Yes.

Or in your words, "Self Censorship".

So it's not so much yelling fire in a crowded theater that you're opposed to, it's ever using the word "fire" for any reason in any time or place whatsoever.

Come on man.

That's not a very accurate metaphor. Western cultural values and middle eastern cultural values don't come from the same "small town".

Bingo.

That's the reason we shouldn't reference "western culture" morals when dealing with "extremist middle eastern" morals.

Well, I'm glad we can agree that it was a weak metaphor.

Like I said, anybody willing to kill over a cartoon needs to be called out on their stupidity. And comedy is some of the most effective commentary.

true, but since we're talking about france i think "western culture" morals should apply.

edit - this is why i kept facetiously saying you guys should be deported to iraq. you seem to want "extremist middle eastern" morals to apply, well there are places like that for you already.

Again, come on man. So f*cking lame to post that.

well, that's just how it seems to me. you support censorship to appease these terrorists, that is basically allowing their rules to apply to us imo.

i'm not saying any of this to insult you chula. it's just the way i see it.

JWB. You are standing in front of an insane violent person. You spit in their face. They tell you not to do it again, "or else".

Do you spit again?

Yes = brave?

No = prudent.

We can't make the insane violent person go away anytime soon. It's how we deal with them in the meantime that matters.

you can keep coming up with these funny scenarios all you like but at the end of the day, what message does it send if when these people decide to get violent over cartoons, we pull the cartoons? can you not see how that is validating their violent tactics?

Dude, of course. The Islamic Terrorists SUCK. F*CK THEM. They should burn in hell.

Hey, they didn't go away. Crap.

That's just an ignorant way to approach diplomacy tbh. There is nothing wrong with showing a little courtesy to people you disagree with, it doesn't matter how small or large the scale or level of disagreement. You sound like Lord Lare in the swastika thread.

Ever heard the phrase, "cutting off your nose to spite your face?"

you're not addressing my point. if you make violence an effective tactic for obtaining censorship, how exactly are you not encouraging violence every time a certain party desires censorship?

You are just not getting it. Ideals are awesome. F*cking A!!! Good for you.

But are you willing to spit in the dudes face because of them?

I don't really see how its affecting censorship tbh. Is the French government changing it's policies? It was a sh*tty incident that will blow over and things will go back to normal. You're just blowing it out of proportion.

If you wanna complain about something like this why don't you start standing up for all the muslim americans who are now being targeted by our government ever since 9/11? Now that's some bullsh*t, not to mention all the policy changes that happened afterward.

@ chula

yea.... if you mean freedom of speech? absolutely. caving in is the worst thing you could do at this point.

that's cause you're thinking about policy. this isn't about policy. we aren't dealing with policy. we're dealing with a group of people who say insult our religion and there will be terror. it's not the first time this has happened and it won't be the last.

edit

the **** does that have to do with this topic?

It's also not truly affecting anything. It's a back and fourth battle between people who think like you.

"I'm not backing down to these terrorists it's my right to do this"
"I'm not backing down to these cartoonists they are insulting our religion"

Granted one may be more extreme than the other but the cultures are completely different, and it's because of people with your mindset that this is such an impossible situation to resolve. Definition of insanity applies perfectly here.

Edit: It doesn't relate to the thread per say, it's just that when it comes to this topic of people losing certain rights/privileges there are way worse scenarios currently in existence and you're making a fuss over something minuscule in comparison.

man i gotta go to bed but i will be @ you crackers tomorrow

oh rly

so i guess a bunch of people shot up & bombed = not effecting anything

good to know

and good night sweet prince

i will son you in the morn

edit - er make that tomorrow night cause i have work lol

I thought this discussion was about censorship, that's what I was referring to when I said not affecting anything.

He meant self-censorship.

lol, i was pretty intoxicated at that point, so my bad for losing track

but yea. i could see it not changing anything in terms of motivation to commit terrorism, if i'm being perfectly honest, but i could also see backing down to appease them changing very little as well since once these things get rolling they tend to gain a momentum of their own. that's all a bit of guesswork. but in all honesty, i'd much rather at least we didn't compromise our own ideals in the process of dealing with these thugs. i honestly don't see the point in us even having free speech if we are willing to squelch it every time a group of people start threatening us with violence.

I just prioritize the value human life over free speech. Rather we like it or not, in a situation like this we have no choice but choosing between the two.

Ya, I wonder if the wife of the editor of Charlie pleaded with him to stop doing what he was doing because she feared for him.

