Oh, come on, Cail. wayfriend has been posting on the Watch for eight years , and the Tank hasn't always been as bad as it is now. Right? The consensus seems to be that the forum's in a pretty bad state right now, yet you're blaming it all on a guy who's been here since the beginning (pretty much)? I...

:wave: Hello, friends. As a longtime Tanker myself, I can affirm the other old-timers' suggestion that the "Tank has gone to hell" meme does tend to repeat itself every so often, without fail, BUT I do think (a) constant self-reflection does us good even when it's often repetitive, and (b)...

In many ways slavery is the most profoundly anti-capitalist arrangement possible. If we take capitalism to be the liberalization of markets, then the lawful enslavement of huge portions of the population is just about the biggest distortion of the market imaginable! However , this is in my view an a...

It's astounding, but here I thought that China was a communist country. That makes all of China's inhabitants communist. No, it doesn't. Not anymore than all Americans are Democrats because Obama is President. Communism is an ideology as well as a party; not all Chinese are party members (really), ...

I'm not sure if it goes without saying if we are saying that class warfare comes from the bottom and that "spreading the wealth around" in this country only means helping the middle class.

You won't find any argument from me on that front. What I just described, and I think it is a fair description of the facts that I'd be happy to discuss, is indeed the result of yet another consensus between both parties: that they prefer to be beholden to special interests and to craft and implemen...

I have another angle on an ideology so obvious and implicit throughout our society that apparently nobody in this thread feels the need to talk about it. That's the ideology that says those who most deserve the government's protection are the richest sectors of our society: The banks that have been ...

Let's hope he's serious this time and that it's not Guantánamo Part II. Let's especially hope he's serious since we are under obligation according to the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement , negotiated by the Bush administration, to be out of there by the end of December. Plus from a political point...

Zarathustra, Okay, I'm glad we agree that some moral judgment about Israel's founding isn't the basis for all current judgments. I don't think Israel's founding is fundamentally immoral. I think the way it was done was wrong but the principle of the creation of Israel is not in my view fundamentally...

Look, the moral consequences of the founding of the United States and of Israel make for a very interesting historical discussion, one I would be glad to have even. But I thought we were talking about what's happening in Israel and the Occupied Territories now , today . There are certain things that...

I wanted to say a few more words about disproportion. Whatever else one thinks of the Shalit "kidnapping," the fact is that he is a solider of an occupying army. (I don't think kidnapping is the proper nomenclature for the capture of an enemy solider, but whatever.) Although the conditions...

Just goes to show that Israel is forever being accused of "disproportionate response," even when it's doing someting peaceful and humanitarian. :roll: No doubt Hamas would be demanding the release of a greater number of the illegally held prisoners in Israel if they had more Israeli priso...

Killing one's enemies is perhaps among the very first principles of a state. Indeed. Which makes it one of the most eminently questionable principles of politics. An even more fundamental principle is the one that states that principles we apply to others should be applied to ourselves. We wouldn't...

... an administration official said in a statement Friday. I dunno, wayfriend. When I hear administration officials justifying their own legal policies, I can't help but think that their word is, well, worthless. I'm sure there's a legal argument to be made for the stuff they're doing (yesterday's ...

Cail, In the real world, we recognize that things aren't simply as black and white as you'd like to make them. Your naiveté is only exceeded by your inability to see other points of view. Maybe. This whole conversation would go a lot easier if we traded in specific facts, as I and others have been a...

Cail, Seeing as how neither of us were there, I'm not making any judgement regarding who killed who. If 3,000 civilians were rioting, then there may well be a justification for killing them. Don't know, and neither do you. We don't know firsthand, but we could consult the relevant sources which read...

Vraith, To "truly give the Palestinians back their homeland" is a strawman. What is suggested -- indeed, what the international consensus on the issue is -- is for Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories where Palestinians today live. We're talking about now. To imply, as you seem...

Cail, Care to discuss all the other times prior that Israel was attacked? I'd be happy to. (You were the one who mentioned Hamas in an historically inaccurate way, so I brought up the Second Intifada.) Which instances? Didn't say they weren't civilians...Never said that either. So if the fact that t...

Sorry, I'm not going to feel the least bit of sympathy for people who elected a government that states as one of their purposes the eradication of Israel. 1. The Second Intifada took place before the election of Hamas. (In fact, it was a direct cause of it.) 2. The Second Intifada took place in the...

No they're not. There's no such thing as "Palestinian territory", and even if you grant that there is, Israel acquired that land when they were attacked. There is nothing illegitimate about conquered land. Maybe on Planet Cail you are right. But in the real world, we have things like UN 2...