Was it right to repopulate Israel with Jews?

[Metsfanmax]

Then where is your criticism of Doom Yoshi for -

Freedom of Speech is a terrible example in any case. It's a pipe-dream, a mere fantasy.

I didn't bother. I cannot see a constructive way to argue against such a pessimistic and absolutist point of view.

I mean, you seem to think that freedom of speech is pretty important (hence your rightful criticism of Israel), but instead of setting Yoshi straight, you feel it prudent to attack on Israel, why?

You were comparing Israel to Palestine but I wanted to make it clear that Israel still is not ideal when it comes to this freedom, even if it is better than Hamas. My point wasn't to attack Israel, it was to set the record straight, even though I do condemn the laws that Israel passed last year.

Why did you ignore my point that Liberty dies in the face of fear, country and religion? The Israeli's are falling into the same trap we in the US are falling into, giving up our liberty for a perceived feeling of "safety". It's ridiculous.
But you ignore all that and just point out Israel.
Why?

I don't feel like responding to every single argument made in a thread. There is not much to be gleaned from my absence of commentary, yet you seem to be finding a lot of ammunition there.

[patches70]

Patches, I agree with you that Freedom of Speech can be taken away. However, I disagree that we can ever truly achieve it. In other words, if there was a freedom of speech scale, you could have a negative value (Hamas Palestine) but you could never achieve zero (unless you are a hermit) or a positive value.

Freedom of Speech is a negatively defined concept. It's defined by what you can't do - at a fundamental level. The political aspect comes in when they twist it around to be defined by what you can do.

EDIT: If you don't believe me, insert the folllowing phrase in the following listed situations:

"Hamas sucks balls. Totalitarian shitheads to the bone and they should be tossed in a prison, the murdering bastards."

A job interview, in lieu of "Hello, I'm Patches70"
Immediately before intercourse - say it while yelling and drooling all over your lover
Mow the message into the white house lawn
carve the message into Obama's Head with bullets
Blast the message onto the Moon with Nuclear Missiles

Where has your freedom of speech gotten you? Nowhere. It's an illusion.

What do you mean?
Everything has consequences.
In the job interview I might not get the job.
With my lover, I doubt it would make much difference, we'll still be having intercourse.
I can't mow it into the law, because then I'd be damaging some one else's property. I wouldn't get in trouble for the message, I'd get in trouble for destruction of property that isn't mine.
Carving the message into Obama's head is assault, scratch that, murder since it's with bullets.
Nuclear missiles don't work so well in space. Look it up. You might see a quick flash of light, but there would be no blast. Only a huge amount of radiation emitted but not blast.

Your examples are stupid and deluded, can't you see that? None of them having a thing to do with Free speech, I'm beginning to think you have exactly zero idea of what Free Speech even is.

Just because one has the right of free speech doesn't mean anyone has to listen to it.

You complain about messages on this site curtailing your freedom of speech. This is a private site. Nothing at all prevents you from getting your own site dedicated to talking about how great whomever was. More power to you, no one is stopping you. While you're at it, you can post copy after copy of the bible or anything else you want and no one will ever ban you. Likely no one will ever talk to you either, but your freedom is there.
On your site you can tell anyone you want to take a flying leap and ban them to your heart's desire, because it'll be your site.
Property rights. A different thing than speech rights. No right can impede another's rights. If it does, that's not a right, it's theft or destruction.

Oh, and you broke Goodwin's Law you schmuck.

[Dukasaur]

Anyway, wealth can be measured in absolute terms such as money. Civil liberties cannot. Or, if you think you can devise a meaningful Unit of Freedom which is flexible enough to take in all the different things people mean when they say "freedom" by all means go ahead. Until then, the relative indices are all we have.

Why can't Freedom be measured in Dollars?

Why don't we measure mass in Kelvin or waiting times in Angstroms? Probably because using a scale that has a specific purpose for a very different purpose will result in misunderstandings at best or a dadaist state of incomprehensibility at worst.

