 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
| 1061 wrote: | I'm just sick and tired of the apologists who seem to be more interested in long winded BS postings that seems to my eyes as I read to be deflecting from what once again to me eyes is a black and white issue.
The issue is Bad people doing bad things in the name of ISLAM.
Black/White. |
David does not disagree with this. David is not an apologist. But we all need to be careful not to get sucked into "visceral responses" to awful situations.
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
|
|
|
 |
swoop42 
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| watt price tully wrote: | | David wrote: | | swoop42 wrote: | | David wrote: | ^ Keep in mind though that the percentage of Muslims in most Western countries is quite small. 2% here, if I'm correct. Even if 100% of them take their religion seriously, that's still a small minority. I mean, there are five times as many Greens voters!
While seeing that number pass the percentage of regular churchgoers is likely to whip the sort of people who bang on about "Judeo-Christian heritage" into a frenzy, what that really shows is how dominant secularism has become in the West. That's a good thing, not a bad thing, because it shows that neither Islam nor Christianity will have any power in our societies in the years and decades to come. |
Beg to differ on the Islam part.
Greatly.
As the stats show there love of actively participating in there faith doesn't appear to be on the wane unlike Christianity and while they might make up a small percentage in a country like Australia in many countries they would represent 98% of the population.
This situation is only going to get worse IMO in the years and decades to come. |
On the contrary, I'd wager that when it comes to the grandchildren of Muslim immigrants to Australia, the majority will be atheist or at most nominal Muslims (i.e. non-practising). When it comes to minority groups, far more likely for mainstream society to change them than the other way around. |
To soon know. Lebanese Muslims for example are over-represented in prisons, crime & violence, unemployment, lower educational outcomes etc compared to other ethnic groups. This does not augur well for your wager. |
Glad you said it and good to know the news services haven't been deceiving me over the last decade or more.
_________________
He's mad. He's bad. He's MaynHARD! |
|
|
|
|
swoop42
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Hostages in Kosher grocery now.
Gunman allegedly the same one who shot and killed the female police officer the other day.
_________________
He's mad. He's bad. He's MaynHARD! |
|
|
|
|
watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
1 wounded in kosher supermarket shooting in Paris
French media report shooter is suspect who shot policewoman and was member of same jihadist group as Charlie Hebdo suspects.
Reuters quoted in YNET news:
A shootout at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris has wounded one person, according to police sources.
France24 reported that the perpetrator was the same suspect who shot dead a policewoman in Paris on Thuesday before fleeing into the Metro and successfully evading police.
Police reported that the shooter was a member of the same jihadist group as the two suspects in the attack at weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
French newspaper Le Figaro reported that there were five hostages inside the market, all of whom were woman and children.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4613271,00.html
This is linked to what I noted earlier & above. And this is where it is Jihadi on this occasion but the attacks on Jews in France over many years has been performed by non Jihadi Muslims as well - this includes rape, torture, stabbings, shootings, fire bombs etc.
The extent of Muslim anti-semitism (lets not split hairs over the term anti- semitism) is frightening, abhorrent & murderous in various parts of the world including France.
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| I don't care for the sound of French. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| watt price tully wrote: | 1 wounded in kosher supermarket shooting in Paris
French media report shooter is suspect who shot policewoman and was member of same jihadist group as Charlie Hebdo suspects.
Reuters quoted in YNET news:
A shootout at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris has wounded one person, according to police sources.
France24 reported that the perpetrator was the same suspect who shot dead a policewoman in Paris on Thuesday before fleeing into the Metro and successfully evading police.
Police reported that the shooter was a member of the same jihadist group as the two suspects in the attack at weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
French newspaper Le Figaro reported that there were five hostages inside the market, all of whom were woman and children.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4613271,00.html
This is linked to what I noted earlier & above. And this is where it is Jihadi on this occasion but the attacks on Jews in France over many years has been performed by non Jihadi Muslims as well - this includes rape, torture, stabbings, shootings, fire bombs etc.
