No, there is near universal agreement that the black market is what elevates price. It was true with alcohol prohibition and it's the same with drugs. The illegality makes it profitable for those who are willing to take the risk, or have the firepower to be untouchable.

Oh really?  1) Congressional Republicans Rail Against Legalization of Marijuana: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/colorado-marijuana-legalization_n_5638758.html  2) A republican congressman (Randy Harris, MD) promised to prevent a bill from proceeding through congress after DC residents voted to legalize marijuana. (Congress reviews all laws DC passes and can hold up any law it disagrees with.) 3) Republican presidential candidates on the record against legalization: Christie, Bush, Rubio, Walker, Cruz  http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-marijuana-republicans-20150509-story.html#page=1 4) The republican Attorneys General of Oklahoma and Nebraska have sued Colorado over its legalization of marijuana. http://abovethelaw.com/2015/05/marijuana-melee-nebraska-and-oklahoma-v-colorado/

There's more than substantial evidence to prove republicans are the party standing in the way of legalization. There are some republicans who favor legalization, as there are some democrats who favor prohibition, but they are exceptions that prove the rule.

The answer to number 2 is because he's recognized as a leader of Muslims. The fact that he is influential in Islam makes his personal prejudices and hatred towards other religions very relevant to how Muslims conduct themselves with members of other faiths, especially where they follow his example.

Thanks for this. I will look into it when I have an hour to watch.

I don't know enough about Breslau to have a qualified opinion. What are the circumstances that would lead you to question its status as occupied or not? Does Germany contest the land? Does the civilian population express a German identity rather than Polish?

Just responding to these two short notes in another good post by you. I also agree that this is the best approach for me as a "selfish tax payer." However, following this road is nearly guaranteed political suicide in the US, so it almost seems futile to try to pursue it. Being critical of Israeli policy opens you to a charge of being anti-Semitic, 'betraying an important ally,' or any other serious political crimes that a political challenger would be all too eager to use against you for their own political gain. It's unfortunate because as Israel's largest enabler, I believe we have a responsibility to hold Israel responsible for human rights violations. (Given our own track record, the case would ring hollow though.) Despite being the dominant military force in the area, Israel is still viewed as the underdog, and undercutting them inspires great anger from US citizens.

The book On Killing is really great. I can't recommend it enough. It's one of the most important books I've ever read considering the topic it deals with and how the military systematically extinguishes the natural instinct not to kill, and how important understanding desensitization is for our civilization in this era where violence can be inflicted on large numbers by so few and with such ease.

The difference between Liberland and all those countries you listed is that no other nation is claiming their land. Liberland territory is claimed by at least one, and possibly two, other nation(s).

What is the metric by which you measure the degree of modernity in a religion? Is it how recently it was created, or the extent to which they believe in 'magic?' Scientology is more "modern" in the sense that it was created more recently, but I wouldn't consider their dogmatic beliefs any more modern than any other religion.

They weren't faking a raid on the compound. The raid on the compound was real with the intent to kill him, they were just going to report he was killed in a drone strike to get around the sticky mess of what actually happened at the compound.

I doubt when your religion was taking into consideration whether or not pork was allowed, they considered any of these reasons. Just about every one of the reasons listed in this article are contemporary matters that did not exist 1400 years ago.

Or pre-populate with mercenaries before you declare your independence? In any event, it ends the same way. Doubtful they would ever find enough people willing to risk their lives to enforce such an infantile effort at creating a nation.

Why would I consider such a ridiculous scenario as people with no job prospects deciding to just be serial rapists? And if you're going to cite something as a fact, provide the basis for it. (Where are you getting the "latest stats" from?)

The republican party is the one that stands in the way of legalization. That's the whole basis of the "republican war on drugs." I'm talking legislatively. It doesn't matter what party to local officials are when the republicans block reform on the national or state level. Those local police still have to enforce the law.

Pigs being the primary carrier of something does not mean they all have it. The human form of the AIDS virus is carried primarily by humans, but do you have AIDS? Do you avoid all humans because some might carry this virus? To avoid pigs on the basis that there exists certain viruses which they primarily carry is not the same as avoiding them because they all carry it.

And everything you eat can lead to a disease. Are you prohibited from having fat? Fat leads to heart disease. Sugar? Diabetes. Salt? Hypertension. Unless you're eating a strictly vegan diet, anything you eat can lead to some type of disease. The prohibition on pork because it can be bad for you is logically faulty, as you're surely eating many other things that are just as likely to cause some other disease, which is apparently fine by your religion.

This is where I take the information about Palestinian declaration of state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Declaration_of_Independence One of the problems with the Palestinian declaration is that it is predicated on the 1947 partition borders. As we have already agreed, this is probably no longer applicable/possible, as too much has changed in the last 65 years for those borders to be workable. But from the Palestinian point of view, this is what they consider to be their state, and Israeli "occupation" of that area is a provocation. It seems to me to have any progress on this, the world needs to work towards helping the Palestinians accept that the original borders are no longer on the table, due to Arab aggression towards Israel following the 1947 plan. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The point here is that Palestine should be a state, and now both sides just need to be reasonable about what the borders should be. And one thing I find absolute is that Israeli settlement expansion is not reasonable, and this is entirely Israel's fault since the government encourages it.


We've both argued our sides here. I respectfully disagree that building settlements isn't a provocation. I think militarily, Israel is provocative too, but this is a chicken-and-the-egg type of argument. Israel really doesn't have a choice but to respond militarily when they are attacked (for political reasons, moral is another question). Just as Israel could not respond militarily, Palestinians could just as easily stop firing rockets.


