"All of the people, processes, and philosophies that have made Blizzard so successful will be preserved. Blizzard will benefit from all-star sales and distribution teams to service our products. In addition, the combined company will be stronger financially, managerially, and operationally"
What?
"We'll do everything exactly the same way as always with exactly the same people and everything will be exactly the same -- except totally better somehow!!!"
I can afford the karma hit so I'm gonna say it like it is:
Blizzard hasn't been a "release it only when it's done" company since Warcraft 3: TFT. I've Participated in the last 4 Blizzard betas, and there was a remarkable shift from Warcraft 3: RoC to Warcraft 3: TFT -- you almost couldn't even call TFT a beta test by comparison. It lasted maybe 2 months total? The game came out very incomplete -- missing an entire single player campaign from what had been promised -- but was slowly added in over the course of several balance patches (the game as also a joke of balance when it came out). Blizzard, to their credit, did do a good job with the final product -- it just took them a couple months worth of patches after release to get the job done.
I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but Blizzard has been a "patch it till it's done" company for a few years now, just like everyone else.
This actually works out well enough in the MMORPG setting since often they are able to patch in missing content and polish/fix other content before players even get to it -- since it takes players some time to burn though the lower-end content which tends to be the most polished/playtested.
I do give them credit for actually delaying TBC (thus causing it to miss it's initial November 30th release date which would have meant massive Christmas sales) and spending more time with it -- but they almost didn't have a choice there -- there was literally no content above level 67 at the time and 3 out of the 7 zones weren't even populated/open/quested/etc, not to mention none of the raid content was implemented yet.
Any person not believing in the basic scientific principles which are the underpinnings of evolution is simply NOT QUALIFIED to hold any position which is in charge of establishing the curriculum to teach said principles.
In your example, the person in question most certainly should be fired as they are not qualified to hold the position -- just as you would fire a salesman for disparaging the product he's been hired to sell. If you believe science is a bunch of hooey, you shouldn't be in charge of how children are taught science. That's just common sense.
In the REAL situation, however,someone is being fired who is perfectly fired -- even suited -- to the job in question.
And suggest that it's because there's really no clear-cut libertarian philosophy. People can pretty much believe whatever the hell they want an call themselves a libertarian. The basic idea is something that pretty much *anyone* can agree with: That individual liberties should trump the government and the government should never act in a way that limits them. But from there people can make any sort of whacky intellectual leap they want. To some people this means and end to the War on Drugs, to some it means privatized Police force, schools and Fire Departments.
I think the libertarian movement, in general, has been (as of late anyways) been boiled down into an "anti-tax" movement -- which is unfortunate. While these views are, in my opinion, a bit extreme (and/or screwballish), it is still possible for many people to find lots of things inside the *basic* libertarian philosophy with which they can agree.
Yes, I'm sure if people had known they were going to get a check-out credit and their money refunded, they'd have actually used the service. As it stands, however, google will be out about 10 bucks for this decision.
I think someone should point out, somewhere in here, that Blizzard's downloader isn't just a bittorrent clone, it literally is bittorrent. Bram Cohen didn't patent it, he released it under the MIT license which is less restrictive even than the GNU license (doesn't require modified source code be released). Thus large corporations like Vivendi are free to modify it and use it for their own purposes as Blizzard has done.
On that last bit, I think that's the reason why no one is surprised by this article. It seems like several times a year I read an article about some idiot who took his computer in for repairs and pornography of an illicit nature was found on it and he ends up arrested. I think by now we've pretty much all figured out that if you take your computer in for repairs, someone is searching your computer for jpegs. They're in your computer looking at your files and who's going to stop them? It's really not a secret.
Hey, I got another shocker for you. The people who develop your 35mm pictures LOOK AT THEM. They totally invade your privacy and stuff! But apparently people don't realize that either and you still hear about people being arrested for trying to have unsavory materials developed.
There's already a good 100 clones of allofmp3 with similar music catalogs and pricing schemes all operating out of Russia. Shutting down one website is really a non-issue at this point, anyone can go to google and find dozens of alternatives all operating out of Russia.
Honestly, does anyone who followed this incident believe that anyone other than the Boston PD/local government/etc was to blame for the wasted money?
These were not "hoax devices". A "hoax device" is meant to fool you. This wasn't meant to fool anyone, but fools were nevertheless fooled by it. A similar incident occured a couple of years ago when someone staged a protest outside of an army recruitment office dressed like prisoner from one of the famous abu-garib photographs. Wearing a black hood, standing on a crate, with wires hanging from his arms.
