padren

I haven't looked into that too much, or what would be expected in those situations. Israel appears to be often overly harsh in their methods, but my main concern is the issue of what happened on the boat where the people died. How they treat reporters is another story. If you read a paragraph above the one you quoted: In addition, there is this: When a friend of mine was on tour in Iraq, he was on patrol in an armored vehicle manning the "big gun" at the top. An Iraqi child about 12 yrs old was riding his bike and entirely unaware of their vehicle, and he was yelling loudly to the child to turn. The child did not look like he was carrying explosives or anything that would be a threat, but they have to maintain a perimeter around their vehicle and open fire on anyone or anything that fails to adhere requests to stay back and breeches the safety line. He kept yelling trying to get the kid's attention on the load busy street and the kid looked up finally and realized where he was and backed off - but you imagine being in that position? I know I'd be sick and loaded with adrenaline, but what can you do? You are required to open fire if a certain distance is breached. To me the sickest thing about warfare and military engagements is that situations such as the one with the 12 yr old will happen, and they will not always turn out like this. It's a horrible affair, it's imprecise and it's impossible to count on "clean results" from any specific engagement or only "the bad guys" get shot or suppressed and "the good guys" are able to distinguish "the innocent" and protect them. That's a cold fact, but what really bothers me is when people act in total disregard and with no respect for this fact - "change course away from the Gaza Strip or be confronted with lethal force." is not just the words of some bullies intent on pushing them around, it's a plea to avoid a very likely messy and tragic confrontation. For combatants to choose to ignore such pleas is unfortunate but understandable but for peaceful protesters it's an absolute disregard for human life. If that's how little they value human life - fine. But then to claim outrage and surprise at the subsequent events that resulted ranges from absolute unforgivable ignorance to blatant hypocrisy. Military forces are rarely out there to be bullies and kick "the little guys" around. They are doing what they have to because it's the least worst option available, and they do it solemnly and which as much precision as they can to try and avoid the loss of life that haunts them as much as any other human being. To so blatantly and dismissively limit their options to the point that "no-contact boarding and control" is their only one and then condemning them for it honestly sickens me.

It seems pretty plausible to me. Without solid evidence we can't say "so that's what happened" but at the same time neither side has solid evidence of their view of events, so it's not like he has the burden of proof to overturn the Flotilla's account, as neither account has been settled. I would say the reason it seems plausible is: 1) Ships 1-5 did behave as protesters would be expected, and there was no loss of life or injury 2) Ship #7 did behave as protesters would be expected, and there was no loss of life or injury 3) Ship #6, the only one to encounter an anomaly only had one element that was different than all the others: the people on that ship. I'm not so sure with #7, but 1-5 and #6 were all handled by the same IDF people enforcing the blockade. Therefore, the most likely anomaly responsible is the one element anomalous to that encounter: the people on board. Secondarily: I have no idea how Israel could have benefited from this exchange. Clearly Gaza has but just what would be Israel's motivation? The only plausible scenario where the IDF fired on the protesters before being placed in harms way themselves would be due to some catastrophic error - followed by a cover-up. This is plausible but again, given how anomalous this one case was, it seems less so than the others. I think only time and evidence can really settle it.

That is a different measure: 1) "Israel is starving Gaza with the blockade due to not letting shipments in" 2) "They do, but they have to go through inspections first is all" 3) "Yes, but they do block aid because construction material isn't allowed in" That's an argument that "Gaza isn't being allowed to rebuild" which is a fair issue to discuss, but that is not the same one as "Gaza isn't allowed to get food."

I think I have to agree with you, that would have been far better. It's also one of those situations where literally every day counts, and throwing resources early (damn the consequences) would actually be warranted - we can throw a few hundred billion at wallstreet without blinking because "if we stop and blink the damage will be unparalleled" - but here we have clear, present and tangible damages and costs rising every day. With the entire ecosystems is choking to death, I think your no-holds-barred approach would even be cheaper in the long run considering just the economic impact of the toxicity and die off.

I agree with the overall assessment that his lack of being "in front" has hurt his reputation on this. While it's just a musing and not enough to draw a conclusion, I wonder if there is some advantage (perhaps deliberate) to avoid being too personally involved, so as to not over politicize the spill. When this is plugged and we start slowly cleaning up the damage, the national dialog should be on examining how this happened, and how we solved it and our general practices in such matters. For the media to celebritize Obama's role for good or bad, or either party to turn it into Obama-spin would detract from learning anything useful from all this.

