Marius C.

The acts that labmath2 talks about are libel and defamation specifically. Libel is the publishing of false information or accusations against someone. It is not going to the store and robbing it by giving it false reasons -- that falls under fraud, if not stupidity given your example. Libel or defamation is standing in a public area, or publishing a newspaper article, stating that you are a child molester when you are not. I agree with Pepin's response. In an anarchic society, reputation is extremely valuable as it allows people to decide whether to interact with someone (in any way) or not.

In order to reach a level as high as that -- to have foreign communications in between governments regarding it -- you most likely have to have some evidence other than word-of-mouth. Just because you are not privy to that information (but chances are you would be with a proper FOIA, or its Israeli equivalent, request), it does not mean that evidence does not exist to support the claims. As for the "self-cleansing factor" of the IDF, I have not seen a press release or even a tweet from the IDF about that investigation, whether or not it stood up to scrutiny. Just the simple fact that they are investigating such misconduct. Instead, all of their press releases and tweets are either dehumanizing Palestinians or patting themselves on the back for their operations. And all the while, the IDF's use of white phosphorous bombs in the 2009 attacks against Gaza, for which there is photographic evidence and which broke International and Humanitarian Law, does not get mentioned anywhere anymore. I did. The main question is why wouldn't you take his claims with a grain of salt? Especially when the image you are seeing could be of anything, including a father punishing his sons (which, again, is something I do not condone). Statistically speaking, Israelis and Jews are more likely to be subjected to anti-Palestinian propaganda -- and spread it -- than every other ethnicity on the planet. In order to have an entire country accept the attacks that have been carried out against Palestinians, where almost 2000 civilians were killed and almost 500 of them being children, the target must be dehumanized by the media. So statistically speaking, they should be the ones whose claims should be scrutinized more. I did not say to not listen to any Israeli or Jew speaking of the matter because he is lying. I said that such strong claims with such vague evidence should be taken with a grain of salt. I would worry more about who is shelling children playing soccer on a beach, in what the IDF called a targeted attack, more than the blind firing of rockets. At least when you aim at someone, you get to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. And you see who you are aiming at.

You're right. And since I am engaged in this conversation with you, and you are so certain that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and that it uses human shields, I assume that you have done your research and due diligence and are now able to provide me with the massive amount of proof that convinced you of your conclusion. Yet so far, all we have received from you were tainted, repackaged videos that had nothing to do with Hamas in Gaza, a story about a vacant school used to store rockets, an instructional video about what human shielding is (as if we were unfamiliar with the term and were arguing about something else), and now a picture of two kids being hanged on a fence -- by who could be their father -- doing it as a prank (by all means I agree that this is bad parenting), and very likely a Jew (based on his name) claiming that it is Hamas using children as human shields. And the irony was just a few lines below that... What John posted was an official leaked cable from mid-2009. If a leaked, official, classified document does not convince you of its authenticity, then how can you believe what you are reading or seeing from your "sources", which we have already determined to be propagandist liars? Also, note that the cable was dated July 2009 -- that is more than 5 years ago. Have you ever heard anything about this in the mainstream media, both Western or Israeli? I doubt that such an investigation would take longer than 5 years. So no, it does not speak for the self-cleansing ability of the IDF; but it might speak for their PR ability... Look, if you want to believe in something, then by all means, go ahead. We are not here to stop you. But do not claim that it is empirical or true until you are able to prove it to anyone beyond the shadow of a doubt. If you want to believe that a green leprechaun follows you around, go ahead! But don't expect us to also see it or believe in something you chose to believe in without proof, while pushing away all the people that were telling you that there is no leprechaun.

