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Scapegoating has been a feature of Politics for as long as anyone can remember. They often serve to distract the public from the actual issue at hand, while disproportionately harming the Scapegoats themselves. As simple ways to deal with complex problems they are a convenient distraction for the corrupt and incompetent. There have been many examples throughout history of scapegoats, with often disastrous results.

What are some examples of modern day Scapegoats and what issues are they being used to obscure or distract from?

At 11/22/14 12:05 PM, NewgroundsMike wrote:

At 11/22/14 11:57 AM, Ericho wrote:

At 11/22/14 11:01 AM, NewgroundsMike wrote: I wish for that drink called "Angel's Blood".

Granted, but it's LITERAL Angel's Blood. Of course, if you're in to that sort of thing...

I wish I passed my oral comps.

Granted, you sucked dick.

I wish for no more twists of words.

Granted, now everyone speaks in binary 01001001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 00111111....

I wish for a talking duck-moose hybrid.

We, the jury, find the defendant gillty of terrible fish puns!

At 11/22/14 02:09 PM, ChickenChips wrote: whats ur routine
arrive high as a nger pie
carry overweight luggage without a cart
hold up the line through security
buy some smart water
get on plane
make music on DS
draw on the ds
rub my palms and hair
listen to music loudly
turn off the tv thing
turn on my geiger counter at 50k feet with sound enabled
read my ebook reader
give mean looks to people watching me
get black coffee as the complimentary drink and refuse the snacks
praise allah
take a piss and go sky divin

You are obviously not a very good Muslim. Praise Allah should me a much more frequent part of your routine.

At 11/22/14 01:07 PM, NewgroundsMike wrote:

At 11/22/14 01:05 PM, VJF wrote: Don't you think its a little better than the obsession over gorillas put forth a few pages ago?

What's the point of obsessions anyway?

Aren't they a principle feature of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?

At 11/22/14 02:59 PM, TheGamechanger wrote:

At 11/22/14 09:59 AM, NewgroundsMike wrote:
How perverted is this place?

It's more perverted than you.

Does ketchup on ice cream sound delicious?

That sounds awful. I would never eat that, unless I was being force fed it.

Would you prefer a blue sun, a red sun, or two suns?

At 11/22/14 11:19 AM, NewgroundsMike wrote:

At 11/22/14 11:15 AM, Cyberdevil wrote: Would you rather a hell and heaven is scientifically proven to exist, or that there is nothing after life at all?

Hell and heaven proven to exist. Hell sounds like kind of a fun place.

Would you rather do a wall of death at a funeral or at a wedding in church?

A wedding seems slightly less disrespectful. Also the people getting married might actually request it, but if you're dead there's no way you could do that.

Would you rather inhabit the body of a famous athlete or a famous musician for a day?

At 11/21/14 11:51 AM, glazov123 wrote:

At 11/20/14 09:30 PM, Maltos wrote:
I wish the bible involved less incest

Granted. But then, it loses a lot of readers who turned out to be incest story fans and nothing else.

I wish Minecraft had Chuck Norris mob in it.

Granted, but the Chuck Norris mob insta-kills everyone on the server whenever it appears. People get sick of playing against an effectively invincible mob and leave the game in droves. Minecraft is forced to apply for bankruptcy and then eventually go completely under due to crashing profits and mounting debt.

I wish I could temporarily turn off my emotional barometer when I had to do sustained amounts of very dull but necessary work.

At 11/19/14 05:34 AM, NewgroundsMike wrote:
A death ray gun.

Would you rather teach me how to blank post or how to ninja-reply to someone?

I rather teach you how to ninja-reply to someone, since I'm far more proficient at that?

Would you rather have severe third degree burns over your entire body or lose all your fingers and toes due to frostbite?

At 11/21/14 10:51 PM, ecwrulesbad wrote:
Are you referring to Bear Grylls?

Aren't Bears smart enough not to drink their own pee?

At 11/22/14 04:05 AM, Cyberdevil wrote:

At 11/21/14 07:25 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: 2014 will be over soon, and will see the 2015 list soon.

There's still time to take over this one, swiftly rise through the rankings and pick a spot with the true BBS elite of the year! :O

The elite huh? I guess I could split up the list into levels. I was thinking of doing it earlier actually, it just seemed like a big pain.