It's seems pretty reasonable with a semi-auto pistol. If you are cornered or on the ground being bludgeoned and are able to get to your firearm, it makes sense to fire rapidly, quite possibly while shielding your face. If the individual shot in the face turned as they fell it would seem reasonable. Alternatively if he was standing right over the shooter similar patterns could emerge. What seems unreasonable to me, is why someone would be executed in such a fashion: It's somewhat overkill for the calculated execution for a subdued non-combatant. Honestly, which is more likely? The short distance implies close-quarter combat or close-quarter execution, but the variance in the locations of where the individual was hit, combined with the number of shots is not consistent with an execution. It would be more damning if the people shot were all at a greater distance since the weapons they were using to attack the soldiers were almost all close range. Longer range gunfire would have to either involve stray rounds, or to protect someone being attacked at a greater distance. I think the greatest thing I'm having trouble understanding is how the IDF could be expected to use restraint after being attacked upon boarding: The ship showed up to interfere with a military operation. That is established. The justifications or intentions of either party are a non issue when it comes to interfering with military operations. When you interfere with such an operation, and that military moves against you no matter the circumstance you really have one of two options: A) Surrender, offering only passive resistance. Please note: This is what is protesters do. B) Resist with violence. Please note: This is what combatants do. What I don't understand is how anyone can engage in an open conflict with any military violently for any reason and expect their safety to be a priority. It really doesn't matter who is right or who is wrong: when you engage the military units (on your ship, in your house, in your bathroom) if you try to fight you have to expect a fight. It may be a worthwhile stand to take: "I will not stand for a military invasion of my bathroom!" and a cause worth dying for, but don't kid yourself that chances are, that's what you'll be doing. We have a set of rather imperfect tools to peacefully deal with unjust or illegal use of military force - none of those involve violence. We can choose to say that the peaceful tools here have proven to be ineffective, and all manner of techniques effecting change have failed due to the unfair stubbornness and even outright corruption of the IDF. In that case, perhaps resorting to violence is understandable - lets say we support the activists' use of violence - that is still engaging a military in combat. No amount of unique circumstance can change that fact. 1) You attempt to break a military blockade 2) You get boarded, as anyone enforcing a military blockade will have to do 3) You can surrender (and use passive resistance) or you can fight the military. If they surrendered and were still met with violence from the IDF then I'd be up front condemning the IDF. Choosing to meet the IDF with violence as they boarded (even if it turns out the IDF was boarding illegally) is going to reciprocate violence. I'm even okay with the choice of those people to use violence! Their lives, their call. Everyone has the right to live or die for whatever they believe in. What I don't get is what else the IDF was supposed to do when they were met with lethal force upon boarding. I don't understand how that is considered an outrage. It's like protesting a railway by jumping in front of a train, then being upset when you wake up in a hospital with your legs cut off and lucky to be alive. When you engage a military with violent force, the series of events are just as locked in as train is to it's tracks. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I believe they all had sidearms, but they were holstered as last-resort only their lives were dangerously in harms way. They had the paintball guns out for the engagement, but the person grabbed the holstered firearm as he was mobbed. At least that's what I think happened based on what I read before.

Except that it doesn't appear they came in peace, and I would suspect both Somali pirates and the Italian mafia would both defend themselves when lethal force is used on them, probably with quite a bit less restraint than the IDF. If you care to examine why many in this thread contend they "did not come in peace" or the various explanations, legality, and ethics for the actions of both parties, I recommend reading this thread.

With regards to the seized video, I can understand why the IDF would do this - they are investigating this matter in depth and those videos are important. If footage shows one of their own officers is lying or shows a specific protester directing others to maximize the violence they can learn a lot. Granted, people may not like the idea of the IDF doing the investigation, and much prefer all this goes into the hands of a UN investigation, but as of right now they are the ones doing it, so they do have to do their job. Likewise, I do agree somewhat that recordings should be public, but I think it would be better if we could have some sort of "emergency international incident investigation team" from the UN that can immediately go out and collect and catalog these, giving involved parties full access as well as decide to release relevant portions to the public (and not just a person filming their cat acting like people before the trip).