It wouldn't surprise me in the least that an unfortunate amount of aid winds up in the personal accounts of the political leadership of Palestine. This is repeated everywhere in the world to poor nations the developed world supports. The solution to me is to stop providing aid (my view as a selfish tax payer), because our intervention entrenches tyrants who have the resources to impose their will.

I understand your point of view, I just disagree with it (largely, not entirely). I think there is definitely an element that wants to destroy Israel and there are people who use this anger for their own political advantage, but I also think this is a minority compared to the people who just want their own state and to live in peace. As I stated above, I think the (unreasonable) expectation to have the 1947 borders leads to a mentality of purposeful and willful "occupation" that is not necessarily justified. The violence over this isn't aimed at "destroying Israel," it's aimed at driving out the "occupation." (I'm using "occupation" because I don't believe everything the Palestinians view to be occupied territory to be a legitimate claim.) But I think the distinction between the motivation of destroying Israel and ending the occupation to be important, as the former motivation is murderous, but the latter is defensive. Any population on Earth would, and has, violently resisted what they viewed to be an armed and hostile occupation. I think the majority of the Palestinian violence is of the latter motivation now, but I am not blind to the fact that there are still factions bent on the destruction of Israel. But their numbers will continue to dwindle, as they have since the aggressive wars against Israel began in 1947.

The previous generations didn't pay their share. No real reason to expect we'll pay ours either.

So what it is the "legitimate" claim for Israel as a state then? It seems to me the same situation: Israel declared itself a state in 1948 at the end of the British Mandate, and then it was accepted as a state by the international community. It seems just as arbitrary as Palestine, which has declared itself a state and is recognized by a majority of the world, both in terms of number of governments, and a vast majority of the population represented by those governments. I'm just trying to drill down as to what the specific difference is here, on a technical "what is a state" level.


I agree with you for the most part, the violence and the rockets need to stop. The only thing I would add here is the question, do you believe the Israel does nothing to perpetuate hostilities? I guess specifically I mean the expansion of Jewish settlements into what both sides have at times previously recognized as land designated as part of a future Palestinian state.


Ok, I was just wondering. I agree with this viewpoint.


I think your analysis of the situation and the motivation of Israel is reasonable. I don't disagree with it, but I do also feel that this approach makes victims of people who aren't deserving in many cases. By lumping all Palestinians together, Israel looks to punish "them" by taking "their" land when the radicals commit violence against Israel. But the blanket use of force against "Palestinians" and not the specific individuals who commited the violence makes victims out of people who had nothing to do with the violence. I think this is where much anger comes from. And then the radicals use this as proof of how 'evil' Israel is and radicalize more people for the intifadas and the rocket campaigns. I'm not justifying the violence, but I'm saying that I don't believe the Israeli approach to it doesn't solve the problem, and actually makes it worse. It hasn't solved it for decades, and I guess at this point it only looks like it will when there are no Palestinian lands left, and then it still won't, because there will continue to be terrorist attacks.

As for the Palestinians stopping it themselves, I hardly know how they could. There are no resources in Palestine for police or courts or just general society. To the extent Palestinians have jobs, they travel to Israel for work, when they are allowed to cross the border. There are just no resources for a functioning society, and it is very easy to say "that's the price of being terrorists, because then Israel has to wall them off from everyone else" but this is also an overslimpification of what is happening (IMO). It creates victims of people who are innocent, and this creates anger and resentment, and then a radical group wants to use them as a proxy for their war against Israel, and it's easy to marshal that anger at that point.


This works for me. I think you're right about the original plan not being relevant today. I think the biggest impediment to peace is the radical groups in Palestine, but obviously from what I've written, I don't hold Israel blameless. I think their actions, while perfectly predictable to their strategic aims of securing their borders, also perpetuates the problem by continually stoking anger. But I also don't think politicians on either side want peace. While they wouldn't deny it if it fell on to them, their primary objective is like all other politicians: to stay in power, and they can use the anger at the other side to do that. Marshal the hatred for political gain because it's easier than trying to convince your own people to want peace instead.

Isn't his intention clear? It seems to me it is not to pay the interest. I'm interested to know does Islam forbid the payment of interest, or just the charging of interest which implies that if it can't be charged, it is not to be paid? If Islam only forbids the charging of interest, what basis does he have to claim he cannot pay? And most importantly, if someone lent him money who is not a Muslim, does he not have a moral obligation not to take the loan since he knows they will ask for interest which he has no intention of paying? I don't know how it works in Islam, but in the western world, breaking a contract is dishonorable, and reflects poorly on your morality and ethics as an individual.

Are you disputing that the majority of prisons do not make rehabilitation their primary function? The war on drugs has proven to be the death of rehabilitative prisons as they are overcrowded past their ability to function in a rehabilitative manner, even when they're specifically built to be so. Here's a nice and short synopsis of the changing role of the US prison system: http://www.adpsr.org/home/prison_history.  Perhaps if the war on drugs were eliminated, there would be less stress on the system and it could return to a more rehabilitative role, but that would require a seismic political shift in the national landscape, especially by the republican party. I'm hopeful, but not expectant.

I suppose it depends what the intent of prison is. If it's to reform people and have them be functioning members of society when they're released, I think Bastoy is shows some promise. If it's to punish people in harsh conditions during and after imprisonment so they are likely to return to crime, the US prison system is exemplary.