[socrates1fan]

People need to learn to live with eachother or we will end up killing eachother period. It doesn't matter if your black or white, christian or muslim, gay or straight.
We are all humans and I fear the sake of groups already under attack as problems increase. Ignorance is easy, and blaming another group for a problem you brought upon yourself is easy. It doesn't require thinking.

[socrates1fan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nutmeg', 'L')iberals are just so compassionate and wonderful! When this happens to your grandchildren, they'll ignore it and pat themselves on the back even more, unless you stop them! You're next, YT!

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('socrates1fan', 'P')eople need to learn to live with eachother or we will end up killing eachother period.
It doesn't matter if your black or white, christian or muslim, gay or straight.
We are all humans and I fear the sake of groups already under attack as problems increase.
Ignorance is easy, and blaming another group for a problem you brought upon yourself is easy.
It doesn't require thinking.

[socrates1fan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', '[')i]"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?...It’s just not right. It’s not right. It’s not, it’s not going to change anything. We’ll, we’ll get our justice....Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to work it out" ~Rodney King

[nutmeg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('socrates1fan', 't')hose r what I call 'useless liberals' a true social liberal is one who stands for the rights of all.
Equality applies to all groups, revenge is dangerous, and society needs the cooperation of different groups in order to survive.

[socrates1fan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nutmeg', 'T')hat's nice that you think a "true social liberal" should care about white victims of Communism, but your "true social liberal" doesn't exist at all in reality. Reality is what I described. Your words are just fantasyland theorizing.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'S')en. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America." Thats all I'm sayin on the issue.

[hironegro]

What the Expletive deleted. is it with Americans and the word liberal!?

[Ayoob]

I'm kind of looking forward to the time when it's too expensive to put police in gasoline powered cars, when the electrical grid is too unstable to run surveillance cameras, and when we're all truly free to do as we choose.

Then, our true natures will bear strange fruit. Cue Henry V act III, scene I.

[Ayoob]

...And wrap it up with Henry V, act III, scene III.

[MrBill]

Sorry, Cur, it was fun while it lasted, but the hate mongers are now in control of this thread. Armed with statistics no less. I am out of here. Cheers.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'S')orry, Cur, it was fun while it lasted, but the hate mongers are now in control of this thread. Armed with statistics no less. I am out of here. Cheers.

[wisconsin_cur]

Blame the foreigners!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ritish households are having their "pockets picked" by foreign energy firms to subsidise customers in their own countries, the Government’s new consumer champion has said.

In his first comments as Gordon Brown’s consumer advocate, Ed Mayo claimed a lack of competition in the European energy markets meant millions of British families were being ripped off. An EDF bill is arranged next to an electricity meter in Paris. Critics argue that because European firms control the gas coming into Britain, domestic energy firms cannot keep prices low

Britain’s energy bills have risen more quickly than on the Continent, where governments have manipulated markets to protect customers. More than 11 million households have their power supplied by foreign-owned companies.

Mr Mayo said households were suffering because foreign companies — often owned by the state — faced no competition at home. "Closed and protectionist European energy markets end up picking the pockets of consumers in this country," he said.

[wisconsin_cur]

It wasn't until I saw this I did not think of what we were witnessing as an example of renewed nationalism... It still only may or may not apply... but if we are seeing a re-nationalization of "key sectors." It can't be too long before globalism starts to suffer as we seek to protect those now taxpayer interests from global competition??

I might be grasping... the finance sector is not a strong suit of mine.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Russia's government will loan the country's three biggest banks, OAO Sberbank, VTB Group and OAO Gazprombank, as much as 1.13 trillion rubles ($44 billion) for at least three months to boost liquidity.

``These are market-making banks capable of insuring the liquidity of the banking system,'' the Finance Ministry said in a statement today. The government and central bank will take more measures to improve liquidity this week, the ministry said.

State-run Sberbank can borrow as much as 754 billion rubles, VTB has a limit of 268.5 billion rubles and Gazprombank can get 103.9 billion rubles, the ministry said. About 400 billion rubles more of unspent budget funds is available to other banks.

[wisconsin_cur]

Link$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')ozens of immigrants have rioted after six African men were shot dead in a southern Italian town. Rocks were thrown at police, windows smashed and cars overturned as rioters called for justice on Friday, in the town of Castelvolturno, northwest of Naples.

The rioters taunted police as they marched for 10 km along a state highway. The riots continued into Friday evening. They said that the police were racist for accusing the victims of the shootings of being drug traffickers.

One protestor said: "We want justice. It's not true that our murdered friends sold drugs or were mobsters." Police had said that they suspected the shootings late on Thursday to be a fallout from a drug-related turf war. The six men were killed outside a tailor's shop by six assailants who fired 130 bullets, allegedly using Kalashnikov rifles and smaller weapons.

