It gets worse. Not sure how far down the rabbit hole we want to go.

Years ago I started going by the old line, 'follow the money.' What I learned after much research nearly made my skull vent steam like a goddamn volcano.

Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports... another diamond in the coal mine. Every year every state submits a public financial accounting of all their activities. CAFR for short. They are required and are easily looked up by the discerning general public. Every fiscal year BILLIONS of tax dollars go to private enterprise investments made by public officials. Rainy day accounts, venture capital, real estate, you name it. Any private citizen using public money for private profit would probably be looking at doing hard time for capital fraud. But we give politicians the power of the purse and they literally turn our tax dollars into liquid cash accounts for their own greedy purposes. And the next year they come screaming for new tax raises to pay teachers and keep the roads paved. Why do we even bother asking where the money went? They told us where it went! The lie has become the truth.

Yet another reason not to have a global government. Even at the local level shit rolls uphill and buys itself some ETF funds using our money. If we're going to have a global government based on current government activities then we must be realistic about it and elect a senior official from Goldman Sachs as the world leader. How's that sound?

So you are for Australia opening its borders for all immigrants? Odd, I thought you wanted to bomb all incoming boats with asylum seekers in them.

Illegal immigrants you moron. You're aware right of how many [legal] immigrants Australia takes in per year? I'll guarantee you it it's more than Finland.

Would you prefer to have some Russian illegal immigrants in Finland, perhaps they can bring their tanks with them?

Wait, what happened to not be restricted to national divisions? There would be no Australia or Finland or Russia or Syria anymore, just one big family of people and a world government. How do you figure there would be still borders between nations, if there were no national divisions?


When talking about immigration, it is good to make a distinction between asylum seekers and people coming with a work visa. You don't get any extra credit from me for granting more work visas than e.g. Finland, because each country gives work visas only to those people they see as profitable to the target country. That's why things like age, level of education and in which area it is, whether you have the workplace already agreed etc. affect the decision process (I know Australia is very strict with those; I know someone who worked in Australia (he has an university degree)). So Australia imports more medical doctors than Finland, good for you.

And the comparison is invalid anyway because in the EU the member state gives a visa to the whole Schengen area, not just one country; so should the comparison rather be the whole of EU vs Australia? Furthermore, absolute numbers vs per capita, look it up...

So, this again. Hm. Funny how it always boils down to people who don't know things claiming that since their claims aren't falsifiable, they're true.