The extent of Muslim anti-semitism (lets not split hairs over the term anti- semitism) is frightening, abhorrent & murderous in various parts of the world including France. |
WPT has rightly been worried about this and tracking it for some time now. Instead of worrying about such dangerous racism, the French public debate and legislative response was to expend large amounts of energy proscribing Muslim clothing.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
| Post subject: | |
|
My thoughts exactly.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/?_r=1
| Quote: | And similarly, in a cultural and political vacuum, it would be okay to think that some of the images (anti-Islamic and otherwise) that Charlie Hebdo regularly published, especially those chosen entirely for their shock value, contributed little enough to public discussion that the world would not suffer from their absence.
But we are not in a vacuum. We are in a situation where my third point applies, because the kind of blasphemy that Charlie Hebdo engaged in had deadly consequences, as everyone knew it could and that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because its the kind that clearly serves a free societys greater good. If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then its something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isnt really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesnt depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and its okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, thats when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed. |
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| David wrote: | My thoughts exactly.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/?_r=1
| Quote: | And similarly, in a cultural and political vacuum, it would be okay to think that some of the images (anti-Islamic and otherwise) that Charlie Hebdo regularly published, especially those chosen entirely for their shock value, contributed little enough to public discussion that the world would not suffer from their absence.
But we are not in a vacuum. We are in a situation where my third point applies, because the kind of blasphemy that Charlie Hebdo engaged in had deadly consequences, as everyone knew it could and that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because its the kind that clearly serves a free societys greater good. If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then its something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isnt really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesnt depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and its okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, thats when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed. |
|
Infidel !
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
|
|
|
|
Bruce Gonsalves 
Joined: 05 Jul 2012
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Allah will have his work cut out finding all those virgins to close the deal. |
|
|
|
|
David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
| Post subject: | |
|
This is even better:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/01/08/rundle-charlie-hebdo-terrorism-and-the-distortion-of-popular-memory/
| Quote: | Charlie Hebdo, terrorism and the distortion of popular memory
Guy Rundle
The news hit London around morning teatime, a grainy image popping up in the Twitter feed. Pretty soon, the news made clear what it was part of a violent attack on the offices of Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly, or, Your Average Weekly), with at least 11 dead, and more injured. Barring bizarre events, there wasnt going to be any doubt who had done it. Charlie Hebdo is more free-wheeling in its satire than Private Eye, its UK counterpart, and has been especially willing to go the tonk on religion, in old-fashioned, gauchiste anti-clerical style. From the 60s until Charlie Hebdo closed in 1981, that target was usually the church. When it came back in 1992, and in the wake of the Rushdie affair, and the rise of Islamism as a political movement, Islam began to get the same treatment. But it wasnt a huge focus for them, with their attention turned more towards embedded French political power, showbiz and literary gossip (never really separated in French life) and cartoons more or less incomprehensible to anyone not up with Parisian idiom.
The magazine had received violent threats before, from both Islamist groups, nationalists and a French zionist terrorist group called the Jewish Defence League (not the US group) which objected to some low-taste holocaust humour cartoons which might be an unpleasant surprise to many of Charlies newfound friends. Other threats followed republication of the Danish Muhammad cartoons in 2008. In 2011, it produced an issue ostensibly guest-edited by Muhammad 100 lashes if you dont die of laughter after which its office was firebombed and obliterated. It was back in action immediately with rising sales, and ever more brio, until this.
Three masked, black-clad men wielding AK-47s got into the building mid-morning, by hijacking a staff member as she was going in. They didnt kill her, and ran down the corridor and into offices shouting the names of people they were after. They found most of them in an editorial meeting, killing 10, three writers and editors, and seven of the countrys leading cartoonists. On the way out, they shouted we have avenged the prophet!, were blocked off by an arriving police car, and shot it out, killing a wounded officer execution-style, before getting away. They are still on the loose, having hijacked another car.
