American Consulate Attack in Libya [Archive]

Admin

09-13-2012, 07:14 AM

I am so disgusted that rather than take the first moment to focus on the real tragedy of the situation, the death of Chris Stevens and others, the focus is on political bashing.

Shame on not just Romney, but a lot of the media. I saw more coverage on the idiocy of Romney than I did on the true victims of this horrific act.

I feel so sad for all of those who lost a loved one. It makes me sick that they have to witness the death of their family member/friend being used as a vehicle for political chest thumping.

I am worried about what is going to happen in response to these attacks. The whole thing really makes me sick to my stomach.

Peace and prayers for the lives lost and those affected by the loss.

I am really worried too, tantalizing. I hope that the violence doesn't escalate but am not feeling very hopeful after seeing how it escalated at the Yemini consulate.
I don't care if extremist people want to get pissed off and burn our flag and shout "Death to America". That's an expression issue to me and doesn't feel much different than what Fred Phelps does over here on our own soil but the minute a representative of the US got killed along with 3 others, I felt that ugly nervous-tummy feeling.

I hate to think of this in political terms but this is going to be a shitty situation for not only President Obama as he makes a decision about what to do or not about this, but for the men and women who are still in consulates across the world AND for the potential danger that our soldiers are entering as warships move closer to Libyan shores.

My Brother is military. Every incident like this makes me feel like he is an inch closer to putting his life on the line because of idiots.

tantalizingfemme

09-13-2012, 07:48 AM

I am really worried too, tantalizing. I hope that the violence doesn't escalate but am not feeling very hopeful after seeing how it escalated at the Yemini consulate.
I don't care if extremist people want to get pissed off and burn our flag and shout "Death to America". That's an expression issue to me and doesn't feel much different than what Fred Phelps does over here on our own soil but the minute a representative of the US got killed along with 3 others, I felt that ugly nervous-tummy feeling.

I hate to think of this in political terms but this is going to be a shitty situation for not only President Obama as he makes a decision about what to do or not about this, but for the men and women who are still in consulates across the world AND for the potential danger that our soldiers are entering as warships move closer to Libyan shores.

My Brother is military. Every incident like this makes me feel like he is an inch closer to putting his life on the line because of idiots.

Had a reply, deleted it. Need to think it out more clearly. But to respond to this, I agree with it all. I am afraid that the responses to this are going to further endanger everyone and escalate to a catastrophic level.

I am trying not to let the anxiety I feel go haywire...

weatherboi

09-13-2012, 08:00 AM

Watching the President address this tragedy on the tv yesterday was rough. Hillary looked so sad, like she was in physical pain and that means something to me, the people that die everyday means something to me, and my administration means something to me. I fear for any Muslim in America. I felt this way before 9/11 and it was crystal clear for me on 9/11 as I sat in a queer bar the night of the tragedy and listened to some of my own community embrace hate rhetoric out of fear. I would have thought after such a tragedy and presently feel watching continued tragedies throughout the world that we would embrace peace with a decline on the importance of religion to accomplish that, but we don't. Until that happens I am not sure there will be an end in sight to this particular type of violence. Our local news is focusing on Terry Jones and his cult clan. They are the Quran burning gang down in Gainesville and have somehow found themselves mixed up in this by supporting an anti Muslim/Islam video and refusing to recant. He locally promotes more Muslim/Islam hate here and gets people going. Again, this is what we are hearing locally in the media. I know there are other stories out there about why, what and who is responsible for this recent tragedy, but you don't see them on the local news here. The Mitt ads have been running like crazy focusing some on this but I am sure it will get worse as this situation develops. No matter how it develops the Mitt camp is gonna try and use it against the current admin. It somehow seems to only mean something for so long then it seems like it meant nothing as people continue to die all over the world everyday for the same reasons.

ruffryder

09-13-2012, 08:09 AM

Medusa

09-13-2012, 08:29 AM

Why do we have to take care of the rest of the world. Why cant we just bring our Americans home. Why do we even have our flag hanging in other countries. Why is there so much hate against America and our beliefs of freedom of speech, religion, etc. Why, Why, Why.. so many questions. *sigh* I keep feeling this is another war about to escalate once again for pretty much the same reasons. With beliefs and disagreements such as these, it seems to never end and people have to not only fight about it but bring out full blown war and attacks. :(

Ruff-

I think I can answer to why there is hate toward America in a lot of other countries at this time.
I wouldn' characterize the disdain that some other cultures/countries/sects feel toward us based on our freedome of expression or beliefs. I think their disdain is much more centered around the idea that many Americans don't think twice about stomping on someone else's right to believe what they want in the name of "you don't know any better" and "our way is the only way".

It's very ethno and Euro-centric, the way we do things a lot of times.

I think that in certain Muslim-heavy countries, there is the perception that "those arrogant Americans" think they can tell the rest of the world what to do and when to do it. Because honestly? We've operated like that before. And we've done some shitty things like busting up into other countries under the guise of "we're looking for weapons" when we were really looking to pilfer oil supplies. That kind of dirty dealing is a stain on our reputation, but also leaves the impression with folks that we want what we want at any cost.

With that, even if President Obama doesn't want to operate in a shady way, the history of the American political system is still in the memories of the folks who have been a victim of it.

Now, the idea that a movie about Mohammad gives people the right to act a damn violent fool and kill folks is not only ridiculous but it is the same mentality that causes people to murder Gays, rape women, and commit violent acts of racism in the name of "what they believe in". It is fear-based, aggressive, mob-mentality behavior and it is very, very dangerous.

Zimmeh

09-13-2012, 08:41 AM

I was working at a hotel in Ocala, Florida when the World Trade Center was hit by both plans. My boss at the time was from Pakistan, and was a nice gentleman. I feel that some Muslims are grouped in with the one's who are extremists and for some reason, we cannot differentiate between the two groups. As far as ol' Mitt goes, it was the Bush Administration that got us into the financial mess we are currently in. He wanted to make sure his friends in the oil business was well taking care of, while the middle class suffered and now Obama is getting blamed for it. I do believe Mitt does need to close his trap..

Zimmeh

I didn't see a thread on this so thought I would start one.

I've been following this closely for the last couple of days and am just sick for the family of Chris Stevens and the 3 others killed in the attacks. Also sickened by the anti-Muslim rhetoric that I am seeing all over Facebook.

Now, I'm reading about a second attack in Yemen and that the attack in Libya might have been coordinated to commemorate 9/11. The Pentagon has just moved 2 warships closer to the Libyan coast as well.

I hate that people are taking the opportunity to paint all Muslims as extremists but even further, am concerned about the larger implications for war. And if Mitt Romney doesn't shut his fucking face.....

Rockinonahigh

09-13-2012, 09:28 AM

I have been watching this since it happend and am sick over it all.To think someone from this country would make such a movie and use it to inflame someones religion is beond me.I pray this stops but in my heart I know it will be an issue for a while.It's bad enough this happened but Romney isnt makeing it a bit better,he needs to shut the "F" up and let Obama and Hillary take care of this.I doubt Romney will stop his comments all I do hope is he digs himself into a political grave he cant get out of.

weatherboi

09-13-2012, 09:36 AM

I was working at a hotel in Ocala, Florida when the World Trade Center was hit by both plans. My boss at the time was from Pakistan, and was a nice gentleman. I feel that some Muslims are grouped in with the one's who are extremists and for some reason, we cannot differentiate between the two groups. As far as ol' Mitt goes, it was the Bush Administration that got us into the financial mess we are currently in. He wanted to make sure his friends in the oil business was well taking care of, while the middle class suffered and now Obama is getting blamed for it. I do believe Mitt does need to close his trap..

Zimmeh

If I am to apply this to my own country I could easily say that I can't tell the difference from a christian extremist or just a person that practices Christianity. I see many, many people that hide behind the guise of christianity do extreme things in this country to keep people oppressed and fearful. How many pastors do we know from this country that have gone to Uganda or some country that hates/kills gays and tries to help organize them to create legislation against our international community. That is some extreme lengths to go to in order to hate on the queers. Extremists are not just limited to the international community they are born right here in America. Can I tell the difference? Yes they are all over the TV and web. My point is I am sure if we were to understand Muslim/Islamic culture we would very easily be able to tell the difference but it is because we lack that knowledge and sensitivity that we can't. I am sure Muslim/Islamic people who are just practicing their faith don't wish to be confused with that kind of extreme practice just like any other person that practices a religion for positive gain.

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 10:01 AM

Why do we have to take care of the rest of the world. Why cant we just bring our Americans home. Why do we even have our flag hanging in other countries.

These attacks happened at either the American embassy (Egypt and Yemen) or an American consulate (Libya). We have flags flying in those and other countries because part of what nation states *do* is have embassies and consulates in other nations. It is part and parcel of diplomacy to have diplomatic staff permanently in that nation. While we may not recognize the importance of diplomatic relations with other nation states they are important. Having an embassy in another nation is so important that when we *don't* have an embassy one of two things are true: either we are in a state of war or we have broken off all diplomatic relations with that nation. An example of the first is what happened at the start of WW II. Immediately after Pearl Harbor the Japanese embassy in D.C. burned their code books and then got out of the US. The US closed its embassy and we did not reestablish diplomatic relations with Japan until after the war. In the latter case, we closed our embassy in Tehran, Iran, after our embassy was taken and hostages held with the full knowledge and support of the new Iranian government (the government following the overthrow of Shah Reza Pavlavi). We have not reopened that embassy and so we *still*, almost forty years after the fact, we don't have normalized relations with Iran.

Not having embassies in the world means not dealing with the rest of the world. That means international travel can become very interesting. It means doing business in foreign countries becomes much more difficult. We fly flags in other nations because in order to deal with those nations we have to have diplomatic staff there who can build relationships with the locals. The day we start closing embassies around the world is the day the world becomes a much more unstable place.

Why is there so much hate against America and our beliefs of freedom of speech, religion, etc. Why, Why, Why.. so many questions. *sigh* I keep feeling this is another war about to escalate once again for pretty much the same reasons. With beliefs and disagreements such as these, it seems to never end and people have to not only fight about it but bring out full blown war and attacks. :(

I do not think it is accurate to say that people hate America because of our beliefs in freedom of speech or religion. This is not to say that there are not people who oppose those ideas but I don't think there's good reason to believe that they hate America *because* of those core commitments. Rather, I think they just hate the idea, generally, of freedom of religion or they either hate or do not understand the idea of freedom of the press. Most nations do *not* have written into their constitutions the kind of expansive freedom of religious belief or speech enjoyed in the United States. In all too many nations, if the press says something one is justified in assuming that the *government* has said it because either the state runs the press or the state approves anything that is published. Such is not the case in the United States. And I think that a misunderstanding of people who may live under a different form of media regime than we do is probably inevitable.

Imagine you live in a nation where if it is printed or broadcast you know some state censor has given their blessing to whatever the utterance is. Then you find out that some filmmaker in America has put out a movie insulting to your religion. Working within the only frame you know, you assume that if some American filmmaker put out a movie, *someone* in the US government *must* have given it the official OK. I mean, *your* nation has a Ministry of Culture that approves movies so how can it be that the USA doesn't? So you're angry not just at the filmmaker but at the United States government since it must have approved the insulting film.

I think some variation of that understanding is at work now.

I would also suggest that much of the anger at America is due to her *policies*. Every time an Israeli soldier tosses a tear gas grenade at some protesters and the canister has a 'made in the USA' stencil on it, it makes people angry. Every time the United States speaks about 'freedom' and 'democracy' while simultaneously propping up some kleptocratic dictator (Mubarak of Egypt leaps to mind here) it makes people angry. We support Israel against the Palestinians no matter how egregious Israeli malfeasance might be. We support dictators because they are geostrategically convenient for us while telling their oppressed people that we stand for democracy and the right of peoples to live in liberty.

My point is that *long* before we get to "they hate us for our freedoms" there are much better explanations for why some people hate the United States.

That said, let me make a couple of points about the last 72 hours. While the protests in Egypt appear to have been, more or less, genuine expressions of outrage (as misplaced as I think they are) the protest and attack in Libya appears to have been planned. The Libyan people, despite what some on the American Left would have us believe, are actually *very* favorably disposed to Americans right now because it was American jets that swatted Gaddafi's planes and helicopters from the skies over Libya, allowing the rebels to overthrow their dictatorship. When an American pilot was shot down over Libya, the Libyan people rescued him and got him to safety. Yesterday, Libyans turned out to protest *against* the attack on the consulate and to mourn Chris Stevens because they knew he was on their side while he lived.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 10:28 AM

I am so disgusted that rather than take the first moment to focus on the real tragedy of the situation, the death of Chris Stevens and others, the focus is on political bashing.

Shame on not just Romney, but a lot of the media. I saw more coverage on the idiocy of Romney than I did on the true victims of this horrific act.

I'm going to take a somewhat contrary take because what Mittens did was so entirely outside the norm of American presidential politics . There are three, more or less, unspoken but well-understood consensus rules in national politics and they are these:

We have one President at a time and so one foreign policy at a time.
Politics stops at the water's edge.
You don't play politics with the lives of Americans killed overseas.

Mittens broke all three of those rules and he did so in the most craven and mendacious fashion. This isn't a matter of 'both sides do it'. I'm a politics junkie and I've watched every national election since 1980 with fanatical interest. In those three decades, I have never seen a major party candidate jump up and try to make foreign policy from the campaign stump by contradicting the sitting President and/or the Secretary of State. Yet, that is what Team Romney did last night.

As the consulate in Benghazi was under attack, Team Romney claimed that the POTUS sympathized with the attackers. While there were still protesters on the grounds of the embassy in Cairo, Team Romney criticized the embassy staff for a tweet that was sent out before the protests even started. That is a particular kind of scummy behavior. I think it is entirely right and proper that Mittens et. al. are pinned in the klieg lights of the media a startled squirrel on a country road seeing its last few moments of life barreling toward it.

Up until yesterday morning, I wanted Mittens to lose and lose badly not because of him but because of his party. I wouldn't have said that he didn't *deserve* the office of the Presidency, just that I didn't think he should be or would do a good job. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, however, Mittens showed himself undeserving of the Presidency. His lack of judgment and his utter disregard for consensus American values makes him unworthy of our trust. Utterly and completely unworthy.

Cheers
Aj

Greyson

09-13-2012, 10:43 AM

Gráinne

09-13-2012, 10:44 AM

Ruff-

I think I can answer to why there is hate toward America in a lot of other countries at this time.
I wouldn' characterize the disdain that some other cultures/countries/sects feel toward us based on our freedome of expression or beliefs. I think their disdain is much more centered around the idea that many Americans don't think twice about stomping on someone else's right to believe what they want in the name of "you don't know any better" and "our way is the only way".

It's very ethno and Euro-centric, the way we do things a lot of times.

I think that in certain Muslim-heavy countries, there is the perception that "those arrogant Americans" think they can tell the rest of the world what to do and when to do it. Because honestly? We've operated like that before. And we've done some shitty things like busting up into other countries under the guise of "we're looking for weapons" when we were really looking to pilfer oil supplies. That kind of dirty dealing is a stain on our reputation, but also leaves the impression with folks that we want what we want at any cost.
With that, even if President Obama doesn't want to operate in a shady way, the history of the American political system is still in the memories of the folks who have been a victim of it.