It's Penny Arcade, mostly gaming humor but it does fit with the frustration towards BP

So, in the interest of public relations, they should have waited until they'd be forced to sink the vessels, killing nearly everyone, because by acting in the "gray area waters" where jurisdiction is unclear they "look worse" no matter how many lives it saves? There's a lot of layers to consider to successfully navigate this tangled issue: Israel claims to enforce the blockade with that many ships, they would have either had to board them where they did, or sink them closer in. We can debate (A) whether this is true or not, and (B) whether they believed it was true or not, and © whether the blockade is justified separately... but we can't ignore that (i) as of now, there is a legal internationally recognized blockade (ethical or not) which includes military action to enforce (ii) the vessels were not trying to politically lift the blockade, but actively disrupt and usurp a military operation. Maybe we decide Israel is full of it when they say the blockade would have cost more lives if they enforced it closer to their shores. However, unless that is settled, we can't dismiss it. It leaves the options of: 1) Letting the ships run the blockade 2) Stopping them where they did, with the results we already saw 3) Boarding the ones that they could, sinking the ones they couldn't at a high cost to life. For the record, it would be easy to say that "morally, it's not worth killing people over" and let them run the blockade. However, that is a different story. They have a legal blockade at this time - a military operation. If we want to condemn them for having a blockade at all, we should be clear on that. We as the international community can't really say on the one hand "okay, you have your blockade" and then be critical when the bloody mess that comes hand in hand with such an operation gets messy. For the record, it's legal for the US military to shoot anyone approaching a US Naval vessel "ala USS Cole" even if it turns out they aren't packed with explosives. What is determined later does not change the rules at the time. Engaging military vessels or attempting to disrupt military operations are hazardous to your health. We can't forget these people were doing just this. A blockade is a military operation, defended with military force. If the parameters "should be" that boats bringing no "war effort" goods ought to be allowed to enter then the nature of the blockade should be changed. As it stands now, it's as locked down as a quarantine zone by military force. Legally it wouldn't be any different. If their goal was to break through the blockade, they should use either stealth or superior military force - without one of those you will die unless the opposing military is confident they can choose to use non-lethal force and still be successful in conducting their operations. From all the information so far, their goal was not to break the blockade, but to provoke hostilities to encourage the world to take the view that "this blockade is not worth the human lives it costs" to enforce. They wanted an engagement - and they wanted to fail. They wanted non-lethal force to be impossible, so they could show that this blockade requires lethal force to enforce. What bothers me the most, is they went as "protesters" which, generally are arrested and detained. We tend to tolerate and use non-lethal force against protesters as they tend to not try to directly threaten the military operation, just force them to act and detain them. Again, this is the sort of thing Gandhi did. The fact is if you are going to interfere with a military operation and you will use lethal force to carry out your interference, you are not protesters. That is guerrilla warfare and a whole other game. I would even respect them if that was their stated goal - but they abused the term "protester" and continue to. They are playing both sides of the line between protester-victim and combatant and that is a reprehensible.

Would you: 1) Prefer they board 40 miles out where the legality is disputed on both sides? or 2) Prefer they wait until there is no ambiguity, and sink all the vessels killing all of them? Apparently, if that many ships got within 20 miles, they would not have been able to peacefully board them all in time to stop them. That of course is a failure of the Israeli Navy, but what result would you prefer? Ok, I just cut about three pages worth of quote/response to try to keep this succinct. The bulk of what I am trying to convey here, is that people dispute who has "the legal right of way" all the time. People settle these disputes in courts, especially when it's between law enforcement/military branch and civilians. The right of way in question: (1) The boats thought they had the legal right to remain close to territorial waters, while making it clear they intent to run the blockade, and suffer no interference from the Israeli Navy. (2) The Israeli Navy thought it had the legal right to enforce it's blockade against vessels that had clearly stated that was their intention, while still 40 miles from their shores. If the boats have the right of way, they can float out there as long as they want. If the Israelis have the right of way, they can board their boats and direct them to port as ordered. This is the important part, because when you have a dispute concerning the right of way with a military or law enforcement branch they will be in the process of doing what they are there to do - and that usually involves the carrying of weapons and quite possibly search and seizure. If it sounds like I am belaboring it, I'm sorry but it's a very important point: Say SWAT team busts down your door and tells you at gun-point to get on the ground, only to discover later they had the wrong house - they don't even have a warrant for your address! No matter how bad that mistake was it would not make them pirates or common thugs. They would be subject to legal ramifications and you would be able to sue, but trust me if you tried to repel them with lethal force, (while knowing full well they were SWAT police) on the grounds that simply "they had no right to invade your home, they were at the wrong address so it's their fault" you or some of your guests would probably get shot. You would have made a bad situation worse. When it comes to the enforcement of laws, you just can't handle disputes that way.