Hours later, Europe was still reeling from the shock not merely of the attack itself, but of the sudden loss of half the countrys great cartoonists, including two national treasures, Cabu and Georges Wolinski. It would be like, in one hit, losing Bruce Petty and Michael Leunig. And Coopes and Moir and First Dog and David Pope. Shocking also was the smooth professionalism of the attack, with video footage of the three killers suggesting that they had military training. The West likes its Islamist killers suicidal or deranged or both. This attack was like the sort of terror Paris is well-accustomed to the black-clad, right-wing OAS of the 60s, brazenly gunning down opponents of Algerian independence, Mossad assassinating Black September and other Palestinians, Turks taking out Kurds, and the bombing campaign by Carlos the Jackal Ramirez, trying to prompt release of his guerrillas in the 1980s. Early afternoon, the world held its breath for 10 minutes.
Then the usual imbecility began, the sort that the now departed staff of Charlie Hebdo would have pilloried remorselessly. Thousands reading their Twitter feed in line waiting for a hazelnut latte tweeted #istandwithcharliehebdo cost-free, zero-content pseudo-solidarity that flatters the issuer. Politicians, commentators etc made sententious statements about freedom of speech being absolute, a right etc as if the attack was some sort of opening gambit in a debate about religious vilification laws. American neocons issued effusive words of support, perhaps unaware that several Charlie Hebdo cartoons had ended up in Irans Holocaust Humour exhibition of a few years ago issued statements. French politicians, some of whom had tried to close down the magazine using draining legal assaults, now had to stand in solidarity including President Francois Hollande, last seen on the cover with his dick hanging out of his pants, the membre petite with a speech balloon saying Moi, Presidente. All of them had, years earlier, asked Charlie Hebdo not to publish the Danish Muhammad cartoons. Now, with the act done, they were suddenly supporters in retrospect.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, whose government has unquestionably received French DGSE buggings of the Hebdo office, said we are all Charlie Hebdo. Queen Elizabeth II, whose family have variously been depicted as vibrators, tampons, and everything else, issued her condolences. Peak asinine was reached when people gleefully remarked that the killers had only served to make Charlie Hebdos cartoons more widespread, declared that they had not won, and intimated that they were too stupid to have done so.
This was ridiculous. Of course the terrorists had won. They set themselves a narrow operation they harmed no one when they initially barged into the wrong office which was to obliterate the magazines staff, and they did it. The suggestion that there was anything medieval about such an operation was simply drivelling self-congratulatory liberalism on autopilot. Whats medieval about killing people who traduce your idea of the truth? Europe spent most of the 20th century doing that. Thats not an exception to modernity its most of what modernity has been. The shock in France relates in part to the very, well, French character of the event. Exemplary political terror is more or less a Parisian invention after all indeed the liberal republic from within which the right to free speech is intoned, was founded on terror. By 6pm, on BBC Radio, someone was quoting Voltaire I disagree with what you say, but etc. Voltaire never said that, but he did express hope that the last king would be strangled with the guts of the last priest, so he appears to have had a soft spot for terror too. All very confusing, isnt it?
So of course they prevailed in this encounter. They punched a hole in French national culture. Theres nothing fair about ones status in death and so it is cruelly true that to take out a bunch of the countrys most loved cartoonists is a harder hit, even though killing 12 random people on the street would have been no less tragic. But its important to understand what sort of a cultural attack this was. Charlie Hebdo didnt have the cultural reach of Private Eye, with 200,000, still less of someone like Jon Stewart or The Chaser. It had sales of 50,000 a week in a country of 50 million. For a mainly Parisian elite, it was indispensable, part of the furniture of life that we call culture. Millions of French people have never heard of it, never seen a copy. For three young attentive Muslims no doubt freshly re-enraged by each succeeding issue featuring imams with their dicks tied into turbans etc etc Hebdo, one suspects, represented not the West en masse, but the elitist metropolitan culture that negated their faith by refusing to recognise its rules as sacred. Hebdos been as excoriating of the Wests imperial wars as any leftist publication. and there are plenty of French right-wing tabloids that are effectively fascist in their attitude to Muslims, triumphant examples of the Crusader West. The sophistication of the operation suggests not merely Islamic State-style field training, but proper military training. Survivors reported that they had spoken in native-tongue French, and they were later identified as two brothers, Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi and a teenager Hamyd Mourad. At time of going to press, there were reports that they had been captured in Reims, East of Paris.