Now, the idea that a movie about Mohammad gives people the right to act a damn violent fool and kill folks is not only ridiculous but it is the same mentality that causes people to murder Gays, rape women, and commit violent acts of racism in the name of "what they believe in". It is fear-based, aggressive, mob-mentality behavior and it is very, very dangerous.

I think it goes back farther than that, even, at the end of WWI when Great Britain, France and the U.S. cobbled together Iraq and many other countries without consideration of cultural, ethnic and religious differences. Yugoslavia was another example, in which it took a dictator to hold hostile factions together until it fell apart in a civil war.

Plus, our penchant in the 50's and 60's for setting up truly awful rulers (Saddam was one, the Shah of Iran was another) whose main qualification in our eyes was that they weren't communist. This was also true in SE Asia and in Central America, and even Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

It's a long, tragic story all around.

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 11:15 AM

Medusa, thank you for stepping up and starting this thread. I too am disturbed by this latest round of events. Cairo, Libya, Yemen. I am confounded by the total lack of regard the fellow who made this film had for the potential consequences of his action.

I agree with Dreadgeek, Diplomacy is a necessity. There is no moving backwards and going into some sort of isolation. Our,(the USA) "interests" and security are inseprable from global events.

I was touched to see everyday people in Libya holding up signs telling America this tragedy was not the work of the people. I even saw one sign with an apology. The geopolitical situation is complex. I do make a concious effort to remember all people have families, loved ones of some sort, aspirations and dreams.

Seeing the sign from Libyans apologize touched me deeply. Too often, we Americans assume that the rest of the world is either one way or another way and the reality is far more complicated than that. That the Libyan people wanted to let the American people know that the attackers did not speak for them and did not enjoy their confidence or support moved me. Provided that we are cautious and restrained in finding the people who attacked our embassy I think that we will have made friends with the Libyan people for a while. My hope is that any actions we take will be limited and focused *only* on those armed groups that were responsible. We *must* answer this attack on our soil, however and it is a well-respected tenet of international relations that the embassy is the soil of that nation.

Cheers
Aj

Medusa

09-13-2012, 11:21 AM

Seeing the sign from Libyans apologize touched me deeply. Too often, we Americans assume that the rest of the world is either one way or another way and the reality is far more complicated than that. That the Libyan people wanted to let the American people know that the attackers did not speak for them and did not enjoy their confidence or support moved me. Provided that we are cautious and restrained in finding the people who attacked our embassy I think that we will have made friends with the Libyan people for a while. My hope is that any actions we take will be limited and focused *only* on those armed groups that were responsible. We *must* answer this attack on our soil, however and it is a well-respected tenet of international relations that the embassy is the soil of that nation.

Cheers
Aj

God, me too, Aj. It serves as such a deep reminder that the people of Libya are not the Borg collective of extremists as some of our American news outlets would have us believe. They are human beings just as scared of war as we are. And yes, they have their crazy assholes just like we do.

I cringe to think of how we look to the Muslim community with the uprising of overt racism with regards to our own POTUS. White folks all over tv hanging the President in effigy and spouting the most hateful and ignorant shit imagineable. How in the hell are other countries able to respect us when our own people do things so disgusting.

My hope and wish is that many people see the photos circulating on Facebook and that it sparks their humanity toward "they are more like me than I thought" and away from "Let's get those terrorist Muslims".

Kätzchen

09-13-2012, 11:47 AM

I have a Muslim friend who lives in the Middle East and also a dear married lady friend's husband who has been serving on the front line (Adriatic coast). I am deeply worried for both of them (and of course, all of them) who are involved in the newest outbreak of conflict.

This is heartbreaking for Arabs and Muslims overseas in the Middle East, here in America, and in other places of the world too.

My heart goes out to Arab and Muslim people who suffer persecution and are disenfranchised members of societies because they are being denied equitable access to communal, life sustaining resources and opportunity to lead as peaceful a life as possible.

Words

09-13-2012, 11:52 AM

Martina

09-13-2012, 12:04 PM

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 12:27 PM

I was in Israel at the time of the Twin Tours attack and found it very interesting how the Palestinians differentiated between the American Government and the American people. On the one hand, yes, there was a feeling of 'FINALLY, someone has dared stand up to the American Government and show it that, in its arrogance, its completely forgotten that it's not invincible'. On the other, however, there was genuine sadness at what doing this had cost in the terms of human life. In other words, they saw the attack on the US Government as something completely different from the attack on the American people in general and those who were killed/injured in particular.

I know it's hard for Americans to believe or understand that, but I witnessed it first hand and can attest to it - with a very few exceptions - being true.

Words

I think it is terribly sad that most Americans don't realize that distinction. On 9/11 I was teaching at a business school in Portland and I had students asking me why this had happened and why people in Palestine seemed so pleased with it. I told them that I wouldn't answer their question no that day but that I would try to explain it on Friday when things had calmed down. That night I almost lost my job giving the following explanation. I told them:

Imagine that Mexico annexes the West Coast of the United States and creates a new nation calling itself Northern Mexico. We are all displaced and are now second class citizens on the lands that our fathers and their fathers before them toiled on. The Mexican government has the backing of Canada in this endeavor such that we know, with the certainty of things that have actually happened, that should we step out of line the whole weight and force of the Canadian military will fall down upon around us. How long does it take you to start hating Mexicans and Canadians? I then explained that in this thought experiment, California, Oregon and Washington were the Palestinians, Mexico was Israel and Canada was the United States.

I went on to explain that this did not justify the attacks but it explained why Palestinians seemed celebratory that it had happened.

As it turns out, two other night teachers--two of us veterans--had independently done something similar in our classes that same night. The head honcho of our campus took us all into her office that Monday and laid into us hard, culminating in a "if you don't like the United States you can leave".

At those words Bob, a retired Air Force officer (I think he'd made Colonel) jumped up out of his chair and in his very solid voice challenged our boss saying, "You served when and where?" To which our boss replied, "I was never in the military, Bob." At which point he took her to the woodshed saying, "Well then, I will thank you never to question my patriotism or the patriotism of this young lady (pointing at me) our years wearing a uniform on your behalf paid for our being able to say what we want about this matter." With that he turned on his heel and walked out of the door.

I always respected Bob but in that moment, I loved him.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 12:41 PM

I know that most Muslims do not hate Americans. But I do think we have a very questionable history in the regions -- North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. There are reasons that some ordinary people support Al Qaeda and other extremist organizations.

I want us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand that Al-Qaeda has infiltrated -- deliberately -- the Afghan police force, and that the murders of U.S. service men and women are not an expression of Afghan popular sentiment. I also respect the efforts of Afghani civil servants to re-vet police and armed service recruits. I KNOW that there are efforts being made on the part of Afghan nationals, Egyptian nationals and others to keep citizens of other nations safe.

My son's last overseas term, before he got out of the Army, was in Afghanistan. It will be a good day when we leave that nation. I once read that Afghanistan is where imperial powers go to learn humility. I hope our foreign policy elites are more circumscribed after our experiences there. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan because they harbored people who attacked us instead of turning them over. I did not support our decade long occupation of that nation and I am convinced that the Iraq war will go down as one of the truly spectacular blunders of foreign policy ever.

NEVERTHELESS, I am tired of hearing of the senseless deaths. And I truly think they are senseless. I no longer think that U.S. influence in Afghanistan is salutary in any respect. It's time to go.

Past time. We should have gone in on '01, found Bin Laden and his followers, captured or killed them, and then left. Instead we did the stupid thing.

I am happy that both Obama and Romney have agreed to the 2014 deadline. It can't be too soon as far as I am concerned.

Given that the GOP has gone insane and Romney's general fecklessness I don't know that he would abide by the 2014 timeline. Keep in mind that his party has gone *so* insane that they disagreed with the 2011 timeline Bush the Younger negotiated with the Maliki government in Iraq. I mean, there are GOP foreign policy hacks who are saying that SOFA (Status Of Forces Agreement) or no SOFA we should have stayed in Iraq. That this would be an act of aggressive war appears to make no difference to them. Since the Afghanistan SOFA requires us to leave in 2014 I fear that a Romney presidency (which, blessedly, I think is safely in the improbable column) could see us trying to hang on when we no longer have any buy-in from the local government for us to stay.

Re Libya, of course we should continue to have a diplomatic presence there. Also in Egypt and Yemen. But we need to provide better security for our people. When the risk is too great, we need to pull them out, as we have in the past in a number of different circumstances.

Agreed. I think we have a window of opportunity with Libya and, quite honestly, I'm rather pleased with how Obama has handled Egypt. Instead of doing the normal thing and propping up Mubarak, he recognized it was time to make good our claims to care about democracy and that it was time for the dictator to go. Then, when the Egyptian people did what anyone familiar with the region might have predicted and voted in a populist government in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, instead of saying that the election was rigged because we didn't like the outcome, simply said that the Egyptian people had made their choice. That was the harder tack. I know that he has taken heat for that but really, that's how it works. Democracy is responsiveness to the popular will and if that popular will brings forth a government that is antithetical to our values or has geopolitical interests that conflict with ours, so be it.

Cheers
Aj

Kobi

09-13-2012, 01:09 PM

Tragic and horrible news events like this make me start twitching these days.

One thing the Bush-Cheney regime taught me was to not be consumed by the surface stuff in horrible, tragic events. It taught me to take a step back, and look and keep looking and keep listening.

I see lots of disturbing stuff here. I see a "film" being blamed for this starting.
This "film" has reportedly been circulating the net for weeks. So, why did it take so long for a reaction to develop?

Why is it that attacks in Yemen and in Egypt involve smashing windows, burning cars, and hurling stones while the initial attack in Libya was a military style attack with guns, mortar, and grenades? Kind of odd eh?

There are reports coming out about the film maker himself. Associated Press originally reported the film maker was a man named Sam Bacile, an Israeli Jew. Now, there are reports that the film maker may actually be someone named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula aka Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others according to Federal court papers. He is described as a "California Coptic Christian convicted of financial crimes who acknowledged his role in managing and providing logistics for the production." Story here. (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/sam-bacile-israeli-jew-may-actually-be-nakoula-basseley-nakoula-coptic-christian/262316/) Hmmm, interesting.

Part of me also thinks....in a close US Presidential election, who gets the upper hand in a tragedy like this? Sitting Pres always gets the glory unless something goes really really wrong.

And, I am not saying the Pres or the government, per se, has any part in this. What I am thinking is there are many well connected, well financed people with much at stake in the outcome of this election on both sides of the aisle.

And, I also look for what else is going on that the people might need to either be distracted from or might be in need of some kind of convincing. And I find this (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/white-house-report-automatic-spending-cuts-friday-spokesman-171644225--business.html):

"The White House will deliver to Congress a report on possible automatic spending cuts on Friday, spokesman Jay Carney said on Thursday.

The spending cuts would go into effect under a process called sequestration if lawmakers cannot reach a deal on preventing them by the end of the year. President Barack Obama is required under law to specify how funding for specific programs would be affected.

Cuts are expected to total $109 billion in 2013, to be split among defense and non-defense programs."

Well, kind of hard to consider military cuts if we have a "problem" to contend with. A "problem" to contend with would be justification of expanding the deficit even more. Expanding the deficit would impact the weak economic recovery that is sputtering already. A sputtering economy may need another whopper of a stimulus program. Funny how things can snowball sometimes.

I expect as more and more info becomes available, things might get clearer.....or not.

The surface stuff is scary enough. The below the surface stuff is even scarier.

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 01:12 PM

God, me too, Aj. It serves as such a deep reminder that the people of Libya are not the Borg collective of extremists as some of our American news outlets would have us believe. They are human beings just as scared of war as we are. And yes, they have their crazy assholes just like we do.

I cringe to think of how we look to the Muslim community with the uprising of overt racism with regards to our own POTUS. White folks all over tv hanging the President in effigy and spouting the most hateful and ignorant shit imagineable. How in the hell are other countries able to respect us when our own people do things so disgusting.

My hope and wish is that many people see the photos circulating on Facebook and that it sparks their humanity toward "they are more like me than I thought" and away from "Let's get those terrorist Muslims".

Since you mentioned the Borg collective, I wanted to run something past y'all. I'm writing a blog post for Skepchick and since this incident was on my mind I wrote about it. In it I said this about Mittens and I'm curious if the imagery 'works' for people (relevant bit in italics):

Mittens might have chosen to leave it at the customary expressions of condolences and outrage at the attacks. Nothing wrong with that. He had a chance to show that he was human and not the product of a particularly wild night between a member of the Borg and a Ferengi wherein they got their freak on and he was the blessed and unintended result.

I'm just curious what people's reactions are to that last bit.

Cheers
Aj

Medusa

09-13-2012, 01:31 PM

Since you mentioned the Borg collective, I wanted to run something past y'all. I'm writing a blog post for Skepchick and since this incident was on my mind I wrote about it. In it I said this about Mittens and I'm curious if the imagery 'works' for people (relevant bit in italics):

Mittens might have chosen to leave it at the customary expressions of condolences and outrage at the attacks. Nothing wrong with that. He had a chance to show that he was human and not the product of a particularly wild night between a member of the Borg and a Ferengi wherein they got their freak on and he was the blessed and unintended result.

I'm just curious what people's reactions are to that last bit.

Cheers
Aj

That is a very apt sketch of Mittens! Although I wonder if he is more "Borg Queen meets Data"?
But I guess Data's way of thinking is way too logical for a Mittens comparison.

yotlyolqualli

09-13-2012, 01:41 PM

I hate war.

I hate it.

Mennonites, traditionally, will go to prison, and some have even died, before they would pick up arms, and fight. Not because they weren't patriotic, but because they served God, first and foremost, and would not kill. Period. I hate war.

Truth is, though, war is a necessary evil. It exists for two reasons. Political or monetary gain, or humanity interests. Sadly, the wars we have fought in the Middle East, in the past few decades, have had more to do with the former, than the latter. Having said that, I agree with the idea, that when a nation "votes" in a government, (as long as the election spoke for the people) we, as a nation, MUST respect that outcome, whether we like it or not. However, the German people voted in Adolph Hitler. Thus, no case is ever as black and white as we want it to be.

So war is a necessary evil.

I am a huge WWII buff. Mostly because of being in the genetic line of Jews, but also because of the complete lack of humanity, that many normal ordinary people engaged in when it came to their hatred and fear of the Jews.

We, the USA, are in a very precarious position. We are damned if we do, and damned if we dont. If we don't address atrocities against human kind, then we MUST agree with it, or at least are seen as turning a blind eye to it. But when we DO address it, then we are "policing" and "forcing" our political and ethical and moral views on other sovereign nations.

Words from a Jew who "helped" gas his fellow Jews at a concentration camp... he remembers crying out..."God, where ARE you? Why won't you hear us?" When I first read those words, my heart broke, because his God, is my God. Then a revelation came to me... God did hear, God heard the cries of His people, and He responded. I know, full well, that had the USA not gotten involved in that war, we'd be living in a MUCH different world than we do now. We'd, quite possibly, be living in Hitler's Germania. We may have gotten involved in that war because Japan stupidly "awoken a sleeping giant" but when the atrocities of that war came to light...

