Nevermind what I said about them taking any of thier depravity to heart. Apparently the Lebanese news source listed it’s headline as “Libya - USA Ambassador in Bengazi sodomized and killed by his own al-Qaeda puppets.” They are beyond reasoning, beyond logic.
Yeah. The US has al-Qaeda puppets. These idiots have swallowed so much of thier own bullshit that they like the taste.
It’s cause and effect Anduril. Stir up a hornet’s nest and somebody will get stung. Poke a bear with a stick and you get swiped. Insult Mohammad and the nutters will crawl out of the woodwork and enemies of the US with a pre-existing agenda will use it to attack US interests. It’s not hard.
Liberals are staunch defenders of free speech: the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch put boots on the ground for this principle. All conservatives bring to the table is bluster and pompous grandstanding designed to prop their pre-existing religious sentiments. I oppose wackjob fundamentalists of every stripe, be they Islamic, Christian or economic. Pretty much a seamless garment over here.
Oh, and how is the nutty conservative film-maker having his rights challenged? News flash: the riots were in the middle east, not Los Angeles. I read it on the internet.
scratch:
ETA: “I’m not clicking the links.” Yeah, I didn’t want to google it either. Pretty sickening stuff. Thanks for checking it out though – I’ll take you at your word.
But what I’m saying and what keeps getting ignored is that there SHOULDN’T be a cause and effect relationship there. By blaming the filmmaker, we are keeping the status quo, precisely what these idiots want. By going squarely behind the filmmaker, no matter how despicable his form of expression is, we might be able to modify THEIR behaviors and send a message that we value freedom of expression more than anyone’s right not to feel insulted. And it’s not the filmmaker’s right that’s being challenged, it’s all our rights. Look at how the media has bent over backwards because they don’t want to be attacked. It’s wrong.
A potentially interesting point… but there are two problems here:
(a) we don’t understand them and they don’t understand us
(b) they kill people when things they don’t understand happen
Sure it’s important to address (a)… but it may or may not ever happen. Will the people of Joliet IL ever truly understand the people of Ulaanbaatar? Probably not… but neither of those groups seem to be actively killing people due to misunderstandings. On the other hand, addressing (b) is a literal matter of life and death.
And if their position is “our faith and the prophet is SO IMPORTANT to us that making fun of it/him is equivalent to murdering innocents, and thus when someone does that we are going to murder innocents right back in retribution”, then that position is an evil one that must be scourged from the earth, understanding be damned. (Anduril: note that you and I agree on this point.)
No one is ignoring that. In fact, everyone agrees with that. However, you are making that statement and then kind of declaring yourself the victor of the debate, and the rest of us are saying that there SHOULDN’T be such a relationship, but there IS, so how do we proceed to live in a world which is less than ideal?
Similarly, it SHOULD be the case that leaving your car and your home unlocked would never lead to your stuff getting stolen… but that doesn’t mean that changing your behavior to keep your stuff from getting stolen is some cowardly act that lets the bad guys win and encourages them.
Backing up a second, my position on this topic is as follows… if you disagree with me (and honestly, I’m not 100% sure you do), please point out SPECIFICALLY where that disagreement lies (I’m assuming for the moment that the deaths were in fact the result of people being upset about the movie, not an Al Qaeda op using the movie as cover, or some such other wrinkle):
(a) the filmmaker had the absolute legal right to make the film he did. It is good and correct that he had that right, and that right should continue to exist
(b) the movie was insulting and slanderous towards lots of people. Being insulting and slanderous is a kind of a dick move
(c) bad and evil people who felt insulted/slandered by this movie WAY overreacted and killed innocent people. These bad and evil people are by far the baddest and evilest people who show up in this story. They should be captured and convicted and punished. They are murderers. Murderers are bad.
(c1) but the reason we’re not really going on and on about them is because they’re murderers and they’re bad and we all agree that they’re bad murderers, so there’s no debate there
(d) the people who made the film bear SOME ethical/moral (but not legal) responsibility for the deaths that resulted from the rioting. THIS DOES NOT DIMINISH THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ACTUAL KILLERS AT ALL!!!
(e) does that mean they should not have made the movie? Not in a legal sense. And that’s not a decision I’m comfortable making for them. There are certainly times when making art or making political speech is so important that one should do so despite possible repercussions.
To propose a more interesting hypothetical… Suppose you are the writer or producer of a TV series and you have an episode that is scheduled to air which contains what you think is a powerful message about race in America, but which contains a lot of fairly raw language, stuff that at first glance might seem insensitive of offensive, but which you believe works together to make an important and meaningful point.
And suppose your episode is scheduled to air the first week of May, 1992, and wouldn’t you know it, in late April 1992 the Rodney King riots break out. What do you do? Do you consider postponing this episode? Or possibly re-editing it? Or both?
Honestly, I can’t answer that for you. I think lots of choices are reasonable. Changing the air date is not a cowardly act, it’s not letting the rioters win. And not changing the air date because you don’t want to let the rioters win is also not unreasonable. BUT, if you go ahead and air the episode, and the riots flare up again in LA because of your episode and a janitor at the NBC affiliate in LA gets beaten to death, YOU BEAR SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR THAT. And you bear some responsibility for that even though it SHOULD be the case that airing TV episodes about race doesn’t lead to people dying.
