I meet 1000's of people from all over the world every month. The more of them i meet, the more i am convinced the world needs a good, solid apocolypse.
 
All i see is slaves walking the earth. This scares me almost as much as human greed and stupidity.
 
     

Spending trillions of dollars into deeper and deeper debt how is that guiding us in the right direction,  we should of taken oil in Iraq to pay for the war reparations,  but no with Obama now he's like i dont care imma spend even more than bush,  now hes gotten us into deeper crap,  and this endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan against enemies that are made up.  Theres no Taliban,  or Al Qaeda,  Hussein wasnt even connected to the 9/11 attack they killed em before he even got the chance to speak out.

I tried to post on this when I got up today, but I must not have had my coffee and didn't hit the "post" button....
 
As soon as I saw all the tag lines on the guy's video, I scarcely needed to watch the thing.    Yes, the world has problems.   When has this not been the case?    
For the vast majority of what we call history, the bulk of the population has lived in absolute grinding poverty and drudgery in agricultural societies.
Only the "1%" has had their butt in the butter... The kings and royalty and upper levels of the military and so forth.
Now, at least in the "first world", the vast majority of people are capable of lifespans that make those of our ancestors look puny indeed, and living in health and productivity through the vast majority of those greatly-extended lifespans.
We have plenty of food, technology that our ancestors could not even have imagined, and we know more about ourselved and the universe than our ancestors ever dreamed possible.
 
I always wonder what the folks talking about how terrible life is have in mind.   Some sort of Libertarian/Anarchist utopia, where everyone is "free" to do whatever they like?
Not in this universe.
Societies have to have rules in order to function.   For much of human history, those making the rules have held their populations in conditions of tyranny.   It's much less so today.  Not that we are devoid of tin-pot dictators, but they are considerably fewer and many of the remaining ones are trembling in their boots.

Quote from Little on Jun 17^th, 2012, 4:41pm:

We don't have as much debt as there was during and after WW2, and that was one of the highest points of the US economy.
Quote from Little on Jun 17^th, 2012, 4:41pm:

Invade a country and then bleed it dry during the time when it should be rebuilding itself? That's a good way to lose what few international friends we have left.
Quote from Little on Jun 17^th, 2012, 4:41pm:

He's only returned us to the same debt levels as there were before Clinton. In that sense, he's actually spent just as much as Bush Sr.
Quote from Little on Jun 17^th, 2012, 4:41pm:

Not really. If Obama loses the reelection he'll be known for 2 things in the US, championing universal healthcare and overturning "don't as don't tell." The healthcare law has a fairly good chance of being deemed unconstitutional in it's present form (I LOVE how the unpopular bits are set to be phased in slowly so that people won't notice them at first... ) and ditching DADT didn't change much. It was already illegal to descriminate based on sexual orientation outside of the military. Everything else was outside if Obama's hands. I think he'll be noted as being remarkably similar to Bush despite his rhetoric.
Quote from Little on Jun 17^th, 2012, 4:41pm:

Iraq's over and done, unfortunately. I think the invasion was a bad idea, but doing a half assed job and leaving before anything gets accomplished is not the way to go. Our work in Iraq will be over when the next generation of leaders of the country look back on the school that the American soldiers built for them. We need to help them rebuild or the kids of this generation will turn out like the kids in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: angry, radical, and trained in RPG maintenance. Operation Iraqi Freedom is a repeat of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and Operation Cyclone with the US playing the part of the invader and the savior like a high school drama class that doesn't have enough actors.
Quote from Little on Jun 17^th, 2012, 4:41pm:

Why do you say that? The Taliban was once officially recognized by 3 different countries as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was started because of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The local tribes didn't have the skill, manpower, or training necessary to fight off the invading communists. The US helped by training and funding Afghans to fight and smuggled weapons through Pakistan. Saudi Arabia helped by training and funding Saudis, Pakistani, Yemenites, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, and Emirati jihadists. Osama bin Laden was one Saudi trained jihadist who used his military training after the Soviet union left to set up a militant Islamist (fundementalist theocratic) group which was called al Qaeda or "the basis" in order to influence the new Afghan government and also help muslims being oppressed in other countries. There were many foreign factions in Afghanistan fighting over whose interpretation of Islam was the best to use as the foundation for a government, not just al Qaeda. A democratic government was set up, but a long civil war instigated by these foreign factions. In the end, one local faction -the Taliban- rebelled and conquered most of Afghanistan. It's all there in the history books.
Quote from Little on Jun 17^th, 2012, 4:41pm:

Iraq was invaded because it was suspected of having "weapons of mass destruction" that put the US and the UK in danger, because Hussein made statements immediately after 9/11 which supported the terrorist attacks and made it seem like he had funded them, and because Hussein committed human rights violations and was wanted in international criminal courts. Turns out that Hussein had only committed the human rights violations. The other two were posturing and bluffs to make Iraq's enemies scared. Hussein didn't consider that America's reaction to his bluffing would be to attack and try to take away his weapons rather than to negotiate with him to not use them or attack us again. I refuse to feel sorry that a dictator's bluffing and posturing backfired, though.

This video fundamentally doesn't understand history.  I really hate when conspiracy nuts tell lies about history (usually to some pieter bruegel the elder paintings or some really inane video feed) and then try to draw conclusions from their lies.  
 
Specifically, Ancient Egypt didn't use direct compulsion.  Aside from the bible, there is almost no evidence of slavery existing in Ancient Egypt, and there is a lot of doubt in the historical community as to whether or not the Israelites were ever slaves within Egypt.  In fact, most Egyptologists are tending to agree these days that they were not.  The builders of the pyramids and great monuments of Egypt were not slaves, but well-paid laborers who received food, healthcare, lots and lots of beer, and other "in-kind" forms of compensation as coinage was not well-developed in the Egyptian state at the time.
 
The claim that taxes came after Rome is ridiculous.  The idea that people couldn't choose their own occupations until the very late middle ages is ridiculous.  The idea of feudalism as a coherent policy is ridiculous.  Applying it to the early middle ages (pre-1000ad) is ridiculous.  Etc, etc.
 
The whole "people are sheep" idea is very attractive to egocentric high-schoolers, but it's bullshit.  People aren't sheep.  They have a very annoying habit of being different.  Because of culture, mental wiring, or a combination thereof, people tend to be different in similar ways sometimes, but that's very different from being sheep.  If you drive a sheep off a cliff, others might follow it due to herd mentality.  If you drive a human being off a cliff, even Snooki from Jersey Shore is going to stop and tell you what a jerk you are.
 
I think what irritates me the most about the "people are sheep" statement is the sneering self-aggrandizement that comes along with it.  The statement is never just "people are sheep."  It always carries with it the not-so-subtle implication that "people are sheep, but not me, I'm a radical free-thinker who has stumbled onto this tired and cliched idea after watching a life-changing 13 minute video on youtube.  Look at how amazingly different I am."
 
I suppose the absurdist in me should find it terribly amusing, but I just don't.  Maybe it's the early hour.

Quote from curious_aardvark on Jun 18^th, 2012, 6:57am:

 
Great words of wisdom.

I've been involved with "skeptical inquiry" for a long time... I've been a member of the James Randi forum for about 10 years, with close to 10,000 posts....
And a longtime reader of related literature as well.
 
Anytime I see anything related to the "Illuminati", "New World Order", secret societies, and world-wide conspiracies it's hard to keep from laughing.   We do seem to love these stories..  And people get so heavily invested in them as to beggar belief.  
Essentially, no evidence against is ever good enough, it's all just part of the conspiracy.   Even when the conspiracy would necessarily have become so extensive that nearly everyone but the believer would have to be involved.
And that is what we call paranoia.