Both sides did things no human should do to other human's. But the absolute extermination of men, women and children... had to be stopped. And it was.

I am sure that there are atrocities around the globe, happening today, that cries out for intervention. That screams out for humanity, and I agree, the USA can not answer all of those cries, but we cannot, we MUST not, ignore all cries for help, ignore all needs and simply tend to "our own" because, if we do, we become them.

Having said ALL of that... in light of what is taking place globally, if I had my druther's, the people responsible for this film, that was made and released in part, with the FULL KNOWLEDGE of it's creator's, the possible reactions it would get, should be held responsible. Freedom of Speech does NOT ALLOW for anyone to incite a riot. At the very least, this incited a riot. Maybe if the world see's that we can police our own, they will begin to see that while our freedoms are at the core of our beliefs, even WE have to respect our rights within that structure of law. Those men who created that film, had every right to make it, every right to believe, passionately, what they portrayed in that film. But in exercising those rights, they also took on the responsibility of what the consequences of putting that film out, meant and means.

I have every right to bear arms, but if I pull that gun up and shoot and someone gets killed, whether that was my intention or not, I will be held accountable for it.

The hatred of some extremists for America was the weapon. The few extremist American's who despise and disrespect the Islamic faith and beliefs were the bullets, and those men who created that film, with that film, pulled the trigger.

They should be held accountable.

I am not as politically savvy as some. I allow logic and my thought processes to be influenced, strongly, by my heart. I can't force my focus onto the political arena right now, it's too tied up in humanity, for those who are hurting because this "gun was fired". I have no "political" point in this. When I look at the world, I don't see economy or politics, I see people. It's those people I want to help. It's those people whose cries reach my ears... not the governments, but the people. I close this missive with the following quotes... they speak much for how I am feeling right now.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

~ocean

09-13-2012, 02:25 PM

r we all forgetting this is all beacuse of someones ignorance.. insulting the muslims on u tube.. the person who started all of this should be punished as well..

Martina

09-13-2012, 02:34 PM

There is no excuse for this violence. I am sure that many Muslims were offended, but the people charging our embassies are probably those with a political agenda.

I do not care about the film. Last I heard it was a Coptic Christian behind it. That's an old fight. There are always going to be religious folks offending each other. That's no excuse for killing. Egyptians Muslims have been, IMO, persecuting Christians ever since Mubarak was ousted. They were before, but it has gotten worse. I try to read more objective sources on this. I know there are a lot of right wing assholes who try to exploit every incident. Point is that this is an old fight. And someone is always going to do something. I don't think the point is the film. The point is the violence.

Maybe that makes me very western or just an old lady. But I don't give a rat's ass about the film. I have no doubt it was offensive. So? Lodge a protest. Fight for laws that address such issues. Make your own film. I get feeling helpless. I am sure it's more offensive to be insulted by the people you see as having more power than you, a culture you see as potentially a danger to your own. Fight back in a way that can make a difference. This sure is not it.

But I don't think most of these people were losing their minds with rage and lashing out. I think they were extremists looking for an excuse.

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_21534297/rochester-muslims-no-excuse-killing-us-ambassador

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 04:30 PM

r we all forgetting this is all beacuse of someones ignorance.. insulting the muslims on u tube.. the person who started all of this should be punished as well..

Ocean;

I found your statement chilling.

I have to ask three questions which I'll front load and then expound on. Who should do the punishment? What should the punishment be? What *crime* has he committed?

Each one of these questions is important and I'm taking you at your word that you believe he really should be punished. Should the US government punish him? If so, for what crime? Making a hateful video that insults this or that group isn't a crime in the United States. If it were, then D.W. Griffith would have gone to jail for "Birth of a Nation" which was horrifically racist. The person who made this film has a Constitutionally protected right to do so and can only be punished for doing so by our government under the most extreme circumstances. Are you ready to see Dan Savage driven off the air or out of the newspapers because I guarantee you that if we punish this guy for his insulting Muslims then we're going to, if only for the sake of consistency, punish Savage for insulting Christians.

Perhaps you think he should be punished by the people in Libya or Egypt or Yemen? If that is the case there's a word for that--it's called a lynching. Are you really going to sit there and say you are advocating mob violence? Perhaps you think we should turn him over to the legal authorities of a Muslim-majority nation. If so, again, on what grounds and do you want to open *that* can of worms? Are you prepared to turn over Salman Rushdie to, say, Pakistan which has blasphemy laws? Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" had him living under a fatwa for two decades and if he were turned over to the Pakistani courts he could be tried and put to death for violating Pakistan's *blasphemy* laws. If you turn over the maker of this film, whoever he turns out to be, you have to turn over Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has also written and made utterances that could have her tried for blasphemy in any country that still has such laws on their books.

And then, what should the punishment be? Should he have jail time or should he be executed? These are all questions that are *inescapably* raised by your statement. While I understand that it is emotionally satisfying to shout for his head on a pike, don't you think that we should resist that urge?

I'm not defending his movie, I'm not even defending him because I think he made a movie that was bigoted with the intention of inflaming anti-American sentiment abroad and anti-Muslim sentiment in the USA. But that is not a *crime*, it is simply odious behavior. I am defending a principle and it is this: people have a right to make utterances that I find offensive and wish that they wouldn't make. Hell, I'll go so far as to say that, at times, I wish they didn't have the *right* to make those utterances but that is me in the heat of emotions. Today the government can shut down the speech of someone we all think is odious, tomorrow they can shut down the speech of someone we all admire, the day after that they can shut down *our* speech.

I am sympathetic to the protesters right up until they set foot on embassy grounds. But I do not think we should let ourselves be tempted to go down the road of censorship. There are people, fellow countrymen of mine in the USA, who think the very *existence* of this web site and every single word posted on it is a deep offense to their religion. They are free to blog about it, write songs about it, find the ISP that hosts the site and stand outside holding signs from now until the sun expands in a few billion years and vaporizes the Earth. But once we go down the road of censorship, they will shut this site down because it offends their religion and then, when we protest because our site was shut down, they will have us arrested for offending their religion because we protested their action. And when people speak up for us in solidarity they *too* will be arrested for insulting the religion of the censors.

You can tell when someone really believes in a right, it's actually rather easy. Ask them if they believe that right extends to the person or group they most oppose. If that person answers no, they don't really believe in that right on principle, they're simply advocating their self-interest. The easiest thing in the world for someone here to say is "I think that queer people should be able to write, speak and publish as they please". That tells us nothing about whether the speaker believes in free speech. The person who really believes in free speech is the one who will say "I wish this person did not have this right for their every word and utterance is odious to me and were it up to me, they would never be allowed to say such things. Fortunately, it's not up to me." That person believes in free speech down to the very atoms in the marrow of their bones for they are willing to pay the price of free speech, which is having to put up with speech you find repulsive.

Where do you stand?

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

09-13-2012, 04:33 PM

There is no excuse for this violence. I am sure that many Muslims were offended, but the people charging our embassies are probably those with a political agenda.

I would put money on the Libyan attack being Al Qaeda seizing an opportunity to attack the consulate in Benghazi in retaliation for the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi earlier this year.

Cheers
Aj

Toughy

09-13-2012, 06:25 PM

worth repeating:

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, however, Mittens showed himself undeserving of the Presidency. His lack of judgment and his utter disregard for consensus American values makes him unworthy of our trust. Utterly and completely unworthy.

I entirely agree with this.......plus it made me laugh...

Mittens might have chosen to leave it at the customary expressions of condolences and outrage at the attacks. Nothing wrong with that. He had a chance to show that he was human and not the product of a particularly wild night between a member of the Borg and a Ferengi wherein they got their freak on and he was the blessed and unintended result.

As to the film and it's maker.......the hardest, hardest part of democracy is free speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is not free speech. Making that awful film is free speech. It could well be a film about Jews, Christians, __________. Our task as a country is to help others understand our brand of democracy and free speech....both secular concepts.

I also know that separating radical fundamentalism (Christian, Jewish, Islam, ______) from the feelings of the people is a difficult task. This country is not hated around the world. A small percentage of folks in the world hate everything and everybody that is not like them and will do their best to incite more violence. The answer to offensive speech is not violence and most humans understand that.

As the peaceful protests happen and we see violence occur, I would remind us all of what happened with the Occupy movement protests....particularly in the Bay Area. Very large peaceful protest with a small handful of anarchist violent destructive asshats. The asshats get the largest part of the news cycle and that leads to uninformed bullshit like what Mittens and Factless News are saying.....

------------

Just as an aside...........seems Pat Robertson told some letter writer to his show that he should convert to Islam or go to Saudi Arabia so he could beat his wife to get her in line with his rightful authority as head of the family........he really did say that.....

Martina

09-14-2012, 01:41 AM

What a trip! Diplomacy via Twitter. From the NYTimes.

But the war of words was continuing in Cairo on Thursday.

The United States Embassy publicly mocked the Brotherhood for sending out conflicting messages in its English and Arabic Twitter accounts. “Egyptians rise up to support Muhammad in front of the American Embassy. Sept. 11,” read an Arabic language post the Brotherhood sent out on the day of the attacks — one of several over the last few days emphasizing outrage at the video or calls for its censorship.

So on Thursday, when the group sent out a message of sympathy and support from its top strategist, Khairat el-Shater, from its English-language Twitter account, the Embassy responded tartly via Twitter. “Thanks,” its message read, “By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those too.”

Martina

09-14-2012, 02:21 AM

I found this blog article interesting. It discusses Indonesia struggling with the free speech issue in terms of religious teachers promoting hatred.

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/asia/indonesian-suicide-bomber-back-heaven

Martina

09-14-2012, 02:34 AM

Commentary (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201291391347458863.html) from a UC Irvine professor -- published in Al Jazeera (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201291391347458863.html). I don't agree with it all. But it was informative. I had thought, for one thing, that Mubarak had protected the Copts.

This guy writes:

In Egypt, it turns out that the Mubarak government, which pretended to be a last line of defense for Copts, in fact incited and even directed violence against Copts by Salafis in order to strengthen its argument that without a secular authoritarian state the situation would be far worse.

Words

09-14-2012, 02:36 AM

Words from a Jew who "helped" gas his fellow Jews at a concentration camp... he remembers crying out..."God, where ARE you? Why won't you hear us?" When I first read those words, my heart broke, because his God, is my God. Then a revelation came to me... God did hear, God heard the cries of His people, and He responded. I know, full well, that had the USA not gotten involved in that war, we'd be living in a MUCH different world than we do now. We'd, quite possibly, be living in Hitler's Germania. We may have gotten involved in that war because Japan stupidly "awoken a sleeping giant" but when the atrocities of that war came to light...

Both sides did things no human should do to other human's. But the absolute extermination of men, women and children... had to be stopped. And it was.[/I]

Hi yotlyolqualli,

First off, I want to tell you that I have tremendous respect for the way in which you are open about your belief in God. We might not have the same religious beliefs but I appreciate your willingness to share yours even at the risk of coming under fire for doing so.

I would like to say this though. It is indeed true that someone responded to the plight of the Jews during World War II and that the absolute extermination of men, women, and children was stopped. The problem is....in stopping that, the world - not God - neglected to ensure that some of the atrocities that happened throughout the Holocaust were never repeated elsewhere, albeit on a smaller scale. In creating a homeland for the Jews, for example, it neglected to ensure that the Palestinians living in (then) Palestine would benefit from the same privileges as the thousands of Jews coming there not only from Poland and Germany etc. but also from all over the world. It neglected to ensure that the Palestinians living in (then) Palestine would benefit from respect for the same human rights as the Jews coming there not only from Poland and Germany etc. but also from all over the world. It neglected, in short, to protect the lives and liberties of Palestinians living in (then) Palestine period.

My point here is this. I believe - as all Muslims do - that what separates humans from animals is free will and that it was God who gave us that 'gift'. So in my opinion, it wasn't God that intervened in the case of the Holocaust, it was those He'd empowered with the ability to bring it to an end. And that's what the Muslims seek now...to be shown exactly the same consideration, the situation in Palestine/Israel being a prime example. And no, I'm not comparing the plight of the Palestinians with that of the Jews and thousands of others who perished under Hitler. But from a Muslim perspective, it does appear that there's definitely a double standard here in terms of how those with the ability to help them make use of their God given gift.

Words

P.S. As a side note. The God to whom that Jew cried out is also my God and that of millions of Muslims worldwide. Different name, same God.

Martina

09-14-2012, 02:48 AM

From the Levine article (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201291391347458863.html)again:

Americans and Europeans are no doubt looking at the protests over the "film", recalling the even more violent protests during the Danish cartoon affair, and shaking their heads one more at the seeming irrationality and backwardness of Muslims, who would let a work of "art", particularly one as trivial as this, drive them to mass protests and violence.

Yet Muslims in Egypt, Libya and around the world equally look at American actions, from sanctions against and then an invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sent the country back to the Stone Age, to unflinching support for Israel and all the Arab authoritarian regimes (secular and royal alike) and drone strikes that always seem to kill unintended civilians "by mistake", and wonder with equal bewilderment how "we" can be so barbaric and uncivilised.

Russia receives little better grades on this card, whether for its brutality in Afghanistan during the Soviet era, in Chechnya today, or its open support of Assad's murderous regime.

Meanwhile, the most jingoistic and hate-filled representatives of each society grow stronger with each attack, with little end in sight.

Let us assume that the attack was in fact not directly related to the protests in Benghazi but rather was the work of an al-Qaeda affiliated cell that either planned it in advance or took advantage of the opportunity to attack. If correct, we are forced to confront the very hard questions raised by the support for the violent insurgency against Gaddafi instead of following the much more difficult route of pressing for continued non-violent resistance against his murderous regime.

Ciaran

09-15-2012, 01:48 AM

We, the USA, are in a very precarious position. We are damned if we do, and damned if we dont. If we don't address atrocities against human kind, then we MUST agree with it, or at least are seen as turning a blind eye to it. But when we DO address it, then we are "policing" and "forcing" our political and ethical and moral views on other sovereign nations.

Actually, in my opinion, this touches on why there's an antagonism towards the USA across many parts of the world. It's incredibly arrogant for the USA to view itself as the world's policeman (or policewoman for that matter). No nation or collection of nations should think that they have the carte blanche right to interfere in the internal affairs of other parts of the world. Values are not absolute.

Added to this, where the US interferes overseas, whilst it may be under the rhetoric of human rights interests, there's invariably an underlying selfish strategic and / or economic motivation. Those parts of the world where USA interferes militarily represent only a small proportion of territories where human rights abuses are the norm. The USA picks and chooses not on the basis of the human rights abuses in the foreign parts but, rather, on the basis of its own short-term interests.

Why else would the USA be in such a close alliance with the despotic Saudi Arabia and why else is the US government now willing to bend over backwards to reach a settlement with the Taliban whilst, at the same time, allowing continued numbers of US men and women to be slaughtered in a hostile, foreign land. The US military funerals are impressive, as is the rhetoric of the importance of servicemen and servicewoman. The reality appears very different to me.

