I wonder how many of those students had Pell Grants (federal need-based money for low-income undergraduates).

"They ought to be tried for treason; the lot of 'em." Treason's not...ah, screw it.

The USA, supposedly the land of the free. Unless you have a political opinion that GF disagrees with, in which case you're a criminal.

I was going more on the semantics of treason, but yeah. (Besides, it's legally allowed to burn an American flag, Gunfighter).

Yeah, I don't know where in the world treason came from, but if you encounter someone that hates the USA, calling them treasonous when they aren't committing treason basically affirms their feelings toward their country.

1. Give me a break, Gunfighter.

I agree with you, I think the UCI students were acting like smug, self-important schmucks over the flag thing...

And then you have to go the one extra and throw "treason" into it? O.o

If being a sanctimonious college punk were a treason-worthy offense...well, I guess that'd solve the problem of wondering what we're going to do with all these kids graduating and then struggling to get jobs.

Again, they were being smug, UC-style pricks. It's not like they sold state secrets or, you know, worked with Boris and Natasha vs. Moose and Squirrel.

2. http://news.yahoo.com/zionist-union-opens-lead-netanyahus-likud-poll-105754535.html

"Six days before Israel votes in a snap general election, the centre-left Zionist Union opened a lead of several points over the ruling rightwing Likud party, a poll found Wednesday."

Come on...

As stated, beating Likud is one thing, forming a coalition government is another, but still--

EVEN IF the coalition skewered in favor of the Israeli right this time, *IF* Herzog's center-left party were to beat Netanyahu and Likud, *ESPECIALLY* after Netanyahu essentially played what he clearly thought would be a trump care in his Boehner-supported speech, and had that backfire...

Were Netanyahu to lose after all that, even if the center-right still formed the majority in a coalition, the symbolic victory would be a step in the right direction. It would show people in Israel and abroad 1. That Netanyahu isn't the only voice in Israel, and that 2. There IS another attitude and option when it comes to how Israel should conduct itself and position itself, both in relation to the Palestinian question and to the world abroad.

I hate Netanyahu, I hate what he's done to Israel, hate what he's done to the Palestinians, particularly in the West Bank (as I again say that Hamas shares in the blame in terms of Gaza) and I want to see him out and a better day for Israelis, Palestinians, and members of the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas around the world. It isn't an excuse by any stretch, and it's not the only reason, but Israel's absolute PR failure in how it conducted and gave its side of the 2014 war is a contributing factor to the Antisemitism on some of these college campuses, and then on the flip side you have the dispossessed among the Palestinians.

Hoping hard that Herzog can pull this off...even if it's just symbolic...

It's not a matter of political opinion. It's the fact that they removed a symbol of national unity (American flag) from a public space during wartime. It would be a stretch, but I can still (somewhat) fairly accuse them of low-level treason.

Also, Texas v. Johnson was a travesty and every American knows it.

We're at war? Whom with? Also, flags do not deserve special protection.

No, they don't. Please see the multitude of Supreme Court cases saying flags are a form of expression and covered under freedom of expression.

See, they can use the same protection as everyone else.

GF: Are you saying you want to thought police the people who don't like America? Because burning a flag is just as much a form of expression as waving one. I agree that it was disrespectful, but since when is it illegal in the United States to be disrespectful? Let society shame a flag burner for his/her actions (as would surely happen, and I very may well join in), don't arrest him/her. And we aren't at war, which is why I argued the semantics of treason. (I brought up Texas v Johnson to highlight that it's legal to be far worse to the flag than just not have it hanging up in a public place). And it wasn't just the US flag they wanted to take down, but any and every flag.

I miss the good old days when communists and anti-Americans were actually punished. If someone invents a time machine, I'd pay good money to permanently go back to the 1950s.

You mean 1450s?

GF - are you a white male by any chance? Because no-one else wants to be in teh 1950s.

Ah, the 1950s...

When men were men, women were women (and in the kitchen, where they belong, of course) and a fella could keep the commies AND colored out, right, Gunfighter?

I'm not saying the 1950s didn't have good things about them too, I'm just saying you're idealizing it a ridiculous amount...and what about all the people accused of communism who were blackballed for years thanks to the likes of Joe McCarthy?

Whole careers ruined, climate of fear, people thrown under the bus for the sake of saving one's own skin...

Isn't the whole post-9/11 mantra to NOT give into fear? Because reverting to a 1950s-style climate like you want seems to be something of the opposite...

@mendax:

"are you a white male by any chance? Because no-one else wants to be in teh 1950s."

For your information, Gunfighter is a gay Jewish transvestite of mixed parentage, black and Russian...of course he is, right? That's the perfect fit for the 1950s!

Apparently, several Californian lawmakers are drafting a bill to make it illegal for state-funded schools to remove US flags.

GF: So you want to revert to an Oceania-like society where people are punished for having opinions? What a freedom hater.
KC: That makes sense to me. They fund the schools, they get to make rules like that for the school.

Heck I am fine with that. (the proposed law, not the treason and all) Take our flags out of your school, and we will take our money out of it too.

@ obi

"what about all the people accused of communism who were blackballed for years thanks to the likes of Joe McCarthy?"

Good riddance. Commies don't deserve careers. We need Senator McCarthy now more than ever.