States of emergency in the USA are declared when there's an emergency. Things like natural disasters, or man-made ones. The great thing about them is they also go away. We don't live in a constant police state - we live in a state with constant policing. There's an important difference, there; the greatest of those is that you don't have a federal curfew (AFAIK there aren't any state curfews either but I could have missed out, I suppose) or, say, documentation checks (there's a STATE that's been doing documentation checks, counter to federal guidance, but that's not a strong argument for The Man keeping us down).
Most countries have a network of intelligence - we've been made very aware recently of hoe far-reaching they are. But most European countries have been finding out that it's not just the USA paying attention; it's their own governments as well. And it seems that those governments have to spy on each other to stay abreast of what's happening in other people's backyards. That's not a unified conspiracy - that's how governments work. In fact, that most people now know the name of the National Security Agency ("affectionately" called No Such Agency back in the 80s and 90s), and are aware of which TLAs are most involved in intelligence gathering, is a demonstration of how much relative transparency there is in this country compared to the over-the-top regimes you use as a reference point.
Controlling education is actually in the best interests of everyone using the education system. You know what you get when you don't control it? You get the University of Phoenix, cranking out tens of thousands of worthless degrees a year, mostly aimed at those who don't have the luxury of sitting down in a class for six hours a day and then studying four to six more hours. You get diploma mills for both high school and college equivalency, unaccredited and handing out stamped paper for anyone who wants to send them some money and get a piece of paper that's worth less than ink it was printed with.
Right now, without a detailed background check or even a request for a license, I can go buy a pump-action, 12ga shotgun that chambers magnum cartridges, and keep it in my home or car. If the police see it, they can't even stop me for more than a verification that I haven't modified it, because there are no licensing requirements for shotguns here. If that's disarmament, it's a very obtuse way of getting it done. There has been a recent push against the unchecked availability of firearms in the USA; but that's not disarmament. Ask the Japanese about disarmament - they've got plenty of people old enough to remember it. Unless you're a felon, mentally disturbed, or live in D.C., it's very easy to get guns in the USA. And if your complaint is that there should be no responsibilities to go along with rights, then you've got your work cut out for you, since even the first amendment, one so important it came before "you can protect your own life," acknowledges that there are responsibilities that go with exercise of the right to free speech.
Fluoridation. Whew. We've done this before, here. I'll sum it up for you, since the link you provided gave no sources I'll just tell you what to look for instead of doing the work myself, since you didn't do any worth mentioning. First, fluoridation of water in the USA is done to 1ppm (and recently guidelines have changed to 0.5ppm), which is well-demonstrated as safe. Indeed, municipalities in mountainous areas sometimes have to remove fluorides from the water, because naturally occurring levels are above the level that the government fluoridates to (and by government, obviously I mean contractors). Studies demonstrating neuronal impairment have been shown in a Harvard-published meta-analysis of mostly Chinese studies, which used levels tens to hundreds of times higher than present in US water, and and included data on fluoride gas inhalation, which is only an issue in the presence of hydrofluoric acid, which is a much bigger problem than the fluoride salts used to fluoridate water (sodium hexafluorosilicate, mostly) would be in any concentration; the most egregious claims came from studies that could not be replicated and had no peer review. Claims that fluorides are toxic at high concentrations (such as made in that ludicrous video) are ridiculous, because pure water is toxic in high concentrations - anything is. Food, air, you name it. Put enough of it in you and you'll die. But then, how much do you need to have a problem? That's valid. Fluorides get stored in your bones as apatite, which then gradually releases when you're out of the loading phase; this means your body naturally can store boatloads of that stuff. Additionally, fluorides clear the body through the kidneys, and aren't significantly fat-soluble as they occur in our water - this means that as you drink more water with fluorine in it, you pass more water, clearing that fluorine out of your system. Finally, you may notice I used fluoride salt, fluorides, and fluorine in those previous sentences; it's important to distinguish between them, and that video you linked doesn't. Because it's full of crazy. You could search the archives for the thread; a real live research chemist showed up to drop some knowledge bombs on the last guy who freaked out about it.

Man, I really dislike Common Core, and I'm not remotely a fan of the increasingly litigious nature of our country, and that apparent increase in criminality, but just arguing reason makes me look like I'm defending it all. That's some powerful crazy you've linked, OP. Some magnificent madness, that.
EDIT: typos, as usual.

You take one thing I said and deliberately blow it out of all proportion. For one, unrestricted immigrantion between any countries, or even between different regions in the same country, can be extremely destructive. Poorer people move to richer areas, burden the the area's services (public transportation, welfare), drive up the costs of housing, etc. So even if a one-world govt existed, which would be great because of all the billions (trillions?) of money that would be saved through elimination of duplication (instead of every country having their own laws, regulations, administration/bureaucracy, police, armed forces, institutions etc), it would still be wise to have common sense travel restrictions so you would need special permission to move from one "region" to another. The central govt's responsibility would be to develop the poorer regions so come up to par with the richer regions.

For example in the Soviet Union although it was one big country, citizens could not move their place of residence at will, they needed to get papers and permission to move.

This says "about 100".

But China isn't at Nazi Germany level either. Millions were killed during Mao's reign, like millions were killed by Stalin and millions were killed by the Nazis. These are extreme cases, but in any such regime you see the corruption and attempt to subjugate the population clearly and in large numbers.

Every government is corrupt at some level. People just are. What I call stupid isn't the highlighting of corruption of a certain government, it's the comparison to a much much much worse government and the lack of judgment to be able to distinguish between these levels.

Where I live its done more discreetly. Until it comes to light. And the same party is still voted in a few months later. But politicians who steal money here just send it off to offshore accounts so no one sees it; and won't spend it here.