I should add that, if anyone things I'm coming out with some sort of deliberate anti-USA stance, nothing could be further from the case. I think the same way about my own beloved United Kingdom (and I am a strong British nationalist) whose approach to foreign affairs is along similar lines, just on a smaller scale these days.

dreadgeek

09-15-2012, 03:26 PM

Actually, in my opinion, this touches on why there's an antagonism towards the USA across many parts of the world. It's incredibly arrogant for the USA to view itself as the world's policeman (or policewoman for that matter). No nation or collection of nations should think that they have the carte blanche right to interfere in the internal affairs of other parts of the world. Values are not absolute.

I'm not sure that last bit is true. Is there a single sane person on this planet that would argue that it is entirely acceptable if some nation should decide that they will round up some group X within their midst and put them all to death in a systemized, callous and utterly barbaric fashion? I would argue that there *are* absolute values. There may not be a whole lot of them but there are a few. I would say that no people, no matter how powerful, have leave to enslave another person. If it is not forbidden, even if that is simply in the sense that it's just one of those things you don't do , then it is permitted. We should be extraordinarily cautious around the idea that there are no absolute values.

Before I ask you some questions to show the point I'm making, please understand that I am assuming that every single person reading these words is entirely opposed to racism, violence, slavery, sexism, bigotry of all kinds, oppression of all sorts. In fact, I'm counting on everyone reading this being a humane and compassionate person who is operating out of goodwill. The throat clearing is simply so there can be no possibility of misunderstanding here.

Now, is there anyone who would argue that if a people decided to practice slavery that it would be acceptable? Is there anyone who would argue that it is okay for a society to have laws that take whole populations and put them outside normal legal protections? Is there anyone here who would argue that if a society says that the word of a woman in a rape case is worthless unless multiple men also back up her story that that is simply their choice? Anyone want to argue *in favor* of laws making homosexuality punishable by death?

These are not matters of simple prejudice. Would anyone argue that Jim Crow in the United States was simply a matter of preference in Dixie and we cannot say whether it was a bad thing? An unjust thing? Again, not simply matters of national, cultural or personal preference. If there are no absolute values, no places where either people or cultures should not go then we have no basis upon which to judge whether or not society today is better than society, say, 100 years ago. Anyone think that society was better off when women couldn't vote?

I'm sorry but enslaving other people is wrong. It wasn't evil because it happened in my nation, to my people. It was evil because it happened and had it been people from Africa who had sailed up north, grabbed a bunch of people from Scotland and taken them to North America where they sold them to the Native Americans, it would *still* be evil. It was evil because people were treated as mere property, tools, means to an end and not ends into themselves. Any culture that thinks it is acceptable to enslave people--*enslave them*--is doing something wrong. I emphasize slavery because I'm not talking about things that get called slavery. I'm talking about actual taken by force, held by force, transferrable to another person as property, right to slay you on the spot because the sky is blue, can take your children and sell them off, slavery. I'm not talking about horrible working conditions. Slavery.

I would say that what happened in Russia under Stalin when millions died in purges and gulags, that Russia was doing something wrong. It is wrong to kill people because of political disagreements. It doesn't matter if in so doing you are going to bring about a proletarian utopia, you can't slaughter your fellow citizens because they disagree with you politically. I don't think the state has the right to do so on behalf of the citizenry and I don't think the citizenry has a *normal* right to do this. If the citizenry is being slaughtered by their government, they have the right to defend itself. If a *legitimate* state (consent of the governed, minority rights, rule of law) is threatened it may use what measures are necessary to put down those who would overthrow it. States, like people, should be able to defend themselves. But the state doesn't have the right to arbitrarily take measures against its citizenry. For that matter, I would argue that majorities should not have the right to vote on the rights of minorities.

To say that slavery, bigotry, legal exclusion of minority, genocide are simply matters of cultural taste is to give up the ability to speak intelligibly about why we should prefer our own societies to be as they are now over as they were 400 years ago. Anyone want to go back to a time when witch burnings were a commonplace?

I'm sorry but I would say that any society that does not *allow* or *encourage* the burnings of witches is to be preferred over any society that does. A society that allows witch trials and witch burnings is likely to have a whole lot of cultural habits that will make life *very* unpleasant. Witch trials only work if there are no rules of evidence and if the accused must prove their innocence against accusers who need prove nothing but speak their testimony. They only work if torture is considered morally acceptable. Anyone want to argue that if a society chooses to torture that is acceptable? If you're willing to argue that, then what's the problem with the United States torturing?

A world without any kind of absolute values--and you did say categorically that values are not absolute--is a nihilistic world. In such a world, we cannot speak of justice or injustice for there is no measurement to give which any other person or people, who wish to get on with oppressing others, are bound to respect. This means there is precious little upon which to build a consensus to act upon.

I'm not defending either American or British imperialism. Rather, I'm arguing against a certain kind of nihilism.

Cheers
Aj

Toughy

09-15-2012, 10:24 PM

I will be back tomorrow........

interesting dialogue could happen

Ciaran

09-16-2012, 02:27 AM

I'm not sure that last bit is true. Is there a single sane person on this planet that would argue that it is entirely acceptable if some nation should decide that they will round up some group X within their midst and put them all to death in a systemized, callous and utterly barbaric fashion? I would argue that there *are* absolute values. There may not be a whole lot of them but there are a few. I would say that no people, no matter how powerful, have leave to enslave another person. If it is not forbidden, even if that is simply in the sense that it's just one of those things you don't do , then it is permitted. We should be extraordinarily cautious around the idea that there are no absolute values.

Before I ask you some questions to show the point I'm making, please understand that I am assuming that every single person reading these words is entirely opposed to racism, violence, slavery, sexism, bigotry of all kinds, oppression of all sorts. In fact, I'm counting on everyone reading this being a humane and compassionate person who is operating out of goodwill. The throat clearing is simply so there can be no possibility of misunderstanding here.

Now, is there anyone who would argue that if a people decided to practice slavery that it would be acceptable? Is there anyone who would argue that it is okay for a society to have laws that take whole populations and put them outside normal legal protections? Is there anyone here who would argue that if a society says that the word of a woman in a rape case is worthless unless multiple men also back up her story that that is simply their choice? Anyone want to argue *in favor* of laws making homosexuality punishable by death?

These are not matters of simple prejudice. Would anyone argue that Jim Crow in the United States was simply a matter of preference in Dixie and we cannot say whether it was a bad thing? An unjust thing? Again, not simply matters of national, cultural or personal preference. If there are no absolute values, no places where either people or cultures should not go then we have no basis upon which to judge whether or not society today is better than society, say, 100 years ago. Anyone think that society was better off when women couldn't vote?

I'm sorry but enslaving other people is wrong. It wasn't evil because it happened in my nation, to my people. It was evil because it happened and had it been people from Africa who had sailed up north, grabbed a bunch of people from Scotland and taken them to North America where they sold them to the Native Americans, it would *still* be evil. It was evil because people were treated as mere property, tools, means to an end and not ends into themselves. Any culture that thinks it is acceptable to enslave people--*enslave them*--is doing something wrong. I emphasize slavery because I'm not talking about things that get called slavery. I'm talking about actual taken by force, held by force, transferrable to another person as property, right to slay you on the spot because the sky is blue, can take your children and sell them off, slavery. I'm not talking about horrible working conditions. Slavery.

I would say that what happened in Russia under Stalin when millions died in purges and gulags, that Russia was doing something wrong. It is wrong to kill people because of political disagreements. It doesn't matter if in so doing you are going to bring about a proletarian utopia, you can't slaughter your fellow citizens because they disagree with you politically. I don't think the state has the right to do so on behalf of the citizenry and I don't think the citizenry has a *normal* right to do this. If the citizenry is being slaughtered by their government, they have the right to defend itself. If a *legitimate* state (consent of the governed, minority rights, rule of law) is threatened it may use what measures are necessary to put down those who would overthrow it. States, like people, should be able to defend themselves. But the state doesn't have the right to arbitrarily take measures against its citizenry. For that matter, I would argue that majorities should not have the right to vote on the rights of minorities.

To say that slavery, bigotry, legal exclusion of minority, genocide are simply matters of cultural taste is to give up the ability to speak intelligibly about why we should prefer our own societies to be as they are now over as they were 400 years ago. Anyone want to go back to a time when witch burnings were a commonplace?

I'm sorry but I would say that any society that does not *allow* or *encourage* the burnings of witches is to be preferred over any society that does. A society that allows witch trials and witch burnings is likely to have a whole lot of cultural habits that will make life *very* unpleasant. Witch trials only work if there are no rules of evidence and if the accused must prove their innocence against accusers who need prove nothing but speak their testimony. They only work if torture is considered morally acceptable. Anyone want to argue that if a society chooses to torture that is acceptable? If you're willing to argue that, then what's the problem with the United States torturing?

A world without any kind of absolute values--and you did say categorically that values are not absolute--is a nihilistic world. In such a world, we cannot speak of justice or injustice for there is no measurement to give which any other person or people, who wish to get on with oppressing others, are bound to respect. This means there is precious little upon which to build a consensus to act upon.

I'm not defending either American or British imperialism. Rather, I'm arguing against a certain kind of nihilism.

Cheers
Aj

You have done a great job at taking a sentence and twisting it for your own ends in your rather long reply.

Values are not absolute. That does not, by definition, make society nihilistic. Rather, it means that values, and what's commonly accepted as right and wrong, changes over time. For example, what's most commonly referenced as an intrinsic value is the right to life. However, scratch under the surface and you'll find that sort of value means very different things to different people and, in fact, for some, their right to life means a right to end the lives of others i.e. death penalty states for prevention / punishment of serious crimes.

Much of what is accepted as "good" today will, no doubt, be viewed very differently by subsequent generations. Values are partly cultural - hence, your example to slavery. Most of us (not all of us) may be sickened by the idea of slavery today but, centuries ago, some of our forefathers and foremothers clearly thought otherwise.

Similarly, your reference to torture. You may believe that torture is wrong but clearly not everyone does - include many in senior positions in US society. As for racism? It's actually enshrined in law in some way or another in most countries that I've been to.

I have my values - they are strongly held and I am, in the original meaning of the word, a bigot. However, my value system is complex and, no doubt, impacted by many aspects. They are not absolute and we know that peoples' values systems change when their circumstances do (hence the rise of Nazism in post WWI Europe).

Values not being absolute doesn't equal a nihilistic world. Rather, it equals the world we live in for all the good and bad that it is.

Martina

09-16-2012, 04:30 AM

From Juan Cole's blog:

Top Ten Likely Consequences of Muslim anti-US Embassy Riots

Posted on 09/15/2012 by Juan

1. Tourism in Egypt and Tunisia, the economies of which heavily depend on it, is likely to take a nosedive this fall. It is a shame, because Tunisia had been hoping for a near return to 2010 levels of 7 million visitors this year. And Egypt’s tourism was up 16% over the previous year, though still down by 300,000 visitors a month from summer of 2010.

2. Likewise, foreign investment will be discouraged. Ironically, the embassy riots broke out while a delegation of 100 US business executives was in Cairo looking for investment opportunities. Some of those planning to stay beyond Tuesday are said to have abruptly left the country and canny observers spoke of the good will generated during the visit being squandered.

3. Decline of tourism and of foreign investment implies even higher unemployment in countries already plagued by lack of jobs.

4. In Egypt and Tunisia, the Muslim fundamentalist-dominated governments may well get blamed for failing to maintain public order. In opinion polling, security and fear of crime are major concerns on the part of ordinary Egyptians.

5. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the al-Nahdah in Tunisia, fundamentalist parties that did well in the first post-revolution elections, face new parliamentary elections in the near future. If they are in bad odor with the public for failure to provide public order, and for implicitly helping the Salafi rioters, and for failure to improve the economy, they could be punished at the polls. It would be ironic if the impassioned reaction of fundamentalists to a phantom Islamophobic film so turned off the public as to lead to the Muslim religious parties being turned out of office in the next elections.

6. As a result of these considerations, the fundamentalists will blame outside agents provocateurs for the violence, and Israel for provoking it, trying to convince the public that Muslim fundamentalists had nothing to do with the issue.

7. The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi and the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others almost certainly spells an end to any American interest in intervening in Syria. The longevity of Bashar al-Assad’s secular Baathist regime, now attempting to crush rebels that include a small number of radical Muslim vigilantes, may have just been lengthened. Meanwhile, the Muslim world will be unembarrassed that they got so upset about a Youtube trailer but didn’t seem to care if hundreds of Syrians were killed, arrested and/or tortured every day.

8. The attack on the embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, by some 4,000 angry protesters, will likely draw the US even more into internal Yemeni disputes, since Washington will want to try to destroy the fundamentalist movements there. US drone strikes on radical Muslim movements of an al-Qaeda sort have become commonplace in Yemen. However, no one in the United States will know that Yemen ever existed or that the embassy was attacked, or that the US is pursuing a policy of drone strikes in that country.

9. Assuming there aren’t any diplomats taken hostage, President Barack Obama will look presidential in dealing with these deaths in Benghazi and his electoral chances may improve.

10. Mitt Romney will go on switching back and forth among his various opinions of the Islamophobic film and of President Obama’s reaction to the Libyan consulate attack.

dreadgeek

09-16-2012, 07:58 AM

You have done a great job at taking a sentence and twisting it for your own ends in your rather long reply.

I didn't twist anything you said. In fact, I took the most limited reading possible and assume that the statement 'values are not absolute' means just that. Values are not absolute. That means that there is no way to argue that we should prefer, if given a choice, value set A over value set B.

Values are not absolute. That does not, by definition, make society nihilistic. Rather, it means that values, and what's commonly accepted as right and wrong, changes over time. For example, what's most commonly referenced as an intrinsic value is the right to life. However, scratch under the surface and you'll find that sort of value means very different things to different people and, in fact, for some, their right to life means a right to end the lives of others i.e. death penalty states for prevention / punishment of serious crimes.

That would be a nonsensical reading of a right to life. It's one of the reasons why many on the American Left (such as it is) rightly object to the characterization of anti-choice partisans as being 'pro-life' because they are not 'pro-life'. What they are is anti-abortion. A consistent pro-life stance can't square itself with support of the death penalty.

Much of what is accepted as "good" today will, no doubt, be viewed very differently by subsequent generations. Values are partly cultural - hence, your example to slavery. Most of us (not all of us) may be sickened by the idea of slavery today but, centuries ago, some of our forefathers and foremothers clearly thought otherwise.

Yes, and they were wrong. Not just expressing a different but equally valid set of values. Their values were wrong. In the mid 1930s one of my mother's brothers was lynched. The people who did so *genuinely* believed that my uncle, his father and mother, all his siblings, all his nieces and nephews who had not yet been born, and every single member of his line stretching up and down through the eons, was not *actually* human. Because they were not fully human, their lives were not particularly valuable. Because their lives were not valuable, it was no crime to take his life because a white woman accused him of attacking her because he bumped into her. That wasn't just a cultural peccadillo but a sign of a culture with a bad set of values. Not different bad. Jim Crow was an evil system. Not a regrettable one, not one that I should be glad mostly had only secondary effects on me but an actually evil one. What we have now, imperfect equality as it is, is far and away better than the one my parents were living in from the 1920s until pretty much the time of my birth in the mid-1960s.