Oh, and as for this:
Look at posts 326, which is responding to post 324. In post 324 I’m making a very specific claim, which is that (regardless of when it is or is not appropriate to insult with violence) (it is not), it is in fact not at all surprising that people react to insults aimed at public figures with whom they identify as if those insults were aimed at them personally. That’s plain human nature. And it’s a very very obviously true point, and one that is basically tangential to this thread as a whole. You respond with post 326 in which you say:
It’s unclear what the “that” is here.
Nothing in my post 324 in any way said or implied anything about when people should or should not modulate their behavior.
And here, you (a) call me an idiot, a move certainly likely to lead to reasoned debate and exchange of ideas, and (b) make a statement again totally unrelated to the fairly specific tangent I was discussing post 324, and one that is in fact an interesting question open for debate, but given that “human nature” is such a vaguely defined term, one that is probably impossible to meaningfully resolve, and somewhat irrelevant. I mean, is rape part of human nature? It sure happens an awful lot, and has all throughout history. But it is and should be and must be a crime that is punished harshly, despite the fact that there are obviously some basic biological instincts that lead to it. Whether or not rape is part of human nature is a morbid but potentially interesting debate on its own, but irrelevant to any real world question of rape laws or sentences or policies.
Tangent aside, I was not saying “murdering people because of a movie is human nature”, I was saying “being just as insulted by attacks on a public figure you care about as you would be by attacks on you personally, is human nature”, and you responded by saying “but murdering people because of a movie is not human nature”, which is responding to something I was not saying. Do you see the distinction?
So what is the solution – how do we scourge that position from the earth? Especially if we don’t understand it? We can’t kill everyone who holds that position, we can’t even identify them all. I’m suggesting that understanding may be the first step to eradicating the viewpoint, and if it isn’t, maybe it can at least help us identify the target.
What MaxVool said.
Well, there’s something to this. But lame attempts by scammers aren’t going to work. I’ll back the Onion approach though, (already posted here):
“No One Murdered Because Of This Image”
NSFW!
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/?ref=auto /NSFW!
“Following the publication of the image above, in which the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity, no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened, sources reported Thursday. … Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.”
The other method is pointing out the offensive things that this country tolerates. The classic example being the Nazi march in Skokie, IL, home of a number of holocaust survivors during the 1970s. Pins the offense-o-meter at 11. And yet we allowed it. And not because we like sworn enemies of the US. Quite the contrary.
Thing is, it would be good to recall that there are guerrillas operating a war against the US in the mideast. What the movie did was give them a bigger mob, but I understand that actions were planned against the US on 9/11 anyway. So scope for kumbaya is pretty limited, at least until we get an Arab/Israeli peace settlement. Which will happen eventually, though it may take another 80 years.
Fair enough. I certainly don’t have an easy solution to that problem.
Then think of it simply as a matter of realpolitik, on the tactical level. May I assume that any reasonably sane American does not want a permanent state of hostility with roughly one sixth of the world? Makes a good start.
Our sworn enemies recruit on the basis of a lie, that America and “the West” are on a mission to destroy Islam. That line is their most effective weapon. The drooling idiots in America who publicly flaunt their anti-Islamic postures are the heaven-sent gift to the Al Queda recruiter, every time one of these assholes pokes the bear with a sharp stick, the bear gets bigger.
All right, take “Loose lips sink ships”, the famous WWII tag line about keeping quiet regarding troop ships, movements, stuff like that, information you do not want to fall into the wrong ears. In our national interest, for the sake of our troops, you censor yourself, you retain the right to free speech even as you are circumspect about using it. Reasons of security.
Provoking Islamic people with public displays of contempt is tactically stupid, it puts Americans at risk for no good reason, it increases the likelihood that American soldiers may need to go in harms way. It is, in a word, unpatriotic, it puts our nation at risk for no worthwhile purpose.
As for moral issues, it’s even simpler: if fostering hatred isn’t evil, what, in the Name of God, is evil, if not that?
MaxtheVool, I apologize for the epithet. I have no excuse.
To answer your question: I disagree with point d). In fact, given that you agreed that there shouldn’t be any causal relationship between the film and the violence, I thought you would also see it my way.
So let me tackle your example:
Firstly, we’re not debating about the value of prudence; we’re talking about responsibility. I don’t think it’s cowardly to be prudent about these things. What’s cowardly is to blame the broadcaster/filmmaker/etc. because at no point is the broadcaster/filmmaker to blame for the violence. I look at this from the viewpoint of whose behavior needs correcting. Which behavior needs modification? Is it the rioters’ or is it the broadcaster’s?
The answer is obvious: we need to correct the rioter’s behavior. The broadcaster has EVERY RIGHT to broadcast what he/she wants. The rioter has NO RIGHT to be violent. So, given that we know whose behavior needs correction, the question now is, what course of action will lessen the behavior in the future.
