Originally Posted by playwrite

There are over 1.6 billion Muslims in this world and you want to F all of them.

Yea, that makes you really special.

I think there are more christians. Will that be your opinion when the bible thumpers get rilled up over something?

It is amazing how much power we let them have over us.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

I think there are more christians. Will that be your opinion when the bible thumpers get rilled up over something?

Have you been watching his exchanges with JPT?

I'd note that there is a big difference between a 'christian' and a 'bible thumper.' Too many of the bible thumpers are defined by their hatred or bigotry rather than their love of God or their fellow man. The recent spiral of violence and rhetoric belongs to religious extremists on both sides, and power hungry politicians eager to exploit the religious extremist view.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Have you been watching his exchanges with JPT?

I'd note that there is a big difference between a 'christian' and a 'bible thumper.' Too many of the bible thumpers are defined by their hatred or bigotry rather than their love of God or their fellow man. The recent spiral of violence and rhetoric belongs to religious extremists on both sides, and power hungry politicians eager to exploit the religious extremist view.

Man, I'm an atheist. But my folks a Roman Catholic.

Violence and rhetoric on both sides? Where have the bible thumpers been using violence? That is the problem. Equating people making a film with people who kill and spending more time wringing your hands over the first.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

The next time some guy puts out a movie that offends the bible thumpers, and the the bible thumpers go on a rampage, will that be your story?

What the hell is wrong with you?

This isn’t some philosophical/ideological video game. This is real. Actual people, our people get killed and maimed overt this stupidity.

Do we have military or embassy personnel in any Christian country with terrorist groups looking for any excuse/cover to put an RPG into their chest cavity?

Our military and embassy personnel work every day to defend the precious gift of your freedom of speech, why would you endorse using that needlessly to F them over?

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

...
It is amazing how much power we let them have over us.

Yea, that is exactly al Queda and other Islamic terrorist groups' strategy. Use your easily-triggered bigotry to keep literaly billions of people pissed off at each other with their brains turned off. They thank you for playing.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Yea, that is exactly al Queda and other Islamic terrorist groups' strategy. Use your easily-triggered bigotry to keep literaly billions of people pissed off at each other with their brains turned off. They thank you for playing.

My easily triggered bigotry? I'm not a christian, jerk.

Anyone who thinks that movie is anything more than an excuse to kill is stupid. Either that, or who is that that has teh easily triggered bigotry, man?

Originally Posted by playwrite

What the hell is wrong with you?

This isn’t some philosophical/ideological video game. This is real. Actual people, our people get killed and maimed overt this stupidity.

Do we have military or embassy personnel in any Christian country with terrorist groups looking for any excuse/cover to put an RPG into their chest cavity?

Our military and embassy personnel work every day to defend the precious gift of your freedom of speech, why would you endorse using that needlessly to F them over?

So what you aere sayiong is that if christians were easily hair triggered enough that they'd kill over antything, that we'd have to make movies the way they want to. Are you crazy?

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

F--- them, their hearts and minds are already dedicated to Islam and Islamic violence.

It is extremely unwise to attack Islam.

In the last Crisis one powerful nation dedicated much of its effort into eliminating a religious tradition with about a thousandth of as many people. In view of what happened to many of those who participated in that vile enterprise -- think of Adolf Eichmann if you did not yet get the message, it would seem a bad idea to do to Islam what you consider inappropriate.

Muslims of all political shades -- include those who admire America for its best -- will fight a genocidal America, much as Jews who admired German culture at its best turned against the Nazis. America would lose a genocidal war against Islam, and perpetrators of genocide would find that the Muslims who think Jefferson and Lincoln relevant to their political values would be the ones to judge perpetrators harshly.

Religious bigotry is for fools who bring shame and ruin to their countries. Nobody needs to love Islam to respect believers in Islam.

The murder of an American diplomat has been widely condemned in Libya, including by the weak-but-official government. Murder is an abomination in Islam.

By the way -- would you rather be in Dearborn or in southwestern Detroit?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

It is extremely unwise to attack Islam.

In the last Crisis one powerful nation dedicated much of its effort into eliminating a religious tradition with about a thousandth of as many people. In view of what happened to many of those who participated in that vile enterprise -- think of Adolf Eichmann if you did not yet get the message, it would seem a bad idea to do to Islam what you consider inappropriate.

