We can worry about the ontology of law, moral or legal, when we’re more at our leisure. But whether moral or legal, it’s an axiom of law that all is permitted save what is prohibited. This is because listing permissions… Read More ›
Everything You Wanted to Know About What’s Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME
As of day 100 since October 7th, the Israeli government announced there were 105 hostages still alive. Probably a couple fewer today. But after all this time, I can’t help but wonder if, and if so for how many, Stockholm… Read More ›
APARTHEID AND GENOCIDE
The reason they’re called the Abrahamic religions is that Jews, Christians and Moslems share a common core conception of god. But let’s not be too quick about what follows from this. You and I might share a common conception of… Read More ›
GAZA AND THE MEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT
The Israelis started it off, on October 7th, at 1405, and then gradually dropped it to the current count of 1155. As of today, apart from the 51,000 they’re reporting as injured, the Gaza Health Authority has its own latest… Read More ›
WHY ISRAEL DOESN’T HAVE A RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF
The thing about rhetoric is it can’t afford to ask itself what it means by the words it uses. For example, in justifying Israel’s response to the attack on October 7, the most oft-chanted mantra is that Israel has a… Read More ›
CELEBRATION AND INCITEMENT
Amnesty International has always been notoriously silent about Israeli apartheid, because, understandably enough, it doesn’t want to alienate its sizeable Jewish donor base. It ignores a relatively few injustices so it can attract the resources to fight far more. Well,… Read More ›
ANTISEMITISM
There’s a pattern of fallacious reasoning in political discourse – I don’t know what to call it, but I’m open to suggestions – that goes like this. 1) If I refuse – and I do – to condemn the Hamas… Read More ›
MORE MATH AND A MODEST PROPOSAL
After seven weeks of ‘precision’ bombing, the IDF, by its own reckoning, has managed to kill 1,000 Hamas soldiers. So only another 34,000 to go. So keeping the kill rate constant, it should only take another four and half years… Read More ›
SHAME
Of the 16 million Jews in the world, just under half live in Israel. Of the other 8.5 million, most support the State of Israel, in the sense that they regard it as a mustering point “come the next pogrom”…. Read More ›
THE HECKLER’S VETO
I’ve thought long and hard about this problem, but apparently not hard enough, because I haven’t come up with a solution to it, and I’m beginning to despair that I ever will. As I’ve noted elsewhere, your freedom of expression… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 