my true question on this is kinda simple, yet seen as complex. What you are speaking, is it truth or what the media has told you?

I mean of course it has been interpreted through some means of media, but I try and inform myself through non-mainstream sources. And this story was portrayed on both platforms. So, I believe this to be true.

What do you think about the state of the world and the state of the Middle East?

wow great question/response.(and also apologize for non use of grammar). I heard a topic or video that hit me hard the other day, referring to the middle east and possibly refferring to almost anything pertaining to this. If you look at any american movie or story it always depicts a certain idealogical value. Alamo/Braveheart/Avatar...... It is always about the un-understood/minority fighting against the majority. Now dont get me wrong, I am a total non liberal right wing conservative. But the difference with me and the others is maybe a simple ideal. I believe that the idea of socialism and liberalism and whatever the term is nowadays is correct idea. But i am also smart enough to understand as a human society we are not ready and able to use that idea

I truly respect your passion for uncovering the truth. We live in an age where information is in an abundance, but with that, critical thinking becomes the primary means of interpretation.

I by no means assert that I have all the answer. I truly do not. I have come to this forum to question other like minded people to help me further my knowledge. I do not know if that is selfish intent or not, but I want to know the truth of the word. I believe everyone has something to offer if you integrate it with an open mind.

I also believe that though in the past there were many admirable individuals who defended of freedoms ( I have relatives who fought in the Alamo). But, with that being said we live in a new world and I think critical thinking and unity under one cause is what will change the course of history.

No matter the race, religion, or nationality, we are humans; we are a species an we need to unite and set aside our man-made differences in order to confront the powers that explicitly an implicitly control our lives.

saw038 I love everything you have said. Do you honestly think as a human race that we have in essence evolved to a point of where we can not be racist or have the notion of hate?

This is a tough question, while my optimistic side wants to believe that the world has far surpassed these primitive tenacities.

The police violence in the United States seems to paint a different story; furthermore, I grew up in a small rural country town. I saw first hand the racial discrimination between classes.

I think there is a class that has much and a class that has little. If I could have all the power I needed, I would like to bridge the gap.

I simply don't understand how the U.S. which is $19 trillion dollars of debt can recently give Israel $38 billion dollars. I do not understand how.

In regards to race, I think there are many divisions among humans, religion, race, culture, nationality, sex and so forth. All of these cause conflicts because each party wants the other to conform to their ideology...when in reality, people can coexist with differing ideologies.

Maybe I'm a foolish optimist but I truly believe that if we broke down the man made divisions, we could see that we are one species and unite under that premise.

I ramble but I think this to be important.

SAW would you mind this question? Hillary or Trump? and define your answer

This is a difficult question. I disagree with Hillary because she committed perjury and jeopardized national security through her email use. Moreover, I truly believe she has some form of health issue, whether it be minor or severe, I do not know; but, it is a factor. She has lied under oath and continually lies until she is called on it.

Conversely, Trump says whatever is in his best interest. He will lie and contradict himself with no problem. I believe he seeks money and power (as if those two things could be separate). He says and does what his voters want to hear. He cultivates and exacerbates fear to serve his political platform.

Gary Johnson is a candidate, but he will not win, nor any independent party.

I don't like Hillary because I think she is corrupt and in the back pocket of wall street an big money.

However, I do not like Trump because he attacks religious groups, he talks about race in callous manner. He will flip flop any way that behooves him.

I wish it weren't between these two, and I hope something may change that, but in the realm of reality, I truly do not know who to vote for.

No, there is nothing that is different than anything else in history. — saw038

This seems contradictory. Wars are rife in history.

Who believes that we are on the verge of a massive paradigm shift? — saw038

I don't know whether we are on the verge of a major paradigm shift or not, and we might not know it until it has actually shifted. I don't think the conflicts in the Middle East are unusual. Unfortunate, but not unusual.