Maybe you mean measuring our valuation of freedoms in dollars? You could say "I'm willing to pay ten thousand dollars for guaranteed freedom of speech." But assigning a value to it doesn't measure how much of it you have. If gas is worth 50 cents a gallon, it says nothing about how much a gallon is. And, if tomorrow the price goes up to 75 cents a gallon, the size of a gallon still hasn't changed.

Two Possible Arguments against this:
1)What do we measure our valuation of dollars in?

If a dollar buys an ounce of gold, and tomorrow a dollar buys half an ounce, has the size of a dollar changed? Has the value of gold changed? Now this may seem like mere wordplay, but if you think about various permutations of words "value, dollar, gold" and how they interplay with each other, the only possible conclusion is that wealth itself is merely the assignment of value to something. And as you yourself say: "assigning a value to it doesn't measure how much of it you have".

Exactly.

2) My main argument is that you miss the point completely. I am claiming that the terms wealth and freedom are interchangeable. How best to restrict someone's freedom? Steal or otherwise take their money. This is Libertarianism 101. I am not sure why you don't follow.

Sure, depriving someone of money will curtail their freedom, just as depriving someone of money will curtail their ability to gas up their car, but it still doesn't mean that you can measure freedom in dollars or gas in dollars.

In Moscow there have been some billionaires who thought that they were wealthy enough to get away with openly pointing out Putin's flaws. He had them jailed and/or killed nonetheless, proving them wrong. So, in Russia a billion dollars won't buy you freedom to criticize the President.

On the other hand, if you live in some isolated settlement in Northern Ontario, the only person really interested in constraining your actions is the local game warden, so a few hundred dollars a year to keep all your hunting and fishing tags up-to-date will buy you a hell of a lot of freedom.

So, sure you can trade wealth for freedom, but the exchange rate varies widely from time to time and from place to place.

Freedom of Speech is a terrible example in any case. It's a pipe-dream, a mere fantasy. Sure, you can have freedom of speech, but does that mean you say everything that pops into your head? I don't think so. Humans, as social creatures, are innately in tune with what is acceptable speech, regardless of any direct sanctions on speech. Humans who don't are classified as socially retarded.

Now, it is true that difficult to hear stuff does need to be said from time to time. This is the job of the artist. Great Art (by my definition) is art that says something you don't want to hear. It has to be confrontational, but it has to do it in a way that actually sends a message. For example, certain death metal bands are certainly confrontational - but other than "I eat Satan's Vagina" often the message itself is missing. That is confrontational by Form. Then you get the subversive confrontation. This is the best art, although new messages are few and far between. Most artists say the same thing over and over again until a brilliant mind comes who challenges the newest cliche.

Where I am going with this: A minor subset of Freedom of Speech exists for artists, most of whom don't deserve/need the freedom. Other variations on the theme are basically political catchphrasery.

Possibly true, but irrelevant. Sure, you are constrained by many things, but an Index of Freedom only measures constraint by government. Social mores and commercial considerations are dependent variables here.

[saxitoxin]

So, to sum up the arguments thus far ...

Pro-Palestine Side:


Pro-Israel Side:

[Metsfanmax]

So, to sum up the arguments thus far ...

Pro-Palestine Side:


Pro-Israel Side:

I still can't think of it as quite this simple. In particular, I wonder how history would have been different if the Palestinians (and Muslims in general) did not also lay claim to that particular piece of land for religious reasons.

[GreecePwns]

They lay claim to that particular piece of land by holding the deeds to the individual properties, not religious reasons. That they are also religious doesn't mean that is their primary reason.

[saxitoxin]

So, to sum up the arguments thus far ...

Pro-Palestine Side:


Pro-Israel Side:

I still can't think of it as quite this simple. In particular, I wonder how history would have been different if the Palestinians (and Muslims in general) did not also lay claim to that particular piece of land for religious reasons.

Aside from GreecePWNS' excellent point above, it's not just a Jewish Question.