I was thinking:

3,000+ Posts would be Platinum
2,000-3,000 Posts would be Gold
1,000 - 2,000 Posts would be Silver
Below 1,000 Posts would be Bronze

What do you guys think?

Also, I'll be getting out the list sometime tomorrow, so get ready!

I read an article recently titled Positive Propaganda, which briefly describes how propaganda can be used for good or ill. Although we usually associate Propaganda with extremely negative examples, like Nazi Germany and modern day North Korea it is very much a value neutral term. Nearly every nation, government, and political movement has used propaganda in one form or another. Even those who oppose organized government as a whole will often use propaganda to buttress their cause or beliefs.

Propaganda, when it is referred to in the modern era is often used to described "the other" or a perceived enemy. The United States and Russia often claim that the other is using propaganda to manipulate its citizenry in purely negative terms. There are many other examples as well, possibly thousands in a given week. Given the sorry state of news media and the deeply held, but rarely examined beliefs of News reporters, it could be said that a fair amount of News media has aspects of propaganda as well. You can find the same sort of examples in business, academia, religion, philosophy, and a host of other disciplines. Even in professions like Hard Science and Mathematics, whose value premise is to get to the truth of the matter, will often use propaganda like messages to defend the value of their work.

According to Merriam Webster dictionary Propaganda is,

"ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc."

The full definition can be found here.

So, have you ever used Propaganda in your daily life or are you entirely honest and transparent about all things all the time? Do you think Propaganda can be used to positive purpose or that it should never be used at all? Is there something inherent in human nature that makes or more susceptible to propaganda and more able to create it ourselves?

The people of the world have a problem with their priorities. More people have cell phones than toilets to the tune of 1.5 billion people, and this is hardly a new problem. On the one hand, it really shows to what extent the telecommunications and computing revolutions have reached all corners of the globe, but is this really so positive a thing.

Inadequate access to safe sanitation facilities has a host of bad effects, including greater incidence of illnesses, death, and sexual assault.

Some people have tried to make providing the world with adequate sanitation facilities a priority, with a middling track record of success.

While it is a more complicated problem then simply building more toilets then cell towers and one very much wrapped up in water security. It's also worth noting that lack to sanitation has real yearly economic consequences and that outbreaks of Ebola and other illnesses are often linked to poor sanitation and water security.

The development of the Tar Sands is leading to an extremely large increase in CO2 emissions in Canada. Far larger then previously reported and in all likelihood far larger then currently estimated. Canada, under the Harper government, turned its back on the Kyoto Protocol in 2011 and now has given up on the idea of achieving an emissions targets.

Do you think the Canadian government should be punished for turning its back on tackling the issue, given its global consequences? What sort of responsibilities to developed countries like Canada have concerning climate change as compared to developing countries? Do you think that Canada is mortgaging the future for present benefits?

The World Bank periodically publishes a blacklist of corrupt companies that are barred from doing business with the institution. Canada has been taking the top spot for most companies included on the list for some time. Just take a look for yourself.

Do you think Canada should more to reduce corruption in its business community? Could Canada's reputation be damaged by being thought of as a country with a corrupt business community? Could this effect its economy long term? Will firms and nations internationally be more wary about signing deals with Canadian multinationals?

At 11/20/14 01:24 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: If you had complete control over immigration policy in the US, what would you do? Open borders? Closed borders? More immigration or less immigration? More immigration but longer path to citizenship?

Hmmmm...my ideal immigration policy. Every immigrant has to pay me $1,000 every year for the rest of their life. If they miss a payment they get thrown out. The more the merrier.

So, A Merry Friggin' Christmas is out on iTunes. It looks like it has a good cast and its one of Robin Williams last films. I think I'll wait until it winds up in theaters, television or streaming, since $15 to buy it on itunes seems a bit steep. If it were in theaters I would see it though?

Title was supposed to be Foreign Fighters, in case you were confused about the choice of words*

Here's a infographic and two graphs that show where the most foreign fighters come from by country along with who has the highest proportion of foreign fighters based on their overall population. You might be surprised by the results. Here I will break it down as best I can.