Are we on the verge of World War 3? — saw038

What makes it likely that we are on the verge of WWIII is the fact that Russia, US, China, Pakistan, India, France, UK, Israel (presumably) and NK all have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to at least some targets (like South Korea or Japan for NK). A lot of the risk is in the arsenals of Russia and the US. True, we reduced the number of bombs available (largely because we both had more than we needed) but the nuclear-missile subs are patrolling the oceans, the missile silos are ready to launch.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has their doomsday clock currently set at 3 minutes to Midnight -- the moment of doom. A few years ago it was at 6 minutes before Midnight, The End.

Naturally nobody knows at this moment how a nuclear war would begin. My guess is that Pakistan or Israel might launch an attack. Either a massive counter-attack would happen, a rapidly escalating counterattack would take place, or (least likely) the exchange would stop.

On a planet that is already experiencing global climate change, even a fairly limited nuclear war could escalate the process. Massive fires, social disorganization, abruptly shifting priorities, and so on would likely lead to a sudden increase in carbon loading of the atmosphere.

We would be totally screwed in yet more ways.

Serious?? Climate change?? The planet has and will undergo these changes. It is such the nature of an ever evolving thing. I do not have any proof) beleive that climate change wiill have anything to do with our societal destruction. We will almost definetely kill ourselves with nuclear weapons though

Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?

How did we get where we are as a country? It was built on that alone, meaning power hungry cocky assholes. IE the Rockafellas/Vanderbuilts/Morgans/Carnegies and many others of the same. — kenhinds

That's a very good question, but the answer is complicated.

First, the country was built on the backs of two despised groups: white trash and black slaves. From the very beginning, (1620 and earlier, even) the English ruling class loathed their poor white English people, and thought that the shipping as many of them to the colonies would be a way of improving them. It wasn't that they thought that North America was paradise: they didn't. The colonial masters thought of the continent as an unimproved waste land, and that it was a good place to use waste people.

Over time, the descendants of the colonial masters became the founding fathers. They didn't like poor people either, like poor white Americans. Their preferred type was obsessively hard working, thrifty, an economically ambitious climber, an accumulator of land, farm animals, etc. The type they preferred was fairly abundant, and became the real "middle class" -- not the top notch elite, but the professionals, businessmen, large farmers, etc.

Then there were the slaves. Black slaves became the largest single type of asset in the country, outweighing the value of land, buildings, and machinery. They were chattel: meaning they were property, without rights, without dignity. They were in the same class as farm animals. You could beat a horse without penalty, and you could whip a slave to death without penalty. The Civil War was not the sort of liberation of black people that some think it was. Poor--now free--blacks were even more loathed than poor whites. Well, maybe not -- hard to determine who was at the bottom of the inverted aristocracy of loathsome people.

But one thing was crystal clear: blacks were not going to rise. They were going to be kept on the bottom of the social pyramid by whoever much violence it took to keep them there. And they were, from 1865 to 1965, more or less.

As for white trash, there was never any intent on the part of the American ruling class to allow American white trash to rise too much either. Rise some, yes. Rise a lot, no. Of course: Some poor white trash became rich white trash, and if that happened far enough back, one could eventually pass one's self off as high quality. Maybe even become ruling class.

So, we have the country run in the interests of the small ruling class--whose interests tend to be supported by the much larger middle -- professional, entrepreneurial, academic -- class.

Most white trash never developed a sense of being an exploited, oppressed group. They were sold the bill of goods that everybody was going to get rich, but was just currently out of cash. Going to be rich but broke lasts generations.

So white trash are racist, quite often. White trash need the theory of racial superiority to explain how they are actually better than black trash, cuz in the dark at the bottom of the heap everybody looks pretty much the same. [My background is solidly white trash. I'm a WASP -- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but my parents were poor and I never made much money. Too stupid and trashy to know how.]

Yes, change is the only constant. The climate will change. What is significant about THIS climate warming (or changing) is the speed at which it is happening. Normally losing or gaining a few degrees of average surface temperature takes thousands of years. We're getting noticeably warmer by the decade.