By nightfall in Europe, the full absurdity of trying to say something meaningful against such a successful act of political assassination was becoming clear. For decades the Hebdo crowd had been pilloried as corrosive and cynical, enemies of society and especially of La Patrie. And for all that they are described as satirical, their humour had more than a touch of nihilism about it. The sort of gags that got the Chaser hunted down for months on end by the right-wing media were the weekly trade of Charlie Hebdo the name itself was the third it had had, after being twice banned by the French state, and having to re-emerge in another form. Indeed, their ragging on imams etc was starting to become a little obsessive. Though it was always pretty funny, there was a Richard Dawkinsesque quality to it, in which all the frustration that young men of the 1960s had had with the very powerful Church, was transferred to the pretty marginal institutions of European Islam, as their moralising began to contradict the secular 60s dream. But they were always good for a dick joke.
By late evening, Hollande was calling these late ageing enfant terribles heroes of the nation which was the last thing they had wanted to be. It was the sort of twist - satirists enrolled as representatives of the state that would have been the sort of thing dreamed up by Charlie Hebdo.
For journalists everywhere, this unquestioned act which was first and foremost a targeted political assassination was also an act of terror. Less so for civilians. That the killers did not randomly shoot uninvolved strangers was a clear political act too. They wanted it to be clear that specific individuals, and the police, were the targets. For journalists, it was the sudden realisation that someone might be out there, reading everything youd written or that your work was just appearing beside, and planning their move. Attacks in the weeks previous had been utterly random, with several Muslims driving trucks into crowds on the street. Crazed and far from effectual, they dont sharpen the sense of threat overmuch.
The Charlie Hebdo attack prompted an almost manic release of statements of things that by their very nature should not need to be stated that free speech is a principle on which our societies are based, that we should not let fear start to determine what we write. Commentators outdid themselves in otiose stupidity, the best of which was Suzanne Moore at The Guardian, suggesting that we should ridicule the killers instead. But ridicule works in exactly the opposite direction to all the other ineffectual things people were saying. What could you possibly say about the killers that was both a) belittling and b) true, when they had succeeded absolutely, and the whole of the West had now reorganised the meaning of its being around these events? Like it or not, for the next while, this event is the black hole around which our universe turns.
Given the satanic darkness of the event, it is tempting to call it nihilistic. It is nothing of the sort, simply an extremely ruthless political act, founded on a set of fervent and concrete beliefs, not on a nothingness. We call it nihilistic because there is an asymmetry between the ungroundedness of our contemporary culture, and the fervent certainties of theirs. Indeed the sort of terror that violent Islamists can provoke is due to their radical refusal of any sort of common ground. Much of the terror that Paris has played host to over the decades and centuries was part of a dialogue, however violent, over the broad direction of modernity, and the claims of right of different groups. But violent Islamism has not the slightest interest in that dialogue. The more from the other side that you insist that a simple meta-political rule like freedom of speech is the sacred value to which you hold, and that you will not be intimidated, the more you emphasise how little is actually sacred in your culture, how contentless it is. Putting a meta-meta-practice like satire especially the undermining satire of a mag like Charlie Hebdo at the centre of your culture, is to say you have almost no culture at all.
