Bob

Your OP is an example of him being a bona-fide anti-Semite, with his parroting of the Jews as puppet masters who control the American government. He has no credibility on these issues when he says such absurdities. Naturally, you will parrot these ridiculous assertions as valid. We expect that from you.

Zbigniew Brezinski is known for being very hostile to Israel and Jewish national interests. It's pretty much poured over into his wholesale subscription to the anti-Semitic narrative of excessive "Jewish influence" in Washington. It is essentially a modern iteration of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a bestseller in many Muslim-majority countries and a favorite among anti-Semites on the internet), with the new master plan for global domination now being advanced by Jews Zionists. Popular profiteering off of this anti-Semitic historical-political narrative has manifested itself in such titles as "The Israel Lobby". Brezinski said, not to long ago, that if Israel were to mobilize its airforce towards striking Iran's nuclear weaponry development facilities, that the American military should shoot down the bombers should they fly over American-occupied territory. That's just one of many examples I can provide of Brezinski's absurd anti-Israel positions and rhetoric.

The Holocaust is the pinnacle of what the Jewish people are vulnerable to in the absence of statehood. To paraphrase a great man, (the Jewish people) have endured the benefits of statelessness over many centuries: inquisitions and expulsions, dhimmitude, pogroms, and the Holocaust. Thanks, but no thanks. We've enjoyed enough of the minority benefits and will now determine out own destiny rather than allow our futures be defined for us by whims of our host societies who refuse to treat us as equal human beings. It's predictable for someone like yourself to suggest that the Holocaust has been "exploited" by Zionism, rather than the simple truth - the Holocaust is the ultimate historical example of why Israel is necessary for the Jewish people. Of course, those who subscribe to demented political and historical narratives have a knack for perverting morality.

If Israel is behind the recent liquidation of Iranian nuclear scientists (which seems to a dangerous job in Iran, lately!), then good for Israel. The possible acquisition of nuclear weaponry by Iran presents an existential threat to Israel, so Israel has a moral obligation to prevent this from happening. Those who wish to label this as "Israeli terrorism" are engaging in the usual hysterics and attempts to paint Israel with the same brush that is reserved for Islamist filth like Hezbollah and Hamas. Let's not pretend that Iran doesn't have blood on its hands. It provides support to Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist outfits in and around Israel - including weapons, technology, intelligence, funding, and political/propagandist support. For the purposes of trivia to those that didn't already know - during the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, Israeli soldiers captured Iranian weapons and tech and intercepted Farsi communications. And that's to say nothing of Iran's complicity in mass murder in two terrorist attack in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, material and political support to terrorists who actively murder American and coalition troops in Iraq, and on and on and on. If Israel was indeed indeed behind these recent liquidations of Iranian nuclear scientists, then bravo.

I don't understand the question or the motive for asking it. Why don't you answer it first?

Here's another one, just for the hell of it:

Bud is desperately trying to come up with some equivalent to videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtt8V25lGmc&feature=related

People here don't realize it's satirical. I didn't know it was a parody of 60s/70s official Israel government messages warning against assimilation, but the first clue is that it's a bikini-clad female warning against the evils of assimilation. As expected, bud parrots the anti-Israel narrative in lock-step with his ilk.

That's exactly it. That's why GostHacked asked, in feigned bewilderment, why certain MLW regulars don't draw attention to such stories while focusing on equally reprehensible examples of "religious extremism" among Islamists. I guess this story is the moral parallel of female victims of rape being treated like criminals in Afghanistan (took two seconds to find this story on CNN when searching for "Afghanistan rape victim Kharzai"), or acid being thrown in the faces of girls going to school (took another second to find this story when searching for "Afghanistan acid attack"). Here's the first video that shows up in Google when searching for "modesty police Iran":

Perhaps the Israeli government regularly updates a database that keeps track of spitting incidents in Israel. Of course, we will need to compose an algorithm to factor in the likely number of unreported spitting incidents. Hopefully this databsse is managed and staffed by social scientist graduates well-trained in the collection of such information, so that each spitting incident is categorized by location, age of the offender and victim, degree of religiosity of both the offender and the victim, the time of the day or night of the incident, and other such essential and quantifiable factors. That should satisfy Michael Hardner, who will then be able to follow the discussion with empirical evidence. After all, he just wants to have a "dialogue". Now I'm off off to find those statistics....

I don't speak in code, and I don't post things with ulterior motives. I am an open book on MLW. I say what I mean, and I compose clear and coherent posts that don't require interpretation. Your struggle to "read between the lines" with respect to my posts is unnecessary. If anything, it says a lot about you. My posts are to be taken at face-value, nothing more, nothing less. The question you asked, "What are your views on innocent Muslims?" is just such typical Michael Hardner. It's totally out of left-field, it's a absurdly broad and irrelevant question, and it demonstrates that you are unable to follow the dialogue of the thread. You've just stated that you are trying to decipher my posts, as if you need some sort of decoder ring from your children's breakfast cereal box. What is there to decipher? Again, I say what I mean and I compose clear and coherent posts.