Apparently in that situation they also called in the bomb squad and charged the protesters with a "hoax device" because apparently wires are serious business and EVERYONE should know that you can't just go attaching wires to things this day in age and not expect the bomb squad to be called -- EVEN IF YOUR MIMICKING A FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH THAT HAS BEEN SEEN ON NEWS BROADCASTS ALL OVER THE WORLD AD NASEUM FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS.
The appropriate response would be to start firing people. Clearly there are people in positions of power who simply do not belong there. These are people Who do not have the common sense that god gave to most creatures with an intellect greater than a tuna fish. Who can't look at protester with wires attached to his arms and say "Oh yeah, I've seen that photograph before" or who can't look at a god-damned light-bright for a popular tv show and say "Neat advertisement". Who can't understand that something INCH THICK composed almost entirely of LEDS does not have explosive potential. There is simply a limit to how tiny explosives can be, you need something capable of exploding -- some kind of fuel.
The city of Boston fucked up, big time. Instead of admitting their mistakes like men/women and firing the people responsible, they're going to go after their innocent victims in court and try to pass laws to put the burden of their stupidity on the public at large. Beware: If we mistakenly identify something completely innocuous as a bomb, it will be your fault for owning that innocuous item! Nice going, guys.
Not really, I just don't see lawbreaking as an appropriate solution to lawbreaking.
That being said, I do see that she CLAIMS to be legally obligated to confiscate them and that seems a bit fishy to me, but I suppose that could be the case. It seems odd for the state to give a law-enforcement role to bartenders, but stranger things have happened.
Also to the Anonymous idiot below you who called me a "fucking tool" for not reading, if you had spent a little more time READING and a little less time criticizing other people for not reading, you'd have noticed that I responded to my own post before you did. Still, I got a big chuckle out of you making yourself look silly, so thanks for that.:)
Does she have a legal right to confiscate the ID's in the first place? She is not the place. If someone possesses property which is illegal for them to possess, is there therefore no laws protecting it from seizure by a third party?
It just seems a bit odd. Unless there's some law that specifically empowers her to seize fake ID's, I just find it odd that she feels empowered to keep them -- unless she simply feels that no one would call the cops of having something illegal to own stolen from them.
I'm less concerned about "becoming a police state" than I am about "law-enforcement wasting their time on obvious stupidity".
I Have no problem with the chain of events you outlined, but with #3, the investigation should have stopped after someone actually read the damn comic. It could have saved them countless hours spent: 1) Wasting Taxpayer money 2) Harassing an innocent man 3) Not pursuing real threats
It's clearly a joke. I can understand, perhaps, someone not being familiar with the whole concept of a "comic" and how they tend to incorporate "comedy" and thus are rarely serious. But the police should know better. The investigation should have taken 30 seconds for one person to read the comic and then be done with it.
And don't give me some crap about how "in a climate of fear blah blah blah every threat must be taken seriously blah blah blah". The fact of the matter is that in order for law enforcement to keep us as safe as possible, they need to prioritize. There simply isn't time to waste questioning an obviously innocent man just to create the appearance of "taking every threat seriously".
Linden seem to be masters of manipulating the media to the point where major companies think its smart to be involved in a game that actaully has very few players relative to other MMOs. I don't even know anyone who plays Second Life or has ever played it.
The article basically points out that when Linden says they have 4 million "residents" they mean 4 million avatars have been created. This number isn't even directly related to the number of people who regularly play the game in any measurable way -- but its a safe bet that the actual number of regular users is probably in the hundreds of thousands at the most. That may be bigger than some games, but compared to a monster like World of Warcraft, which easily musters 20 times as many regular users, it's really not that many.
One of the (many) nice things about Pandora.com is that they will accept musical submissions from anyone who spends the money to register a Bar code(its not much at all) that they can associate with it. This means that lots of independant bands get played along side the label stuff and its all finely tuned to people's musical tastes. I've discovered tons of great music through pandora.com and much of it has never been published on any CD you could buy in a store.
Of course, the downside is, once you do find a track you like, it can sometimes be nearly impossible to actually find somewhere to buy it or download it . . .
The criticism you face when you criticize Islam is no different than the criticism you'd face by criticizing Christianity -- it simply comes from other sources.
