Recent content by Dutch_labrat

You see the same shit here in The Netherlands. A fun game is pointing out that all booms in Dutch economy started with an influx of refugees starting with Spanish Jews. It is of course simple rhetoric of the populist nationalists. Fear is a strong emotion that makes people easier to control.

I must disagree. There still exists a huge leftist christian movement around liberation theology. Quite a few South American catholic priests are close to Marxist. Heard the new pope lately? Local christian democratic movements in South America, Asia and Africa (spot a trend?) can also be quite...

Basically the argument is that if you define 'higher Power' in such a way that it is a thing that exists you believe in it. Nature exists, the universe exists, things behave in predictable ways, believing that is not really a profound thing.

Well, that is my point brilliantly illustrated by Bomb#20. Thanks for that :D

Oh get off it. What you fear is that a black person in power would treat you as bad as you would treat a black person if you were in power. It is pure protection of your own wish to discriminate. Of course a non-white racist in power could abuse their power to discriminate whites. But... if that...

You are missing an obvious one: The father's heirs. When you have a paternal society it becomes essential for those males in power to ensure their status and goods are inherited by their sons. Without DNA testing how can you ever be sure who your real son is? By controlling the women you have...

I think the thread got a bit derailed so I will start with the top again. I agree with you. What we call "laws of nature" are models, most of them mathematical. I will go a step further than that: In a materialistic philosophy it can be no other way. Explanation infers reason but there is no...

Here are some books that can really help you think about international politics from Terry Prachett's Discworld series Interesting Times explains about the futility of trying to change a society through revolution or outward forces. Jingo explains how nationalism and group-identity are used by...

Power is not needed for something to be racist but it is needed to make racism harmful. Imagine majority group A enslaves minority group B (*). If a person in group B thinks that everybody in group A is stupid, lazy, ignorant, smelly, childish etc.. this has serious consequences because this...

Hell yeah. I have did a complete medical lab tech education: hematological, clinical chemistry, immunology. The last phase before my diploma was an 6 month internship at a university hospital during which I witnessed the introduction of modern automated analysers...yay \0/ I never worked there >:(

To be honest I think many religions do that. Most creation stories depict human creation as separate from animals. The main difference I can see is with souls. The abrahamic religions are very clear that only humans are ensouled or at least that their souls are very different. Shamanistic and...

I have another reading: Laws are just ink on paper, those in power can make them do as they want. Go find the DRR constitution, another great example on how little those smears of ink mean. In the US the constitution is deified, the writers are portrayed as mythical "founding fathers". This...

I think everybody is racist, and sexist, ableist and quite a few more-ists. To function in the modern urban interconnected world you need some methods to classify all the people you meet and our cultures and traditions are full of such modes of thought. I think your level of racism though...

So, Marx and Engels wrote their Communist manifest in 1840: An extremely well known and hotly debated political manifest. After 70 years debate and polemics about this manifest it was Lenin who first turned the page back and noticed the title. Really?? Of course not, by the time Lenin was born...

Bolded for your convenience. Socialism is recognizing that a society holds property, goods and interests in common and that the state represents the people in managing these. It is not necessarily a type of government but another element in governance. A state can have a free market with...