This is precisely why I do not sign up to the "terrorist" labeling of various organizations or armies. A terrorist organization nowadays is any organization or state that does not submit to or has the courage to stand up to the United States or its close allies' political agenda. As George W. Bush clearly stated: "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists". There's no option of being in between, or not associated with any of the two groups. It is like the drug of choice. One day it is legal; the next day it's illegal; a decade later it might be legal again. There are videos of Blackwater (or whatever they are named nowadays) driving into and shooting at civilian vehicles in Iraq, without any reasonable motive, opening fire at civilians without being threatened, and investigations about the murdering numerous civilians. What makes Blackwater not a terrorist organization -- the US government sanctioning of it?

You missed my analogy by a mile... You are an innocent civilian, who owns a house with a shed, and who is, at the time of this analogy, gone on vacation. I am Hamas, and I decide to use your shed to store weaponry, temporarily, knowing that you are on vacation, and thus not home or in your shed (unless people vacation in their sheds). How exactly did I use you as a human shield by storing these weapons in your shed while you were gone? Your clip has absolutely nothing to do with the UN finding rockets in the vacant school or with my analogy. Surely, since this is such a common occurrence in Gaza -- that it got almost 1900 civilians killed so far, out of which 430 were children, and many more thousands were injured -- there has to be better evidence of this than a vacant UN school used as a weapons cache, no?

That's like using your shed to store weaponry while you're away on vacation and you claiming that I used you as a human shield. You do realize that this is ridiculous, right?

I was about to post that, JohnH. I also wouldn't be surprised if this is the same UN school in Rafah that the Israel Defense Forces bombed on August 3rd. But this is only speculation.

So you provided us with two videos that you call proof that Hamas uses children as human shields. One of those videos was already disproved as being Syrian rebels. Now, if you check the other video you posted, there is a comment that claims that the Arabic spoken in that clip is also a Syrian dialect. I am not an Arabic linguist, so I cannot verify this. So the validity of this comment remains uncertain. But the issue has been raised, which makes this clip only partially credible, until someone can confirm or disprove the dialect. But as we stand right now, you have provided a clip with a completely inaccurate title and description (read: false propaganda), and another clip whose authenticity is currently being debated. This significantly tips the state of this debate against your proof of Hamas using children as human shields. At this point, unless you were biased, you should either be seriously doubting the validity of these sources (and, personally, I would start questioning the validity of other sources as well, seeing I have just been blatantly lied to), or post more proof to support your argument that Hamas uses children as human shields (preferably ensuring that the clips do have sound and the Arabic spoken can be discerned, as this is clearly a good way to disprove false propaganda). But you have done neither of this, you have deviated from the topic, and you are now having a he-said-she-said argument with regevdl. If Hamas is regularly using children as human shields in Gaza, you should definitely be able to produce proof of this. If Israel with all its advanced military and surveillance capabilities cannot produce such video evidence to support their claims, then I'm going to dismiss this as false propaganda. As for the Hamas combatants, with regards to this issue: they are innocent until proven guilty.

I think the use of equal force is permissible; and what fills the gap is responsibility. If someone points a gun at me on the street and gets shot -- whether it's by me or an armed bystander attempting to protect me -- even if he/she claims that they were only planning to threaten me, they acted in an irresponsible manner, and are responsible for what happened to them. If all they wanted to do was to threaten, they could have done it without the gun. The moment they brought the gun and pointed it, the potential for harm increased significantly.

cap·i·tal·ism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. A country's trade can exist without government, banks or fractional reserves, and so can its industry. Just because you say that the aforementioned institutions are the foundational basis of capitalism doesn't make it so. Unless you can provide some supporting evidence to your claims, you're doing nothing but proving how narrow-visioned you are. You can consider me out of this conversation if you cannot provide something that is more than opinion.

How the hell is my post an extrapolation? You're the one talking about people living without capitalism for thousands of years and I'm showing you that they did not! I'm giving you an example of a time when there was no such thing as money, Federal Reserve or banks. I'm giving you an example of when people traded their goods and services on a free market. Don't tell me that if someone was offered more of something in return for his goods or services (also known as profit), he wouldn't take it. Since when is the existence of banks, central banks, fractional reserves and any of the banking terms you keep throwing around a requirement for capitalism? As someone else said earlier, you are full of strawman arguments. You have taken everything out of context and gave ambiguous counterarguments to it. Also, since we're in the business of posting Wikipedia links, here's one for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll -- you are either a troll or lack substantial argumentation skills.