Similarly, your reference to torture. You may believe that torture is wrong but clearly not everyone does - include many in senior positions in US society. As for racism? It's actually enshrined in law in some way or another in most countries that I've been to.

Torture *is* wrong. It is wrong on moral grounds, it is wrong on utilitarian grounds and it is wrong on ethical grounds. I'm not opposed to torture because it was my government doing the torturing. I'm not opposed to torture because it was poor and middle-class whites torturing poor non-whites. I'm opposed to torture because it is morally indefensible.

You appear to be conflating the violation of intrinsic values with their not being intrinsic. Are you prepared to argue that because racism is enshrined in the laws of many nations that racism isn't wrong? If you aren't, and it is vanishingly improbable that you are prepared to do so, then by what do you justify preferring to live in a society that is not explicitly racist than one is? By what argument are you prepared to state that American society circa 2012 is a better society than America circa 1942. I *am* prepared to make that argument because there are things that are intrinsically wrong and to violate them means that your society is behaving wrongly. Just because societies break the rules and take some action that is intrinsically wrong doesn't mean that it isn't wrong.

Just because someone breaks into a house to steal the stuff inside and, discovering that the owners are home, kills them, doesn't mean that neither murder nor theft are wrong. In the same way just because Germany slaughtered millions of innocents in adherence to a racially eliminationist philosophy doesn't mean that genocide isn't wrong. What the German people allowed themselves to become was evil. What the German people did during the period of 1932 to 1945 was evil. It wasn't just a cultural practice that we cannot and should not try to judge because trying not to say that the Germans shouldn't have done what they did puts us in very ugly and vile moral territory.

If there are not intrinsic rights and wrongs, things that under almost no (if not absolutely no) circumstances a people should not be allowed to get away with, how do you argue that Britain is a better nation without the Empire or that America is better without Jim Crow? Personal preference? It's better today because now we recognize it is better but it was better then because they thought it was better back then? I knew a whole generation, all deceased now, that would argue strenuously that the America their grandchildren or great-grandchildren live in now is far and away a better one than the one they were born to, all self-interest put aside.

Cheers
Aj

Kätzchen

09-16-2012, 10:50 AM

Item no. 8 in the article Martina submitted above is covered in this recent press release of former President Jimmy Carter's speech, as delivered, at Drake University.

http://qctimes.com/news/state-and-regional/iowa/carter-u-s-drone-attacks-violate-human-rights/article_2d994486-fe82-11e1-9dfd-001a4bcf887a.html

Carter: U.S. drone attacks violate human rights

Former President delivers speech at Drake University

September 14, 2012 10:38 am • Rod Boshart

DES MOINES – Former President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that America is engaging in — and its citizens are accepting — human rights violations that “would never have been dreamed of” before the terrorist attacks that occurred in this country 11 years ago.

The nation’s 39th president said the U.S. government under both Republican and Democratic administrations has violated 10 of 30 provisions set out in a universal declaration of human rights that was forged after World War II, including perpetually detaining people in prison without informing them of any charges, providing them access to legal counsel or bringing them to trial and, more recently, by killing people via the use of unmanned drones.

“We have now decided as a nation that it’s OK to kill people without a trial with our drones, and this includes former American citizens who are looked upon as dangerous to us,” Carter told a group of Drake University students involved in a social-justice learning program.

“Not just terrorists, but innocent participants in weddings and so forth that happen to be there. I think this is acting in a way that turns people against us unnecessarily because there is a great deal of animosity about the United States that is unnecessary, in my opinion, because our drones are performing these things” in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and even in the Philippines, he said.

“These are the kinds of actions that would never have been dreamed of before 9/11,” Carter noted, referencing the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I think we need to go back to the purity of the guarantees of basic human rights,” he added. “Most Americans either don’t know about it or accept it. I’m not criticizing one leader compared to another because both Democratic and Republican leaders are participating in these violations. We should all look upon human rights as something that is precious to us because we need to get back and be the champion of human rights and I believe the champion of peace as well.”

Carter, a Georgia Democrat who served as U.S. president from 1977-81, and his wife, Rosalynn – founders of The Carter Center – delivered the 29th Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture on Thursday evening at Drake’s Knapp Center. Before that event, the former president and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and his wife heard students discuss a wide range of social justice they are involved in, descriptions that the Carters found emotionally moving.

During a question-and-answer session, the former president addressed a number of international topics.

Carter disagreed with delegates to his Democratic Party’s national convention who restored a platform position that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, saying the same thing happened when he was running for president in the 1970s and he made a public announcement in opposition to it. He said the best hope for peace in the Middle East is a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine with Jerusalem as a shared capital.

“I personally think that’s a mistake for the Democratic and Republican parties to call for Jerusalem to be the capital just for the Jews,” he said.

Carter did not discuss the heightened security at American embassies and consulates around the world after an attack this week that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya, but he parted ways with President Obama on the question of whether Egypt is an American ally after Obama told an interviewer that “I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy” after protesters attacked the U.S. embassy in Cairo this week.

Carter, who knows Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi personally and monitored recent elections in Egypt and Libya, said Egypt is an ally of the United States and “we ought to make sure that we continue the long-standing friendship we’ve had” by encouraging efforts to forge a democratic Egyptian government.

He noted that after the U.S. independence in 1776, it took a dozen years to finalize the constitution and solidify the government, “so we can’t expect the Egyptians to do it in less than one year. I think we have to be patient with them and let them find their own way, but give them support so they won’t go in the wrong direction,” Carter said.

On the civil strife in Syria, Carter said it would not be appropriate for the United States to intervene militarily, but he would like to see the United Nations call for free elections that would allow the people to choose the nation’s future direction.

“But if that’s not possible, then I think we just have wait and see how much of a tragedy is going to develop,” he said. “There’s no way to predict what is going to happen in the next few months.”

dreadgeek

09-16-2012, 12:21 PM

From Juan Cole's blog:

I love Juan Cole.

Several of the points he makes seem to me to be the kind of tragic death spiral I hate to see people get themselves into. For reasons that may seem like good ones, certainly at the time, people are protesting at American embassies. This is going to draw press because large protests at any embassy probably should get our attention. People, seeing these protests, become justifiably concerned about traveling to those nations. So plans are changed, money goes elsewhere. Which leads to more economic pain. Which just makes things worse in those nations, which creates more justification for protests, which leads to people changing their plans etc. The people protesting are doing what they think is correct. The people who are avoiding traveling to places where protests have erupted are justifiable in doing so, particularly if it is their nation's embassy being protested. The protests has led to a heightened presence of Marines at those embassies which will almost certainly be demagogued as aggression on the part of the Americans. However, the American officials have no choice *but* to have a more formidable security presence in those embassies. If the nation can do something to prevent diplomatic staff from being taken hostage as they were in 1979, then they are obliged to do so.

Cheers
Aj

ruffryder

09-19-2012, 08:57 PM

Our local news is focusing on Terry Jones and his cult clan. They are the Quran burning gang down in Gainesville and have somehow found themselves mixed up in this by supporting an anti Muslim/Islam video and refusing to recant. He locally promotes more Muslim/Islam hate here and gets people going. Again, this is what we are hearing locally in the media. I know there are other stories out there about why, what and who is responsible for this recent tragedy, but you don't see them on the local news here. .

(Newser) – Egypt wants Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who is allegedly behind the anti-Muslim film that sparked protests across the Islamic world, behind bars—or worse. Cairo authorities ordered the arrest of Nakoula and six other Egyptian Coptic Christians living in the US, all of whom they say were involved with the Innocence of Muslims. They also issued an arrest warrant for Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones, the BBC reports, accusing him and the Coptic Christians of "insulting the Islamic religion." Egypt says all of the above, if convicted, could face the death penalty; it will notify Interpol and US authorities of the warrants. Iran also wants the movie-makers to face justice.

I'm not sure how this all ties in with what happened in Libya but lots of people are blaming it all on this. I think the attack would have happened regardless and this is just something to put the blame on. . however, Egypt now wants their heads.

Toughy

09-19-2012, 10:48 PM

Martina

09-19-2012, 11:52 PM

There was an article in Al Jazeera by an American academic describing the U.S. as an outlier where protection of speech is concerned. LINK (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201291895216118375.html)

I don't know. I firmly believe in free speech. I am grateful for it. Remember Mappelthorpe? If we didn't have these protections, we would always be fighting with fundamentalists of all stripes to be able express ourselves.

I still can't get past the fact that in the case of this film, it was made by members of an oppressed minority of a Muslim country. We are asked to look at the consequences of our bad actions in the region. I think it's only fair to ask others to do the same.

I guess this isn't rational. But it has tested me a little. One thing that helped was a story on NPR about a twitter thread called #MuslimRage. It reminded me how small these protests really are and how unrepresentative. LINK
(http://www.npr.org/2012/09/18/161369296/newsweeks-muslim-rage-cover-mocked-on-twitter)
Anyway, the green on blue attacks are hard to process. As I hear and read more about them, I still just don't understand. It is a cultural gulf too wide for me to reach across. How can a soldier showing you pictures of his wife or blowing his nose in front of you enrage you to the point of shooting him? But of course there's more to it. One of our drones killed how many women and children this week?

One commentator today was saying that there is a lot of conflict within the Afghan security forces also, so their folks are already on edge.

Prudence

09-20-2012, 04:17 AM

What a mess.

dreadgeek

09-20-2012, 11:29 AM

I think one of the issues around this film has to do with free speech and what that means in different cultures. I heard an interesting explanation for the differences. This is in the context of non-secular governments where it is flatly illegal to insult, demean, disrespect any prophet...whether it be Mohammed or Moses or Jesus. Folks go to jail for that.

In the US version of free speech, we are free to insult whoever we want. In most of these Muslim countries, their free speech is to be free from insult. That help explain why Muslim countries do NOT understand why those asshats are not in jail. Since most of these countries do not have free press (not that our corporate media is free...we just like to delude ourselves), it is also difficult for them to understand our government had nothing to do with disgusting film.

Cultural awareness helps understand many things.

Here is our quandary. We cannot and should not allow ourselves to be maneuvered into backing off from a commitment, a strenuous commitment at that. Yes, other nations may have blasphemy and regardless of my feelings about them (and, for the record, I think they make about as much sense as laws against interracial or interfaith marriages and for much the reason) they are entirely entitled to have whatever laws their culture may dream up. That said, what we should not do is turn over the filmmaker or try to muzzle him or ourselves in order to appease the people turning out into the streets.

It would be one thing, perhaps, if he traveled to Pakistan or some other nation with blasphemy laws, did something in country that violated their laws, and then was turned over to the authorities for trial. He'd be in that nation as a guest and while I'm not comfortable with the idea of an American citizen being tried for something that isn't a crime in the States, so be it. But whether or not others like the idea, he *does* have the right to make any film he wishes and we should not be shy about defending the principles of free speech even while we condemn the xenophobia of this movie.

Toughy, how is 'freedom of speech' a right to be 'free from insult'? Aren't those two things fundamentally incompatible? If you have a right to not be insulted doesn't that mean that you can say what you wish provided that no one is insulted? Wouldn't that preclude any speech that might give insult to someone? I can't see how it could do otherwise. Certainly, a society might choose that it is better that the majority never have to be exposed to memes which they find disagreeable but such a society cannot be said to have a right to free speech.

Protester: "The elites of our nation line their pockets while the poor starve! Is this justice?"

Judge: "You have insulted the elites of our country who care about the poor as much as anyone. I know, I'm an elite. Guilty!"

Protester: "The homosexuals of our great nation are arrested and for what? For loving another person? Why is this a crime? Because a holy book says it should be?"

Judge: "You have insulted the religious sensibilities of many pious people in our nation who believe that the holy book is perfect to its very last letter. Guilty!"

Can we say that people in such a nation have free speech? In all nations, people have the right to praise the government, lionize the rich, express their piety and respect for the traditions of women staying home and having babies. In other words, you don't need free speech to support the status quo or lift up the powerful for praise and adulation. What you need free speech for is to do the opposite and I just don't see how *any* country can be said to have free speech if you cannot say things that would be offensive to the majority and/or those in power without fear of punishment.

Cheers
Aj

Kätzchen

09-20-2012, 12:43 PM

Here is our quandary. We cannot and should not allow ourselves to be maneuvered into backing off from a commitment, a strenuous commitment at that. Yes, other nations may have blasphemy and regardless of my feelings about them (and, for the record, I think they make about as much sense as laws against interracial or interfaith marriages and for much the reason) they are entirely entitled to have whatever laws their culture may dream up. That said, what we should not do is turn over the filmmaker or try to muzzle him or ourselves in order to appease the people turning out into the streets.

It would be one thing, perhaps, if he traveled to Pakistan or some other nation with blasphemy laws, did something in country that violated their laws, and then was turned over to the authorities for trial. He'd be in that nation as a guest and while I'm not comfortable with the idea of an American citizen being tried for something that isn't a crime in the States, so be it. But whether or not others like the idea, he *does* have the right to make any film he wishes and we should not be shy about defending the principles of free speech even while we condemn the xenophobia of this movie.

Toughy, how is 'freedom of speech' a right to be 'free from insult'? Aren't those two things fundamentally incompatible? If you have a right to not be insulted doesn't that mean that you can say what you wish provided that no one is insulted? Wouldn't that preclude any speech that might give insult to someone? I can't see how it could do otherwise. Certainly, a society might choose that it is better that the majority never have to be exposed to memes which they find disagreeable but such a society cannot be said to have a right to free speech.

Protester: "The elites of our nation line their pockets while the poor starve! Is this justice?"

Judge: "You have insulted the elites of our country who care about the poor as much as anyone. I know, I'm an elite. Guilty!"

Protester: "The homosexuals of our great nation are arrested and for what? For loving another person? Why is this a crime? Because a holy book says it should be?"

Judge: "You have insulted the religious sensibilities of many pious people in our nation who believe that the holy book is perfect to its very last letter. Guilty!"

Can we say that people in such a nation have free speech? In all nations, people have the right to praise the government, lionize the rich, express their piety and respect for the traditions of women staying home and having babies. In other words, you don't need free speech to support the status quo or lift up the powerful for praise and adulation. What you need free speech for is to do the opposite and I just don't see how *any* country can be said to have free speech if you cannot say things that would be offensive to the majority and/or those in power without fear of punishment.

Cheers
Aj

What a beautiful post Aj.

In particular, I like how you developed the idea of what free speech, as a tool that is used in a democratic society, can be understood as fully as possible. I think it is so important to internalize the concept of what free speech means and the responsibility that comes with it. The ability to address offensive issues without fear of reprisal and punishment for bringing to attention the very items that affect humans in social, cultural, political, educational situations (to name just a few).

Martina

09-20-2012, 01:00 PM

Based on that Al Jazeera article I cited, I think it is more common even in western countries to police speech than not to.

