American Consulate Attack in Libya

[Toughy]

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]

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]

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...er-back-heaven

[Martina]

Commentary from a UC Irvine professor -- published in Al Jazeera. 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.