Muslims of all political shades -- include those who admire America for its best -- will fight a genocidal America, much as Jews who admired German culture at its best turned against the Nazis. America would lose a genocidal war against Islam, and perpetrators of genocide would find that the Muslims who think Jefferson and Lincoln relevant to their political values would be the ones to judge perpetrators harshly.

Religious bigotry is for fools who bring shame and ruin to their countries. Nobody needs to love Islam to respect believers in Islam.

The murder of an American diplomat has been widely condemned in Libya, including by the weak-but-official government. Murder is an abomination in Islam.

By the way -- would you rather be in Dearborn or in southwestern Detroit?

I guess it is unwise to say anything about islam because they have a long track record of murdering anyone who disagrees with them. Is that really a tenable position for us to be in?

Murder is an abomination in islam? Bull$hit. It isn't murder to kill a disobedient infidel, which includes me and you, man.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

My easily triggered bigotry? I'm not a christian, jerk.

Anyone who thinks that movie is anything more than an excuse to kill is stupid. Either that, or who is that that has teh easily triggered bigotry, man?

I'm sure this comes as a surprise to you but there are terrorist groups in the Middle East that hate us. Yea, they got the bigotry, big time, but unlike you or Weave, they've got a shit load of AK47s and grenade launchers and they not only want to us them on our people, they know how to use them on our people.

However, in the ME, particularly in Libya, maybe now less so in Egypt, there are many more people who like the US or at least tolerate us. The crazies with the guns can't just go and shoot up our embassy and then dance around in the streets - more than likely the locals will kill them. So, they need the excuse/cover to attack us in a way that not only helps protect them but more importantly gives the appearance that they somehow represent the general viewpoint and willingness-to-kill-us of the larger population. It's about hearts and minds.

They are also counting on the instantaneous stupid and bigoted reaction on our side that this is exemplary of 1.6 billion Muslims just dying to do what a relatively few terrorist were able to do. And they very please to have us get caught up in some sanctimonious comparison of our freedom of speech to the obvious backwardness of those 1.6 billion Muslims. Yea, that will win hearts and minds.

This is not about freedom of speech; this is about not being so utterly stupid in a very hostile world. It’s about growing up.

Originally Posted by B Butler

It is natural for you to believe this. Your world view is class and economic driven. Many in the Middle East are not idealistic socialists. They are deeply religious. Like many, you have difficulties stretching your thoughts to embrace other world views.

No, he's right. Religion might provide the identity that unites, as well as courage in the belief that one will be taken care of if killed/imprisoned for doing "righteous" acts, but it is the foreign policy that provides the motive.

There is no better way to understand the enemy than to listen to how it recruits new suicide bombers to kill us. In July [2006], Al Qaeda released its most recent recruitment video, encouraging Muslims to carry out new attacks similar to the July 7 bombings in London last year. The video is stunning in its absence of religious declamation.The first speaker is Shehzad Tanweer, one of the actual 7/7 bombers, who explains that he intended to punish "the non-Muslims of Britain" because "your government has openly supported the genocide of over 15,000 innocent Muslims in Fallujah," the site of a major Western military operation in Iraq in 2004.

The second speaker is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second in command, who reiterates that "Shehzad's motivation was the repression which the British are perpetrating in Iraq" and other Muslim countries.

Finally, the main event: Adam Gadahn, a 28-year old American citizen, born of Jewish and Christian parents, who converted to Islam as a teenager and has lived with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1998. Gadahn is the new voice -- and new weapon -- of Al Qaeda. In his long recruitment appeal, he never mentions 72 virgins or the benefits Islamic martyrs receive in Heaven. Instead, he speaks to an earthly motive: revenge for Western military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I know [Western combat forces] killed and maimed civilians in their strikes because I've seen it with my own eyes ... I've carried the victims in my arms: women, children, toddlers, babies in their mother's wombs," Gadahn says. "When we bomb their cities and civilians like they bomb ours, or destroy their infrastructure and means of transportation like they destroy ours ... they should blame no one but themselves. Because they are the ones who started this dirty war and they are the ones who will end it ... by pulling out of our region and keeping their hands out of our affairs."

To make sense of Al Qaeda's campaign against the United States and its allies, I compiled data on the 71 terrorists who took their own lives carrying out attacks sponsored by Osama bin Laden's network between 1995 and 2004. These men are drawn from two groups: those who feel harmed and humiliated by foreign military occupation, and those who identify with the plight of a kindred ethnic group under foreign occupation.

I promise you that a single innocent killed in a single drone strike makes us more enemies than all of the inflammatory speech of the last hundred years.