Try this experiment: Criticize Islam and then run for public office (note, this will work better as a Republican and even better in the Bible Belt). Were you criticized for your remarks? Absolutely. No doubt you received tons of negative press and crys of outrage from Islamic advocacy groups. In certain parts of the country, this might have blown in your face badly enough to ruin your chances to win. Bummer.
Now try insulting Christianity.
How'd that work out for you?
There is no place in the United States where you could make that ship sail. If you insult Christianity your political career is absolutely over. More than 50% of the population will NEVER forgive you and never vote for you. THe criticism and negative press you receive will be just as bad or worse.
The sad part of the experiment is that with either experiment, you'll inevitably receive death threats.
Those are the rules for politicians. Not only can you not criticize Christianity as a politician, but you need to pay it constant lip service. Imagine the outcry if, for instance, you choose to be sworn into office on a Koran instead of the Bible (neither one is required by law, it's totally your choice).
The rules for entertainers? Different. They don't need 50% of the people's approval. They aren't running for election. Even if you can only appeal to 10% of the people, that's still more than enough people to grab decent ratings. So Michael Savage can say towlheads all he wants and rant about how Islam is a religion of violence and war and there's little to no repercussions. Sure he receives criticism, but people by and large recognize there's nothing they can do about it. By the same token, the creators of South Park can make Jesus a character in their show and have him say absolutely outrageous things because there are enough people who will enjoy it to sustain the ratings.
All this brings me to this guy. Who knows what happened with him? It's worth noting that Youtube did not specifically say his video was removed for containing hate speech and it did in fact use copyrighted music -- it could very well be a copyright issue that brought his video down. If his videos were indeed removed because of his quotes from the Koran, then I'd point out that moderating such things is generally not done in a very uniform matter. I have no doubt that countless practitioners of both religions reported both of his videos because they were offended and a different moderator might have banned him for the one criticizing the Bible but not for the one criticizing the Koran. It's simply a matter of who ends up reviewing the content -- not some grand conspiracy against criticizing Islam.
Why is that the American conservative right has suddenly lost the ability to differentiate any shade between black and white? Why must I be with you or against you?
Here's a summary of the logic your post, and countless others, seem to follow:
1) You do not support Israel' Policies.
a) Therefore, you hate Isreal.
b) Therefore, you believe Israel has no right to exist.
c) Therefore, you hate jews.
D) Therefore, you are anti-semetic.
e) Therefore, you believe the holocaust was a lie.
These are what we call "ridiculous leaps of logic" which, frankly, make no damn sense.
a) Israel is still our ally, of course -- much like France is our ally. To the extent that we believe Israel has made mistakes in pursuing their own war on terror, we feel obligated, as friends, to tell them so. We still support them and grieve with them for their losses but good friends do not sit back and watch as people commit injustice even when those people are their friends.
b) I've honestly never seen anyone other than Klu-Klux-Klan types (utra-liberals, amirite?) make the argument that Israel has no right to exist. If you do not think the "deranged lefites", as you called them, think this way -- then by all means declare this argument a strawman and move on. However, if you think this is a serious left-wing belief then I would argue you're confused. I have seen people argue that that the creation of Israel was a poorly thought-out bad idea. Similarly, I've seen people argue that Israel has no right to continue expanding into areas where people are already living and bulldozing their homes to make way for new Israeli settlements.
These 2 concepts, however, are very much different from suggesting that Israel has no right to exist which, as far as I know, is a fringe belief held only by members of the extreme right (such as the Klan).
C + D) Israel is a nation, not a religion. Criticizing a nation for it's actions against its own citizens is not the same as criticizing the religion that the majority of them follow. Why are people who protest Israel's actions condemned as anti-semites while people who crusade against Chinese oppression aren't labeled "anti-daoists". It really makes no sense.
e) Again, I hear this holocaust denier accusation frequently from the right but I'll bet you can't find a single quote of any left-wing anyone saying such ridiculous crap. That is, unless you think the President of Iran is a liberal.
I swear if I were him I'd keep using the Enlightenment icon for stories of inspiration just for the near-violent reaction it gets. No offense, but you're all rather uptight in an amusing sort of way.
Slashdot Mirror
"All of the people, processes, and philosophies that have made Blizzard so successful will be preserved. Blizzard will benefit from all-star sales and distribution teams to service our products. In addition, the combined company will be stronger financially, managerially, and operationally"
What?
"We'll do everything exactly the same way as always with exactly the same people and everything will be exactly the same -- except totally better somehow!!!"