The fundamentalist Born-Again philosophy of Christian Zionism (which is, ironically, older than Jewish Zionism), whereby all the Jews need to be gathered in a single place and then wiped out in order for Jesus to come back is what drives support for Israel in the west and helps fund these ridiculous "documentaries" on TBN, the 700 Club and History Channel about Bible Prophecy and why we're living at the end of the world and need to hurry up and get all the Jews to Israel ASAP, see Viceroy's post: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=181542&start=105#p3968677

When God is telling you to do it, no amount of legal violations or no number of dead Palestinian kids is enough to deter you from your goal. It's simply not possible to negotiate with someone with this mindset (all Israeli supporters) because you have nothing to offer them more valuable than what a God can give them. Since negotiation is futile, an armed response by forces like the Al-Aqsa Brigades, etc., is the only possible recourse.

The Israeli Lobby is a case of the crazy leading the insane. And they have nuclear weapons.

[Metsfanmax]

They lay claim to that particular piece of land by holding the deeds to the individual properties, not religious reasons. That they are also religious doesn't mean that is their primary reason.

Perhaps, but those particular people are quite definitely in that particular place for religious reasons. It's not like people of most Western nations, who are there because of historical chance. The Palestinians and Israelis do lay claim to that particular region for religious reasons. It is true from a narrow legal perspective that it is not relevant why the Israel government was founded in Palestine in particular; they did indeed poach land that did not legally belong to them. But as was also correctly pointed out in this thread, that ignores thousands of years of history were the Jewish people were subjugated and forced out of this land, which historically (if you go back long enough) was theirs to begin with. I think that it is too narrow-minded to say that Israel stole land from Palestine in 1948, and that's the end of the story.

[Dukasaur]

When God is telling you to do it, no amount of legal violations or no number of dead Palestinian kids is enough to deter you from your goal.

Yup, and God (or his duly appointed Imam) is telling the Arabs from an early age that their sacred duty is to "make the fields red with the blood of Jews" so the fact that a few of their friends and neighbours will also die in the process doesn't deter them in the least.

[GreecePwns]

What happened thousands of years ago is of minimal impact to the individual lives of Jews today. That also refers to a time where international laws didn't exist, let alone the concept nation-states for which said laws govern. Courts of law can't do anything about that now.

What happened 60 years ago and what continues to happen today is of importance to the individual lives of Palestinians today. It refers to a time where international laws did and do exist. Courts of law can do something about that now, namely the return of stolen property.

[GreecePwns]

When God is telling you to do it, no amount of legal violations or no number of dead Palestinian kids is enough to deter you from your goal.

Yup, and God (or his duly appointed Imam) is telling the Arabs from an early age that their sacred duty is to "make the fields red with the blood of Jews" so the fact that a few of their friends and neighbours will also die in the process doesn't deter them in the least.

You've managed to keep this debate on which religion is better than the other to an average (Christian?) Westerner, rather than the legal, secular claims made by Palestinians and the lack of said claims on the Israeli side.

You'll sound credible when you use the same tone toward the idea that all non-Jews were made to serve "God's chosen people," or at least try to address the secular points we've brought up.

[saxitoxin]

When God is telling you to do it, no amount of legal violations or no number of dead Palestinian kids is enough to deter you from your goal.

Yup, and God (or his duly appointed Imam) is telling the Arabs from an early age that their sacred duty is to "make the fields red with the blood of Jews"

Who said "make the fields red with the blood of Jews?" I haven't heard any PLO / PNA leader in a position of responsibility make any such statement recently. Do you have a name?

We did - just the other week - hear an Israeli politician in a position of responsibility (Police Minister El Yishai) say (as, IIRC, GP pointed out at the time): "... send Gaza back to the Middle Ages, only then will Israel be calm for the next 40 years." (http://rt.com/news/israel-gaza-hamas-war-103/

Also, in the last few days, a MP and son of the former PM:
“There are no innocents in Gaza – mow them down!”