After we specifically define "fringe", you'll then be asking for "evidence" of statistics, right? Some poll or research project that breaks down the Israeli population into arbitrarily defined categories, which will undoubtedly contin within it certain inconsistencies by virtue of the subjective nature of the material being quantified. We will then need to "objectively define" what constitutes an "ultra-orthodox" person. Then define the "Haredim". And then on and on and on. It will never end. Of course Michael Hardner needs to be spoonfed along the way of the dialogue so that his brain doesn't short-circuit when concepts, issues, or ideas are brought up that cannot be touched, felt, tasted, heard and therefore measured "objectively". What a sad life you must live. It's really sad how you think this painfully mechanical way of thinking actually assists you in understanding anything or learning new things. All it does it continuously demonstrate that you are incapable of abstract thinking and grasping subtleties, nuance, and concepts containing elements of ambiguity. I'm almost embarrassed for you when I read your posts. I wonder if you act this absurd in the real world.

I have seen enough of your posts over enough time on MLW to see right through you. Your attempt to smear me as an apologist for idiot fringe groups among the ultra-orthodox communities in Israel is really an attempt to deflect for your real intention with this thread. I might as well try to suggest that Canada and America are waging similar fights for the "soul of the nation", where both countries combat violence against women. If women are much more likely to be raped in America or Canada than in Israel, why are you not waving your false flag for women's rights with a post about that? You know and I know that your intention with this thread is to play the moral equivalence game. End of story. Israel, like any other country, has its issues, but they will not can cannot be addressed by someone like yourself. You just don't know enough, and you certainly don't have any real integrity on this issue. There are certainly legitimate grievances that many Israelis, including myself, feel towards components of the ultra-orthodox community in Israel as well as the broader segment of them in their entirety. Those problems, however, do no include isolated incidents of some idiot spitting on a girl he thinks is "immodestly" dressed. The real issues are about their unemployment resulting from their choice not to study conventional material academically, which is permitted by the state due to a disastrous decision made by Ben-Gurion in Israel's early days regarding stipends for religious students and exemptions from national service - leading certain components of the ultra-orthodox to be overly dependent on social assistance programs. Essentially, many of them are economic liabilities. You wouldn't know anything about that, though. You're just parroting the narrative from the anti-Israel crowd, and it's nothing new, that Israel and the Jewish people the moral equivalents of our enemies.

This is where Michael Hardner attempts to come across as an ultra-rationalist (as if that's an endearing way to be) who wishes to quantify anything and everything. This is standard robotic Michael Hardner thinking at its finest - if there is even a shred of subjectivity or ambiguity to a concept, it short-circuits his brain! If he can't see it, touch it, hear it, or smell it, it cannot be objectively understood. Ah, the limitations of a self-imposed robotic mind. Very sad. But also very amusing.

"What are your views on innocent Muslims?", besides being a ridiculously broad question, is relevant how to this discussion we're having? I mocked you by asking an equally irrelevant, although less broad question about your views of the United Russia ruling party in Russia. A better mockery of your inability to follow a dialogue would've been achieved if I had asked, "What are your views on war?".

I literally burst of laughing and almost spilled water on my keyboard while reading this! In all seriousness, though, of course this is an absurd characterization of the goings-on in Israel. This "push", if you can even call it that (it's not even a tap, let alone a push) is coming from a fringe minority within a minority. Women can and do travel wherever they please in Israel (although perhaps they should think twice before going to several Arab-majority areas at certain times - Western women who've traveled to Israel will likely know what I am talking about). If you were really concerned about gender equality in and around Israel, you would look at the Arab-Muslim communities, where male/female separation isn't the exception, but the norm (albeit largely voluntarily, with a dash of coercion). Bear in mind non-Muslim Arabs don't practise strict gender-separation (you will see Arab-Christian women, for example, leaving salons with fancy hairstyles, makeup, and stylish outfits). Furthermore, you will *never* see Arab-Muslim men and women walking together in Jerusalem outside of a family context. You'll also *never* see Arab-Muslim women walking without a hijab in Jerusalem. Of course this is irrelevant to you, as your entire motivation for posting about such issues on MLW is to portray Israel and Jewish people in a negative light - perhaps rooted in some perverted desire to do as many others do: to draw a moral equivalence between various groups where there is none to be drawn. And their "demands" are of course ignored. The political parties, for example Shas, that you would likely describe as "Jewish fundamentalist" have already come out against this type of behaviour from the fringe groups. As usual, you're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Your hollering over this story would be like someone from Norway decrying Canada for being misogynistic as a result of recent allegations of systemic sexual harassment against women at the RCMP. I would look as ridiculous as you do right now.