As well as the fact that an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor was among the people on the ships. I say all the power to them to use any and all political clout and resources to get the blockade lifted. Using political clout and violence to try to break through the blockade... I hope she left her peace prize back on shore.

That's a dangerous conflation. The justifications for the blockade are irrelevant - if someone opposes the blockade, they need to work to have the blockade condemned. (A) Getting arrested or detained in an act of defiance against a law you feel is unjust is a form of "protest" or demonstration. It's actually quite respectable. Gandhi did it very well. (B) Using lethal force for reasons other than self defense in an act of defiance against a law you feel is unjust is an act of war, rebellion, insurrection or even terrorism depending on the circumstances. These are not equatable. Noamount of just cause makes the former into the latter. It may at times, make the latter justifiable, such as the American Revolution - but in that war the activists made no qualms about what they were doing or what they were in for. Do you keep driving when a cop trying to pull you over with lights flashing, because as far as you know "You've done nothing wrong, therefore you can ignore him and then beat him to an inch of his life if he tries to arrest you?" Regardless of whether you would call them defensive or offensive weapons, they were used with lethal force at a time that they were not under any physical threat. They were used to protect what they considered their ship's sovereignty, and their right to break the blockade, and they were used in a fashion that could very easily cause life threatening injuries. Defensive or not, they were not used defensively. The other ships acquiesced to the IDF's request to board. They did not encounter any resistance up to that point, and did not expect to find any there. They also did not have the trademark weapons and were under orders to avoid lethal conflict unless absolutely necessary to preserve their own lives. Personally I am not qualified to determine how special ops do and do not behave, but I personal found the explanations of their behavior to be reasonable. Frustration may be an explanation for violence, but it is not a justification for violence. Again, the issue is not whether those weapons were being sent to the Palestinians in breech of the blockade. They had already stated their intent to breech the blockade and were in the process of attempting to do so. The weapons indicate they expected an armed conflict with the Israeli forces. That changes them from being victims to provocateurs. When you say "they didn't cross all those miles to be handcuffed and sent back home" I think you are entirely correct, and that is the damning evidence in this against them. What was supposed to happen? They thought they'd be allowed to dock? That they would valiantly win a naval victory against the Israelis, getting their supplies through and join the rebellion? They went there knowing they'd be turned back or arrested. That's a protest and it draws attention to the issue, but they took it past the point of protest and elevated it to armed conflict. Again it's not if the fight is justified - if you are peaceful protesters than you act like it, if you are taking up arms then you are taking up arms. You can't call yourself one thing and act like the other, and then say it's justified because "the other guys" are so wrong. (1) They were there to board and redirect the ships to the proper ports where the aid could be inspected before being sent on to Gaza. (2) They were there to peacefully enforce the blockade without injury or loss of life to the protesters. (3) Upon boarding, they were attacked with lethal force. They attempted to stop the attackers through non-lethal force, but as the attacks continued and became more lethally dangerous they were forced to open fire, and ceased as soon as they stabilized the situation.

With the Turkish Navy escorting them, they would probably have to stop right at the border of international waters. Then, if any civilian vessel tried to make a break for it that close, they'd pretty much have to sink them to enforce the blockade. While the needless loss of life would be much higher, it would be more legal. Just a question Bascule: I am not suggesting that during this event, the only way to ensure the vessels did not reach port was to either sink them in territorial waters or board them in international ones - that question is out of my range - but if they had to choose one or the other, which would you consider the better choice? One seems more ethical, the other more legal.

1) They were not defending their lives, they were not being boarded by pirates, and they were refusing to respond by radio, and they responded to being boarded with lethal force. Clubs and knives are lethal weapons. 2) It was more than obvious that the Israeli's felt they were within their legal right to board the boats - they may very well have been wrong as it will be settled with a more detailed examination of international law. I'm all for settling that debate but it's not the sort of debate you settle with clubs and knives in the heat of the moment while ignoring all attempts at radio contact. That is a gross disregard for human life. 3) I am very critical of Israel on many factors in how it handles the Palestinian issues, but this makes me more sympathetic to Israel, not Palestinians. I don't hold it against the Palestinians what a flotilla of aggressive people do, but it only sets back their cause.