The Minister of Transportation:
"Gaza [should] be bombed so hard the population has to flee into Egypt"

The Chief Oracle / Head Magician to the Israeli Government:
"If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million!”
(http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali ... -red-cross)
This same guy, who claims to be a wizard with magic powers and preaches to the current PM Netanyahu, also called for any "gentile" to be beheaded as a sacrifice to Yahweh, the Egyptian God of Thunder that Judaism worships. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/08/02/ ... le-babies/)

Obviously the Zionist Entertainment Complex doesn't report on these lunatics. But if a 15 year old garbage picker in East Jerusalem utters the slightest anti-Semitic slur under his breath it gets splashed across the front page of the New York Times and everyone says "see! the Arabs are nutzoids!"

[Metsfanmax]

What happened thousands of years ago is of minimal impact to the individual lives of Jews today.

Quite the opposite. What happened in the past is of central importance, because if the Jewish people had never been forcibly ejected from their homeland, by many of the same religious and ethnic groups that were in the area in 1947, they would not be in the situation they are in today.

That also refers to a time where international laws didn't exist, let alone the concept nation-states for which said laws govern. Courts of law can't do anything about that now.

What happened 60 years ago and what continues to happen today is of importance to the individual lives of Palestinians today. It refers to a time where international laws did and do exist. Courts of law can do something about that now, namely the return of stolen property.

The international community got together and agreed (by a 72%-28% margin) that Israel had rights to at least part of the land in Palestine in 1947. The Palestinians refused to recognize the legitimacy of the UN's plan at the time. The PLO has since used this point to argue in the past that they have sovereignty recognized by international law. That may also mean that Israel does too, which necessarily means that it cannot be required to compensate the Palestinians that rightfully belongs to them by international law. Compensation may very well be required to solve the issue in a practical manner, but I don't think the international law here is as clearly on the side of the Palestinians as you and saxi are making it out to be.

[DoomYoshi]

Possibly true, but irrelevant. Sure, you are constrained by many things, but an Index of Freedom only measures constraint by government. Social mores and commercial considerations are dependent variables here.

You should read this too, patches:

Imagine two situations:

A) the government grants me "freedom of speech". I then take this government granted speech and call my potential boss some racial slur during an interview. Then I suffer consequences Based on my breach of social mores.

B) my friends say: "Yoshi, go ahead, you can make fun of Putin". I do this and end up in jail in Russia. So, I Suffer consequences based on my breach of government rules.

How are these situations different?
In both cases I was granted freedom of speech. In both cases, I am denied that exact same freedom of speech. It doesn't matter whether your non-freedom comes from social mores, government regulation or personal resolve. In all cases, the end result is the same! No government can actually grant me freedom of speech unless they can meld the society to accept things I say etc.

Here's a quick question for you: what's worse: the minority controlling the majority or the majority controlling the minority? Well, the minority controlling the majority is what is frequently called a dictatorship and the opposite is frequently called a democracy. We must never forget that both these are forms of oppression though. We must not forget that it was majority rule that decided to make black people use seperate bathrooms in Alabama after the Civil War.

My point is that both forms of oppression are equally oppression.

Now, let's just say that I conceded that point (I don't). Ok, great, the Netherlands has now granted you Freedom of Speech. How did that help Theo Van Gogh? Did he have freedom of speech? If he did, why is he dead for drawing a comic? Clearly, the government can not actually grant freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is an illusion. You can call me absolutist or pessimistic or whatever. I know that this is the kind of bullshit sentiment that sprung out of Napoleon's wars. You can take your cocksucking freedom of speech, and your nationalism (the bastard child of racism, xenophobia and imperialism) and shove it all up your ass.

Back to the issue at hand: I already proved that the only true Jews are the Palestinians. The fake Jews should all kill themselves for invading the holy land. I am not saying Palestine is great or anything, I would fully support Canadian troops occupying the entire middle east (and middle earth) and taking the oil so that gas isn't so expensive for me.

[Dukasaur]

When God is telling you to do it, no amount of legal violations or no number of dead Palestinian kids is enough to deter you from your goal.

Yup, and God (or his duly appointed Imam) is telling the Arabs from an early age that their sacred duty is to "make the fields red with the blood of Jews"

Who said "make the fields red with the blood of Jews?" I haven't heard any PLO / PNA leader in a position of responsibility make any such statement recently. Do you have a name?