I think what Toughy was quoting was a play on words illustrating the difference of emphasis in values. It is probably true that more people in the world value a public sphere in which speech can be regulated than one in which it is not.

I am with Dreadgeek on this. I am a strong proponent of free speech, but I think that the Al Jazeera article is probably factually correct. I disagree with the author's intent -- that we (the U.S.) as outliers ought to move more toward the middle.

As far as I am concerned, that would end up in interminable legal battles with the religious right who would take any opportunity to start limiting people's opportunities to express ideas and experiences that conflict with what they believe is "right."

I do believe that in voluntary communities -- like butchfemmeplanet.com, for example -- that people can police away. We just have to live with the consequences.

I don't think that we have had serious problems differentiating between harrassment and freedom of speech, but I would have to ask a lawyer. But people are protected in the U.S. from being harrassed on the job. If we could not have freedom of speech and the right not to be harrassed in public space, then I would have to rethink. But we seem to be succeeding in making that distinction.

Corkey

09-20-2012, 01:17 PM

dreadgeek

09-20-2012, 01:38 PM

I am with Dreadgeek on this. I am a strong proponent of free speech, but I think that the Al Jazeera article is probably factually correct. I disagree with the author's intent -- that we (the U.S.) as outliers ought to move more toward the middle.

I'm actually rather concerned that in the US there is so much sympathy for the viewpoint that we should have laws that protect people from hearing things they might find offensive. I say that because as a minority of a minority of a minority the chances that I will say something offensive to *someone* in the majority is very high. If I write about atheism or, for that matter, evolutionary biology I will offend many religious people who would just as soon not have to be reminded that there are atheists. If I write about queer things then I am in danger of offending people for whom the very statement "I'm here, I'm queer, I refuse to apologize for either" is an attack on the very foundations of their most dearly held religious beliefs. If I write about racism, I'm in danger of offending the white majority. So operating *simply* from self-interest, I am opposed to almost all forms of censorship including the most subtle and insidious of them which is self-censorship.

If, one day, we should listen to the siren songs of censorship which will tell us that there will be peace, justice and harmony if only people can't say things which might give offense, we queer people will quickly find ourselves in an untenable position. Such laws--or social codes--will never be such that it would be the case that as a minority I can say "<insert slur against whites here> hate black people and live only to oppress us" but a white person couldn't say "<insert slur against blacks here> hate white people and live only to <insert anti-black stereotype here>". Never. Majorities simply don't do that to themselves. Rather, what would be more likely is that if I spoke out against racism I might quickly find myself in the dock. Why? Because, as the many threads about white privilege here amply demonstrate, whenever you start pointing out racism or privilege someone is going to get offended. Should *offense* be the touchstone we use to decide what goes to far or should it be something else? I would submit that it should be something *other* than offense.

Yes, I understand that other cultures look at the issue differently but my own reading of history leads me to not trust human beings in large groups and to hold majorities suspect. I fear not for the person who wants to praise Jesus loudly and long but for the person who does not believe in Jesus. I do not fear for the person who wants to wave the flag and shout USA! USA! at the top of their lungs. Rather, I fear for the person who wants to talk about the people who are 'faces at the bottom of the well'. They need free speech and they need to be able to speak out without fear of governmental retribution.

Speech that gives succor to the majority and those in power will never need protection, it is the minority report, the lonely voice, the voice of the outsider and the free thinker that need protection. All the protests at all the embassies in all the world doesn't change that.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

09-20-2012, 01:44 PM

One other point I wanted to make. In his 2012 book, "You Can't Read This Book" British author Nick Cohen (a man with as sterling left-wing credentials as you can find in the West) takes the reader on a tour of how speech is constrained in the UK. Now, this might sound weird to Americans but one thing Cohen pilloried was that in the UK something can be prevented from being published by prior restraint. Let's say that someone wanted to publish a book about Rupert Murdoch or David Cameron or Tony Blair. Those men could set their pet lawyers loose upon the hapless author and her publisher and have them sued so that they couldn't publish their book even if every word in it was true and sourced to the heavens. Simply the fact that the subject of the book might be offended by it is enough for a UK court to shut down publication. Chilling? Yes, as a matter of fact, it *has* had a chilling effect and one effect of this is that the powerful in Britain need not worry overly much about articles or books coming out that put them in a bad light. This goes from MPs to the banks to Murdoch media octopus.

Censorship favors the powerful, not the powerless.

Cheers
Aj

Kätzchen

09-20-2012, 02:25 PM

The whole thing comes down to:
free speech v.s. violent action.

In this country and perhaps no other that I know of one can say what they want as long as it doesn't harm physically another, i.e.: no yelling fire in a crowded theater type of thing.

In other countries such as our neighbor to the north hate speech is regulated where here it is not.

There was a young woman on Chris Matthews the other day who came from an Islamic country, who discussed the indoctrination of Islam in the early years of up bringing. She grew up immersed in the Koran. When she went to university she traveled and came to realize that other cultures had differing view points on religion and free speech. She (and I'm paraphrasing here) said that she sees a need for education of other cultures in Islam. How to get there: she and others she is working with are doing that education. I fully support her efforts.

One of the things I appreciate, especially in Higher Education institutions, are efforts to diversify campus populations and incorporate curriculum involving other cultures. The university where I earned my masters degree is equipped with an International Student Affairs Office. I think most college/university campuses have these nowadays.

At the time I was earning my masters in Communication, the director and his assistant were also peers in my cohort. We worked on issues just like the interviewee spoke about on the Chris Matthews show. What many might not be completely in the know about is that the process is slow in building specialized curriculum at a higher ed institutional level. It's an intracate dance of power between governing agency and those who oversee the regulatory arm of education. To give an example of how arduous this process is, university settings must meet criteria in construction of curriculum by department and simultaneously, if possible, be able to meet funding requirements so that a class can be constructed within particular departments with a professor who is adept in creating syllabae designed specifically for this cultural education need. I was fortunate to attend to unversities in Oregon (a public one for my bachelors; a private one for my masters) where both universities had staff in strategic departments (sociology, communication, business and mathematics) who had professors who incorporated a deeper cultural understanding of these types of ideas expressed by the Chris Matthews' interviewee.

As of late, even though I graduated from my masters programme, it appears that International Studies is still a project that is not fully expanded enough in terms of cross-cultural studies, which I think is very important in an orchestrated attempt to not only meet a need for International students but to provide an education for those who do not fall under the rubric within International Studies. That's the unfortunate part of the process of higher education issues that most American universities face nowadays and certainly is deserving of a more focused attempt at creating access to this particular type of education, overall.

Toughy

09-20-2012, 06:42 PM

Toughy, how is 'freedom of speech' a right to be 'free from insult'? Aren't those two things fundamentally incompatible? If you have a right to not be insulted doesn't that mean that you can say what you wish provided that no one is insulted? Wouldn't that preclude any speech that might give insult to someone? I can't see how it could do otherwise. Certainly, a society might choose that it is better that the majority never have to be exposed to memes which they find disagreeable but such a society cannot be said to have a right to free speech.

First I did not think up the 'to insult' vs 'from insult'. I heard it on, I think, the Randi Rhodes show (progressive talk radio syndicated)

Your argument and questions are a perfect example of the problem. You view free speech from a USA cultural perspective and they don't. You define free speech from that perspective and others do not.......hell France does not agree with our ideas around free speech. As Martina pointed out lots of folks define free speech from a different cultural perspective and narrative. There are few 'hard line in the sand' concepts that all cultures can agree on...or should.... such as slavery, child porn, child sex workers, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal to name a few.

And as I said earlier and Corkey has repeated: The response to an insult (free speech) should not be one of violence in any culture. I think no violence belongs in the 'hard line in the sand' category.....but humans are not there yet. Non-violent protest should be the response and the large majority of the response to that obnoxious crap has been non-violent.

And we should all remember the terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and the ex-seals security folks is not connected to the film.

The protests (mostly non-violent) occurring in many Islamic countries are about that film. A 15 minutes Arabic translation of the film was shown on (right wing) Egyptian TV and that is when the protests began.

I did a lot of nodding my head yes when reading your posts.

dreadgeek

09-20-2012, 08:34 PM

Toughy;

I don't have any issue with non-violent protests. I *do* have issues with violent protests and blasphemy laws. And I'm not looking at this issue from the point of view of the USA and that we are right. I'm looking at it from three points of view, two of them not my own. I look at it from a writer. That is *my* point of view and I want to be able to write a story about what it might look like to live in a Christianist Theocracy without fear of losing my liberty or my life. I'm not saying we live in such a society but the distance between that society and us now is the boundary between having the right to free speech and not.

No, I'm looking at this from the point of view of Salman Rushdie who wrote a book a quarter century ago and had a fatwa placed against him calling for his death. As it turns out, I had thought the fatwa had been lifted and then it turns out that three days ago, Ayatollah Hassan Sanei of Iran, reissued the bounty on Rushdie's head to the tune of 320,000 pounds. I'm looking at it from the point of view of the person burning the American flag, an action I disagree with but think should be protected. I'm looking at it from the point of Pussy Riot, locked up on a charge that comes down to blasphemy. I'm looking at it from the point of view of ACT-UP and Queer Nation back in 1992. I'm looking at it from the point of view of my parents in Birmingham in the 1960s. I'm looking at it from the point of view of every time anyone stood up and spoke truth to power when power would rather they shut up. Power would rather the powerless shut the hell up and if they think they can get away with it, the rich and the orthodox will use the power of the state to make sure that the powerless don't say uncomfortable things.

Peaceful protests outside embassies do not concern me. They are exercising their right to give vent to their anger and, as such, I might contemplate it but does not concern me.

Saying that people should be put to death or imprisoned because of what they write or speak or film concerns me. That Vladimir Putin had Pussy Riot locked up on a charge that comes down to blasphemy concerns me. Bounties on the heads of writers concern me. The detention of Bradley Manning concerns me. These are all attempts to silence voices that are inconvenient for power. Pharmaceutical companies being able to slap of writ of prior restraint on a journalist because they've written an article that shows fixing of results in trials concerns me.

Like I said before, I don't trust majorities, I don't trust mobs, I don't trust the rich, I don't trust the church, I don't trust the state and I don't trust the powerful. Majorities gravitate toward tyrannies, a democracy can be as tyrannical as a totalitarian state. Mobs are just the crowd at the lynching, the people at the witch burning, whenever bullying gets social sanction. The rich will gravitate toward plutocracy and the church will implement theocracy if they can get away with it. The only thing that stands between us and those various flavors of dystopia is the ability to write against it, march against it, rail against it and convince others of the rightness of our warnings. If that means risking that some people might be offended at the rantings of some fool then so be it.

Cheers
Aj

First I did not think up the 'to insult' vs 'from insult'. I heard it on, I think, the Randi Rhodes show (progressive talk radio syndicated)

Your argument and questions are a perfect example of the problem. You view free speech from a USA cultural perspective and they don't. You define free speech from that perspective and others do not.......hell France does not agree with our ideas around free speech. As Martina pointed out lots of folks define free speech from a different cultural perspective and narrative. There are few 'hard line in the sand' concepts that all cultures can agree on...or should.... such as slavery, child porn, child sex workers, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal to name a few.

And as I said earlier and Corkey has repeated: The response to an insult (free speech) should not be one of violence in any culture. I think no violence belongs in the 'hard line in the sand' category.....but humans are not there yet. Non-violent protest should be the response and the large majority of the response to that obnoxious crap has been non-violent.

And we should all remember the terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and the ex-seals security folks is not connected to the film.

The protests (mostly non-violent) occurring in many Islamic countries are about that film. A 15 minutes Arabic translation of the film was shown on (right wing) Egyptian TV and that is when the protests began.

I did a lot of nodding my head yes when reading your posts.

Toughy

09-20-2012, 11:13 PM

I believe we are in agreement Aj............

Martina

09-20-2012, 11:38 PM

I don't trust majorities, I don't trust mobs, I don't trust the rich, I don't trust the church, I don't trust the state and I don't trust the powerful.

I love this.

Ciaran

09-21-2012, 03:27 AM

I didn't twist anything you said. In fact, I took the most limited reading possible and assume that the statement 'values are not absolute' means just that. Values are not absolute. That means that there is no way to argue that we should prefer, if given a choice, value set A over value set B.

That would be a nonsensical reading of a right to life. It's one of the reasons why many on the American Left (such as it is) rightly object to the characterization of anti-choice partisans as being 'pro-life' because they are not 'pro-life'. What they are is anti-abortion. A consistent pro-life stance can't square itself with support of the death penalty.

Yes, and they were wrong. Not just expressing a different but equally valid set of values. Their values were wrong. In the mid 1930s one of my mother's brothers was lynched. The people who did so *genuinely* believed that my uncle, his father and mother, all his siblings, all his nieces and nephews who had not yet been born, and every single member of his line stretching up and down through the eons, was not *actually* human. Because they were not fully human, their lives were not particularly valuable. Because their lives were not valuable, it was no crime to take his life because a white woman accused him of attacking her because he bumped into her. That wasn't just a cultural peccadillo but a sign of a culture with a bad set of values. Not different bad. Jim Crow was an evil system. Not a regrettable one, not one that I should be glad mostly had only secondary effects on me but an actually evil one. What we have now, imperfect equality as it is, is far and away better than the one my parents were living in from the 1920s until pretty much the time of my birth in the mid-1960s.

Torture *is* wrong. It is wrong on moral grounds, it is wrong on utilitarian grounds and it is wrong on ethical grounds. I'm not opposed to torture because it was my government doing the torturing. I'm not opposed to torture because it was poor and middle-class whites torturing poor non-whites. I'm opposed to torture because it is morally indefensible.

You appear to be conflating the violation of intrinsic values with their not being intrinsic. Are you prepared to argue that because racism is enshrined in the laws of many nations that racism isn't wrong? If you aren't, and it is vanishingly improbable that you are prepared to do so, then by what do you justify preferring to live in a society that is not explicitly racist than one is? By what argument are you prepared to state that American society circa 2012 is a better society than America circa 1942. I *am* prepared to make that argument because there are things that are intrinsically wrong and to violate them means that your society is behaving wrongly. Just because societies break the rules and take some action that is intrinsically wrong doesn't mean that it isn't wrong.

Just because someone breaks into a house to steal the stuff inside and, discovering that the owners are home, kills them, doesn't mean that neither murder nor theft are wrong. In the same way just because Germany slaughtered millions of innocents in adherence to a racially eliminationist philosophy doesn't mean that genocide isn't wrong. What the German people allowed themselves to become was evil. What the German people did during the period of 1932 to 1945 was evil. It wasn't just a cultural practice that we cannot and should not try to judge because trying not to say that the Germans shouldn't have done what they did puts us in very ugly and vile moral territory.

If there are not intrinsic rights and wrongs, things that under almost no (if not absolutely no) circumstances a people should not be allowed to get away with, how do you argue that Britain is a better nation without the Empire or that America is better without Jim Crow? Personal preference? It's better today because now we recognize it is better but it was better then because they thought it was better back then? I knew a whole generation, all deceased now, that would argue strenuously that the America their grandchildren or great-grandchildren live in now is far and away a better one than the one they were born to, all self-interest put aside.

