<p>I'll support a ban on political discussions (even in the Cafe, which was made for non-college-related discussions) the minute that you ban "discussions" along the lines of "What color eyes do you have!?!?!?!?" and "How much do you weigh?!?!?!?" (especially in the high school forum).</p>
<p>
[quote]
we are finding that politics-related threads are responsible for a big part of our courtesy policy violations
[/quote]
If these discussions are taking up too much Mod time, one option would be to let them be completely unmoderated, but tell people that they are entering at their own risk and that CC does not condone or justify any expression within the threads. You could shut each thread down after it reaches a certain number of postings in order to force people to take a break and start up another threat if they wish to continue the discussion.</p>
<p>I think the discussions give you a glimpse of some reality because there will always be someone who will be headstrong against your own opinion</p>
<p>I'm for political discussions - why was the last one just erased? i put a lot of thought and time into the posts there. not nice :-(</p>
<p>yeah, roger_dooley, why did you delete it? It was very interesting post. I made a two page response to DanC1986's post. I was about to post it and then it vanished! Dang, all my hard work to respond to danC went down the drains. But lemme tell him something -- the arabs had some faults but the Jews did too, and i was willing to elaborate on those. Britain also contributed to the mess.</p>
<p>Roger_Dooley, did you delete the thread because you didnt agree with primitivefuture? Why are we having a poll anyway? It seems every political thread gets deleted within an hour, even though there wasnt any personal attack. I feel bad, i could've owned DanC1986!</p>
<p>I don't see the point of eliminating political discussion. Even if we don't talk about politics, that doesn't mean they don't exist and we might as well learn about the political world outside of our little sphere. Besides, almost everyone could stand to learn more about the political world.</p>
<p>I really wouldn't be suprised if sammgc68, Snafu851, and papajohns were all the same person.</p>
<p>Hahahahahaha. That's news to me.</p>
<p>Papajones, of course the jews made mistakes (one was keep control of the gaza strip since 1967, they should have got an agreement "no matter what" back then and not keep on controlling another people"), but my point was that basically the one who led to this situation were the arabs themselves and they had many chances to "get out of it" yet continued to have this absurd dream of "the land of Israel will be totally arab" - so basically you can't say they "deserve" anything, they need a state, don't deserve one, and of course my response to the refugess thing written there, but oh well, no politics right? damn :-), oh, and, you could never own me! :-) i just know to much about it :-)</p>
<p>Roger, I think the deal is that we are here at the site anyway, and that most of the board members are engaged and intelligent individuals. It is a measure of the "family feeling" CC has engendered that makes it seem natural to feel free to discuss politics, religion, or other controversial issues. </p>
<p>If it's too much trouble to moderate, what about a list of forums under Parent Cafe similar to those that the Student Room uses - "Politics Cafe", "Religion Cafe" for instance, where the Parent Cafe would be generic - from sheets to transportation to "what were you like in high school?" and the named forums would be strictly for the topics that can tend to be incendiary. The intro to the forums could state that, except for the baseline ban against cursing and other auto-filters, the topic cafes are unmoderated - if someone is thin-skinned, they would be warned.</p>
<p>I know even more. DanC1986, I am sorry that I do not remember your entire post that was deleted, but I do rememer you talking about Jews buying land from the Arabs. Most of the land was obtained illegally and even the land purchasers were morally questionable as they sometimes were involved in buying land from absentee landlords and then throwing the poor arab peasants off the land. Later on, the governing Jewish body declared that the purchased land can never be sold or leased to arabs. Zionist refusal to employ arabs or even have relations with them just fueled resentment.</p>
<p>I am gonna write more about Jewish faults since you failed to. You just wrote one fault from the Jews while making it seem minor. Apparently you are hiding vital information :) and I will post that sometime today.</p>
<p>And please dont even talk about Sharon. While he was busy slaughtering Muslims, Yasser Arafat was accepting the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize :) . I know Arafat is not a good leader, but he is the lesser of the two evils.</p>
<p>And no, if you are thinking that i am anti-semetic, you are wrong :)</p>
<p>DanC- Clearly you do not understand the conflict in Israel. Palestinians have nowhere to go. The rest of the arab world hates them, and they feel they should have their own state on the land that their ancestors lived on for generations. It doesn't help that Israel only, and exclusively, grants citizenship to those of Jewish faith.</p>
<p>And guess what? I agree with primitivefuture that the Talibans arent "evil" as the media presents them to be. Under them, the crime rate was much lower that the crime rate under Hameed Karzai.</p>
<p>Yeah, theft is very low in arab countries because they cut off your hands if you steal anything. Hey, maybe we should do that too.</p>
<p>yeah, at least it prevents from all the looting,rape,and violence preceeding the Taliban government. Ever since the fall of the Talibans in Afghanistan, this looting, and crime increased greatly and Karzai is now always roaming about with US soldiers as bodyguards to avoid assasination :) </p>
<p>And they Talibans enforced laws in which women should cover their entire body to prevent sexual relations before marriage. Afghanistan is a very conservative, islamic nation.They realize that sex before marriage will result in poor family life and despair from women and also AIDs, as primitive said, just look at our great nation ;) I doubt they ever did anything which really could be justified as "evil" They have high moral standards, way beyond that existing in the U.S. (No, I am not a terrorist :)</p>
<p>I even doubt there is a better alternative to the way Talibans deal with terrorism is a very poor nation like Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Definitely, I would be disappointed if CC banned political discussions.</p>
<p>I wish i could discuss with all of you about it, I really do. I don't understand the conflict? trust me, there is no one who understands it better than me. But one thing must be said: while arabs see sharon as responsible for killing of many muslim civilians, it is widely known those were killed during military action against terrorists, one might claim that sharon made his man to be "loose on the triger" (not that i agree, but i know the claim). arrafat was just a terrorists, he got the peace prize before he violated the entrie Oslo agreement and other than that - he always supported the killing of innocent civilians while Israeli prime ministers always express their sorrow when non-terrorists were killed. the fact that arafat recieved the peace prize is only a shame for the nobel prize and not an honor by any way to arafat.</p>
<p>i'd love to discuss somehow papajones :-)</p>