We did - just the other week - hear an Israeli politician in a position of responsibility (Police Minister El Yishai) say (as, IIRC, GP pointed out at the time): "... send Gaza back to the Middle Ages, only then will Israel be calm for the next 40 years." (http://rt.com/news/israel-gaza-hamas-war-103/

Also, in the last few days, a MP and son of the former PM:
“There are no innocents in Gaza – mow them down!”

The Minister of Transportation:
"Gaza [should] be bombed so hard the population has to flee into Egypt"

The Chief Oracle / Head Magician to the Israeli Government:
"If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million!”
(http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali ... -red-cross)
This same guy, who claims to be a wizard with magic powers and preaches to the current PM Netanyahu, also called for any "gentile" to be beheaded as a sacrifice to Yahweh, the Egyptian God of Thunder that Judaism worships. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/08/02/ ... le-babies/)

Obviously the Zionist Entertainment Complex doesn't report on these lunatics. But if a 15 year old garbage picker in East Jerusalem utters the slightest anti-Semitic slur under his breath it gets splashed across the front page of the New York Times and everyone says "see! the Arabs are nutzoids!"

Ok, here's one 15-year old garbage picker, Nasser:

“Our path to Palestine will not be covered with a red carpet or with yellow sand. Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood… In order that we may liberate Palestine, the Arab nation must unite, the Arab armies must unite, and a unified plan of action must be established.”
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
(Pre-election speech, 1965; quoted in Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A History [Yale University Press, 2007], p162)

Here's some 15-year old garbage pickers that just happen to rule about 12 or 15 countries:

“... collective Arab military preparations, when they are completed, will constitute the ultimate practical means for the final liquidation of Israel.”
- Arab League
(Summit Declaration, January 1964; quoted in Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World [Penguin, 2001], p230)

Here's the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Don't know if he was 15 or not when he said

“If the Jewish state becomes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea… Even if we are beaten now in Palestine, we will never submit. We will never accept the Jewish state... But for politics, the Egyptian army alone, or volunteers of the Muslim Brotherhood, could have destroyed the Jews.”
- Hassan al-Banna, Muslim Brotherhood founder
(New York Times, August 2, 1948)

Here's someone who broadcasts to Palestinians on a regular TV show, with the full approval of the government. Obviously he wishes to raise the moral tenor of the debate.

“... the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers… the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations… The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history… The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.”
- Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, Palestinian Authority cleric
(Palestinian Authority Television, May 13, 2005)

I'm very sorry, I wasn't able to find the quote about fertilizing fields with the blood of Jews, but here's an official statement that indicates that it will fulfill the nutritional needs of the children:

“My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood.”
- Hamas broadcast
(Jerusalem Post, February 17, 2006)

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/israel/quotes.html

[Dukasaur]

When God is telling you to do it, no amount of legal violations or no number of dead Palestinian kids is enough to deter you from your goal.

Yup, and God (or his duly appointed Imam) is telling the Arabs from an early age that their sacred duty is to "make the fields red with the blood of Jews" so the fact that a few of their friends and neighbours will also die in the process doesn't deter them in the least.

You've managed to keep this debate on which religion is better than the other to an average (Christian?) Westerner, rather than the legal, secular claims made by Palestinians and the lack of said claims on the Israeli side.

You'll sound credible when you use the same tone toward the idea that all non-Jews were made to serve "God's chosen people," or at least try to address the secular points we've brought up.

I didn't bring religion into this; Saxi did. I was just answering him.

In any case, I've addressed all of the secular issues at one time or another. If you didn't notice or whatever I'm willing to repeat myself, but not endlessly. Please indicate specifically what you think has not been addressed.

[saxitoxin]

When God is telling you to do it, no amount of legal violations or no number of dead Palestinian kids is enough to deter you from your goal.

Yup, and God (or his duly appointed Imam) is telling the Arabs from an early age that their sacred duty is to "make the fields red with the blood of Jews"

Who said "make the fields red with the blood of Jews?" I haven't heard any PLO / PNA leader in a position of responsibility make any such statement recently. Do you have a name?