This conundrum is one of the reasons that culture conservatives with a dash of Islam-envy people like Niall Ferguson or Andrew Bolt or Nick Cater put such emphasis on the idea of a Christian revival in the West, and its also why they regard organisations like Charlie Hebdo or the Chaser or whoever, as the true enemies of the Western cultural revival. But the weakness of our culture, its ungrounding by the forces of capital and technology over recent decades, means that we can no longer make a response of silent dignity and resilience to such acts. We have to have the whole theatre, the logo, the marches, and now god help us, laying out pencils as some sort of symbol of something or other. None of the routine terror that made its way across Europe in the post-World War II years drew out this desperate need to make meaning through jerry-built symbols. Words of defiance will do nothing to the killers. Theyll either go out in a blaze of suicidal glory if cornered, or theyll go out on a Eurolines bus to Germany and disappear into the crowds of the cities. Even capture and lifelong imprisonment would be lit by the glow of their act. Theres something deeply pathetic about this search for a way in which to undermine a single focused act of terror whose meaning is complete, and doesnt require any more inadvertent bigging up. Im writing this from a city that was bombed for more than 500 days during World War II, waking many mornings to 500 deaths. My mother walked to school, aged seven, during the winter into spring 1944-45, when first the V1s and then the silent V2s missiles rained capricious mass death down on London. Had they stopped to put flowers on every obliterated terrace of houses, no-one would have got anything done. Resilience against that had little to do with obsessing on what the Nazis didnt get. It was about the country itself was, understood in terms of itself, and not defined against a force it had already seen as negating.
In Australia, the situation is much worse, since we have been willing to wear down the resilience that our culture once prided itself on, with a ceaseless performance of public emotionality, and a weird celebration of fear as a form of collective being. Our culture is so atomised and so depresso-genic, that a mainstream media desperate for public events takes any occurrence, wraps it in overkill, and then puts a Beyond Blue message at the end of it. Having spent two weeks mourning a cricketer killed in a freak accident, we then tried to turn a $%$ed-up hostage taker whose complaint was that the High Court would not recognise his loyalty to Australia into a terrorist mastermind. What will we do if we have to face a Charlie Hebdo situation on our own soil? The systematic undermining of our self-possession done for the most obvious political purposes suggests that we would be consumed by it.
For those who would like to avoid that, if/when a well-planned and executed terror event is visited upon us, we need to start talking back to this attempt to enrol every aspect of society as a hero in defence of its values, a sort of soft militarisation of the pluralist and untotalised way of life that is ostensibly the thing we value. Violence is a refusal of dialogue, and any complex modern society will always contain a small number of people willing to make that refusal at any given time. Shaping your discourse around their acts is pointless and stultifying. For some people, changing aspects of your life to respond to such threats is not giving into fear, it is a simple recognition that the notion of universal consent to democracy is pure rhetoric, and hides the fact that there is no ultimate court of appeal where a turn to violence can be rebuffed by an act of speech. There is never a point, or never for very long, when every group in society has renounced violence as a legitimate act, and trying to disprove their claimed legitimacy as if it were an error in maths is futile. They must simply be treated as crimes, even if they have a political dimension, prevented where they can be, apprehended where not. It is the few who are exposed to excess risk that should be taking extra precautions not the many, uninvolved, who should be mobilised in a form of pseudo-national defence, with its denial of pluralism, and conscription to what usually comes with it an imperial vision that threatens mayhem over the next hill, against the next other. |
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^ Great article. Some perspective.
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
|
|
|
|
think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| David wrote: | My thoughts exactly.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/?_r=1
| Quote: | And similarly, in a cultural and political vacuum, it would be okay to think that some of the images (anti-Islamic and otherwise) that Charlie Hebdo regularly published, especially those chosen entirely for their shock value, contributed little enough to public discussion that the world would not suffer from their absence.
But we are not in a vacuum. We are in a situation where my third point applies, because the kind of blasphemy that Charlie Hebdo engaged in had deadly consequences, as everyone knew it could and that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because its the kind that clearly serves a free societys greater good. If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then its something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isnt really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesnt depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and its okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, thats when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed. |
|
I'm not reading the essay, but I agree with this article.
But: I also won't agree with 100% free speech. No you should not be blown up for saying something, but their should be some moral clause, some line you don't step over, yes, something's should be sacred. Just like pornographic magazines, put them out of the way, don't allow the cover to be too explicit. It should be a choice to read such things, it should not be forced upon you. (It may not be, I have never had any interest in what they publish)
Cheers
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Rundle is usually good for what he does, so I'm not overlooking that; but, unfortunately, he's not well-versed in this matter like far too many in his field. I do sense, though, we might agree on simply treating this as organised crime, which is a good start.