Cheers
Aj

This is a diatribe and clearly written for an audience.

I don't understand your words or theories so won't try to give them an answer and I thank my God for that.

Martina

09-21-2012, 11:57 AM

This is a diatribe and clearly written for an audience.

I don't understand your words or theories so won't try to give them an answer and I thank my God for that.

Charming. Really charming. *shakes head*

Martina

09-21-2012, 12:15 PM

This from an article in the Times today:

“An attack on the holy prophet is an attack on the core belief of 1.5 billion Muslims. Therefore, this is something that is unacceptable,” said Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in an address to a religious conference Friday morning in Islamabad.

Mr. Ashraf called on the United Nations and international community to formulate a law outlawing hate speech across the world. “Blasphemy of the kind witnessed in this case is nothing short of hate speech, equal to the worst kind of anti-Semitism or other kind of bigotry,” he said.

Surely he knows better.

Hate speech is defined in terms of inciting violence AGAINST the party being maligned. The people causing violence in this case are the folks who are the targets of the offensive speech.

Speaking as a high school teacher, there is an element of immaturity to this that boggles my mind. Someone hurt me deeply, so I beat them up. Please put them in jail, not me. What someone said made me feel a really strong feeling. A REALLY strong one. My behavior after that is no longer my responsibility, but theirs.

A young (tres hip) Muslim man was on NPR yesterday talking about how he couldn't believe people were taking the bait. He understood the video as bait. And he was upset at the naivete of folks who just grabbed it.

Bait or not. Intended to offend not. It did not incite violence AGAINST Muslims.

GOD, this makes me grateful for the Constitution.

HEAR me, Ciaran and others whose comments make ME feel labeled as a jingoistic American. I am so god damned proud of my Constitution. SO GRATEFUL for the U.S. Constitution.

Understand that?

Edited to add: I know that a lot of the anger with the U.S. and other western countries stems from the historical relationships we have imposed on the region -- as subaltern states. They have not had the power to affect us, and our decisions have had ruinous effects on some of the nations there -- for generations.

Kätzchen

09-21-2012, 01:42 PM

This is a diatribe and clearly written for an audience.

I don't understand your words or theories so won't try to give them an answer and I thank my God for that.

I would argue that your post is clearly designed and written for a specific audience too.

However, I don't buy the justification you give for not understanding the value of Aj's message or postulations or theoretical application. You then go on and say that you 'thank your God for that'.

In the very arrogance you prize for the perception you percieve about your own brand of aristocracy, I do believe that sets of behaviors like yours deserve a closer inspection.

To me, your set of views illustrate the time immemorial struggle for power.

I do not find your brand of engagement useful; however, sets of behaviors exemplified in your approach seemingly share a type of relationship that are present in local, regional, national and international disputes over resources and percieved power.

dreadgeek

09-21-2012, 01:49 PM

This from an article in the Times today:
Surely he knows better.

Hate speech is defined in terms of inciting violence AGAINST the party being maligned. The people causing violence in this case are the folks who are the targets of the offensive speech.

I was thinking about this walking the dog this morning. Imagine, if you will, if black people in America had spent *just* the years between 1900 and 1990 going on a rampage and breaking things every time something offensive was said to us or about us. Just in the last 90 years and *just* in the USA. Can you imagine? Black people have had to develop a pretty hard outer shell because I am here to tell you that the first *half* of my life incredibly racist things were just part of everyday American discourse. From the restaurant chain Sambo to the the rantings of Rush Limbaugh, hardly a day would go by when I wouldn't hear something or see some imagine denigrating of blacks.

By my mid-twenties, I had learned two things: 1) I can't make people not look down upon me because of the color of my skin and 2) I can't stop people who hold racist sentiments from speaking their mind.

From there, I recognized that to save my sanity and to give my son a fighting chance to save his sanity, I had to learn to hold my head up high and not give racists the satisfaction of responding how they expect me to respond. The expected response from me, as a black woman, is to freak out, start moving my head back and forth, yelling and carrying on. That way the racist can look at me and say "see, this is how 'they' always act. No self-control." I confound them because I don't lose my temper and I outsmart them and nothing--no thing--makes a racist squirm more than to be bested by someone who he or she thinks they are superior to. Perhaps I shouldn't enjoy their discomfort as much as I do but I do and so be it.

Speaking as a high school teacher, there is an element of immaturity to this that boggles my mind. Someone hurt me deeply, so I beat them up. Please put them in jail, not me. What someone said made me feel a really strong feeling. A REALLY strong one. My behavior after that is no longer my responsibility, but theirs.

This is why I have taken the stand I have about this issue. First, we say "well, you know what, we'll do that. You can't say anything against the Prophet or portray him in any manner that would not be acceptable to the *most* restrictive Islamic sects". The next day the demand will be that you can't show any art, play any music or publish any book that might give offense to this or that sectarian group. So suddenly, at the behest of this or that religious group that nude sculptures or women in diaphanous gowns be covered up in the name of modesty. The day after that, it will be that you can't speak out against religiously inspired bigotry be that against racial, ethnic, religious or sexual minorities.

Once you start to give in on this matter, you tend to have to continue to give in on it. How could you not? If I can't say X because it might offend the sectarians of this or that religion, then by what justification can I say Y because it might *also* give offense? I can't see how. "Well, in the case of X you are saying something offensive to a religious group that was born of out disdain for this group but in the case of Y you are defending an oppressed group against bigotry" seems a fairly weak place upon which to stand. If I've learned nothing else about bigotry (not just racism but bigotry) is that the vast majority of bigots likely do not see themselves as bigots.

If I had a dollar for each time I've heard some variant of "I'm not racist but..." or "I'm not sexist but..." or "I'm not anti-gay but..." I'd have enough money that I would only have to pay in taxes what Mittens has to pay. The people who are posting pictures of the White House lawn covered in watermelons, or Obama's face on the body of a chimp, or now hanging chairs in effigy don't think they are racists. Todd Akin doesn't think his 'legitimate rape' comments are sexist. Fred Phelps doesn't think he's a bigot for being anti-gay. Terry Jones doesn't think he's being a bigot in his rabid anti-Muslim tirades. Rush Limbaugh doesn't think he was being sexist calling Sandra Fluke a slut.

So when we stand up and speak out against Akin, or Phelps or Jones or Limbaugh or any one else who is advocating bigotry, we are unlikely to hear them say "oh well, that's different". Instead, they will argue that we are on the wrong side of the issue from God, or they will argue that we are being anti-American, or anti-Christian, or anti-straight but they will *not* agree that they are in the wrong. So if we decide that a mob in Pakistan should dictate what is acceptable and unacceptable public utterance is in London or San Francisco or anywhere else, what do we say when the *next* thing some other mob, perhaps closer to home, demands that no longer should it be spoken that being against gay rights is bigotry? That we will heed the words of an angry crowd on the other side of the globe but ignore the words of those closer to home even though, truth be told, the positions of the crowd outside the embassy in Islamabad and that of customers outside of Chik-fil-a are pretty close at least as far as it concerns homosexuals.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

09-21-2012, 01:56 PM

This is a diatribe and clearly written for an audience.

I don't understand your words or theories so won't try to give them an answer and I thank my God for that.

All writing that isn't in a diary or journal is written for an audience. As a now long-deceased English scientist once observed "How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view to be of any service." I would amend that for these circumstances to say that it is very odd that someone would not see that all public writing must be intended for an audience if it is to be of any service.

Are you saying that when you post on a thread you aren't writing to communicate something to the other participants? That seems a very strange way to write. You speak as if writing in order that one's words would be read is a bad thing.

Cheers
Aj

Corkey

09-21-2012, 04:45 PM

We all write for an audience, and it is best to know ones audience if one is to communicate thoughts. Just an observation.
We in the US don't do things the way Briton does, we had that war long ago.

Kobi

09-21-2012, 04:59 PM

This is not good news.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Muslim countries reverberate with fierce protests over a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad, an ad equating Islamic jihad with savagery is due to appear next week in 10 New York City subway stations despite transit officials' efforts to block it.

The city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority had refused the ads, citing a policy against demeaning language. The American Freedom Defense Initiative, which is behind the ad campaign, then sued and won a favorable ruling from a U.S. judge in Manhattan.

According to court documents, the ad reads: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel/Defeat Jihad."

MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said the ads would be displayed starting on Monday, but he could not say at which stations.

"Our hands are tied. The MTA is subject to a court ordered injunction that prohibits application of the MTA's existing no-demeaning ad standard," said Donovan.

In July, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that the ad was protected speech. While agreeing with the MTA that the ad was "demeaning a group of people based on religion," Engelmayer ruled that the group was entitled to the "highest level of protection under the First Amendment."

The American Freedom Defense Initiative gained notoriety when it opposed creation of a Muslim community center near the site of the Twin Towers, which were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/ads-criticizing-jihad-bound-york-city-subway-stations-232906064.html

Corkey

09-21-2012, 05:03 PM

I wish these groups would grow the F up.

Kobi

09-21-2012, 05:11 PM

I wish these groups would grow the F up.

Could you wish a little harder? Im beginning to believe the Mayan calender coming to an end on Dec 21st.

PARIS (Reuters) - A French magazine ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday by portraying him naked in cartoons, threatening to fuel the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a California-made video depicting him as a lecherous fool.

The drawings in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo risked exacerbating a crisis that has seen the storming of U.S. and other Western embassies, the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and a deadly suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

Riot police were deployed to protect the paper's Paris offices after the issue hit news stands.

It featured several caricatures of the Prophet showing him naked in what the publishers said was an attempt to poke fun at the furor over the film. One, entitled "Mohammad: a star is born", depicted a bearded figure crouching over to display his buttocks and genitals.

The French government, which had urged the weekly not to print the cartoons, said it was shutting embassies and schools in 20 countries as a precaution on Friday, when protests sometimes break out after Muslim prayers.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby called the drawings outrageous but said those who were offended by them should "use peaceful means to express their firm rejection".

Tunisia's ruling Islamist party, Ennahda, condemned what it called an act of "aggression" against Mohammad but urged Muslims not to fall into a trap intended to "derail the Arab Spring and turn it into a conflict with the West".

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/french-weekly-publishes-mohammad-cartoons-075449808.html

Martina

09-23-2012, 11:43 PM

Here is "The Satanic Video" by BILL KELLER (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/opinion/keller-the-satanic-video.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www)

I was just gonna take out quotes, but I like the whole thing. I highlighted points that I thought were especially good.

THE alchemy of modern media works with amazing speed. Start with a cheesy anti-Muslim video that resembles a bad trailer for a Sacha Baron Cohen comedy. It becomes YouTube fuel for protest across the Islamic world and a pretext for killing American diplomats. That angry spasm begets an inflammatory Newsweek cover, “MUSLIM RAGE,” which in turn inspires a Twitter hashtag that reduces the whole episode to a running joke:

“There’s no prayer room in this nightclub. #MuslimRage.”

“You lose your nephew at the airport but you can’t yell his name because it’s JIHAD. #MuslimRage.”

From provocation to trauma to lampoon in a few short news cycles. It’s over in a week, forgotten in two. Now back to Snooki and Honey Boo Boo.

Except, of course, it’s far from over. It moves temporarily off-screen, and then it is back: the Pakistani retailer accused last week of “blasphemy” because he refused to close his shops during a protest against the video; France locking down diplomatic outposts in about 20 countries because a Paris satirical newspaper has published new caricatures of the prophet.

It’s not really over for Salman Rushdie, whose new memoir recounts a decade under a clerical death sentence for the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses.” That fatwa, if not precisely the starting point in our modern confrontation with Islamic extremism, was a major landmark. The fatwa was dropped in 1998 and Rushdie is out of hiding, but he is still careful. His book tour for “Joseph Anton” (entitled for the pseudonym he used in his clandestine life) won’t be taking him to Islamabad or Cairo.

Rushdie grew up in a secular Muslim family, the son of an Islam scholar. His relationship to Islam was academic, then literary, before it became excruciatingly personal. His memoir is not a handbook on how America should deal with the Muslim world. But he brings to that subject a certain moral authority and the wisdom of an unusually motivated thinker. I invited him to help me draw some lessons from the stormy Arab Summer.

The first and most important thing Rushdie will tell you is, it’s not about religion. Not then, not now.

When the founding zealot of revolutionary Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued his Rushdie death warrant in 1989, the imam was not defending the faith; he was trying to regenerate enthusiasm for his regime, sapped by eight years of unsuccessful war with Iraq. Likewise, Muslim clerics in London saw the fatwa against a British Indian novelist as an opportunity to arouse British Muslims, who until that point were largely unstirred by sectarian politics. “This case was a way for the mosque to assert a kind of primacy over the community,” the novelist said the other day. “I think something similar is going on now.”

It’s pretty clear that the protests against that inane video were not spontaneous. Antisecular and anti-American zealots, beginning with a Cairo TV personality whose station is financed by Saudi fundamentalists, seized on the video as a way to mobilize pressure on the start-up governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. The new governments condemned the violence and called in police to protect American diplomatic outposts, but not before a good bit of nervous wobbling.

(One of the principal goals of the extremists, I was reminded by experts at Human Rights First, who follow the region vigilantly, is to pressure these transitional governments to enact and enforce strict laws against blasphemy. These laws can then be used to purge secularists and moderates.)

Like the fanatics in the Middle East and North Africa, our homegrown hatemongers have an interest in making this out to be a great clash of faiths. The Islamophobes — the fringe demagogues behind the Koran-burning parties and that tawdry video, the more numerous (mainly right-wing Republican) defenders against the imaginary encroachment of Islamic law on our domestic freedom — are easily debunked. But this is the closest thing we have to a socially acceptable form of bigotry. And their rants feed the anti-American opportunists.

Rushdie acknowledges that there are characteristics of Islamic culture that make it tinder for the inciters: an emphasis on honor and shame, and in recent decades a paranoiac sense of the world conspiring against them. We can argue who is more culpable — the hostile West, the sponsors, the appeasers, the fanatics themselves — but Islam has been particularly susceptible to the rise of identity politics, Rushdie says. “You define yourself by what offends you. You define yourself by what outrages you.”

But blaming Islamic culture dismisses the Muslim majorities who are not enraged, let alone violent, and it leads to a kind of surrender: Oh, it’s just the Muslims, nothing to be done. I detect a whiff of this cultural fatalism in Mitt Romney’s patronizing remarks about the superiority of Israeli culture and the backwardness of Palestinian culture. That would explain his assertion, on that other notorious video, that an accommodation with the Palestinians is “almost unthinkable.” That’s a strangely defeatist line of thought for a man who professes to be an optimist and a problem-solver.

Romney and Rushdie are a little more in tune when it comes to mollifying the tender feelings of irate Muslims.

In his new book, Rushdie recounts being urged by the British authorities who were protecting him to “lower the temperature” by issuing a statement that could be taken for an apology. He does so. It fills him almost immediately with regret, and the attacks on him are unabated. He “had taken the weak position and was therefore treated as a weakling,” he writes.