If you were on a ship in the middle of international waters, and a Navy ship radioed you, told you to turn back, then told you to they were going to board, and then boarded, would you really choose violence as the method of choice to address the difference of opinion regarding maritime law? Even if successful, would you kill (or all but kill with knives and clubs) a bunch of commandos on the belief that it was justified, and risk saying "Ooooh, ok, oops - my bad!" should more information come to light that makes their actions seem reasonable? Taking it up a notch, would you do that in international waters after having announced your intentions to break through a naval blockade? Would you make a mental note to not retaliate the moment you passed over the dividing line into their territorial waters? In some ways this reminds me of Gandhi's march to the river to make salt, in open defiance to laws viewed as unfair that forbid something as simple as making salt or delivering food. It seems to have the same sense of conviction to the cause despite the certainty of being arrested where the opposition is then forced to enforce their laws or abandon them. Only, when they came to confront Gandhi on the riverbank, his group started stabbing and clubbing the officers. If you chain yourself to a tree expecting to get arrested, or go to a in a smoke-in at a police station expecting to get arrested, - pretty much any act of protest in which you are fairly certain to be arrested or detained you kind of loose your credibility if you start beating police officers nearly to death for trying to arrest you. At that point you aren't protesting or participating in some activism, that's pretty much baiting armed conflict. It may be they had every right to defend themselves. But if you use lethal violence to avoid detainment and possible arrest then you are pretty much going to war for that right. Against Israeli commandos that's either pretty stupidly optimistic or a desire to be a martyr. I haven't seen anything that suggests they believed they could repel the attack, so I have to go with the martyr thing as the most probable.

Well the biggest thing that doesn't make sense to me on the Israeli side, is why they did not wait until the ships left international waters and trigger a very legal response. As for the ships, the beating of the people as they come down the ropes is pretty condemning. Even in international waters, you can't just start clubbing people and shooting and not expect to be shot at. It may sound cheesy (maybe it's a cheesy way to say it) but there's no way you can visit that sort of violence on people while on a mission that carries "nothing but peace" in your heart. Encircling and beating individuals with clubs as they are on the ground is just incredibly hostile - I honestly don't know how anyone could do that without already having absolute contempt and hatred for them. If their motive was to simply force the blockade to respond and repel or seize them as a political statement I don't think you'd see that level of vitriol. Even in terms of repelling attackers from the sovereignty of your vessel in international waters - it doesn't make sense to have 8 people beating a guy on the ground with clubs when there are other people commandeering the vessel. It really looks from that video that the activists were dead set on being fired upon for the sole purpose of how Israel would be condemned. Not to say Israel's response was well planned or even warranted in international waters, but regardless of what the activists "deserved" I can't see how they weren't trying to create this exact scenario.

I thought it was the ACLU that outed them, who on the left are supporting their decision? I'm sure their member base are for the most part pretty far left in a general sense, but who is supporting them on this? To me, it sounds a lot like that time they tried to sue for a Muslim woman who was denied a driver's license because she wouldn't show her face for the photo. They claimed it was religious discrimination despite the obvious fact that photo identification is not photo identification if you cannot identify the person from a photo. Last I heard that was not exactly embraced by "the left" or anyone else really. I support the raising of the question with regards to what a prisoner has rights to information wise, facing their accuser and all that. I definitely condemn the passing of information directly to the prisoners without having that discussion and settling exactly where the law lies. I am curious who is supporting their actions though, it's not like the ACLU has any implicit stamp of "left approval" to do as they please.