We did - just the other week - hear an Israeli politician in a position of responsibility (Police Minister El Yishai) say (as, IIRC, GP pointed out at the time): "... send Gaza back to the Middle Ages, only then will Israel be calm for the next 40 years." (http://rt.com/news/israel-gaza-hamas-war-103/

Also, in the last few days, a MP and son of the former PM:
“There are no innocents in Gaza – mow them down!”

The Minister of Transportation:
"Gaza [should] be bombed so hard the population has to flee into Egypt"

The Chief Oracle / Head Magician to the Israeli Government:
"If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million!”
(http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali ... -red-cross)
This same guy, who claims to be a wizard with magic powers and preaches to the current PM Netanyahu, also called for any "gentile" to be beheaded as a sacrifice to Yahweh, the Egyptian God of Thunder that Judaism worships. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/08/02/ ... le-babies/)

Obviously the Zionist Entertainment Complex doesn't report on these lunatics. But if a 15 year old garbage picker in East Jerusalem utters the slightest anti-Semitic slur under his breath it gets splashed across the front page of the New York Times and everyone says "see! the Arabs are nutzoids!"

Ok, here's one 15-year old garbage picker, Nasser:

“Our path to Palestine will not be covered with a red carpet or with yellow sand. Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood… In order that we may liberate Palestine, the Arab nation must unite, the Arab armies must unite, and a unified plan of action must be established.”
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
(Pre-election speech, 1965; quoted in Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A History [Yale University Press, 2007], p162)

Here's some 15-year old garbage pickers that just happen to rule about 12 or 15 countries:

“... collective Arab military preparations, when they are completed, will constitute the ultimate practical means for the final liquidation of Israel.”
- Arab League
(Summit Declaration, January 1964; quoted in Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World [Penguin, 2001], p230)

Here's the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Don't know if he was 15 or not when he said

“If the Jewish state becomes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea… Even if we are beaten now in Palestine, we will never submit. We will never accept the Jewish state... But for politics, the Egyptian army alone, or volunteers of the Muslim Brotherhood, could have destroyed the Jews.”
- Hassan al-Banna, Muslim Brotherhood founder
(New York Times, August 2, 1948)

Here's someone who broadcasts to Palestinians on a regular TV show, with the full approval of the government. Obviously he wishes to raise the moral tenor of the debate.

“... the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers… the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations… The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history… The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.”
- Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, Palestinian Authority cleric
(Palestinian Authority Television, May 13, 2005)

I'm very sorry, I wasn't able to find the quote about fertilizing fields with the blood of Jews, but here's an official statement that indicates that it will fulfill the nutritional needs of the children:

“My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood.”
- Hamas broadcast
(Jerusalem Post, February 17, 2006)

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/israel/quotes.html

LOL a few quotes from 50 years ago ... then you also had one from from a radical cleric 6 years ago who has no position in the PLO/PNA and who, apparently, was only broadcast once on TV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Ibrahim_Mudayris). Then you had an "unnamed broadcast" that the website of some guy named Paul Bogadanor who has a self-published book called "THE TOP 200 CHOMSKY LIES!" claims he heard on TV.

After 25 seconds online I was able to find 4 quotes by Israeli cabinet members and MPs - sourced by mainstream media - that are less than a week old calling for mass genocide.

I rest my case.

Leaving on a high note. That's Saxi's last post in this thread, gang - let's print this bitch and get it shipped to the studio - SAYONARA!

[DoomYoshi]

The top 200 Chomsky Lies. There are far more than 200.

[Dukasaur]

A) the government grants me "freedom of speech". I then take this government granted speech and call my potential boss some racial slur during an interview. Then I suffer consequences Based on my breach of social mores.

B) my friends say: "Yoshi, go ahead, you can make fun of Putin". I do this and end up in jail in Russia. So, I Suffer consequences based on my breach of government rules.

How are these situations different?
In both cases I was granted freedom of speech. In both cases, I am denied that exact same freedom of speech. It doesn't matter whether your non-freedom comes from social mores, government regulation or personal resolve. In all cases, the end result is the same! No government can actually grant me freedom of speech unless they can meld the society to accept things I say etc.