That is funny, isn't it? People who attacked me for saying people should be allowed to display swastikas in public and people opposed to it should grow up and get over it are some of the same ones here saying we should be allowed to say anything we want about Muslims and they have no right to get so pissed off about it. :bonkhead:

Moral of the story:

it is very easy to get all noble and shout "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION" when your expression is offending someone else. When their expression offends you, it's amazing how fast freedom of expression flies out the window. And if anyone calls you on your hypocrisy just get all witty and shout, "SLIPPERY SLOPE!!!! SLIPPERY SLOPE!!!!!"

That is all.

From what I saw, nobody "attacked" you. They told you that swastikas were offensive to people, and that displaying them was a bad decision. They weren't trying to start some conspiracy to steal your freedom of expression away, and they weren't actually stopping you from doing it, they were just trying to comment on what they thought was a ignorant action. See, when people have freedom of expression, they're allowed to do this thing called "voicing their opinions", and it works both ways. Trying to voice your opinions while condemning anyone who disagrees with you as some sort of freedom thief is just childish and hypocritical. The fact that your second post actually calls out your opponents for being hypocrites, when all they were doing is what you are currently doing now, makes it one of the most blind things I've ever seen someone write on this website. How could you write that with a straight face? It's comparable to someone shouting "I hate people who swear! They're really ****ty people!"

Here's what you need to understand: Your threads don't keep getting shut down because people are trying to restrict you from expressing yourself. They get shut down because you refuse to follow the rules of the website (like in the atomic bomb thread, when you kept putting up graphic pictures after they were taken down), and because you're incredibly rude to anyone who even slightly disagrees with you (like in the case of the swastika thread).

actually i agree that people who physically attack people over swastikas should be held accountable for that ****. don't recall arguing with you over that.

ah. i like free speech better than human life personally. life isn't worth living if you stand for nothing. that's why i ultimately respect the extremists more than i do you appeasers.

i enjoyed this movie btw, and i wouldn't have seen it if it weren't for this argument

free speech ftw

You do know that you can multi-quote everything into one post?

Something that I find quite scary is that these terrorist attacks as well as other actions by extremists can serve to further alienate muslims in the western world. Take the words "allahu akhbar" (or how it is spelled), it simply means something relatively harmless like "God is great", but I dare say most westerners today associate it with something a little more sinister, like a terrorist battle cry. The actions of these terrorists is creating more and more such associations and if it goes far enough, you can end up in a situation where islamism and the harmless things that relate to the religion remind us of fear, violence and terror. When that happens, it ultimately doesn't matter if you're a rational being - as long as you're a human being with normal feelings, these associations can still be created and will create emotional responses.

All in all, it leads to the alienation of muslims in the western world. Non-muslims will get more suspicious, more negative towards islam - the conflict of religions and culture will escalate. This conflict, and a general environment of more alienation of muslims, may in turn promote more radicalization to extremist movements on either side.

This may be just the kind of world that such terrorists want to create. A world where it's muslims against western world culture. It is also the kind of world that western right wing political extremists want.

Such a world is incredibly dangerous and all of us should try to prevent that from becoming reality.

I've read, that there were a lot of muslims protesting against the terrorist attacks.
Now I don't watch TV, so I might be mistaken there, but it seems that this doesn't really get reported, unlike the violent protests against the caricatures, which creates quite an unbalanced and biased view of muslim people. If that is the case, the media should really change the way they deal with this. People sadly generally focus on their petty differences instead of their deeper similarities and this doesn't help at all.

i agree with the overall message of your post, just want to point out that islamism refers specifically to the political ideology of ruling through islam. i don't consider this to be harmless, personally.

i agree overall that the main problem with this kind of incident is that it drives a wedge further and further between our cultures/civilizations. there are plenty of muslims who would condemn the terrorism and would still be offended at the cartoons. i would agree with them. the cartoons might be insensitive and they have a right to attack it with words.

the media is in the business of making money, not mending cultural strife

No real point to this post, but I've been watching/listening to a lot of stuff in relation to this/Paris etc and have a load of stuff I want to post in this thread, have a listen to this.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c03aASlesPM

It's funny as fuck :D. Even Nihal was going at her.

For anyone who can access the BBC iPlayer, Panorama did a good program - BBC iPlayer - Panorama - The Battle for British Islam

Can probably torrent it if that doesn't work.

Duh. Still ****ty though.
Also hoped someone would say muslim protesters against terrorism were at least somewhat covered. Would be nice to hear that.

For someone who nitpicks, you don't seem to read my post thoroughly. Did my use of the word "islamism" indicate that I do not know its meaning? Did I write that islamism is harmless?

These are rhetorical questions.