virtually any other country? Read on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

During the Second World War, unlike some other allies of Nazi Germany and most German-occupied countries, apart from Denmark and Finland, Bulgaria managed to save its entire 48,000-strong Jewish population from deportation to concentration camps, with Dimitar Peshev, leaders of the Bulgarian Church, Tsar Boris, and ordinary citizens all playing a crucial role in preventing such deportations. The story of the Bulgarian Jews during the War has been told in "Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews"[7] by Michael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli historian, politician and former Knesset member who was born in Bulgaria.

I always viewed it this way: IF there is a significant number of intelligent life forms out there, then more likely than not we are "common", i.e. likely to be "in the middle of the distribution". Therefore I am a [skeptical] carbon jingoist. Also, it seems that intelligence requires certain level of complexity of the physical carrier and not many chemical elements can give rise to vast numbers of complex compounds - the mighty carbon beats them all. Due to historical reasons in my language we call the carbon "vaeglerod" which means "giving birth to coal". I always thought it should be called "zivorod" , i.e. "giving birth to life"...

Wipe them out! All of them...

[OK, I know this is from the prequels that never got made, sorry!]

Is that you, mister Buttel/Tuttle?

Explain to me why spying on, say, Angela Merkel or the entire Copenhagen or G20 summits is related to US national security and maybe I'll see your point.

Because when your only aim is "winning", whatever the fuck that means, there are no friends; everyone is a potential enemy. When you have decided to maintain global dominance, everyone is an enemy, including you own citizens.

One of the most dangerous conditions known to medicine - prolonged lack of proper sleep increases the risks of developing depression and psychosis apart from the other detrimental effects [which are many].

Sleep deprivation is a method of torture that leads eventually to insanity.

But don't worry, fellow Americans - your insanity is spreading fast around the world. Our brave leaders, here in Europe, work around the clock [with apparent lack of sleep - see symptoms above] to implement every detrimental [to humans and society] system and method disguised as "increased efficiency" and "cutting costs".

And here too, the new generation is brainwashed to accept all this as normal. "Work harder and we will make it" - yhea, right. Work harder under artificial, manipulative and downright abusive financial system which can delete your life [together with your hard work] in a second? Work harder when the rules of the game are not what they are professed to be? Work harder so that 0.1% of the wealth you actually produced trickles down to your ever shrinking middle class budget? Work harder and we will increase your children tuition fees by 100%. Work harder and will keep on increasing the costs of living [energy, housing, food, water, education, health care] with a rate that outpaces the increase in your income by factor of 2 or more?

I don't mind working and I do like to do many things. I love to feel appreciated and I love the thought that I am contributing in my own way to my life and the whole of humanity. But I do not accept to be a hamster in wheel who has to run ever faster [shortening my life in the process] in order to stand still [or go backwards as it happens in the last decade].

People, we have to stop this insanity and the first step is to realize that we are manipulated into "camps" so that we keep on fighting each other. Reading the discussions about such topics I notice that at least half of the population has bought into the scam and will defend the system with their lives. I do not see any way how this can be changed. I have spent years trying to convince a handful of people to look a bit further than the next meal without substantial success. And I am bloody good when it comes to talking and convincing people.

Any ideas?

Why is your comment not at +5 Insightful is beyond understanding....

Signed: an ex-teacher with huge passion for the job and very similar experiences as yours

The whole discussion is very interesting; I still want to try to understand why the crime rates are going down [very admirable development to be sure].

It seems to me that [in the US] there is negligible effort to address the socioeconomic reasons for crime. What we are usually told by scientists about the relation between crime and society is in the lines of more equality, supremacy of the law, honest business relations, good education, health care and social nets etc. does often contradict the very fundamentals of US society. So, meaningful change in society is unlikely reason for the decreased crime no matter how complicated those relations could be. Add to that the lobbing by the prison industry [if half of what I read in respectable source is true, well, I am speechless] which apparently unable to cope with decreased demand makes it so that lesser and lesser crimes are given prison time and new crimes are invented all the time, and it seems to me that the climate as a whole encourages crime [the media's role is a whole huge load of Dingo's kidneys, that I am too revolted to talk about].

But crime decreases.

