Saddam never gassed his own citizens, you probably mean Kurdish insurgents.

Assad never gassed his own citizens, you probably mean rebels.

Both strongmen considered their victims to be their citizens and subjects. In the state of rebellion, but citizens nonetheless. Bullshit propaganda much?

How are they NOT "citizens"?

How are they citizens?

Those people have lived within the territorial boundaries their whole lives.

So? The "boundaries" have Israel on one of the sides — why aren't you claiming them to be citizens of Jordan and Egypt? At least, those two neighbors actually once occupied the entire West Bank and Gaza respectively — for twenty years...

The Israeli government is being run by far-right reactionaries

Israeli government has changed many times since the country's establishment — swinging from Left to Right and anything in between. Never once have PLO or Hamas changed their official goal of destroying Israel.

but that won't make it any less true.

Nothing your wrote is true — except for the obvious fact, that downmodding will not make it any less so.

hows that gay marriage thing coming in the US?

All US citizens have the exact same right, when it comes to marriage: they can be married to one person of the opposite gender, who are not too closely related to them by blood.

That about 3% of the population are unable to exercise that right is unfortunate, but it does not mean, they are deprived of the right.

Not any more so, than a quadriplegic is deprived of the right to practice karate.

Oh, so it's a separate nation that Israel recognizes?

No, they are not a nation — not in Israel's opinion, not in their own, not in that of the rest of the world. When the UN split the former British mandate into two parts, Jews proceeded to establishing their own state. The Arabs, instead of likewise establishing theirs, declared war... That was because — in their own opinions — they weren't separate nations (Jordanians, Iraqis, Syrians), but simply Arabs. They lost that war — and the subsequent ones. By the end of the 20th century, Arabs have given up attacking Israel openly and switched to terrorism on one hand and propaganda whining on the other.

That tactics seems to be succeeding...

Not a territory they claim?

No, Israel has no territorial claim to Gaza strip. Are you not embarrassed over being wrong so often?

Israel is sure doing a good job in that area creating more enemies

With the share of Gazans being enemies of Israel before the war being around the "five nines", I doubt strongly, Israel has increased the animosity substantially in recent weeks.

Certainly not enough to prefer to go back to living under the constant barrage of rockets — however ineffective they may be.

Did that make them valid military targets?

It would have, if that — destroying the soldier's transportation — were the goal. But it is not. The goal of blowing up a bus is to make the population — civilians — afraid. That, by definition, is terrorism.

To put it differently, if the IDF started providing a separate transport for these soldiers going home for the weekend — prohibiting them from using the regular buses, Hamas would still try to blow up the regular transit. On contrast, if Hamas were to stop using schools and hospitals to store weapon caches or, indeed, fire from, Israel would not be shooting at those installations.

Got any more false analogies for me?

This shit keeps up and I'll just skip the goddamn Internet completely and go back to reading more books instead.

Please, do. Instead of adding anything to the discussion, you simply repeated your previous comment — only with more swear words. Please, disconnect. Remember to logout.

Whenever I see a provocative account of something from one person's viewpoint, I suspect it of not being entirely honest.

We don't know, what exactly was said, and how "provocative" both sides were. What we do know is:

1. He griped on Twitter about the agent's rudeness.
2. She called him and his boys back from the plane and threatened to call police, unless he deletes the tweet.

That threat to "call police" over nothing but an Internet-posting is enough to have her fired from the job and prosecuted for attempted malicious prosecution. Worse — because she, likely, was not busy checking the Twitter herself, but was informed by Marketing, who do monitor their @-handles all the time — there should be an investigation into a possible conspiracy to commit malicious prosecution.

These people — almost like police themselves — are granted enormous powers to do their jobs. Any time they abuse it even in the slightest, a slap on the wrist is not enough — the hand should be chopped off (yeah, I know), so that none of them do that again.

Do we really want an Internet that, with regard to the U.S. consumer, is essentially owned and operated by Comcast/Xfinity?

Whatever Comcast's failings, I wager, you'll find the Internet owned and operated by the government far worse. I predict mandatory "child-protection" filters, for example. Also, any time you violate the service terms (which will be copied from those of commercial providers), you will be committing a crime (however small), rather than merely breaking contract. Oh, and the tech-support will not only be incompetent, but also rude — because, being government employees, they will be impossible to fire.

the more competition that can be arranged the better

A government entering a market — any market — is the end of competition in it.

Roads (and rail-roads), health-care, electricity and telephone — government and government-sanctioned monopolies provide such outstanding services, only a fool or a sell-out would try to prevent their scope from expanding. Tokyo may have competing privately-owned subway lines, but we here in America know better than that!

Take Municipal WiFi — which the young and progressive generation was hailing on this very site only 10 years ago — was not that a roaring success, that swept over the nation?

What country's first ammendment guarantees you the right to intimidate or harass people online?

What country equates complaining about rudeness with intimidation and harassment? Probably, not even North Korea...

"bitch"? really? there's no need to call anyone that.

Yes, there is, of course. As described in TFA, the woman certainly qualifies for the term. Anybody abusing their power over others is a bad person ("bitch", "asshole" — pick your gender-specific name). And, in addition, malicious prosecution — which she threatened to bring upon him — is a felony, you know...

and perhaps that is the reason: the flight crew considered the tweet intimidation or threatening.

If complaining on Tweeter about rudeness can be considered either "intimidating" or "threatening" — or, indeed, "interfering" — then the First Amendment is null and void. Is that, what you are telling us?

"No person may assault, threaten, intimidate, or interfere with a crewmember in the performance of the crewmember's duties aboard an aircraft [emphasis mine -mi]] being operated under this part."

The gate-agent being talked about was not aboard the aircraft (nor part of the crew). In other words, your citation is invalid and inapplicable even if it were appropriate for a stewardess or a pilot on board.

the tweet identified someone by name.

Her name is publicly displayed. There is nothing "intimidating" about repeating it — or even taking pictures.

there are more reasonable ways to lodge a complaint, and that ain't one of them.

Whether the victim was "reasonable" or not is not being discussed. The agent threatened him with arrest over his accusing her of rudeness. What else would you blame a victim for? How about posting a negative review of a restaurant? Maybe, we "should be more like Europe" and punish people for that too?