That’s your defense? I didn’t give you a laundry list of everything I happen to think is bad (in one post, no less). This horrible failure on my part enables you to read my mind and state for the record that I think violence is kosher. Sorry, I wasn’t aware that the “free speech” you claim to love came with strings attached, namely that failure to address every possible aspect of a situation in a single post leaves one open to the charge of defending violence.
Okay, I’ll play that game. You didn’t express any sympathy at all for the concerns I have at the moment, much less for madmonk28, whose wife’s level of danger is greater than my family’s. This horrible failure on your part means that you think we’ll get exactly what we deserve if we lose someone we love as a result of this situation. (I don’t really believe that, by the way, I’m just using your own tactic to illustrate that it’s not a particularly impressive one.)
FTR, I condemn violence of every kind for every reason, in any place, at any time. This includes the antics of the mouth-breathing assholes at the US Embassy in Jakarta and it sure as hell includes the people who killed J. Christopher Stevens.
I’m sure you are right and that is the underlying logic and motivation. But stopped clocks and all that.
With moves now afoot to impose international protection of Islam (doomed to failure) alongside the very real threat of violence in response to any real or imagined slight then I believe it is right and proper for western governments to make no concessions whatsoever to sensibilities when it comes to free speech vs religion of any flavour.
These mobs attacked embassies and killed people and I have no doubt that Obama will be looking at options. He’s not a guy who’s afraid of sending in the drones. The implicated militia better start watching the skies.
Meh. Everybody already knows how people will react to this kind of insult. People who are willing to kill over a cartoon- how did they get like that? Not by being the most educated and advantaged people in the world. Nope, they were born where they were and made a certain way by forces beyond their control.
I’m saying it shows a lack of compassion to provoke these unfortunates. They are miserable enough already I am sure. Why not pick on the Ayatollah, or Assad, or Al Qaeda or some target that is really worth taking a shot at? Poking a stick at Joe Muslim who doesn’t know what the fuck is going on and isn’t running the show doesn’t accomplish much.
Yeah, I don’t think they need this brand of applesauce. They may have been ‘born into it’ but they are human beings with brains capable of reason. They will see that there are those that don’t think an offensive cartoon is an excuse for murder, and the wiser among them will have their ideas shaped and they will grow and learn just like anyone else. Will they all change their minds?; no. But societies do indeed change when the dumber of their ideas are pushed hard against. It happened in this country.
Certainly. Way it was explained to me is that a sect opposes any depictions of natural beings (as it’d be hubris to try and rival God’s creation). It’s one of the reasons why Islamic art focuses around calligraphy. That’s a cultural artifice which’d account for the violent reactions: they wouldn’t understand the reverence some Americans hold for the flag.
Course, this explanation fails to account for the vitriol directed at Salman Rushdie’s purely literary depictions.
Yea. But there’s only 1 religion we in the West think twice about insulting out of fear for our or other’s lives.
And there’s only 1 religion that has skin so thin that writing a literary novel means you have to spend years in hiding.
So yea - there can be plenty to admire about some of the .1% in this case.
People like Hebro are being dickish on one level (and the film makers were certainly trying to provoke the reaction they got IMHO) but on another they are making a free speech statement in a forceful manner.
None of us, be we comedians, cartoonists, novelists or film-makers should have to limit our exercise of free-speech because one religion has skin so thin you can see the bones.
And the answer to this is not self-censorship.
IMO again - the correct govt response to these events is to say -
‘People have freedom of speech and how they exercise it is none of the government’s business. But what we’re very much making ‘our business’ is the identities of the people and organisations who participated in these murders. Count on hearing from us real soon.’
Encore une fois*: Charlie Hebdo (not Hebro) is the name of a newspaper/magazine, not a person. It’s a satirical weekly that’s evidently been around in one form or another since the 1960s.
I’d never heard of it, but it looks sort of like The Onion meets Mad meets… the sometimes unfortunate French sense of humor.
Fitting that you should say this. *South Park *has taken plenty of shit for their own irreverent satire about religion and everything else, and Parker and Stone were themselves forced to obscure the image of Mohammed in an episode two years ago— despite the fact that “Mohammed” was completely disguised in a bear suit, and despite their having depicted an uncensored Mohammed in an episode nine years prior, apparently to little outcry. You’re willing to grant an exception to Parker and Stone, I presume because you find their satire funny. I don’t find the Charlie Hebdo comic particularly funny, but it’s fundamentally the same idea: satire on a current theme or event, intended to provoke, but also meant to make a point in an amusing way. (As far as I could tell, the comic recounts the story of the Muslim fury over the video and ends with the admonition to “stop talking trash about Mohammed,” the joke being that the comic itself is disrespectful to Mohammed.) Yeah, har har. Nevertheless, I find the comic much more defensible than the video, which was merely an obnoxious attempt at propaganda produced fraudulently and aimed at simpletons. It’s sophomoric humor, but so is South Park at its best and worst.
