A (you) do not cancel out positive or neutral experiences from person B (me). None of them is worth more either; they simply are different and therefore equally valid.

Nazism is directly damaging others. Religion is not. I've been to multiple muslim countries of which two even with sharia law. I was treated very respectfully. And after learning that all this "terror threats" is nothing more than staged psy-ops by CIA and Mossad also that argument is lost. The difference between you and me seems to be that I am traveling the world and talk from first-hand experiences, while you seem to talk on the basis of (faked) "news" reports. By the way; I already live very happily in a country where the vast majority is religious and I am not. Has never been any problem. Don't take your own "news"(=psy-op) based paranoia for factual world views. Open your suitcase, passport and mind and you'll see the world is very different from what they tell you on those damn "news" channels...

Thomasio, interesting post. I miss the point however to jump from historical religious mayhem to people today? Do you believe in collective guilt? Are religious people of today in any way, shape or form responsible for the atrocities committed by a small (!) Elite (and that's where the real problem lies in my eyes) group of psychos who used religion for their power play? I get along with religious people fine. They may believe in afterlives, praying for good causes and bless me using (their) gods. I've never been harmed by anyone who used their religion as a stick. Other people may have different experiences, but strawmanning organized crime (in the name of religion) to normal, ordinary honest people does not seem fair to me at all.

It starts getting ugly in Utrecht, 4th city of The Netherlands.... Dutch city plans to pay all citizens a ‘basic income’, and Greens say it could work in the UK Utrecht takes step towards paying people a salary whether they work or not It’s an idea whose adherents over the centuries have ranged from socialists to libertarians to far-right mavericks. It was first proposed by Thomas Paine in his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, as a system in which at the “age of majority” everyone would receive an equal capital grant, a “basic income” handed over by the state to each and all, no questions asked, to do with what they wanted. It might be thought that, in these austere times, no idea could be more politically toxic: literally, a policy of the state handing over something for nothing. But in Utrecht, one of the largest cities in the Netherlands, and 19 other Dutch municipalities, a tentative step towards realising the dream of many a marginal and disappointed political theorist is being made. The politicians, well aware of a possible backlash, are rather shy of admitting it. “We had to delete mention of basic income from all the documents to get the policy signed off by the council,” confided Lisa Westerveld, a Green councillor for the city of Nijmegen, near the Dutch-German border. “We don’t call it a basic income in Utrecht because people have an idea about it – that it is just free money and people will sit at home and watch TV,” said Heleen de Boer, a Green councillor in that city, which is half an hour south of Amsterdam. Nevertheless, the municipalities are, in the words of de Boer, taking a “small step” towards a basic income for all by allowing small groups of benefit claimants to be paid £660 a month – and keep any earnings they make from work on top of that. Their monthly pay will not be means-tested. They will instead have the security of that cash every month, and the option to decide whether they want to add to that by finding work. The outcomes will be analysed by eminent economist Loek Groot, a professor at the University of Utrecht. A start date for the scheme has yet to be settled – and only benefit claimants involved in the pilots will receive the cash – but there is no doubting the radical intent. The motivation behind the experiment in Utrecht, according to Nienke Horst, a senior policy adviser to the municipality’s Liberal Democrat leadership, is for claimants to avoid the “poverty trap” – the fact that if they earn, they will lose benefits, and potentially be worse off. The idea also hopes to target “revolving door clients” – those who are forced into jobs by the system but repeatedly walk out of them. If given a basic income, the thinking goes, these people might find the time and space to look for long-term employment that suits them. But the logic of basic income, according to people to the left of Horst, leads only one way – to the cash sum becoming a universal right. It would be unthinkable for those on benefits to be earning and receiving more than their counterparts off benefits. Horst admitted: “Some municipalities are very into the basic income thing.” Indeed leftwing councillors in Utrecht believe this is an opportunity to prove to a sceptical public that people don’t just shirk and watch television if they are given a leg-up. “I think we need to have trust in people,” said de Boer. Caroline Lucas, the Green party’s only MP in the House of Commons, agrees. A basic income – the Greens call it a “citizen’s wage” – has long been party policy. It did not make the cut for their manifesto because they couldn’t find a way to fund it. But developments in the Netherlands, and a parallel pilot in Finland, have bolstered Lucas’s belief that this idea’s time has come. The Royal Society of Arts has been examining the feasibility of the idea, as has campaign group Compass. To those who say it is an unaffordable pipedream, Westerveld points out the huge costs that come with the increasinglytough benefits regimes being set up by western states, including policies that make people do community service to justify their handouts. “In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,” Westerveld said, “but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a ‘basic income’.” Horst adds: “If you receive benefits from the government [in Holland] now you have to do something in return. But most municipalities don’t have the people to manage that. We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don’t have the people to see to that. It costs too much.” Lucas says she will seek a parliamentary debate on the policy in the new year, and will ask the government to look into the feasibility of a “basic income” pilot here. “I think in Britain people have quite a puritanical idea of work,” she said. “But this is an urgently needed policy. With increased job insecurity, the idea of everyone working nine to five is outdated. People go in and out of work these days.” “People are increasingly working in what they call the gig economy. The current system is not fit for purpose.” The idea faces a tough political headwind, of course, not least in the Netherlands. Last Tuesday, Johanna von Schaik-Vijfschaft, 41, could be found updating her CV on one of the computers made available to benefits claimants at the Utrecht council building. A cleaner at a local department store, she had been told by council officials to find more work than the 12 hours she currently does. But she will be under even more pressure in a few years when her 19-year-old son turns 21 and leaves her care. Once she has no dependants, she will lose £150 of her £500 monthly benefit payment and come under the remit of the participation laws, legislation recently brought in by the rightwing central government to make benefits claimants work harder for their cash. Von Schaik-Vijfschaft could be ordered to do some community work for the council in return for her benefits, and will face the threat of losing more of her income if her application rate for jobs falls away. And if Von Schaik-Vijfschaft were to dress inappropriately for interviews or, worse still, miss an appointment, she will lose all her benefits for a month. The country’s second city, Rotterdam, has even trialled a “work first” system, where aspiring benefits claimants must put on an orange jacket and spend two months clearing rubbish before they are handed any payments. “Rules, always the rules,” von Schaik-Vijfschaft said. “But of course I want to work. I want to be busy – we all do.” If the experiment can prove that, maybe Tom Paine’s idea will have its day yet. ■ A “basic income”, first proposed by Thomas Paine is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without any means test or requirement to work ■ It is paid irrespective of any income from other sources. ■ It is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job. ■ Advocates say it will allow people to genuinely choose what sort of employment they take, and to retrain when they wish. ■ Its proponents also claim that a basic income scheme is one of the most simple benefits models, and will reduce all the bureaucracy surrounding the welfare state, making it less complex and much cheaper to administer. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/26/dutch-city-utrecht-basic-income-uk-greens

