Don’t mind kwimby. He can’t help himself.
This American would simply warn you that burning shit is a really awful smell, and you may want to limit your activity to shitting OR burning.
I spent the better part of 15 years sending my husband off to unknown locations, for various amounts of time during the cold war. He didn’t get the crap on his chest for playing nice with others. I will admit that I am glad he is retired, but that didn’t stop me from losing a friend recently.
As long as it isn’t my flag, my sidewalk and I don’t have to watch or clean it up, I’ll be happy to hand over a roll of bog paper.
How muchh oil is in our strategic reserves, and how much do we spend in the middle east on oil in the average year? How long can Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC middle eastern countries go without the US purchases furnishing their income? How much other US money do they get in the average year, and how long would it take us to make all of our misguided christian sprog funds to pull out, and all the assorted other organizations that provide what we could then be calling succor to the enemy? [I would be willing to bet that Peace Corps has been subtlly pulling personnel out for the past few months already]
No, we need to pull all funding and aid to force the respective governments and nonviolent populations to force the militant idiots to stop being jackasses, kill them or jail them. That will never happen as long as they feel they will continue getting aid and funding from the US.
No, they are responsible for letting it continue. If we had a bunch of violent politically based assholes cough several black kids ended up with military or police escorts to get them into school, we mobilized the FBI because of a few dead voters rights organizers cough we would deal with making sure they were not screwing around with the rest of the population. Hate crimes are illegal in quite a few countries around the world. If the countries in the eastern parts of the world can’t deal with violence, then perhaps we should withdraw ourselves and out support until they decide they need us to buy their goods and services. If that means I need to convert the farm to home generated methane and heating with wood, I can deal with it. I can augment our solar stuff.
They started it, with 700 or so years of trying to invade europe. They also have been happily killing each other off over a very minor difference generated at the death of Mohammad. The US has been mucking around in the middle east for almost no time at all, under 100 years.
And by using business we can fight back. If we stop any sort of money and aid flat, no more buying their oil, their touristy tchatchkes, their agricultural products, no shipping over humanitarian aid, no loans or grants, throw all their students out. No movies, magazines, newspapers, books. Nothing. Embargo them like Cuba. Wonder how much they get off the US between grants, loans, purchases and aid packages…
You are so fucking ignorant it’s painful to read.
I don’t quite see the parallel. What I wrote was:
[QUOTE=Roderick Femm]
“If your feelings are hurt, that’s your problem.” Exactly, plus eleventy.
[/QUOTE]
The case you cite certainly doesn’t have anything to do with hurt feelings or insulted dignity. It is about a limitation on freedom of speech, in a situation of which one may certainly debate the merits. That is, speaking against the draft during a declared war may or may not be defensible. But it is in no way a parallel to the situation we are discussing. Unless perhaps you would care to elucidate further.
Roddy
counts on fingers Ummm, 14th century, that’s past the Crusades conveniently enough. I assume you’d be talking about the Ottoman Empire, then ?
Of course, while they were busy trying to defend their possessions, crack Istanbul and later Vienna ; Europeans were busy trying and more often than not succeeding in invading, um… everyfuckwhere else ? The New World of course, but also India, Asia, Africa, Australia & the Dutch Indies (which happened to not be Dutch at the time), a couple stabs at Russia… Oh, them aggressive, conquest happy Muslims ! shake fist
But of course, if you merely misspoke and meant “trying to invade Europe *since *700”, then it would still be my duty to remind you that Europeans started that too, with Romans, Greeks and (much) later Normans conquering every coastline of the Mediterranean and of course the Levant while they were at it.
Not that “they started it !” means a shit in the first place, naturally. What are you, fucking five years old ?!
But even so, it’s important to get one’s facts straight.
Ha ! Yeah ! Not like us Europeans, who’ve instead been killing each other off over no difference at all besides a lack of respect for the authority of a man in a funny hat and expecting to be allowed to hold Mass in something other than a dead language. Now those would be proper, solid reasons to be murdering each other by the hundred thousands. Silly Muslims !
1801, to be precise. Expeditionary war against the Barbary Corsairs. If you’re really a Navy wife, you oughta know what prompted the founding of the Navy in the first place.