The largest suppliers of fighters by country (300+ totals)

1.) Saudi Arabia (3000+)
2.) Tunisia (3000+)
3.) Morocco (1500)
4.) Turkey (1000)
5.) France (930)
6.) Jordan (900)
7.) Lebanon (890)
8.) Libya (556)
9.) UK (500-2000)*
10.) Russia (493)
11.) Germany (400+)
12.) Sweden (400)
13.) Egypt (358)
14.) Bosnia and Herzegovina (348)
15.) Pakistan (330)
16.) United States (300+)
17.) Belgium (300)

The Largest Suppliers of Fighters by country as a Proportion of Population (at least 8 per million)

1.) Jordan (315)
2.) Tunisia (280)
3.) Saudi Arabia (107)
4.) Bosnia and Herzegovina (92)
5.) Kosovo (83)
6.) Albania (46)
7.) Sweden (42)
8.) Palestinian Territories (28)
9.) Belgium (27)
10.) Kuwait (23)
11.) Lebanon (18)
12.) Denmark (15)
13.) France (14)
14.) UK (12)
15.) Bahrain (9)
16.) Libya (9)
17.) Netherlands (9)
18.) Norway (8)
19.) Kazakhstan (8)

Now, there are problems with this data, as there is for all data sets. For one, not all countries are covered, so there may very well be nations that are supplying large numbers of fighters for whom there are no records. Additionally, so of the estimates are extremely wide, which makes a big difference in judging the scale of the problem. However, you can still pull out plenty of interesting information. Here are some of my observations:

-Overall European participation tends to be most concentrated in wealthy Western European countries, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
-The greatest European participation as a proportion of population comes in two categories
1.) Nations that were once part of Yugoslavia
2.) Wealthy countries in Western Europe that were under US influence during the Cold War

-The UK has a really poor idea of how many of its citizens are fighting there right now.
-In Europe, Sweden and Belgium have outsized participation rates per population

What do you guys think about the data? Would you like to make any predictions about the participation of countries that were not included? What did you find most surprising in the data? What actions would you suggest that countries with outsize participation take to reduce their footprint in the conflict?

Well, here's the map update if you can call it that. Small changes, but no real consolidation. What a mess. I wonder if the citizenry just wished a strongman would just come in and kill all the local militias. At least then there would be some consistency month to month.

Welcome to the Private Police Force - A Bit of Fry and Laurie - BBC

The Great Irish Potato Famine could also have been considered a genocide under Article 2c, and Article 3e and in a more limited way article 3b, though I hardly think the UK government considers it as such (at least not officially).

At 11/3/14 10:15 PM, LIAB wrote: for all those aussies out there, what do you think about Mr Abott (hint, I dont like him)

I could care less about him personally, though that does have an impact on how other countries view us, but I'm not a big supporters of his policies. His opposition to much action toward climate change along with investment in supporting industries is troubling, though not surprising. His support for the dredging near the Great Barrier Reef for expansion of coal port shipments was super screwed up along with his removal of other environmental protections. The "coal is good for humanity" quote was screwed up too.

His opposition to abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, and same sex marriage is not entirely surprising given his political affiliation and the fact that he had been studying to become a priest. While I don't necessarily disagree with everything he has to say on the subject I don't think that restricting people's options is a good way to convince people to start families and have more kids. Policies that support families will do that if anything will. It feels like the kind of policies a nanny state would be interested in. Also, the stem cell research stuff is short sighted, since it is another way of keeping our scientists behind other nations. I also feel like the euthanasia arguments are overstated and he might feel differently if he actually had to deal with critically ill people the way doctors have to.

I seriously question his or any politicians ability to effect the economy in the short term, so those claims fall on deaf ears. He does seem to be very interested in cutting taxes to Mining and other large industries that supported him not surprisingly, although I seriously doubt it will make much of a dent in the overall growth rate of the larger economy in the long term. There's also something to be said of the fact that Mining resources are finite and we might as well get as much value out of them as possible. Also, the world is slowly but surely moving away from coal so that export market is not infinite. It would be more worthwhile if we saved those tax savings for research, tech, and other emerging industries that are the future of the economy.

He also seems hellbent on cutting social programs to students, the elderly, families, the sick, the disabled, the arts, science, broadcasting, public transport, and pretty much everything else that helps the average Australian. Surprise, surprise...the budget still hasn't passed. I suppose he wants us to all become Miners, since they seem to be one of the only industries that benefit from this budget through a tax cut. Of course Mining isn't large enough an industry to support more than a small fraction of the population and it is becoming increasingly mechanized. Thanks for your brave efforts at hollowing out the economy Abbott. It's not like we need to invest in other sectors to stay competitive or anything... Also, who cares if we deregulate all industries and they get bought up by Chinese investors. I see no problem with that in terms of national security (sarcasm).