Two people get hurt mountain biking. One was smart, wore a helmet, protective gear, and wasn't going ridiculously fast. The other had no helmet, no gear, and was flying along at speeds we call "break-neck" for a reason. The person who has the helmet has a broken leg, cracked ribs and a possible concussion. The other guy has a cracked skull, broken jaw and internal bleeding. When the ambulance gets there, who should they take first and who should wait for the next one? The implosion of Social Security would (will) be a national disaster, having a huge impact on the country. The cold hard facts of the situation being that if we say "screw em" we screw ourselves. It's what we've been begrudgingly learning the last few years: When our neighbors fail, it hurts us. We can all point at Wall Street laughing and call them idiots, but when they crash we crash. When we call BP idiots for failing to follow or even maintain their own safety equipment, it effects everyone. When 90% of the houses on your street go into foreclosure, it affects your home's value. I think it's inevitable that Social Security will fail, but it's too big to fail outright - it needs a controlled fail. The whole phrase "too big to fail" has become synonymous with how failures of people and institutions who are not us can be so big they have a huge negative impact on us. We all let this happen. We stood by while insane mortgage laws allowed insane situations to arise, we ignored the insane consumer debt culture on the basis that people are free to make smart or bad decisions as they please. That's not an all-together bad view either - I prefer it to meddling in everyone's affairs. However, there is a price to pay for that mentality. Either we support these people one way, or we will another - they are not likely to just die off amicably with the words "my bad" on their lips. We've already learned that in health care when "those dumb folk" who don't get health insurance end up at the ER sticking the hospitals with the bill - that those of us who pay the hospital end up picking up. Whether the end result is less freedom by limiting some lending practices (that already make loan sharks blush) or we deal with the shared impact when a large percentage of our neighbors end up in dire straights... or we mitigate that shared impact in a way that costs us less - limited and entirely unfair support. What's your preference?

The businessweek article is readable, and the pajamasmedia one has some facts in it, I think that almost conveyed some information. The other articles were centered as "there are rumors that Obama is going to take everyone's money, here's a very long outrage piece on why, despite being sickening, it's logical if you are a stone cold thief." From what I gathered, there is no actual plan to force any conversion on anyone, they are considering ways of making more stable investments popular. If I missed some little bit of information on some bill please do let me know. All I saw was people considering stopping the tax breaks for 401ks (I don't care if people get those, but I never understood rewarding risking your retirement savings with tax breaks. It's not exactly thievery thought.) What did I miss? Military for one, and of course the Justice system. Highway infrastructure, FDA is pretty important, CDC... all things you benefit from, unless you consider the things that set us apart from a 3rd world country non-beneficial. Stealing people's savings and failing to pay entitlements solves nothing. So you pay your water bill by robbing your electric bill fund - then your pipes freeze and you're still screwed. We have a consumer economy and without people spending, we don't have jobs, without savings to spend people don't. All your suggestions are tongue in cheek and don't actually solve anything. I do agree that programs like SS are pretty much ponzi schemes, which is based on infinite growth to sustain itself. I don't think entitlement programs are by definition ponzi schemes though.

Do you agree with my assessment then that while it is important to secure the border better, that the priority in dedication of resources should emphasize tackling the employers as the primary concern before tackling border jumpers? I could be entirely wrong - it could be that any given year, employers wish they could hire more illegals but they just can't find enough because border patrol is so good. I doubt that's the case, the largest thing stopping people from crossing is when their buddies who already did tell them "No, these guys have enough already and a lot of people are hanging around just waiting for a spot, it'll be rough for the rest of the season." If that is the main limit on illegals here, and the number of crossing attempts varies to meet that demand, then we can much more easily drop those numbers by stopping employers. Then they can call their buddies and say "No, these guys have enough already and a lot of people are hanging around because so many places got cracked down on and can't hire us anymore, it'll be rough for the rest of the season." Then we can much more easily deal with the border, as there will always be desperate ones that try anyway. Just as a side note: border security needs to be stepped up for a lot of reasons. It always worries me that if people and drugs can move so easily across, then it's a weak spot in national security. It's worth addressing as a real problem, but the fact it's getting rushed by illegals only exasperates the other factors, and it's one of the only motivations we can address through the demand side. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'd describe it more as a cake and ant problem: ants like cake, and will seek out cake. You can stop as many ants as you want, but they will want to keep coming until the cake is gone. Instead of more, bigger rocks to throw at more and more ants, we just need to put the cake in a plastic container (crack down on employers offering cake). To stretch the analogy, there will always be crumbs, but far fewer ants will be coming after them and then in small enough numbers to be manageable by small and efficient Cake Patrol Units.

