Maslow's Political Blog

If you didn't know, "Four Israelis traveling in a vehicle were gunned down by unknown assailants at the entrance to the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, near the West Bank city of Hebron. The attack comes two days before the United States is set to host a meeting between Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."  (Stratfor) And Later, "A spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the Aug. 31 West Bank attack that killed four Israelis — two men and two women, one of whom was pregnant. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and al-Haq also have claimed responsibility for the ambush...At least two gunmen opened fire on the victims’ white, older-model station wagon. Reports indicate the vehicle was riddled with bullets, a sign that the gunmen first disabled the vehicle. A paramedic at the scene said the victims had been dragged from the vehicle and shot in vital organs, execution...

Some of you know that I like to listen to college lectures on my commute to and from work from the Teaching Company ( http://www.teach12.com/ ).  It's a great service, and I highly reccomend buying at least 1 lecture series from them sometime in your life.  Really, it's wonderful.  Anyway, I'm now listening to a series about Capitalism, and two excellent lectures about Marx.  The lectures are not in favor of Capitalism, and so Marx is presented very fairly and very thoroughly.  The lecturer brought up an interesting point, though he did it incidentally.  Marx' essential logic is very similar to Jesus.  And after some thought, I agree.  And now I know why I've never liked Marxism, and the reason is identical to my problem with Biblical (or perhaps Apocalyptical) Christianity. I say Marxism and not Socialism or Communism because I favor Socialism (as in Social Democracies like in Europe) and oppose Comm...

Israel is under fire again.  And so it goes.  In brief, during the night of May 30th-31st, a flotilla of aid ships from Turkey carrying about 700 Palestinian supporters were surrounded and boarded by Israeli commandoes.  In the end, 9 or 10 supporters were killed and 10 IDF soldiers were injured, 1 seriously.  It's unclear how many supporters were injured. Before I go on, I should say the flotilla was made up of 6 boats, and that 5 were boarded without any injuries whatsoever.  If Israel intended to murder the supporters, as many claim, they certainly would have opened fire against the first ship, or perhaps blown the whole flotilla out of the water, sinking any video recording onboard, not published their own videos, and hid the whole event, or said they sunk an enemy military ship.  There are hundreds of alternatives, but as it stands, there is no way to reconcile the fact that 5 ships were peacefully boarded with the idea that the Israelis meant t...

Sorry I haven't posted much recently - with Alaska and whatnot I've been busy.  But in any event, there's a new trend (fad?) against Facebook.  To be fair, this trend is actually against pretty much all social networking sites, but Facebook is both the biggest and the most used, and so it is getting the most heat.  It is the McDonald's of the social networking site.  I'm betting someone will make a movie called "Friend Request Me" on the evils of FB.  But unlike Morgan Spurlock's excellent film, that film will be utter crap.  What we are seeing is, basically, a revolt not against what FB is doing, but what the internet actually is.  The past 15 years have seen an excellent technology go from being an odd sounding idea to an essential tool for, well, anything.  From porn to research papers, there is literally nothing the internet hasn't improved. The main grevience people have with FB is that it distributes your "private" information.  I...

Apparently it is a felony to disparrage the meat industry of Colorado. Therefore, Colorado meat sucks and I am going to boycott it. You heard me: Colorado meat is awful. James Thomas must be disbarred, or made to eat Colorado's disgusting meat, which I'm sure is infected with E. coli and made with a heaping serving of cow manure.

I am against illegal immigration and in favor of deportation.  Wait, wait, don't write me off yet!  I'm not racist and I'm not against immigrants.  I'm certainly against amnesty.  Let me explain: There are many legal immigrants.  The process of coming legally is very cumbersome and could be reformed, but the fact is they went through the process.  It would be a great disrespect to say "But if you had snuck into the country, you'd also be a citizen."  In fact, many legal immigrants aren't even citizens yet!!  Amnesty is terrible disrespectful to the many immigrants who followed the rules. More importantly, however, illegal immigration allows those here illegally to be abused.  Many illegal immigrants come here for jobs.  That's good.  Many illegal immigrants are willing to work for less money than the average American.*  That's capitalism, and that's fine.  The problem is they get paid less than minimum wage, but t...

The Good Old Days, plainly, never existed.  If ever anyone says that things were better, think about the time they're talking about.  You'll probably find out something that wasn't so good. For example: at a study group I was in, someone referred to the 1930s as the Good Old Days.  I immediately exclaimed, "But black people couldn't go into some restaurants!"  He said he went to an desegregated school.  There are two problems with that comeback: That it was called "desegregated" means it had been segregated at some point, and some point recently. The second problem, and in fact the general problem with the "Good Old Days."  It's based on personal experience, and colored by nostalgia.  Integrated grade schools were not widespread, and there was much violence against attempts at desegregation.  So his own experience is a little irrelevant to the point. (And besides all that, the 30s were the Great Depression - clearly not a time to be...