My personal last straw to grasp for is biochemistry. Could it be as fundamental as that? I have heard stated few times that decrease in pollution might be a contributor. Lead gets mentioned often. Certainly during the period of wild use of lead the US must have had the most vehicles per capita on the planet. The wealthiest and most-industrialized country at the time. Maybe someone has more knowledge to share. Anyway, that is where I'd look for an explanation. And if the socioeconomic reasons are too complex to understand or too difficult to measure looking at chemistry might be the only option. If nothing else, so we could rule it out [or not].

I say we EMP the whole site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!

I played the role of the village idiot in my team for almost 2 years. It was due to an unique and very unpleasant set of circumstances [outside work, mostly family and health stuff] that totally destroyed my motivation, concentration and even my will to live. Now this might be somewhat different than what the fine article is talking about, as the condition was temporary and everyone knew I could perform above expectation even bordering on excellent.

Nevertheless, only my direct supervisor was aware of all the facts of my case and he never shared them with the MT [because I asked him not to]. Thus for the MT I was a case of lost motivation, reasons unknown. Despite that, considerable effort was executed both on team level as well on MT level to help me out.

More or less the action was as follows:

- Instead of doing long-term project with uncertain result they put me on important but short-term project so I could see the positive effect of my work immediately and boost my self-confidence.
- Every time I did something good, an MT member would drop by the office to congratulate me in front of everyone
- I never heard a single nasty word about me; no-one spoke about my performance and very importantly they all avoided in making me feel patronized. In line of this I did get negative evaluation for one of those years and was punished financially. I wanted this as I was afraid that if I get a "hand-out" I might loose some of the motivation to get better again.
- They send me working part-time to 4 different teams and also contractors outside the company - meeting and working with many new people on very diverse projects really helped getting back on my feet.
- When they saw the recovery progressing really nicely they threw me on the most urgent project in the whole company where I contributed substantially, gained more "fame" than ever before and was rewarded financially offsetting the previous punishment and then adding some to my career growth.

I count all this experience as a resounding success and I have told them many times how grateful I am.
This is Europe and more importantly the Netherlands. As I have stated here before, there is a bunch of neocon-like politicians in NL [alas, they have the power ATM] that are just itching to destroy the management system of the country, more commonly known as the "the polder model".

They claim the model is not profitable but what they mean is that it is not profitable for their corporate friends. Society as whole wins BIG TIME by using that model and it is CHEAPER (again, if you look at the whole country, not a single company or industry). What would be the profit for society if they kicked me out and I spiraled in misery and depression? Would I ever recover? Would I ever get another job? Could it be that I'd turn into complete burden for society, incapable of supporting myself. In such desperation people turn to drugs and suicide becomes a viable way out.

  Ohh yhea, I just noticed that I imply in the beginning of the last paragraph that the polder model might not be so profitable if you look at specific business. That is false - the company also wins since if I had not recovered they'd have to spend tens of thousands finding and educating a replacement for me [I did the math, our solution was cheaper indeed than hiring another person]. So, apparently the polder model is not profitable for a very small group of people within companies who probably get their bonuses based on very short-term performance so that the long-term negative effects of fucking your employees is not visible at the moment.

Obvious troll is obvious but still....

Q: What have Africans done for humanity?
A: Everything, since as far as we know Homo Sapiens evolved there.

Your question reminds me the hilarious "What the Romans did for us" gag...

Too bloody.

The hypocrisy is mind boggling. On one hand it should not be too disturbing for the observers, on the other nitrogen is "too easy" as a poster mentioned above [I for one am for the nitrogen; if I ever want to kill myself I'd use it].

The injection is particularly evil IMO. Just imagine being suddenly awake during surgery and noone notices the monitors [for the sake of argument] - you can't move, you can't scream. I cannot imagine worst than this. No matter how badly it hurts, being able to squirm and scream helps. Total madness!

The world is in the hands of the worst part of humanity. We build our system this way......

The humans are parasites only under the current paradigm not per se. You seem to be under the delusion that it is "our way or the highway" situation. False dichotomy it is called. All docile, ignorant, sociopathic and moronic people use this "argument"

Small addendum: anecdotal but still - I know many non-religious parents that came to regret sending their kids to religious schools. I personally never understood their optimism that somehow their kids would escape the indoctrination.....