Of the current confrontation, he says, “I think it’s very important that we hold our ground. It’s very important to say, ‘We live like this.’ ” Rushdie made his post-fatwa life in America in part because he reveres the freedoms, including the freedom, not so protected in other Western democracies, to say hateful, racist, blasphemous things.

“Terrible ideas, reprehensible ideas, do not disappear if you ban them,” he told me. “They go underground. They acquire a kind of glamour of taboo. In the harsh light of day, they are out there and, like vampires, they die in the sunlight.”

And so he would have liked a more robust White House defense of the rights that made the noxious video possible.

“It’s not for the American government to regret what American citizens do. They should just say, ‘This is not our affair and the [violent] response is completely inappropriate.’ ”

I would cut the diplomats a little more slack when they are trying to defuse an explosive situation. But I agree that the administration pushed up against the line that separates prudence from weakness. And the White House request that Google consider taking down the anti-Muslim video, however gentle the nudge, was a mistake.

By far the bigger mistake, though, would be to write off the aftermath of the Arab Spring as a lost cause.

It is fairly astounding to hear conservatives who were once eager to invade Iraq — ostensibly to plant freedom in the region — now giving up so quickly on fledgling democracies that might actually be won over without 10 bloody years of occupation. Or lamenting our abandonment of that great stabilizing autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Or insisting that we bully and blackmail the new governments to conform to our expectations.

These transition governments present an opportunity. Fortifying the democratic elements in the post-Arab Spring nation-building, without discrediting them as American stooges, is a delicate business. The best argument we have is not our aid money, though that plays a part. It is the choice between two futures, between building or failing to build a rule of law, an infrastructure of rights, and an atmosphere of tolerance. One future looks something like Turkey, prospering, essentially secular and influential. The other future looks a lot like Pakistan, a land of fear and woe.

We can’t shape the Islamic world to our specifications. But if we throw up our hands, if we pull back, we now have a more vivid picture of what will fill the void.

dreadgeek

09-24-2012, 01:24 PM

The whole thing, in all of its magnificence, is posted here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/21/free-speech-a-cloistered-value.html

The parts I wanted to highlight, largely without comment excepting that all emphasis is mine, are below but the whole thing is worth reading.

It is solipsistic, if not narcissistic, to imagine that—because the culturally-specific features of contemporary American liberalism (that, after all, in our own history was long in the making and is still not fully accomplished) derive from certain Protestant Western European traditions—this is therefore the only context in which such values can be firmly rooted. By pretending to "understand" the illiberal attitude of what he imagines the protesters' mindset must be, Fish simultaneously privileges the American, Protestant and Western traditions (in that order) and implicitly dismisses all others as belonging to different experiences that cannot produce an adherence to values such as free speech.

Modernity may have originated in the West, but it no longer belongs exclusively to the West. Almost all existing societies participate in and help shape it. A few decades ago, Partha Chatterjee suggested that for the postcolonial world, modernity was always and inevitably "a derivative discourse," that would invariably be defined in the West. With the rise of numerous postcolonial powers, that argument looks harder to defend.

Obviously there are going to be significant differences in the ways in which modernity and liberalism take root in different societies. Even among societies emerging from the Protestant Western tradition, American free-speech rights are uniquely permissive. Canada bans hate speech. Britain has official secrets, prior restraint, anti-blasphemy and notoriously lax libel laws. Numerous countries in Western Europe have made it a serious crime to question the historicity of the Holocaust.

Given these variations within societies emerging directly from the Western Protestant Reformation—all of which can still be called liberal societies that value and protect free speech—it should be obvious that globally there will be even greater variations. It's wrong to think that the essential values embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and so forth, only be grounded in Western traditions. These are universal values because there is something innate to modern humanity that strives to realize the essence of these freedoms, whatever culturally-specific variations may occur.

Here I'm going to make a brief comment. The things we term *human* rights really are universal. These are not 'Western' rights and while I am not as well-traveled or well-read as I might otherwise like to be, I have a hard time believing that too many people, given the choice, would prefer to have to look over their shoulder lest some secret police come knocking at the door because of an overheard remark. To take one example, the flow of people appears to be *out* of North Korea and not *into* it. I suspect that part of why people aren't bursting down the gates to get in to the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is that, alongside the lack of food, is the lack of freedom where the least overheard word might spell the camp for oneself and one's family as well as tainting one's lineage down two or three generations.

In an effort to be open-minded gone terribly wrong, Fish forecloses the idea that other cultures and traditions, specifically the Islamic and Arab ones, can inform and secure freedom of speech and, implicitly, other liberal values. A quick survey of freedom of speech around the world suggests he is wrong about the unique ability societies rooted in the Protestant Reformation to embody these values. They have already spread far and wide. There is no reason to think that the Arab or Islamic worlds, or any other major cultural block in the modern world, is somehow uniquely immune them.

Cheers
Aj

Martina

09-24-2012, 06:00 PM

I was reading an article cited in the article Dreadgeek is quoting from. Not Stanley Fish's, but one they describe as admirably summing up the psychology of the protesters. (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-incredible-muslim-hulk-proves-to-be-no-friend-of-islam-either-20120916-260e8.html)

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that that writer agreed with Rushdie's point about how the protesters construct their identity:

Soon you have a subculture: a sub-community whose very cohesion is based almost exclusively on shared grievance. Then you have an identity that has nothing to say about itself; an identity that holds an entirely impoverished position: that to be defiantly angry is to be.

Frankly, Muslims should find that prospect nothing short of catastrophic. It renders Islamic identity entirely hollow. All pride, all opposition, no substance. ''Like the Incredible Hulk,'' observes Abdal Hakim Murad, a prominent British Islamic scholar, ''ineffectual until provoked.''

On the way home I was listening on the radio to the PBS news broadcast and was so happy to hear that Syrians are using these events to disarm some of the militias. And to bring them more under the rule of law. That is a wonderful turn of events. I wish the press were covering more of that story. Maybe Newsweek will be forced to after the twitter responders showed them up re their Muslim Rage cover. :)

I am going to go read the Fish article. I shudder after that review of it.

One of my college professors had Fish as his dissertation advisor at Johns Hopkins back in the day. We all read Surprised by Sin (about Milton), Self-Consuming Artifacts, and Is There a Text in this Class. Even then, before he was a college administrator and later a public intellectual, it was clear Fish was carried away with the idea of the community of interpreters creating reality. Great literary theory. Interesting philosophy. Not a world view.

I agree with Dreadgeek and the article she cites. There are universal values based on what is good and healthy for human beings. For example, torture is bad, and eating nutritious food is good. Those are pretty universal.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press may not be the most essential values, but they protect us from us from having to endure serious human rights violations. Iran today has used the youtube video as an excuse to limit its people's access to google. Exactly what some people are saying is the motivation behind the protests. The film is an excuse to clamp down on secular influences.

I was thinking of Foxconn thing -- the workers rioting in the Chinese factory that makes, among other things, Apple products. It's just INSANE that we don't know what is happening on a day to day basis in those factories. This stuff could happen in a second in the United States. In a second -- if we didn't have our First Amendment rights. Did anyone see that report about the Microsoft data barns in Quincy, Oregon. Also in the Times.

First, a citizens group initiated a legal challenge over pollution from some of nearly 40 giant diesel generators that Microsoft’s facility — near an elementary school — is allowed to use for backup power.

Then came a showdown late last year between the utility and Microsoft, whose hardball tactics shocked some local officials.

In an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for overestimating its power use, Microsoft proceeded to simply waste millions of watts of electricity, records show. Then it threatened to continue burning power in what it acknowledged was an “unnecessarily wasteful” way until the fine was substantially cut, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

“For a company of that size and that nature, and with all the ‘green’ things they advertised to me, that was an insult,” said Randall Allred, a utility commissioner and local farmer.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the episode was “a one-time event that was quickly resolved.”

Internet-based industries have honed a reputation for sleek, clean convenience based on the magic they deliver to screens everywhere. At the heart of every Internet enterprise are data centers, which have become more sprawling and ubiquitous as the amount of stored information explodes, sprouting in community after community.

But the Microsoft experience in Quincy shows that when these Internet factories come to town, they can feel a bit more like old-time manufacturing than modern magic.

I guess one could argue that Western Europe is still free enough and safe enough (safer even) with some limitations on speech. But it's still hard to speak back to power in Europe. It's harder than it is here. The EU has regulation to protect folks (as should the U.S.), but if something is wrong that is in the best interest of the elites, good luck with that. Also, EU privacy laws may protect ordinary people from data mining using facial recognition software, but they also keep the halls of power pretty private and unapproachable.

In any case, we AREN'T Europe. As the article from the Daily Beast points out, the West is not monolithic. And freedom of speech and the press protect us from abuses like the ones attempted by Microsoft. They weren't that afraid of the regulators, I'd bet, but they sure are afraid of public opinion. Anyway, sorry for the rambling. I am getting to be an old crank. I can hear it in my tone.

Actually, not done yet. Also from that Daily Beast article Dreadgeek cited -- There are deep traditions of pluralism within Islamic theology and Arab culture. Moreover, there is no tradition of mob protests associated with insults against Islam or the Prophet Mohammed. This mob reaction to perceived insults is not "traditional," but rather grounded in a concatenation of circumstances, new interpretations of religion, and emergent political ideologies that developed during the 20th century.

Fish should know that. Anyway, if Fish's article is correctly characterized, then it is just a more sophisticated instance of throwing up one's hands and saying, "Oh, it’s just the Muslims, nothing to be done."

Martina

09-24-2012, 08:07 PM

So typical of a literary critic to create some unnecessary construct and treat it as if it were real. I am talking about this:

. . . if you think that your religion is just an add-on to your essential personhood, like the political party you belong to or the football team you root for.

That is the view of religion we inherited from John Locke and other “accommodationist” Protestants, Protestants who entered into a bargain with the state: allow us freedom of worship, don’t meddle in our affairs and we won’t meddle in civic matters or attempt to make public institutions reflect theological doctrines. . . . .

Those who buy into this division of labor and authority will themselves be bifurcated entities. In their private lives they will live out the commands of their religion to the fullest. In their public lives — their lives as citizens — they will relax their religious convictions and display a tolerance they may not feel in their heart of hearts. We give witness to this dual identity when we declare, in fidelity to the First Amendment, “I hate and reject what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

People have been writing that kind of crap about modernity, well, since modernity. We are not bifurcated entities. Dual identities. *RME* Stanley, there is a discipline out there called psychology -- and I don't mean Freud. You might check into it. People in the modern world are people -- primates. To the extent that we are more disconnected from ourselves and each other, it's because our lives under Capitalism make it harder for us to live in the kinds of groups that we do best in. Why can't he -- and others -- talk about behavior and history and not create these ridiculous constructs out of thin air?

I liked this from one of the readers' comments after the article:

The discussion of free speech, while excellent, presupposes a context free of drones, bombs, invasions, rapes, murdered children, violated sovereignty, torture, illegal and unending detention, etc. etc.

And this reader's comment on Fish goes well with the Daily Beast article:

There seems to be an assumption by just about everyone that what those "foreigners" believe is different from what goes on here.

What about the Archbishops & Cardinals who insist that we must outlaw gay marriage? How is that different from the mullahs? Or the clergy who refuse communion to catholics who don't vote the way they want them to?

John Kennedy would have been condemned by today's Catholic hierarchy for the speech he gave in 1960.

I'm afraid the Locke point of view that informed our Bill of Rights isn't just out of sync with the Muslim world. It is no longer operative in the USA.

I guess Fish was being arrogant about Western Civilization, but it was a backhanded kind of arrogance. And it was patronizing to Muslims, I agree.

He is romanticizing religious Muslims AND treating them as if they were less complex than we are, a point made in the Daily Beast article.

Here's Fish:

In their eyes, a religion that confines itself to the heart and chapel, and is thus exercised intermittently while the day’s business gets done, is no religion at all. True religion does not relax its hold when you leave the house of worship; it commands your allegiance at all times and in all places. And the “you” whose allegiance it commands is not divided into a public “you” and a private “you”; it is the same at home as it is when abroad in the world.

and his last paragraph -- about people in the West:

But that means that protecting the marketplace by refusing to set limits on what can enter it is the highest value we affirm, and we affirm it no matter what truths might be vilified and what falsehoods might get themselves accepted. We have decided that the potential unhappy consequences of a strong free speech regime must be tolerated because the principle is more important than preventing any harm it might permit. We should not be surprised, however, if others in the world — most others, in fact — disagree, not because they are blind and ignorant but because they worship God and truth rather than the First Amendment, which not only keeps God and truth at arm’s length but regards them with a deep suspicion.

Is he not saying that we Capitalists are placing the marketplace of ideas and the wealth that has created for us above truth? Is he saying that if we prioritize freedom of speech, we almost stop caring whether truth or falsehood prevails? The current Pope cold have said that.

From a comment:

Stanley Fish as usual defending outrageous conservatism with a calm faux reasonableness. He could handily defend the inquisition too I'm sure.

ruffryder

09-26-2012, 09:38 AM

Could you wish a little harder? Im beginning to believe the Mayan calender coming to an end on Dec 21st.

These tensions in other countries have been fueled by the U.S. weaking the Islamic revolution. I can't help but think it's only gonna get worse and not better. We have Iran now testing their missles and wanting to aim them at Israel and wipe them out. Iran claims to have long range drones that will sink Israel and other mideastern countries and they are telling everyone about it. God help us all.

"Iran has warned that if its nuclear facilities are attacked, it would plant as many as 5,000 mines in the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and cut off the flow of one-fifth of the world’s oil.

But the United States has vowed to keep the Gulf open — and is now conducting a massive ship mine-sweeping exercise there through tomorrow. The Gulf is a few hundred miles from where Iran test-fired its anti-ship missiles.

Gen. Ali Fadavi of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said yesterday that the test proved Iran could sink a “big target” in less than a minute, according to Iran’s official Fars news agency.

He also said Iran is closely monitoring 64 US vessels in the region, including 20 engaged in the mine-sweeping exercise, along with British, French, Japanese and Emirates ships.

Another Revolutionary Guard official, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said the new “Shahed 129” drone could be armed with “bombs and missiles” and has a range of 1,250 miles.

Hajizadeh said on Sunday that if war broke out between Iran and Israel, “it will turn into World War III” as other nations are drawn into it. He said Iran would target US bases in the event of an Israeli attack.

Obama alluded to the threatened cutoff of oil when he told the United Nations, “Make no mistake: a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained. It would threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of Gulf nations and the stability of the global economy.”

War jitters helped drive up the price of oil on the world market about 1 percent yesterday before falling back.

Obama blasted Iran for helping to keep Syria’s bloody regime in power and refusing to cooperate fully with UN arms inspectors.

“Time and again, it has failed to take the opportunity to demonstrate that its nuclear program is peaceful, and to meet its obligations to the United Nations,’’ he said.

The remarks set the stage for Ahmadinejad’s annual anti-US, anti-Israel UN tirade today.

Outside the Warwick hotel, where he’s staying, about 50 protesters chanted “Ahmadinejad is a terrorist” and “we want Ahmadinejad out of the US now, now, now.” "

http://www.nypost.com