It has taken us about 200 years of burning stored up carbon (from coal and oil) that was removed from the atmosphere about 150,000,000 years ago or so (I'd have to look up the dates for the Carboniferous layer of geology). What was unique in the Carboniferous period was that the wood produced at that time did not rot -- the organisms which are good at breaking down lignin hadn't evolved yet. So the wood pilled up and eventually was buried -- permanently (until recently) reducing carbon in circulation. Trees that die now rot, and give up their carbon back to the air, or they are turned into something before rotting.

Yes, but there have only been two would wars, so sense I am talking about WWIII, which would contain nuclear weapons, I separate from the other wars in history.

Just because two wars have been given the official designation 'World' doesn't mean that they are so in fact. One could just as easily argue that there have been no world wars given that there were just as many if not more non-combatants as combatants. Or that there have been tens if not hundreds of them as great armies under the likes of Alexander, the Romans, and the Mongols swept across vast areas of the world. On the whole I think I'd go for just one that began with history millennia ago and is still rolling on today.

That being true I personally think that nuclear war actually grows less likely every day. If anyone was going to use nuclear weapons again there have been many, many opportunities since 1945 to do so with reasonable justification. With the growing risk of instant destruction as the weapons themselves have gotten more powerful and the ever decreasing tolerance of civilian casualties in hostilities it would be literally madness to step over that line.

Maybe I'm a foolish optimist but I truly believe that if we broke down the man made divisions, we could see that we are one species and unite under that premise. — saw038

I hope to see this at some point. Maybe the internet will help.

Nuclear war will almost certainly not begin with a considered, thoughtful analysis of the international situation by the central leadership, supplemented by experts in think tanks. Rather, a nuclear war will more likely begin by some country, like Pakistan, losing command and control structure under the assault of insurgents. The insurgents, being fanatics, aren't going to hesitate to resort to nukes if their perceived enemy (India, for example) is seen as a heathen threat.

Pakistan attacks India. India retaliates. Maybe the Israel decides to get rid of threats. It attacks 2 countries, india attacks Pakistan. China or Russia decides to attack the USA, and then the curtain falls.

Someone's been watching too many post-apocalyptic movies!

On a day-to-day basis I'm not much worried about a nuclear apocalypse, though post-apocalypse fiction is a favorite genre, if it's well done. It's the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that set the doomsday clock at 3 minutes before midnight, not I. An even more likely cause of a nuclear war (they note) is misinterpretation of signals, telemetry as well as human words and actions.

It's hotting up in Aleppo now, this means that The Russians are getting irrefutably involved in a genocide, I hope the reaction around the world is not to incendiary.

Syria and the Middle East is a proxy war between the east and the west. It is a mess! Check out these maps showing the different factions and occupied regions:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27838034

Yes I know the extent of the chaos. I wouldn't stress the proxy war to much though. It might be going on in some level within the respective armies of Russia and the U.S. But their administrations are not in that game.

Anyway I am more concerned about the carnage in Allepo at the moment, because there is a large trapped population. Allepo is(was) the largest city in Syria, so if the supply lines are cut there may be mass suffering of the civilian population. I heard a Syrian in Allepo on the radio this morning claiming that there is heavy cluster bombing going on in some neighbourhoods. Specifically designed to kill people hiding in buildings.

The present situation has similarities to the Cold War, but in all respects it isn't as during the Cold War. Both sides aren't on the alert of a nuclear strike from the other side (although the actual doctrines especially of the Russians haven't changed). Then during the Cold War on several occasion US and Soviet troops were shooting each other and engaged in combat, even if it wasn't called a war (best example is the Korean War, were the Soviet Air Force clashed with the Americans in a full blown aerial war...which naturally both sides kept a secret).

Hence talk of an imminent WW3 is a bit too dramatic. Yet it is obvious that especially in Europe the security situation has deteriorated a lot.