I argue that standing behind the filmmaker no matter how disgusting his film was will lessen the likelihood of murders in the future. Why? Because it will send the message that the West values freedom of speech more than any one person’s right not to feel offended. Conversely, blaming the filmmaker will embolden future terrorists. Why? Because it sends the message that if you don’t like what we say, kill one of us and we’ll even lay some of the blame on the person whose speech you don’t like.
That’s why I find your blaming the filmmaker despicable. It’s because I believe it’s the kind of response that increases the likelihood of violence in the future.
By force? If not by force, how? Threat of force, shall we keep several hundred Marines at every embassy? Shall we not have embassies save for those countries who can guarantee our embassy’s safety? If we close our embassies and leave, won’t our enemies point to that as a victory, how they drove the Americans out?
If we simply “correct their behavior”, doesn’t that mean that they continue to seethe in hatred for us, but are merely constrained from acting upon it? And only for so long as we can keep them constrained? And their ranks will grow, of course, the more force we apply.
Today, the rioter’s brothers, father, sons and cousins may not necessarily be our sworn enemy. But if that rioter dies at our hands tomorrow, they will be.
Your plan, no doubt, is better than that. Eager ears await.
By any practical means necessary which certainly DOES NOT include blaming the filmmaker for the deaths and thereby modifying everyone else’s behavior other than the actual rioters.
But Anduril. No modification of behavior is necessary. I would denounce hate speech whether it causes riots or not. And the filmmaker/scam-artist was doing exactly that. Now there might be a thought experiment whereby somebody says something “Offensive but valid.” Maybe Salmon Rushdie would fall in that category, maybe not.
But this one ain’t it. The film was a joke and the creator a felon and liar.
+1
Definitely one of your best, Mags.
Do you really think that matters.How about Theo Van Gogh? Or Rushdie? Or The guys at Southpark? You either believe in free speech or you don’t. And before you go crafting some scenario like screaming fire in a crowded theater, shouldn’t we be able to criticize a religion? Even if we do it badly?
Correction
It was my understanding Sam Bacile, aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, Alan Roberts and (real name) Robert Brownell was a talentless hack currently on five year probation for financial crimes. That part was correct. However, I may have given the impression that he lacked experience in the film industry. Not so. Alan Roberts has an extensive set of listings at IMBD. Some of his better known works include “1977’s Young Lady Chatterly, The Sexpert and The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood, third of the Happy Hooker trilogy.” So as Gawker notes, it’s not surprising that he would show the prophet Mohammad performing oral sex on a woman. It’s part of his oevre.
magellion: Um, when did I call for restrictions on this bozo? A: I didn’t. I merely exercised my rights to denounce his schlock.
You can denounce it all you want. Who says you can’t? What I don’t agree is blaming the filmmaker for the deaths. He’s not responsible - the rioters were. And if we you want to modify the behavior of the rioters even just one bit (as I suppose each one of us do), the worst thing to do is blame the filmmaker. It will simply encourage future violence.
That’s all I’m saying. We agree on practically everything else:
The filmmaker was a douchebag.
The film was a big pile of crap.
The rioters were responsible for the deaths.
The filmmaker had every right to make the film.
We have every right to denounce the douchebag.
What we disagree on is whether or not the filmmaker was responsible. By every account of responsibility, he is not - no matter how dickish his behavior is.
Ask yourself this: what if the criticism is actually valid? What if some filmmaker creates a film that’s critical of Islam and exposes such information as: Muhammad is a pedophile; Muhammad is a murderer; Muhammad is a bandit, etc. ? Do you think the response will be any different? I think it will be the same and if it is the same, should we blame this filmmaker who wishes to tackle this topic?
Your answer to this should be NO. In the same way that your answer to the question of whether the filmmaker at the center of this issue is responsible for the deaths should also be NO. Taste should not be a factor in apportioning blame.
In all fairness, Mr. Brownwell was allegedly duped himself: The backstory behind how Roberts became director of Innocence of Muslims is still unclear, like so many things about the film. …his business associate … said Roberts was “non-political” and did not have any apparent anti-Islam feelings. Roberts may have been duped by the film’s producer in much the same way as the rest of the cast and crew. They believed they were participating in a period piece about ancient Egypt and had no idea the movie would be edited and dubbed into a piece of Islamophobic propaganda…
“They redubbed it, they brought in the actors, put in new sounds, changed the names,” said the business partner. “And this was done later, before it was initially released. Of course Alan had nothing to do with it.” Confirmed: The Director of 'Innocence of Muslims' Is a Schlocky Softcore Porn Director Named Alan Roberts
ETA: Oh c’mon. It’s not like the film-maker pulled the trigger on anybody. Of course he’s not responsible. I’m reciting jr high civics here: our freedoms should be exercised responsibly because words have consequences in a world with troubled individuals (and guerrillas with an agenda). That’s why good citizens denounce hate speech – so as to displace governmental action on the same.
That depends on who you hate, doesn’t it? There’s nothing evil about hating Nazis, or torturers, or any one of a thousand groups that are evil and do evil.