Also his presence on the international stage is middling at best. His performance at the G20 made us look bad and although his relationships with Asian leaders seem to be largely positive he has made a number of embarrassing gaffs their too. It's not a great thing to be known as a stupid negotiator in international politics. I would think his advisers could at least coach him for such encounters, but I guess I'm wrong. At least some of those free trade agreements with the Asian powers will be positive for our industry. After all, they need our resources and we need their finished goods.

Well, at least the anti-terrorism operation in September was successful. I'm not too keen on the deregulation of the financial industry either, even though that's my industry. The kind of actions he is taking are pretty similar to the same sort of actions the US took for its own financial industry prior to the 2008 financial collapse. I'm not confident we can do much better given the same incentives. As for being pro indigenous affairs, well that hasn't amounted to much yet. I suppose there is still time, but I'm not confident in the least based on planned cuts to indigenous programs.

As for immigration, Abbott doesn't seem to have made any huge changes to previous policies. We are now turning back more asylum seekers in boats and there are plans to issue more temporary work visas. That seems a fairly reasonable mix to me so far. While I don't love the idea of turning back asylum seekers that legitimately fear returning to their country we can't accept everyone either. The nation has limited arable land, limited water resources, and a limited capacity to absorb new workers in any given year. It also takes time to integrate people into our society. When border controls were looser boat arrivals skyrocketed and that simply wasn't sustainable. We have reasonable immigration policies and if we aren't willing to enforce them why should anyone else.

So yeah, I'm on balance not happy. There are a few infrastructure programs, a parental leave program, and a few other programs that look promising if they are implemented as designed. Unfortunately those are coupled with things like the abolition of the Freedom of information commission and other programs mentioned above. On balance I don't like his policies and I'm not happy. I wouldn't bet on Abbott sticking around as Prime Minister for too long.

At 11/18/14 06:04 AM, Voltage wrote:

At 11/18/14 06:00 AM, ecwrulesbad wrote:

At 11/18/14 05:19 AM, SentForMe wrote:
Sure are; would wouldn't be cool about the largest land mammal that is also extremely intelligent and has a kickass trunk?

Can I ride your elephant?

is that a sex joke?

How could it not be; its not like I own a zoo or anything?

At 11/18/14 03:19 AM, Immortal19 wrote:

At 11/18/14 01:48 AM, VJF wrote: Is a gorilla really the picture of masculine beauty?

Better question; elephants are cool right?

Sure are; would wouldn't be cool about the largest land mammal that is also extremely intelligent and has a kickass trunk?

Genocide is a relatively new term, first coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. He defined Genocide as follows.

At 11/17/44 07:12 PM, Raphael_Lemkin wrote:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.

On January 14th, 1951 the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. It defines Genocide as follows according to Article 2 and Article 3 of the convention.

Article 2:
Defines genocide as...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article 3:

Defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

You can check out the full text here.

Of course, acceptance of these terms or any other terms for Genocide have varied by country and neither the UN nor any other authority has expressed either the desire or the will to prosecute on genocide in any more than a handful of circumstances. The ICC has arguably had the most success in this regard, though even they had tried concerning a bare handful of nations.

There is also remains a question of efficacy. Their are more fugitives then their are individuals imprisoned attached to these cases. There have also been multiple questions of political favoritism as the cases concern mostly small, politically weak nations in Africa, Asia, and South America. Additionally the ICC has almost no international jurisdiction and largely depends on the cooperation of the nations of accused individuals or other third party nations. Thus it would be hard to imagine a successful case ever being brought against large, politically powerful nations like the G-20, or the EU.

The other problem is that the definition of genocide is significantly broad and vague that it has been used to describe all manner of crimes, perhaps inappropriately, and thus has served to devalue the term over time. Personally I struggle with the term as well, since words matter and you want to be as accurate as you can.

Sure, the Holocaust was a Genocide, since the term literally originated from it, but what about other mass murder events.

The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution led to the death of tens of millions, but intent and the group targeted is harder to pin down. Peasants are not a national, ethnical, racial or religious group and neither were anti government groups. It does not particularly well under war crimes, since they by and large did not occur during a war. In terms of crimes against humanity, the only examples it really seems to fall under are inhuman acts in the first example and persecution in the second. The same could be said of Stalin's periodic purges of his citizenry, which also numbered in the tens of millions.