"When men were men, women were women (and in the kitchen, where they belong, of course) and a fella could keep the commies AND colored out, right, Gunfighter?"

Come on, I have no problem with black/brown guys. I'd live in a non-racist part of the 1950s.

"non-racist part of the 1950s" lol

i definitely agree with gunfighter though that life is much easier and much better when everyone else around you is living and thinking exactly like you. if only those trying to change society for the greater good could learn to like what we already have because it works perfectly for him and me and some others!

It isn't treasonous to be a Communist or burn American flags. Loathsome perhaps, but not treasonous.

"We need Senator McCarthy now more than ever...I'd live in a non-racist part of the 1950s."

...You're trolling us, right? You have to be trolling us.

Wasn't McCarthy that blacklist guy? The most paranoid, egotistical, corrupt guy ever? He literally got paid to ruin people's careers, usually without just cause (assuming that being a communist is just cause in the first place).

I agree with you, I think the UCI students were acting like smug, self-important schmucks over the flag thing...


____________

raza

^Banned and blacklisted so soon after posting?!

:O Oh my God...

JOE MCCARTHY WALKS AMONG US...

Not that I want to criticize things, and I'm sure I'm missing things, but banned for 'spamming'?

You cant base your opinion of Communism based on Soviet Russian Style Leninist/Stalinist Totalitarian Statism or Maoist China's version of "Communism". That being, the USSR and Communist China, are in fact not Communist. Saying the Commies dont deserve a career is un-American. We have the freedom to think and choose any ideology we want to align with or follow. The fact that so many Americans even to this day, 20 some years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, still deteste "Communism" when the majority of people have no idea what socialism/marxism/communism even is, shows us how powerful the anti-Soviet propaganda was during the Cold war, and now this generation has inherited our parents and grandparents thoughts and hate towards the "red menace". McCarthy was a joke, and if he lived a couple centuries earlier, he would of been the one leading witch hunts burning heretics...and as for the students who don't want the American flag being hung in the school hall or where ever, that is their opinion, not that I agree with it, but there are many people around the world who view America as Imperialist, looking to exert power in this region and that, and some of what they say is true. Most recently the 2nd war in Iraq, a war that Cheney and Rumsfeld fabricated facts to supplant their own power in a region of the world to further their own agenda. In fact, the day of 9/11, there is conversations recorded between those men, stating to one another, that "we must find a way to tie this to Saddam and Iraq...", also, Reagan in the 80s supporting apartheid in South Africa, the South clinging to a late 19th century mentality about African Americans, President Polk fabricating reasons to go to war with Mexico, to grab land, and so on....yes America has done horrible things, which I am sure we still don't even know of, but America has been getting better, and correcting our past by moving into the future, for a more tolerant country, where everyone has the right to modern and up to date health care, to be able to afford an education, if one wants one. However, yes we still have many problems, and this growing reactionary anti-homosexual, anti-Islam hysteria, is making America look very intolerant and very close minded. Just as we shouldn't form an opinion about Communism, until the person actually understands what it is, nor should that same person, hate someone, in which they have not a clue about them or their Religion, in this Case Islam, which the majority of the 1.3 billion adherents are nothing like the Islamic State, and want nothing to do with extreme medieval dogmatism...

"You cant base your opinion of Communism based on Soviet Russian Style Leninist/Stalinist Totalitarian Statism or Maoist China's version of "Communism". That being, the USSR and Communist China, are in fact not Communist."

Admitting for the moment that both the response to this and the topic itself are really enough for a thread of their own..........

Yes, you CAN judge Communism by those states...not exclusively and in a limited sense (I'll say how in a moment) but I think they're fair game.

I'd argue the difference here is Communism the Theory vs. Communism Used in a State/As a Model/Partial Model.

As far as Marxist theory goes, yeah...you can point to all the ways Stalin and Mao and other such states have fouled that up, but that wouldn't logically mean the system was flawed. It COULD be flawed, or it could be the people were flawed, but at the very least, it wouldn't fly in the face of the core ideas/terms (the historicizing, the march of history, the means of production, the ideological superstructure, etc.)

That being said...political theories are arguably the most testable and most intended for testing of philosophical theories...

And so even if you wanted to (fairly) claim that the results were fouled up by foul leaders when communism was put into practice/claimed to have been put into practice...well, doesn't that maybe say something about the potential for fallibility in said system, or how it can be corrupted? It's fair to say it was corrupted and that that wasn't "real" communism, but it's likewise fair to say something or someone has to do the corrupting for it to have become corrupted, and the why and how such corruption occurred is worth taking into consideration in a political theory.

Further, given that the USSR, China, and North Korea are probably the three most well-known/longest-lasting examples of a broadly-recognized communist state in the last century, and all three have some pretty startling commonalities (the human rights record for each nation visa vi their own people reads like a rap sheet of potential atrocities) I think it's fair game, in the same way that citing the US or UK as examples of Western capitalist imperialist/former imperialist states (wherever you come down on that third descriptor.)

A critique of Western capitalism necessitates a look at America, and all the pros and cons that system has allowed for...and likewise, any look at communism will include the USSR and/or China. Neither are pure exemplars (things like social security still rankle right-wingers here who say it smacks of socialism, and you can argue China has mixed some capitalist ideals with their professed communist leanings) but both are fair and prominent examples of those systems in action in the real-world nevertheless.