Except for an elite few on both sides, I don't think anybody has benefited-- but its for the elite few of course that things get done.

And the Haitians I'm sure are much worse off-- which isn't saying too much since Haiti is already the poorest country in the Americas.

We're having a big inquiry into the iraq war atm in the uk, which is a joke since it's fairly clear that:
1) the government decided to go to war
2) they realised it was pretty much illegal under international law the uk was signed up to
3) so they invented some reasons and lied to the public, but all within the margin of political deniability (which is a shamefully wide margin)
but that it's hard to expect an ex-civil servant to find that the government did anything wrong, and anyway, even supposing they did tell us what we already know, what are we then going to do with it? Prosecute the government for war crimes?

And anyway, Blair has started this whole post-hoc justification of the war saying that even though he argued for the war based on weapons that didn't exist and did so without securing the un backing that he said he would get, he would do the same (i.e. make up, plagiarise, misrepresent and fabricate the evidence required in order to justify starting a war that remains highly devisive amongst the electorate he is supposed to serve) again based on the idea that saddam was so evil that getting rid of him is justifiable, which seems to me to be so shallow and ignorant a justification that it barely merits consideration except to say that, if so why aren't we liberating zimbabwe, north korea and half a dozen other places?

Dustin, while watching a documentary on body language (history channel iirc) it occured to me that you would probably be interested in understanding body language and facial expressions etc. because it could confirm/deny some of your conspiracy talk. Ever concidered this angle?

I'm tempted to study this in more detail and look at filmed statements about the moon landing etc in slow motion :P

well I'd definitely be interested in learning about that sort of stuff

but not for its applications in conspiracy theory, where believe it or not my views are actually formed by putting things together and logical thinking

One doesn't exclude the other, was just thinking about it because they did analyze Blair's speech after Diana died.

but surely it would represent another thing you could put together.

I have read conflicting things about body language (specifically wrt detecting liars). Some people give interesting things to look for - as much what people say as how they say it which correspond with my experience, whereas others seem to suggest it's much more of a crapshoot.

I've read two Ekman books. I think he's concidered the godfather of facial expression based lie detection or smth.
He's fairly academic in his work and not hyping it up at all and I certainly think it's quite reliable if done correctly. He does emphasize that you always have to concider context/circumstance etc and that you always want to look for a cluster of clues and not just mere one off "soulreads".

He also repeats that making mistakes is really easy, specifically he identifies two isses that he names the "Brokaw law" and "Othello problem". The former being a failure to take into account the "base line" of the subject in question (from an anecdote that Tom Brokaw told him he always suspects people who are evasive and passive+convulted in their workding and thus he'd falsely concider people who tend to talk convulted all the time as suspicios). The latter is simply the observation that the act of being interrogated/closely watched etc. will change demeanor as well (you could for example identify fear in the subject but it's not the fear of being outed but rather the fear of not being belive while innocent etc.)

The rest of the body language, I'm not sure about/have done little resarch

lol Chavez now closed a bunch of TV stations including the chilean channel, dusting do you still support that clown?

please tell me what voting for obama has to do with one's opinion of the filibuster and obstructionism

so anyone who isn't a pure anarchocapitalist is now a communist. words officially have no meaning. relativism wins. i officially declare clowntable to be a marmoset, because he is not an elephant and by my definition, anything that is not an elephant is a marmoset.

on a topical note, i'm quite curious to hear opinions people have on the recent citizens united scotus decision

i looked it up. sounds like the supreme court said it's ok to air a documentary. groundbreaking stuff.

it's a bit more than that:

MADEUS TOWN HOW THE **** ARE YOU

you were my 2nd round draft pick fwiw

this is doubletalk bull**** for speech, right?

i'm sorry, but your bold boils down to exactly what amp said

just because its related to politics and elections doesn't make freedom of speech...less...free...?

i mean, its not like news "opinion" shows aren't allowed to be aired 30-60 days before elections. radio hosts don't shut down 60 days prior. newspapers?

come on

the quote is straight off wikipedia, i have not voiced my opinion on it yet. i brought up the issue because it's been fairly contentious across political blogs of all stripes, and doesn't always result in the reaction you'd expect. so i was curious to see what people here thought.

i'm pr okay

and i saw, i'm honored

now im gonna catch up on this thread tonight. havent looked at it weeks

but seeing madtown's name on the homepage gave me goosebumps (how gay am i?)

That's the sort of thing that gets Canadians all riled up. We telling people what they can't say, and it's even better if it's around elections. I'm pretty sure those sorts of laws are still on the books here.

+1

+1, +1, +1, +1, +1, +1

glad I could contribute to the thread.

for now, yes

madtown,

I support the decision. This may seem quite contradictory given that I'm saying I still support after he takes tv stations off the air-- and it is

Dustin,

I heard on the radio this afternoon that Chavez believes that the U.S. caused the Haiti earthquake with a top secret weapon.

What do you think?

True/False?

hi mark

what people are saying was used isn't exactly so secret. Its called HAARP. I don't really know the science behind it, but it involves sending incredibly amount of energy into the ionosphere, and that energy somehow gets directed back down to earth

Here is part 1 of documentary on HAARP called Holes in Heaven.
I haven't actually watched it but I will right now, but somebody who I respect in politics just posted it....

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/JEF401A.html
This I did read though and it discusses Tesla and I thought it was informative

I do believe that if the U.S. had the ability to create earthquakes. then they would do so.

Whether or not they do have that ability I don't know, but I think they probably do. And whether or not it was used in Haiti I have nfi, obviously.