Atheism = faith? Atheism "arises"? That would mean that religiosity is the base state and atheism the diversion of that. It's the other way around; the base state is nature, it's humans who invented religion.

Armitage, I gave you an upvote for your post. -107 seems very unfair considering your open ways of thinking. If you remember Stefans video about "arguments don't count" it's actually a very good question you ask. Because if rationality would be enough, people with some rational thinking (still most people are capable of that at any time or another) would be much easier convinced. So the "belief" question I think is justified. Coming to your "believe" point, I would like to express it that I am a statheist, or a state-atheist. Where in the past (and in some countries that is still the case) the Church (of any religion) was the leading force, in postmodern Western societies the State has taken over this role. While the Church only has indoctrination as weapon (and in some countries law), the State has all 3 weapons in their hands: "indoctrination, weapons and law". You could add banking as the driving force of course. I simply do not believe in the idea that a State has control over those factors. So where do I believe in? In the possibility that we can live, thrive and strive without that power.

It is the climate alarmists who do not understand their own planet. Way stronger than mankind will ever be and any antropogenic effect on a non-existent global climate is utter arrogance. CO2 is part of the Earth and will not change any climate. The position of the Earth w.r.t. the Sun and his activity are far greater factors of importance. Stop this madness. It's foolish.

One of the main perpetrators of course. The more people see the space lies presented to them, the more the perpetrators have to shift their budget allocations and thus viciously violent tax robbery of the people to "less dangerous" areas. Less dangerous for the brainwashed souls, that is... The CO2 scam I've confidently debunked before. The space hoax is not less simple to explain: - the only force that keeps us on Earth is gravity - the only force that keeps the Moon in tidal orbit with the Earth is gravity - the only force that keeps Moon and Earth in orbit with the Sun is gravity So the only mechanism of transport to escape from that force is an amazingly huge antigravity propulsion mechanism. Even when escaping Earths gravity, we would be in graviational fields of the Moon and the amazingly strong Sun. Current technology does not include antigravity, which makes space travel at this moment outright impossible.

Great effective post, pretzelogik. Unbelievable that just libertarians/anarchists/freethinking critical people keep defending a governmental organization stealing billions of dollars from taxpayers without remorse for their CGI work. I guess most people just want it to be true. Just like a 7 year old who is disappointed Santa doesn't exist but keeps believing it, because of the presents and the nice story. And for those who foolishly believe this is an actual photo (collage) of Saturn, look at the shadow created by the planet on her own rings. That is an impossible shadow we see there...