Broadening things out in this manner makes all knowledge useless. If you take absolutist positions (like "free" or "unfree") you will end up at some place like this. Which brings us full circle to my original comment many posts ago, that nobody is perfectly free or perfectly unfree. In order to have a useful analysis of something you need to be able to quantify it. You need to be able to come up with numbers: I am free to do x, y, z, and I am not free to do a, b, c. Therefore I score 50%. If I lose the right to do c as well, I'm reduced to 33%. To understand something one starts with selecting quantifiable variables.

Indices of freedom attempt to establish a numerical scale between free nations and unfree nations. The Economist and Freedom House both use a 60-variable scale. Those are the only two I've studied in detail, but I'm sure you could look up some of the others. A scale should be statistically robust; ie. no single variable should be able to dramatically change the result.

I'm sure none of them are perfect, but perfection is a metaphysical pipe dream. Men of knowledge know that all things are somewhere on the continuum between A and B.

[Viceroy63]

This should not even be about religion but about an ancient people and their rights. None of those Palestinians were there 4,000 years ago. Or so about. But the ancestors of the Jews were.

No one ever brought back to life a dead and almost forgotten and ancient language. But the Jews just did.

No one ever moved into a desert region where you had to dig holes in the ground to find water. But now all that land is fertile and green.

Why can't the Palestinians simply turn their own deserts into Green, fertile farm lands and leave the Jews alone? Surely if the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can do that, Allah must be able to do the same thing as well???

OK, so I digressed back into religion a bit. So what? LOL.

[DoomYoshi]

@Duke: The indices of freedom are wrong though. All 10 of the most violent cities in the world are in South America. Therefore, South American countries like Mexico and Columbia should score highest, but they don't. They score as "moderately free".

[patches70]

A) the government grants me "freedom of speech". I then take this government granted speech and call my potential boss some racial slur during an interview. Then I suffer consequences Based on my breach of social mores.

B) my friends say: "Yoshi, go ahead, you can make fun of Putin". I do this and end up in jail in Russia. So, I Suffer consequences based on my breach of government rules.

How are these situations different?
In both cases I was granted freedom of speech. In both cases, I am denied that exact same freedom of speech. It doesn't matter whether your non-freedom comes from social mores, government regulation or personal resolve. In all cases, the end result is the same! No government can actually grant me freedom of speech unless they can meld the society to accept things I say etc.

Here's a quick question for you: what's worse: the minority controlling the majority or the majority controlling the minority? Well, the minority controlling the majority is what is frequently called a dictatorship and the opposite is frequently called a democracy. We must never forget that both these are forms of oppression though. We must not forget that it was majority rule that decided to make black people use seperate bathrooms in Alabama after the Civil War.

My point is that both forms of oppression are equally oppression.

Now, let's just say that I conceded that point (I don't). Ok, great, the Netherlands has now granted you Freedom of Speech. How did that help Theo Van Gogh? Did he have freedom of speech? If he did, why is he dead for drawing a comic? Clearly, the government can not actually grant freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is an illusion. You can call me absolutist or pessimistic or whatever. I know that this is the kind of bullshit sentiment that sprung out of Napoleon's wars. You can take your cocksucking freedom of speech, and your nationalism (the bastard child of racism, xenophobia and imperialism) and shove it all up your ass.

Back to the issue at hand: I already proved that the only true Jews are the Palestinians. The fake Jews should all kill themselves for invading the holy land. I am not saying Palestine is great or anything, I would fully support Canadian troops occupying the entire middle east (and middle earth) and taking the oil so that gas isn't so expensive for me.

Wow. I mean...just....whoa....

I hope you share all this with your therapist. You've got serious problems.

[Viceroy63]

It takes all kinds to make a world. And they all have the right to exist. LOL

[DoomYoshi]

Viceroy is my therapist.

[2dimes]

Anyone else click a couple of the Mel Gibson interviews after the braveheart clip? Possibly relevant.