june gloom on 16/1/2009 at 04:33
Quote Posted by Nicker
Yes, the mob was responsible for its actions, to become violent. That doesn't relieve the landlord or the police from acting to preserve the safety of the tenants. As long as you cannot suggest a workable and ethically superior alternative to their action, your arguments have done nothing but to support my original assertion.
I dunno. Do they serve warrants in Germany?
Thirith on 16/1/2009 at 07:47
Quote Posted by heywood
When people make a bad decision and something bad happens to them, I feel sorry. When they make the same bad decision and get hurt again, I feel a little less sorry. And when they continue to chose the same path over and over again, eventually they exhaust my sympathy.
Fuck yeah. How dare those killed Palestinian kids make the same bad decision over and over again? :erm:
Muzman on 16/1/2009 at 07:58
re: the Germany thread of the conversation
The cops probably thought, rightly or wrongly, they had to act to diffuse a dangerous situation. Most forces around the world have such special provisions. Individual rights can get sorted out in court afterwards. Much easier and less paperwork than breaking the riot shields and water canon.
ercles on 16/1/2009 at 08:00
All snide moral high ground aside, what heywood is talking about is essentially human nature. Although it wasn't the mostly tactful point in the world, I still think it is a valid point none the less.
Jason Moyer on 16/1/2009 at 08:43
Based on how Pallywood works, those kids are probably throwing stones into a lake. It's sad that I can't even take pictures that make them look guilty at face value because nearly everything we see from gaza or the west bank is faked.
Edit: Deleting reply to dethtoll after actually reading his post.
Thirith on 16/1/2009 at 09:28
Oh, so it was those guys on the photo throwing stones who were killed? Ah well, in that case it's clearly absolutely justified to be all self-righteous about denying them sympathy.
Honestly, some people here are about as likely to differentiate as the
Daily Telegraph...
ercles: as I wrote earlier, I fully understand if anyone, heywood included, doesn't go all bleeding-heart over Israel and Palestine. Most if not all of us have a limited amount of sympathy to 'spend'.
What makes him a dick in this instance is not that he doesn't care, it's that he obviously believes his pigeonholing of all Israeli and all Palestinians to be anything other than reductive stupidity. It's roughly the equivalent of saying, "I have no sympathy at all for the people who died in 9/11 - look at US foreign policy..." Making such a causal link is intellectually and morally lazy, as far as I'm concerned, and deserves to be called out.
ercles on 16/1/2009 at 09:42
fair call
Rogue Keeper on 16/1/2009 at 09:49
Quote Posted by fett
Glad to know I'm not the only one who hated that fucking game. If I wanted to die by a single gunshot wound to the head, I could simply watch The Bachelor and drink heavily.
Man, harden up and go with the MINIMALIST MOD. :ebil:
heywood on 16/1/2009 at 14:09
Thirith -
I think you're perverting my point. Innocents die in every war and sure they deserve sympathy. People who die in car accidents deserve sympathy. Etc. Nobody is saying that innocent people deserve to die. That is so obvious I don't know why I need to say it. :confused:
What I'm saying is that I no longer feel sympathy for the plight of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples (particularly the Gazans). And I think there are other peoples and other conflicts more deserving of the world's attention.
Perhaps I'm not making it clear enough or you're misunderstanding my point. But if you're trying to equate not having sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people to not ever having sympathy for any innocent Palestinian, then it is you making the reductionist argument, not me.
sh0ck3r -
I fail to see a moral equivalence between the genocides in Africa and the Israel-Palestine conflict. If you don't see the difference, fine, but I do. You were probably joking about the North Koreans, but I actually have a lot of sympathy for the North Korean people. They have no choice. They are living in a closed society ruled by a dictator and they're not even fully aware of their own plight.
Nicker -
Trying to get back on topic. Even if the flag violated the lease (not sure if it did), that still doesn't justify illegal entry and seizure. Leases specify how to deal with violations, typically written notice, then fines and/or eviction.
And the ethical choice for the police was to control the violent protesters. That is their duty. By breaking into this guy's apartment and taking his flag, they became agents of the mob instead of agents of the law.
My concern is that if you allow the police to throw out the law and violate people's rights whenever there's a perceived threat of violence, then it's not a free society anymore. It's worse when the law itself violates people's rights (ie. the USA Patriot Act). I'm just disappointed in general with how the supposedly "free world" has responded thus far to the spread of radical Islam.