[wisconsin_cur]

Globalism is dying

Germany Considers national shield for financial sector

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ERLIN (AP) - Germany's finance minister said Monday he is considering creating a "shield" that would protect the country's entire financial sector, arguing it would not be possible to continue to address troubled financial institutions on a case by case basis.
However, Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck made clear that Germany does not envision making its move as part of a U.S.-style bailout plan for all of Europe. He said he and Chancellor Angela Merkel agree that the German government must remain the sole "master of the process."

Steinbrueck spoke after the government on Sunday put together a new 50 billion euros ($69 billion) rescue package for distressed lender Hypo Real Estate AG. Steinbrueck's ministry reached a deal with private banks late Sunday to infuse an additional line of credit worth up to 15 billion euros ($21 billion).

"We must now try—beyond a single solution at Hypo Real Estate—to stretch a shield across Germany as a whole, so we do not stagger from one case to the next," Steinbrueck said on Deutschlandfunk radio.

"I am very conscious of the fact that, at some point, we won't be able to move forward with individual solutions," he told reporters later Monday. Steinbrueck said the aim was to have a "plan B" available, but declined to provide details.

Steinbrueck was unyielding in his opposition to a Europe-wide shield.

"The chancellor and I reject a European shield because we as Germans do not want to pay into a big pot where we do not have control and do not know where German money might be used," he said in a separate interview with WDR 2 radio.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')quot;We all divide the world into 'us' and 'them,' " said psychologist Ervin Staub, author of "The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence." "Some people are like 'us' because of nationality, religion, race, etc. Those that are not like 'us' are 'them.' "

"Group identity intensifies during difficult times," Staub said. Jean-Bosco Bizimana, a Rwandan Hutu, slaughtered his Tutsi neighbors 14 years ago. Leaders of the genocide exploited the history of hatred between the Hutus and Tutsis to pit them against each other. But before the genocide, the two groups had overcome their hostility to live peacefully together.

"We were manipulated," Bizimana said. "The government pushed us to kill. Before that, we intermarried, we helped each other in daily life and we shared everything. We ourselves can't even believe what happened."

Bizimana's wife said her husband, "would go around with the mob, and to show them he was part of it, he would kill." Perpetrators don't want to be seen as weak, and in a mob mentality, individual guilt seems to disappear.

"People will do almost anything in a group and will do anything not to be rejected," said psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford and famous for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which divided student volunteers into "prisoners" and "guards" and showed how easily people could be induced to commit sadistic acts.

"They give up a sense of personal accountability and diffuse responsibility to the leader."

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Thirteen years after the United States brokered the Dayton peace agreement to end the ferocious ethnic war in the former Yugoslavia, fears are mounting that Bosnia, poor and divided, is again teetering toward crisis.

On the surface, this haunted capital, its ancient mosques and Orthodox churches still pocked by mortar fire, appears to be enjoying a renaissance. Young professionals throng to stylish cafes and gleaming new shopping malls while the muezzin heralds the morning prayer. The ghosts of Srebrenica linger — recalling the worst massacre in Europe since World War II — but Sarajevans prefer to talk about President-elect Barack Obama or the global financial crisis.

Yet for the first time in years, talk of the prospect of another war is creeping into conversations across the ethnic divide in Bosnia, a former Yugoslav republic that the Dayton agreement divided into two entities, a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian Republic.

The power-sharing agreement between former foes has always been tense. Now, however, the uneasy peace has been complicated by Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, which many here worry could prompt the Serbian Republic to follow suit, tipping the region into a conflict that could fast turn deadly.

“It’s time to pay attention to Bosnia again, if we don’t want things to get nasty very quickly,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the Clinton administration official who brokered the Dayton accord, and Paddy Ashdown, formerly the West’s top diplomat in Bosnia, warned recently in an open letter published in several newspapers. “By now, the entire world knows the price of that.”

[Tanada]

Bad economic times promote this sort of chest beating tribalism, not only do the average people feel insecure but the powers that be can get more authority over them by offering greater security via lower freedom thresholds.

Also note that this region has been in a tug of war internationally for at least 2000 years, first the Greeks and Romans, then the East Roman vs the West Romans, then the Muslims vs the Christians, then Russia vs Turkey. There is a reason WW I was ignited in Sarejevo, the place has been contested for all of European history. Other than beautiful moutain vista's I never have figured out WHY it has been contested forever, what does it have that outsiders want bad enough to kill for? It is not the kind of territory you want to use to haul goods, especially as it borders on water which gives you much easier options. It does not have huge mineral deposits that people have been taking out of the mountains in mass quantities. It has mountains and forests, and lots of warefare.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'O')ther than beautiful moutain vista's I never have figured out WHY it has been contested forever, what does it have that outsiders want bad enough to kill for?