I can afford the karma hit so I'm gonna say it like it is:
Blizzard hasn't been a "release it only when it's done" company since Warcraft 3: TFT. I've Participated in the last 4 Blizzard betas, and there was a remarkable shift from Warcraft 3: RoC to Warcraft 3: TFT -- you almost couldn't even call TFT a beta test by comparison. It lasted maybe 2 months total? The game came out very incomplete -- missing an entire single player campaign from what had been promised -- but was slowly added in over the course of several balance patches (the game as also a joke of balance when it came out). Blizzard, to their credit, did do a good job with the final product -- it just took them a couple months worth of patches after release to get the job done.
I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but Blizzard has been a "patch it till it's done" company for a few years now, just like everyone else.
This actually works out well enough in the MMORPG setting since often they are able to patch in missing content and polish/fix other content before players even get to it -- since it takes players some time to burn though the lower-end content which tends to be the most polished/playtested.
I do give them credit for actually delaying TBC (thus causing it to miss it's initial November 30th release date which would have meant massive Christmas sales) and spending more time with it -- but they almost didn't have a choice there -- there was literally no content above level 67 at the time and 3 out of the 7 zones weren't even populated/open/quested/etc, not to mention none of the raid content was implemented yet.
Intolerance?
Any person not believing in the basic scientific principles which are the underpinnings of evolution is simply NOT QUALIFIED to hold any position which is in charge of establishing the curriculum to teach said principles.
In your example, the person in question most certainly should be fired as they are not qualified to hold the position -- just as you would fire a salesman for disparaging the product he's been hired to sell. If you believe science is a bunch of hooey, you shouldn't be in charge of how children are taught science. That's just common sense.
In the REAL situation, however,someone is being fired who is perfectly fired -- even suited -- to the job in question.
In short, your comparison is stupid.
This doesn't mean it's not universal, just that it's not PROVEN that it is. Not at all the same thing.
hile it's logical and not surprising, I find it quite shocking to see them be so cavalier, and even hypocritical, about it."
Isn't it only really hypocritical if they don't admit it?
And suggest that it's because there's really no clear-cut libertarian philosophy. People can pretty much believe whatever the hell they want an call themselves a libertarian. The basic idea is something that pretty much *anyone* can agree with: That individual liberties should trump the government and the government should never act in a way that limits them. But from there people can make any sort of whacky intellectual leap they want. To some people this means and end to the War on Drugs, to some it means privatized Police force, schools and Fire Departments.
I think the libertarian movement, in general, has been (as of late anyways) been boiled down into an "anti-tax" movement -- which is unfortunate. While these views are, in my opinion, a bit extreme (and/or screwballish), it is still possible for many people to find lots of things inside the *basic* libertarian philosophy with which they can agree.
Yes, I'm sure if people had known they were going to get a check-out credit and their money refunded, they'd have actually used the service. As it stands, however, google will be out about 10 bucks for this decision.
I think someone should point out, somewhere in here, that Blizzard's downloader isn't just a bittorrent clone, it literally is bittorrent. Bram Cohen didn't patent it, he released it under the MIT license which is less restrictive even than the GNU license (doesn't require modified source code be released). Thus large corporations like Vivendi are free to modify it and use it for their own purposes as Blizzard has done.
Do you honestly think something like this would be even remotely possible without a disclaimer like that?
You're not signing away your children, just whatever recording you make.
On that last bit, I think that's the reason why no one is surprised by this article. It seems like several times a year I read an article about some idiot who took his computer in for repairs and pornography of an illicit nature was found on it and he ends up arrested. I think by now we've pretty much all figured out that if you take your computer in for repairs, someone is searching your computer for jpegs. They're in your computer looking at your files and who's going to stop them? It's really not a secret.
Hey, I got another shocker for you. The people who develop your 35mm pictures LOOK AT THEM. They totally invade your privacy and stuff! But apparently people don't realize that either and you still hear about people being arrested for trying to have unsavory materials developed.
There's already a good 100 clones of allofmp3 with similar music catalogs and pricing schemes all operating out of Russia. Shutting down one website is really a non-issue at this point, anyone can go to google and find dozens of alternatives all operating out of Russia.
Wow. I can't imagine 2 stupider shows. My faith in the human race is significantly diminished by having read that.
Honestly, does anyone who followed this incident believe that anyone other than the Boston PD/local government/etc was to blame for the wasted money?