My agreement stems from the fact that all of those positions may not be the least inciteful method of approaching a potential or existing problem but IMO it is the correct stance (even if, again, IMO, it isn’t the smartest one)
Why what? Why was I going to disagree? Because it’s a stupid idea; it’s a “fuck you” to moderate and liberal Muslims just as much as extremists. It’s also nothing like the Slutwalk, which was about a police officer who confused cause and effect.
However, it is a protest, and that’s good enough for me.
It may not be intended as a "fuck you’ to moderate and/or liberal Muslims, but it surely makes their lives more difficult. It is a fact that the western nations, exemplified by us, are not at war with Islam. But there are numerous incidents that would lead an unsophisticated mind to that conclusion.
For instance, we didn’t go to war in Iraq for non-existent deities, we went to war for non-existent weapons. Over one hundred thousand innocent persons, presumably a vast majority of them Muslims, died at our hand. I happen to believe that we were that stupid, I know us, I know that is entirely plausible. But how do we convince them?
We attack the Sunni regime in Iraq, the Shia nation of Iran is our new number one enemy. We even hate the Sufis who want to open a community center in New York, which is kinda like kicking an Amish in the shins. Why wouldn’t this lead someone to believe we just generally hate Islam? Add to that the people in our country who do, in fact, hate Islam and work tirelessly to make their hateful dreams real.
If we reduce this all down to the cold reality of realpolitik, is there anything more stupid than actively supporting your enemy’s recruitment program?
Not really, though.
Moderate Muslims, by definition, don’t take this shit so seriously, any more than moderate Catholics take it personally when the same Charlie Hebdo publishes drawings of the Pope taking a dump on altar boys, or the average American gets up in arms when *Charlie *has cartoons of US servicemen frying the nuts of afghani goatherders for laughs and similar (Charlie Hebdo is kind of an equal opportunity crass, bitter mockery paper. Questionable taste is their mission statement and raison d’être).
It’s also only a “fuck you” one can be aware of if they buy that newspaper or go out looking for its covers on the web and so forth, so any resulting offence is largely self-inflicted. Personally I get annoyed and bothered by virulent, violent, pig-headed racists - that’s one reason among many I don’t browse Stormfront, Free Republic or go to Front National meetings.
Well, I see South Park as primarily seeking light laughs, while I see these other publications as seeking to arouse people to genuine political action. Not being French or Dutch, it is very possible that I am mischaracterizing what the Mohammed-offending publications mean to their target audiences.
All Things Considered on NPR had an interview with Noah Feldman, professor of international law at Harvard, on the general issue of freedom of speech, U.S. style, vs how it is viewed in other countries (you can see part of it online here).
What I took away from listening to it last night is that the U.S. is the outlyer (sp?) in protecting free speech vs. its affect on other people, even among western nations. In western Europe, apparently, speech is not as free as here.
Here are some of the best quotes from the interview:
[QUOTE=Noah Feldman]
In the U.S., we value the liberty of the speaker much more highly than either the dignity of the person who feels insulted or the state’s interest in trying to avoid violent protest. …
What’s most distinctive from our perspective is that we think that if your feelings are hurt, then that’s your problem. We don’t believe that you ought to be protected from the hurly-burly of political insult. And that’s a very deeply ingrained American notion. …
And because we’re concerned not to allow what’s called the heckler’s veto, where the fact that one particular group or person will make a fuss, means that we will prohibit the speech, we’ve tended to be extremely permissive, and that does make us very different from other countries.
[/QUOTE]
“If your feelings are hurt, that’s your problem.” Exactly, plus eleventy.
Roddy
Very possibly, yes.
*Charlie Hebdo *is probably more politically charged and engaged than your average episode of South Park on the whole, but they’re still very much a satire rag. Its editors & cartoonists certainly don’t enjoin their readers to take any kind of actions against Muslims as a whole (much less violent or aggressive actions - they abhor any and all brands of “gros cons qui tapent”, “big dumb cunts who hit others”) nor preach anti-religious activism of any kind (even though the publication is pretty darn anti-religious itself). *
Charlie *isn’t agitprop, it’s strictly point-and-laughprop. Except maybe when it comes to the Front National, which they do consistently thrash in ha-ha-only-serious ways, organize marches against etc…
I’ll go along with the unsophisticated part, but that’s about it.
When are people going to stop beating the dead horse about why the Arabs have so much to be angy about? Decades of regional political and economic strife under various different circumstances punctuated by never-ending periods of warfighting would piss anybody off after awhile, I suppose. So what?