However, those scary non-speech areas of the human brain also play a role in human behaviour. Contra Rundle, these acts most certainly are nihilistic, but they're what nihilism looks like when it emerges from a violently broken mind, as opposed to the slumped-over-a-bar-slurring-bad-jokes sort of nihilism of a Dr. Gregory House, MD.
The one thing we know above all else about this topic is that there is no "fervent certainty" in extremist culture. Indeed, the degree of ritualised certainty is inversely proportional to the degree of psychiatric certainty. That's what rituals and incantations are for; experiment after experiment shows simply repeating that stuff or turning up for five minutes stiffens the resolve. It's rudimentary psychology, Guy; get it right.
And those who think this is a matter of "free speech" are lost in musty, self-referential Orwellian cliche and, even worse, are doing everyone else a great disservice. You can use your free speech to say what you like to someone whose mind has snapped; whose survivial resolve has kicked in; who has lain all at the foot of some cross. It just won't have the impact you're after much like Abbott's asylum brochures and billboards. And if your subjects haven't already snapped, you're only likely to push them underground or over the edge, or perhaps into the fetal position for a few hours. Strike that down as a victory for freedom!
Crap on meaninglessly as you will, but at least try to explain the mechanical effects according to known principles or reasonable expectations; don't sprinkle what is a serious technical problem with the fairy dust of cliche just to look like the sincerest mourner at the funeral.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
| Post subject: | |
|
I think you're missing the point of why free speech is important. It's not so that lunatics will understand us and come around to our way of thinking; it's for our sake; for our own ability to drag society forward and hold the powerful to account.
I'm not quite sure why you think free speech isn't a relevant issue here. These killings occurred, at least ostensibly, as a punishment for blasphemous expression, and as a warning to those who might do the same in the future. If that's not an attack on free speech, what is?
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| David wrote: | I think you're missing the point of why free speech is important. It's not so that lunatics will understand us and come around to our way of thinking; it's for our sake; for our own ability to drag society forward and hold the powerful to account.
I'm not quite sure why you think free speech isn't a relevant issue here. These killings occurred, at least ostensibly, as a punishment for blasphemous expression, and as a warning to those who might do the same in the future. If that's not an attack on free speech, what is? |
Usually, we use the adjective "ostensible" when we don't yet understand something or fear we may not have access to the underlying mechanics of it, not as an excuse for refusing to discuss what we already know because it doesn't excite anyone or provide enough column inches.
And providing yet another homily on free speech does little to rebut my claims of cliche on this topic. There is no "our way"; notions like "free speech" are post hoc stories we tell ourselves so we feel part of something important, much like a verse from the church hymnal. It's a pleasant enough thought, but what we're really referring to is having the power to stop some bastard from constraining us. That's the leeway you get when you beat back power, or in our case when history beats it back for you. However, no matter how it's framed, or how itching for a good versus evil conflict some people apparently are, or how startling and upsetting these incidents are, terrorism is still just the annoying gnat in the fight, especially for the statistically fortunate who are not directly traumatised by it.
It may come as a surprise to some, but this is an old debate that the usual suspects lost a very long time ago. Euro-Anglo-America has not spent the past decade overcoming evil and reasserting its wondrous, unrivalled grandeur. Instead, it has wasted trillions of dollars on hysteria-driven war, spun off new jihads and created new jihadi recruiting fields, amplified civil wars and chaos, and proscribed Muslim clothing and architecture in a couple of countries. What a victory over the forces of evil!
Instead of gearing up for another costly, failed and contrived clash of civilisations, how about we focus on catching the bloody criminals? Rather than fighting the fiersome forces of Halal food, how about we find out why overt loons are left off watch lists, openly-flagged terrorist targets are not given police protection, and young radicals with broken psychiatries are not noticed by anyone? How about we investigate why Saudi Arabia is allowed to fund terrorism with gay abandon, and why the dysfunctional oil economy is allowed to ruin entire societies even as it destroys everyone else's environments?
This may not be "ostensible" enough for some, but surely it's better than listening to the same failed voices repeating the same irrelevant, imaginary and distracting grand civilisation rhetoric over and over again because it excites them.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
