I can't imagine how you got "democracy is good... but... hm... ehm... [cognitive dissonance]... except in Israel" from my post. I'm saying it SHOULD be democracy even though I won't like the result very much. I'm simply acknowledging that Palestinians aren't saints (no country is), their understanding of human rights is different than mine (again true of nearly every other country including the US), and that Palestinians aren't particularly fond of US interests (with good and obvious reasons).

If it were a true democracy, I think there would be very real safety concerns for Israeli Jews immediately. Going from one group being persecuted to the other group being persecuted isn't good. But at least that would be democracy rather than persecution WITHOUT democracy.

A treaty doesn't dictate reality. The US and Israel pretend Palestine is a seperate country when it suits them, but do everything possible to prevent it in reality. Look at how bent out of shape they got when Palestine wanted a seat at the UN. It's a part of Israel in reality governed by Israel and totally subject to Israel's rule, but they have no vote.

Read this and tell me why Gaza is the terrorist state.

"Undue influence" is quite an understatement. Israel doesn't allow Palestinians to leave, and prevents anyone it can from entering. They're not allowed to import anything aside from life-sustaining rations Israel approves of. Israel did all it could to prevent Palestinians from voting for who they wanted to in their own elections. They're not allowed to have an army. Israel encourages extremists to take Palestinian territory with force. On top of that, Israel is attacking Palestine in an extremely one-sided conflict.

Aside from the freedom to reproduce, there doesn't seem to be much that Israel doesn't attempt to control about Palestinian life.

..which empirically is not enough to stop the current situation...

You'd suggest what? Cynicism is warranted with politics, but when it gets into resignation, then it's usually a contributor to the problem. People who would stand against the spying are too busy lamenting how the country is going to hell in a handbasket to actually demand something real. People who like their politics to be like a wrestling match in the meantime cheer on their team and let everything else get trampled.

Hey now! Did we even read the bill? We don't know that it will be bad, I mean the Senate has stood up against ... wait

Never mind. We're doomed.

I agree. Furthermore, why make an egg now? Fuck that, wait for a chicken first, THEN make an egg. Greedy fucking ovipares always jumping the gun...

I did some quick googling, I'm sure there is controversy over some of these numbers:

Number of Knesset members: 120
Number of current Arab Knesset members: 12 or 10%
Number of Israelis: 8 million
Number of Palestinians: 4.4 million

Given that Israel rules Palestine, that really doesn't meet my definition of democracy. As an American I'm sure I'd have problems with an Islamic Israel, but we tell ourselves we value democracy and freedom above all else. Furthermore, I can't imagine the current course will end up better.

Angry birds... IN 3D!!

They were honest: comcast is very scared of it. And those cities WERE failed experiments in the sense that they weren't very experimental. What's the hypothesis here being tested? That the city can offer a municipal service... involving computers?

The rights of corporations to put out fliers has never been in question. It has nothing to do with corporate personhood, nothing to do with spending money as speech.

If you don't want corporations to be considered people in terms of freedom of speech, fine, lets pretend that's the case. Only real people have freedom of speech, done. What a roadblock for comcast! Why, they would have to give money to some real person in order to have THAT person exercise their freedom of speech in the form of misleading fliers! Man, that could add a whole hour or two to the process, imagine how much freedom we'd have! (single tear runs down cheek)

Ignorance is no excuse from legal repercussions is the meaning of that phrase. Google made that statement to a reporter asking for comment, not in a courtroom. In reality (as opposed to the legal system) yes, ignorance of a law definitely is a good excuse. Look at patent trolls, those are clear cases where ignorance of the laws are unfortunately not a legal defense but are definitely a moral excuse.

That's disingenuous. Those aren't really in the same category as modern nukes. We're talking about much more power than all of WWII including those two bombs

A man goes to a doctor. The doctor says "You need to stop smoking." Man says "SNORE! Old news, you told me that last time, tell me something I don't know!" and lights up. The man dies shortly thereafter *.

It is news because it is still happening and most people don't know it, or like to pretend we're not in for rough times. If a story is a duplicate on slashdot, then that's one thing. If it's so obvious that everyone already knows it, then that's also fair to object.

Maybe start by asking why they are all spouting the same nonsense. Then conclude that it's because we have stupid voters who tolerate it. Then move.