Common Core has ruined my kids ability to do math. It takes my daughter 1-2 hours to do her math homework because of how she was taught. When given the equation 21÷3 I, and I'm sure all of you, automatically know the answer is 7 because I had to memorize multiplication tables in school. According to the Common Core curriculum rote memorization is bad, the kids should be taught how to correctly solve the problem instead. In this case there is only one correct way to solve this problem:

21-3=18
18-3=15
15-3=12
12-3=9
9-3=6
6-3=3
3-3=0

You need to subtract 3 a total of 7 times to reach 0, therefore the answer is 7.

I am not making this up, this is exactly what was in her math book. It takes way longer to do a problem this way but since it is the "right" way no other method is acceptable. If a student simply answers 7 because they know its the right answer they get points deducted for not showing their work. Now she is at the point where math problems look more like 9682÷87 and it takes her 20 minutes to solve it because she has to go through this same ridiculous process.

At one point last year she was in tears because she spent a half hour reading the assignment and still didn't know what to do. I tried to help her but even I couldn't figure it out. The homework sheet gave a series of math problems like 248+308 and the assignment was to solve the problem 3 times using Estimation, Rounding and Comparative Numbers. She didn't understand the difference between these three methods, and neither did I. I eventually found a video online that was made by the same company who published the text book. Apparently, Estimation is when you just guess at an answer by simplifying the original equation, so 248 is about 250 and 308 is about 300 so the answer is 550. Rounding means you simplify the numbers by using another number close to the original, like rounding 248 to 250 and 308 to 300. Comparative Numbers are numbers that are comparable to those in the equation but are easier to work with, like using 250 instead of 248 and 300 for 308. At no point in time is the student ever asked to simply solve the problem and give the correct answer!

My son is younger so he is just getting started on all this but his homework is no less inane. His homework consists of 3-4 math problems like 23+15 and the rest of the sheet is left blank so that he can draw rows of boxes to represent the numbers in the problem. After spending 3 minutes drawing all these boxes he then counts them up and finds he drew a total of 38 boxes so that's the answer. In the last parent/teacher conference I complained about how horrible this whole system is and the teacher said she agreed with me 100%, but it is a state requirement so that's what they have to teach.

Very ridiculous indeed. Math is easier than this insanity that is also called math for some reason. And that's only the BASIC math, e.g. addition and subtraction, multiplication and division... what more horrors could you find when your children start taking algebra, geometry, calculus and what not?

23+15 isn't even a hard addition equation either! You add the units to the units, and the tens to the tens, without increasing the tens or hundreds. It should be as easy as writing 38 on the sheet. Not drawing 38 boxes, and then counting them up. Too much hassle over figuring out the same result that you can figure with an even simpler method.

This kind of thing is ludicrous.

There's nothing wrong with showing various methods to solve problems, since different people visualize and solve problems in different ways. Whatever method works for you is the right method, IMO.

But to take just one approach and make that the standard 'do-not-deviate-from-this' mandate is doing far more harm than good. It's not that bad here in Canada (yet), but it's still bad enough. I ended up having to teach both of my daughters math because the schools are completely inept at it.

submission and control thats no x-file, its real, look at every dick with harry wants to buy a iphone

My 6 and 8-year-olds are deep into the Common Core. I've been watching it unfold.

It's fascinating.

We know several families that have pulled their children out of school entirely rather than deal with it.

So, I've dived in to trying to understand it myself. I was prepared to hate it. Prepared to believe it was a dumbing-down designed to alleviate the suffering of the stupid at the expense of the capable. And what I've discovered is the opposite.

As much as it is a lot harder work to do problems this way, what it's doing is teaching children how to think about math, rather that just beating them up with memorization. Those of us who are capable of doing a certain amount of arithmetic in our heads use these methods anyway. You know who's pissed off? People whose understanding of math extends only as far as picking up a calculator.

It's much, much more work to do it the Common Core way. But it's providing a framework to teach kids a way to approach mathematics in real-world situations where they won't simply shrug and type it into their phone to find the answer.

I don't know what their math will look like in later grades, but so far through grade 3, I'm on board.

You have spoken the unspoken truth. Most people are like the old coot on their porch screaming about change being bad. Fact is, this is training about mathematics, not memorization of facts. I am happy to hear the rants about how it was implemented, admittedly its been rough. But no one gets everything right.

Just remember no liked that we tried to switch to that strange voodoo and super scary "Metric system" either, and look how that turned out! We can crash probes on mars surface like nobodys business!