I would love to know the relationship between the failure rate of crossing, the number of employers seeking illegal alien labor, and the number of illegals in the country. I've always thought that the issue was demand based. As long as people are trying to fill jobs with illegals, they have their buddies already here telling them to get the heck over the border, and the employers encourage this as long as they are in need. Twice as many Mexican families may loose a huge amount of their savings paying coyotes to get them across because twice as many get caught trying - but until they start calling south and complaining that it's hard to find illegal labor jobs to do, they'll keep coming to fill the void. The only way to erode this from the supply side is to make it so difficult on employers to find reliable illegals that it's cheaper for them to higher legal employees. I agree the stricter border is part of the solution, but that much bigger returns and accomplishments can be made on the demand side.

A better way to phrase it would be that it appears to be blatantly racist. To say they don't care about your wealth, your credentials, your age, your ability but your skin tone is reason enough to bar you from the sport does tend to read as rather "blatantly racist" to most people, and we are talking about why "most people" condemned it as racist. I have to disagree entirely with that. First, when you talk about "societal guilt" and the "feeling" of having repressed an entire race you make it sound like it has more to do with appeasing ourselves over some esoteric past wrong-doing. I always thought these programs were in place to deal with the current issues and hardships existing today as a result that repression. If you looked at a charity that specialized in helping women who have been raped, would they be sexist for not also helping men? There's a degree of specialization there and other groups do help men in those situations (and I'm sure they could refer) - but the amount that goes out towards helping women is a lot larger because a lot more women are raped every year than men. It's not sexist, it's addressing a reality. The reality is the enslavement and subsequent segregation of an entire race has lead to a number of challenges in general that black people tend to face. As such, there are most scholarships and such to try to tackle those issues. There are a lot of white people from incredibly poor and disadvantaged backgrounds that also face challenges - but those challenges weren't created by singling them out for their race, it's because they are poor, and we have programs for poor people too. I really don't think it's far to call those programs racist on those grounds, not because of I don't want it to "sound like a bad thing."

Just to perhaps clarify this, a public place of business is considered to be taking advantage of all the public infrastructure associated with public places of business. You can't remove health warnings from products you sell from your "private" property because you are unfairly taking advantage of a business market that has established certain standards of labeling to denote risk. As a business owner you have all sorts of advantages you would not get without massive public infrastructure - as such you are required to participate with that structure. If you are not interested in serving the public, you can have a private membership organization as bascule mentioned. Secondarily, private businesses (that serve the public, not private clubs) provide a huge range of services that people depend on. If we weren't so heavily free market based, we may be able to get away with more freedoms for private businesses. However, since almost all essential services are acquired through private businesses there has to be some level of assurance that people have access to them. I think the private club/public business is a good distinction and the line is drawn in a pretty good place. It's like you can invite your friends over to fish on your private property all you want, but if you want to go out into the harbor with the rest of the town's fishermen, you have to play by some common rules. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The reasons were blatantly racist or at least racially-phobic. Not letting women participate in some group or sport has a basis in gender centric activities and with regards to sports athletic ability. Even if the reason happened to be sexist, it wouldn't be blatantly sexist unless it was like, a chess club and the room for doubt lessens the likelihood for condemnation. I think we do care about fairness in general, but we also have a sense of never having enough time to fix everything that's broken, and deal with the squeaky wheels first. With regards to "institutional racism" I don't think that's quite a fair label. The goal was designed to help people with a key set of disadvantages, no more racist than a group that helps new immigrants (in an area where almost all new immigrants are one ethnicity) learn English and aid them in other ways. The necessity, benefit, and intellectual honesty of these organizations could surely be a different debate, but I don't think it can be characterized as "racist" in the same sense that institutionalized segregation was.

I know you are saying all this sarcastically, but how is it helpful at all? We are talking about a genuine crisis aren't we? We are getting crushed with debt, and if Social Security needs to be refactored then so be it. What's the alternative to helping people who are broke that expected Social Security to be there? Abandon them to the streets? Hope they have family that can save them? Ignore the problem? Either no one gets it, everyone gets it, or people get it in an emergency triage sort of way. It's not a proud moment but anything this messed up isn't bound to be. Where is this one coming from? Not exactly familiar with that. I'm somewhat lost on the sarcasm now - not quite following. There is nothing wrong with federal level pooling for certain services as long as it's solvent, and insolvency is addressed immediately as a real problem. I still don't see how any of your comments address what needs to be done to actually help solve the national debt issue.