Untold millions have died in North Korea since its inception due to starvation due to food shortages and inhuman treatment in North Korea's many prison camps, yet there does not appear any obvious intent to a specific group insofar as the genocide convention is concerned, since it does not political groups. It again seems to fall under the fairly vague definition of crimes against humanity, except in very limited and poorly documented circumstances.

The rule of King Leopold over what became known as the Belgian Congo led to the deaths of as many as 10 million people and/or 20% of the population of the territory at the time. However, despite the level of atrocity performed in pursuit of raw materials the fact that any national, ethnical, racial or religious group was specifically targeted is not obvious. This again seems to be an example, at least according to the UN and ICC, of a crime against humanity.

These are some of the worst crimes of the 20th century and yet none of them seem to be obvious examples of genocide. If you go back farther in time you will find many other examples as well. While some have described them as examples of genocide there has hardly been any broad agreement on the term and extremely limited action has been taken toward any sort of resolution or restitution of these crimes in any case. Then again, the same can be said of more obvious examples of genocide, like: the Holodomor, the Cambodian Genocide, The Rwandan Genocide, and the Armenian Genocide.

Perhaps it doesn't matter what we define as a genocide and what we do not. In any case, clearer definitions do not seem to have lead to any broad action to prevent genocide or other crimes against humanity as they appear to be just as pervasive in the modern era as they were in years past. While there is a part of me that hopes that better information and clearer definitions might encourage nations to act against genocide the evidence doesn't appear to support that assertion. Additionally, so many nations have been involved in genocide or crimes against humanity that it would be hard to not action by those nations as a sort of hypocrisy, which matters when it comes to mass action.

TL;DR: Genocide is complicated. the definitions are vague and not widely accepted. Despite tighter definitions and institutions set up to prevent them genocide appears to be just as pervasive in the modern era as it was in the past. The term has also continues to be used as a political cudgel, which devalues the term and the institutions set up to prevent it. Action against politically or economically strong nations that were involved in genocide in the past also appears to be difficult or impossible, which calls into question the hypocrisy of acting against weaker nations.

I wish I could come up with feasible way to prevent genocide and similar crimes in the modern era, but I haven't been able to come up with any good ideas. How do you define genocide and if you had the power, what would you do to prevent it?

To be fair, just about any culture that has been around for as long enough is bound to have done some pretty screwed up stuff at some point, either on their own or part of a larger entity. We all have blood on our hands if you get far enough and present behavior does not erase the sins of the past.

I spelled Political wrong in the title. Thanks guys, for not calling me out on that!

At 11/17/14 05:52 PM, Sheizenhammer wrote:

At 11/17/14 05:23 PM, Scarface wrote:

At 11/17/14 05:07 PM, aListers wrote: Don't we have an award for this?

Yeah, the BBS awards should be starting in a month or so.

We ditched the awards, after the shitfest the last 2 or 3 have turned into. Every time it's the same old attention-whoring and pathetic drama. Honestly, you can just re-read some of the old ones if you want; it'd be exactly the same as any new one, just with different names on the posts.

I'm pretty sure they are still going to be done with year, but there's one way to find out for sure.

I summon the mod! @SCTE3 what is your will?

On the face of it this seems like not a terrible idea, but it seriously opens up the site to a lawsuit if something goes wrong. I'm sure 99.999% of you guys are just fine, but what about the 1 in 100,000 of you who might be a murderer or rapist. The easier it is to find people the greater the chance there is you might find the wrong person. Better to do this on another site like BrentheMan suggested. Presumably a site that is better set up to deal with that kind of issue.

At 11/17/14 11:39 PM, TheGamechanger wrote: Where the heck is my Death Ray?! Come ON, science, WORK!!

This is pretty close if you are willing and able to plunk down how ever many tens of millions of dollars it would cost.

Also, a big enough parabolic dish could do some pretty significant damage. This one is as big as a person, so if you made one as big as a house you could probably burst a person into flames pretty quickly.

I'm also pretty sure if you walked into this thing while it was on you would melt.

So they kind of exist, but they're really too expensive and/or unwieldy to be useful to anyone but the military and really specialized scientific research. Sorry, wait another 10 years and it might be a different story.