These were not "hoax devices". A "hoax device" is meant to fool you. This wasn't meant to fool anyone, but fools were nevertheless fooled by it. A similar incident occured a couple of years ago when someone staged a protest outside of an army recruitment office dressed like prisoner from one of the famous abu-garib photographs. Wearing a black hood, standing on a crate, with wires hanging from his arms.
Apparently in that situation they also called in the bomb squad and charged the protesters with a "hoax device" because apparently wires are serious business and EVERYONE should know that you can't just go attaching wires to things this day in age and not expect the bomb squad to be called -- EVEN IF YOUR MIMICKING A FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH THAT HAS BEEN SEEN ON NEWS BROADCASTS ALL OVER THE WORLD AD NASEUM FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS.
The appropriate response would be to start firing people. Clearly there are people in positions of power who simply do not belong there. These are people Who do not have the common sense that god gave to most creatures with an intellect greater than a tuna fish. Who can't look at protester with wires attached to his arms and say "Oh yeah, I've seen that photograph before" or who can't look at a god-damned light-bright for a popular tv show and say "Neat advertisement". Who can't understand that something INCH THICK composed almost entirely of LEDS does not have explosive potential. There is simply a limit to how tiny explosives can be, you need something capable of exploding -- some kind of fuel.
The city of Boston fucked up, big time. Instead of admitting their mistakes like men/women and firing the people responsible, they're going to go after their innocent victims in court and try to pass laws to put the burden of their stupidity on the public at large. Beware: If we mistakenly identify something completely innocuous as a bomb, it will be your fault for owning that innocuous item! Nice going, guys.
Not really, I just don't see lawbreaking as an appropriate solution to lawbreaking.
:)
That being said, I do see that she CLAIMS to be legally obligated to confiscate them and that seems a bit fishy to me, but I suppose that could be the case. It seems odd for the state to give a law-enforcement role to bartenders, but stranger things have happened.
Also to the Anonymous idiot below you who called me a "fucking tool" for not reading, if you had spent a little more time READING and a little less time criticizing other people for not reading, you'd have noticed that I responded to my own post before you did. Still, I got a big chuckle out of you making yourself look silly, so thanks for that.
Ahh . . Nevermind. I see that my question (yes, I can spell it properly!) has already been answered above.
Does she have a legal right to confiscate the ID's in the first place? She is not the place. If someone possesses property which is illegal for them to possess, is there therefore no laws protecting it from seizure by a third party?
It just seems a bit odd. Unless there's some law that specifically empowers her to seize fake ID's, I just find it odd that she feels empowered to keep them -- unless she simply feels that no one would call the cops of having something illegal to own stolen from them.
I'm less concerned about "becoming a police state" than I am about "law-enforcement wasting their time on obvious stupidity".
I Have no problem with the chain of events you outlined, but with #3, the investigation should have stopped after someone actually read the damn comic. It could have saved them countless hours spent:
1) Wasting Taxpayer money
2) Harassing an innocent man
3) Not pursuing real threats
It's clearly a joke. I can understand, perhaps, someone not being familiar with the whole concept of a "comic" and how they tend to incorporate "comedy" and thus are rarely serious. But the police should know better. The investigation should have taken 30 seconds for one person to read the comic and then be done with it.
And don't give me some crap about how "in a climate of fear blah blah blah every threat must be taken seriously blah blah blah". The fact of the matter is that in order for law enforcement to keep us as safe as possible, they need to prioritize. There simply isn't time to waste questioning an obviously innocent man just to create the appearance of "taking every threat seriously".
Linden seem to be masters of manipulating the media to the point where major companies think its smart to be involved in a game that actaully has very few players relative to other MMOs. I don't even know anyone who plays Second Life or has ever played it.
An interesting read on the subject:
Here
The article basically points out that when Linden says they have 4 million "residents" they mean 4 million avatars have been created. This number isn't even directly related to the number of people who regularly play the game in any measurable way -- but its a safe bet that the actual number of regular users is probably in the hundreds of thousands at the most. That may be bigger than some games, but compared to a monster like World of Warcraft, which easily musters 20 times as many regular users, it's really not that many.
One of the (many) nice things about Pandora.com is that they will accept musical submissions from anyone who spends the money to register a Bar code(its not much at all) that they can associate with it. This means that lots of independant bands get played along side the label stuff and its all finely tuned to people's musical tastes. I've discovered tons of great music through pandora.com and much of it has never been published on any CD you could buy in a store.
Of course, the downside is, once you do find a track you like, it can sometimes be nearly impossible to actually find somewhere to buy it or download it . . .