So what you are suggesting, Dwain, is that we should go back to the stone ages, so we can live without capitalism in a self-sustaining manner, whereby we plant our own food, raise our own livestock, and take care of every single one of our needs by ourselves. This is something that did not even happen back then. There was always a form of bartering in place whereby various aliments and necessities were traded openly in a free market.

Right... because holding a gun to people's head and forcing them to hire you to mow their lawn for $500/hr definitely gives them a choice and the freedom to "stand the fuck up".

That's an interesting idea, regevdl. And it gets a lot closer to the truth than "religion" ever will. But I wouldn't look at it as an ideology either. Attracting likeminded people does not necessarily require an ideology. The concept of “attracting” likeminded people does not rely on a dogma. I look at it more like a natural selection of interpersonal relationships. It is normal for us to become closer with someone who has a similar thought process, and distance ourselves from people with significantly different thought processes. Atheism is the result of a specific thought process. It is not the deciding factor that influences who we will have relationships with and who we will avoid having relationships with. Decisions made based on labels are made by those of “little minds,” because it requires a lot less effort to produce a label for someone and jump to a conclusion, than having to listen to the person and identify their thought process. Atheists don’t need to go to church or gatherings to confirm to each other that there is no god. They do not need support groups or drinking clubs to keep them onboard with the idea that there is no god. Atheism is not an ideology that people follow. It is a conclusion derived using logic and reasoning on the topic of deities. If you have your math right, you will reach the same conclusion whether or not you have seen it before. The same is true about atheism. The problem is that a lot of us come from having been forced to believe in the wrong conclusion, when all the formulas and calculations we knew could not produce that result.

I have seen this before -- the idea that "I accept and respect your point of view and therefore I expect you to do the same about my point of view." There is this idea that if someone comes and puts a $5 bill in your pocket, you now owe them $5... or that if they agree with a completely rational point of view, you now simply owe them by believing in their irrational point of view. One point of view is completely logical and provable; the other one is a mere choice to believe in fantasy. The problem you are facing as an agnostic is that you know that there is absolutely no evidence of a god existing, and therefore you have no reason to believe in one; but you choose to reserve the possibility that one might exist, as a backup, in case you are wrong. It is like answering a multiple choice question with "it's X, but it could be anything else," thereby allowing yourself to be right under any circumstance. If you are self-aware, you can probably test this hypothesis by seeing how you respond when people ask something that you are not certain of. If you tend to throw fragments like "but maybe not" or alternating between responses, then your agnosticism is probably a symptom of the same problem.

Saying that you have to have faith in science is like saying that you have to have faith in what you can observe and confirm. If you need to have faith to believe in something that you can observe, then why debate anything? This entire conversation could be a figment of your imagination and unreal. This conversation is either real, observable, and thus worth having, or it's a figment of your imagination like your shower debates, that no one else can observe and thus exists only in your mind. And there is nothing objective about the latter part.

The way I look at it is that if someone makes a claim for something, they have the burden of proof. I don't have to automatically believe their claim without proof. Now, they can come throw a book around and say that that is all the proof I need to believe in the claim; but given the hundreds if not thousands of inaccuracies, fallacies and total lack of logic behind that book, I am going to say that I need a better proof than that. Eventually, if any of the arguments used to prove the accuracy of that claim can be refuted and no logical/rational counterarguments can be made against it, then I can consider that there is no proof to support the claim. Therefore, it's only right that I don't believe in the claim. I am not signing up to a belief or faith in "non-belief" when I say that I have not been convinced by the claim. I am simply saying that I refuse to believe in something that can't be proven. If it's a religion to not believe in things that are not proven, then all sane people make part of that religion, because to some degree or another everyone has refused to believe a claim that was not proven at least once in their lives.