The above statement contains a typo, right? Certainly you didn't intend to state that the ultra-orthodox of Israel are nearly as bad Islamic fundamentalists. The overwhelming majority of self-identifying ultra-orthodox will condemn the absurd fringe among them that harass women for being "immodestly" dressed. These types of stories are uncommon and by no mains mainstream. Women do not sit on the back of the bus. When travelling by bus through certain religious neighbourhoods, people voluntarily separate themselves by gender. For example, if sitting in a section with two-seats facing two-seats, at the very least one side of this two-seat section will have two females (unless they are family members, where male-female separation isn't "required"), but will likely have four females, two sitting in each two-seat section. People on these buses normally move themselves about as people get on and off the bus in order to accommodate the desire of many of the passengers to adhere to this gender separation with respect to seating. Rarely, some ultra-religious moron (which is almost always a male) will harass women who refuse to move in order to accommodate others who which to only sit beside others of the same sex. Although people who refuse to play ball with this sort of unspoken set of rules are typically antagonists with a political agenda (which I sympathize with, by the way), who wish to create a scene, it is of course their right to choose to sit where they wish on a bus that is funded with public money. This narrative of "women sitting on the back of the bus" is absolutely untrue. GostHacked's intent with this thread is quite transparent. He's trying to draw some sort of parallel between what he describes as "religious extremists" among the ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Israel (who certainly have their share of problems, largely as a consequence of their own choices) and mass murderers who fly passenger jets into buildings. It's quite absurd, but par for the course with GostHacked.

Hilarious video, thanks for sharing. The girl is also beautiful. Of course the video doesn't do anything alleged by Jack Webber (it isn't comparing Jesus to an ape, but nice try!) implies, but feel free to continue to engage in ridiculous hyperbole and hysterics while comparing a comedy skit on Israeli TV poking fun on Jews that wish to assimilate to vile Hamas propaganda. We don't expect anything else from you.

So my posting of a Nazi propaganda video that was produced in order to hide the truth about Therezienstadt in order to provide a historical example of people like dre (in this instance the IRCC's choice to become useful idiots participating in the Nazi propaganda machine) who willingly parroted the false narrative of our enemies just as he has been doing on MLW has become - me "comparing" contemporary conditions for Jews in Iran with the horrors Jews endured during the Holocaust? Not sure how you connected those dots, but as usual, you're digging in your heels and committing yourself to ongoing self-inflicted humiliation. You're continually reinforcing what many of us on MLW already know about you - that you cannot even read and comprehend standard English. You're simply unqualified to participate in an adult discussion. How embarrassing for you. Although perhaps ignorance is bliss and you really do believe that I compared the situation facing Jews in today's Islamic Republic of Iran with the atrocities committed against us in the Holocaust... which of course, I never did. As I've already said, you're way out of your league when you engage me. You and I both know this, we might as well be honest about it. There's no self-aggrandizement here coming from me, as you're really nothing impressive to behold. I only indulge you and others like you with responses when I'm feeling particularly masochistic, as I enjoy shredding through not only your ignorance, but your non-existent reading comprehension. Keep replying to things that we never said, nor even implied in the slightest when the record is clear - my posts remain on MLW for all to see. Keep digging that hole, it's kinda fun to watch.

Aside from this bearing absolutely no relevance to this thread, would you please elaborate on "US interference in Iranian politics"? Let me warn you in advance that we don't need to get a rehashing of what your post will inevitably amount to: one-minute Wikipedia-research on the Iran pre-1979 "Islamic revolution".

Michael Hardner is oblivious to his tacit support for Islamic terrorism. he probably even opposes the term "Islamic terrorism", and perhaps even "Islamist". Since his apologism the most oppressive and destructive ideologies and their proponents is grounded primarily in his own ignorance rather than a more malicious and deliberate attempt to deceive us, this phenomenon is perhaps less vile. Still, the consequence of terrorist-apologists is largely the same, whether their narratives originate from a place of malice or from a place of massive ignorance and seeming inability to grasp somewhat abstract concepts (as is clearly the case with Michael Hardner).

Treehugger obviously didn't suggest anything remotely close to that. Perhaps you should revert back to making posts composed entirely of emoticons.

Your bewilderment at the hypocrisy from the Toronto Star clearly illustrated by Keepitsimple's post demonstrates why he is a respected poster and you are more of a court jester on MLW. Keepitsimple's point is clear and to the point, yet you can't grasp it.

Economic fundamentals apply equally to both private and public organizations. We are comparing apples and apples. Both must stand on a viable economic foundation.

It's comments like these that perpetuate your reputation as one of the most painfully ignorant MLW members when it comes to elementary-level (basically the academic levels taught in most high-schools) economics. It's really sad.