The criticism you face when you criticize Islam is no different than the criticism you'd face by criticizing Christianity -- it simply comes from other sources.
Try this experiment: Criticize Islam and then run for public office (note, this will work better as a Republican and even better in the Bible Belt). Were you criticized for your remarks? Absolutely. No doubt you received tons of negative press and crys of outrage from Islamic advocacy groups. In certain parts of the country, this might have blown in your face badly enough to ruin your chances to win. Bummer.
Now try insulting Christianity.
How'd that work out for you?
There is no place in the United States where you could make that ship sail. If you insult Christianity your political career is absolutely over. More than 50% of the population will NEVER forgive you and never vote for you. THe criticism and negative press you receive will be just as bad or worse.
The sad part of the experiment is that with either experiment, you'll inevitably receive death threats.
Those are the rules for politicians. Not only can you not criticize Christianity as a politician, but you need to pay it constant lip service. Imagine the outcry if, for instance, you choose to be sworn into office on a Koran instead of the Bible (neither one is required by law, it's totally your choice).
The rules for entertainers? Different. They don't need 50% of the people's approval. They aren't running for election. Even if you can only appeal to 10% of the people, that's still more than enough people to grab decent ratings. So Michael Savage can say towlheads all he wants and rant about how Islam is a religion of violence and war and there's little to no repercussions. Sure he receives criticism, but people by and large recognize there's nothing they can do about it. By the same token, the creators of South Park can make Jesus a character in their show and have him say absolutely outrageous things because there are enough people who will enjoy it to sustain the ratings.
All this brings me to this guy. Who knows what happened with him? It's worth noting that Youtube did not specifically say his video was removed for containing hate speech and it did in fact use copyrighted music -- it could very well be a copyright issue that brought his video down. If his videos were indeed removed because of his quotes from the Koran, then I'd point out that moderating such things is generally not done in a very uniform matter. I have no doubt that countless practitioners of both religions reported both of his videos because they were offended and a different moderator might have banned him for the one criticizing the Bible but not for the one criticizing the Koran. It's simply a matter of who ends up reviewing the content -- not some grand conspiracy against criticizing Islam.
Why is that the American conservative right has suddenly lost the ability to differentiate any shade between black and white? Why must I be with you or against you?
Here's a summary of the logic your post, and countless others, seem to follow:
1) You do not support Israel' Policies.
a) Therefore, you hate Isreal.
b) Therefore, you believe Israel has no right to exist.
c) Therefore, you hate jews.
D) Therefore, you are anti-semetic.
e) Therefore, you believe the holocaust was a lie.
These are what we call "ridiculous leaps of logic" which, frankly, make no damn sense.
a) Israel is still our ally, of course -- much like France is our ally. To the extent that we believe Israel has made mistakes in pursuing their own war on terror, we feel obligated, as friends, to tell them so. We still support them and grieve with them for their losses but good friends do not sit back and watch as people commit injustice even when those people are their friends.
b) I've honestly never seen anyone other than Klu-Klux-Klan types (utra-liberals, amirite?) make the argument that Israel has no right to exist. If you do not think the "deranged lefites", as you called them, think this way -- then by all means declare this argument a strawman and move on. However, if you think this is a serious left-wing belief then I would argue you're confused. I have seen people argue that that the creation of Israel was a poorly thought-out bad idea. Similarly, I've seen people argue that Israel has no right to continue expanding into areas where people are already living and bulldozing their homes to make way for new Israeli settlements.
These 2 concepts, however, are very much different from suggesting that Israel has no right to exist which, as far as I know, is a fringe belief held only by members of the extreme right (such as the Klan).
C + D) Israel is a nation, not a religion. Criticizing a nation for it's actions against its own citizens is not the same as criticizing the religion that the majority of them follow. Why are people who protest Israel's actions condemned as anti-semites while people who crusade against Chinese oppression aren't labeled "anti-daoists". It really makes no sense.
e) Again, I hear this holocaust denier accusation frequently from the right but I'll bet you can't find a single quote of any left-wing anyone saying such ridiculous crap. That is, unless you think the President of Iran is a liberal.
They look slightly less Brilliant, however, in the long term when their customer base starts dying of old age.
I swear if I were him I'd keep using the Enlightenment icon for stories of inspiration just for the near-violent reaction it gets. No offense, but you're all rather uptight in an amusing sort of way.
You read my mind. I wonder, though, if that would be considered slander.