Obviously, few people burning American flags today remember that one either - they’re more concerned by how badly the US (and the West in general) have been thoroughly reaming them over oil in living memory.
So get the nonviolent parts of the population to kill the militants? GENIUS!!
“raghead”?
Are you under the impression that the people of Pakistan or Afghanistan are Arabs or even Middle Easterners?
US navy began in 1774, technically it predates the country. Jyrenes started the same year as well. It was 1794 that it started mucking about with the Barbary Pirates [who normally predated on Europe and only hit the occasional American trading vessel. When the US split off from Britain it lost the protection of the British navy.]
I even know 2 whole verses to the Navy Hymn … rather useless information, but I have sat through more than enough change of command ceremonies to put the most raving insomniac to sleep 
That’s the *Continental *Navy. It was disbanded and (mostly) disarmed after the Independence - what was left of it anyway. Its remaining ships were either sold or relegated to anti-smuggling duties. It would eventually become the US Coast Guard.
The actual combat force called the *US *Navy and which really had, y’know, war ships (as opposed to re-purposed civilian ones and race-built cutters) was established and commissioned via the Naval Act of 1794, in specific reaction to Barbary corsair raids in the Atlantic which proved a little too much for the revenuers to handle.
It would also prove useful in letting the French stop being dicks, but that’s another story 
Yah well, I think overall the gripe is that they are silly, even given that they are not alone in that. But one can’t always say that without all hell breaking loose. What I propose is that- even if you don’t really respect the beliefs- you try to respect the people and avoid doing things that reliably piss them off.
Seriously, why start a riot, even if it is a riot of people you don’t like? People get hurt in riots. Stop it.
For people like Enkel, aruvqan and any other member of the short-sighted take-my-ball-and-go-home school of diplomacy…this is why you stay engaged:
Libyans storm Ansar Al-Shariah compound in backlash after attack on US Consulate
I would like to make a point that doesn’t appear to be discussed in this thread.
Right now, it’s a time of unrest in the Muslim world. Transitions between one system and another are usually dangerous times. Like the Terror after the French Revolution. It happens… No Iron Hand to control the extremists, and an unsteady system in place that will need time to settle.
Now, on the one hand, while I’m all for shitting on any religion, this may be the very worst (or the very best if your intention is precisely to stir things up) time to do that. Like standing up to a bully when he’s drunk. On the other, I suspect that similar provocations have been going unnoticed through the years, but now the extremists are looking for any excuse to riot, so now the provocations are noticed. Like how South Park had actually used Mohammed’s image in an episode years ago, but nobody cared, in that Superfriends parody episode, but after the dutch cartoon they threatened to bring him back and it was chaos.
No, it fucking doesn’t. Why does everyone keep repeating this lie? Freedom of speech is specifically about being able to contradict those in power without fear of repercussion. This exists so that democracy can function, as, otherwise, those in power can just outlaw any attempt to protest their actions and inspire people to vote them out.
It’s a protection so that you can’t be accused of being an asshole just for sharing an unpopular opinion. It is not a protection so that you can be an asshole and run and hide behind the law. That’s a consequence, and one of the tradeoffs. Stop mistaking the side effects with the purpose.
The thing people never seem to think about in these situations is that being an intentional asshole never brings people together. It always makes enemies. There is no way that this sort of thing is ever going to convince Muslims that they shouldn’t take images of their prophet so seriously, any more than pissing on a Jesus statue is why Christians don’t care about such profanity. We don’t care because we realized that most people who disagree with us are not assholes, and that those who do this are on the fringe.
Stop pushing for it to become mainstream, as that would justify their beliefs. Stop acting like intentionally making the bully mad ever makes him stop being a bully, instead of causing him to wail on you even more.
Oh sorry. I meant sand rat bastard terrorist asshole.
Wherever they live and breed. Not the farmers. Just the sand rat bastard terrorist assholes encouraging them and running the (cough) business.
Oh, that’s all right, you’ve pretty much clarified things already. Its a fine American tradition, actually, hating people you don’t know for reasons you can’t understand.
Cartman: “Screw you, hippie!”
/Cartman
Or maybe the goal is to desensitize them, to undo their training.
Don’t forget kiling them - that’s the important part!
And 1794 is not 1801.