That many left-wing boomers would use this is as an excuse to prosecute a case against free speech is just sad, pathetic, and more than a little bit scary. What is it with blaming freedom every time someone gets hurt?

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

So what you aere sayiong is that if christians were easily hair triggered enough that they'd kill over antything, that we'd have to make movies the way they want to. Are you crazy?

I've been pretty clear on this forum that I don't operate in magic pony land.

We have personnel in areas with hostile forces looking for cover to attack them.

You have the freedom of speech to provide that cover - the question is why would you?

Are you that much of a narcissist?

Being patriotic is more that wearing a flag lapel pin or pounding the table about sending some other family’s kid into harm’s way.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

]...That many left-wing boomers would use this is as an excuse to prosecute a case against free speech ...

If your talking about me, that's about the dumbest reach I've ever seen. Where am I prosecuting a case against the UNIVERSIAL RIGHT to free speech???

My case is against utter stupidity that gets other people killed while the stupids sit comfortable at home, afforded by those getting killed, and wax on about their free speech.

Originally Posted by Weave

That wasnt the argument being made. It was about freedom of speech vs "sensitivity" towards the Muslims.

And that's equally a bullshit argument, equally a call on us to be stupid.

The filmmaker has the legal right to produce that film.

That film is really, really stupid and offensive to Muslims, and should not have been produced.

Acknowledging the second of those in no way, shape or form eliminates or contradicts the first. The only conflict is a made-up, phony one presented by people wanting to use it for political purposes. In reality, no such conflict exists.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

And that's equally a bullshit argument, equally a call on us to be stupid.

The filmmaker has the legal right to produce that film.

That film is really, really stupid and offensive to Muslims, and should not have been produced.

Acknowledging the second of those in no way, shape or form eliminates or contradicts the first. The only conflict is a made-up, phony one presented by people wanting to use it for political purposes. In reality, no such conflict exists.

Well said.

Originally Posted by B Butler

It is natural for you to believe this. Your world view is class and economic driven.

It is natural for YOU to believe what I said, too. Quit pretending you're not an American, OK?

Originally Posted by playwrite

Ah, defender of the wretchedly stupid; I was wondering when you would show up.

Here's a little experiment for you.

Go to the inner city and find some young black males hanging out on a corner. Go up to them and ask them how they like being Afro-Amer but instead use the N-word. [If that particular scenario doesn't work for you, I think you can find the equivalent involving a group of White or whatever people just as easy]

Now, why would you not do that?

1. You are not extremely stupid.
2. You are not extremely bigoted.
3. You would personally get the shit beat out of you.

Now the thing about Weave is 1 and 2 would not stop him because, well, he's not like you.

The only thing that stops Weave is #3.

This is not about freedom of speech, it’s about needlessly putting other peoples' lives in danger and thinking you have the right to do that so you do it. It's about being a coward.

So Im bigoted now? Show one bigoted thing I've said here....because I haven't. You know Playwrite, it is possible to argue your points with others without attributing thier point of view to being a bigot or evil. And its also possible to do so without attacking them personally or using profanity. Im wont claim I'm perfect al the time but in that respect but I at least Im trying...and I'll admit when I've gone too far. You do this repeatedly using terms like "tea-bagger" etc. with impunity and its ridiculous.

By the way, you are arguing on a hill of sand. When most of the liberals here agree that freedom is speech should be defended and not being politcally correct, you've lost the argument. When your hero Obama agrees that there WAS NO justification for the attacks, you've lost the argument, when Hillary makes 2 speeches now saying this was not justified, you've lost the argument...

Youu seem to be a very angry person...how sad....

Originally Posted by Weave

When your hero Obama agrees that there WAS NO justification for the attacks, you've lost the argument, when Hillary makes 2 speeches now saying this was not justified, you've lost the argument

Since he isn't saying the attacks were justified, no, he hasn't.

Actually, nobody except maybe the people who pulled them off is saying the attacks were justified. And that includes people who say the film wasn't justified, either.

In some conflicts, nobody wears a white hat. Hitler and Stalin weren't fond of one another, you may recall.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Man, I'm an atheist. But my folks a Roman Catholic.

Violence and rhetoric on both sides? Where have the bible thumpers been using violence? That is the problem. Equating people making a film with people who kill and spending more time wringing your hands over the first.

The spiral of rhetoric precedes the spiral of violence. Middle Eastern cultures tend to go violent before Americans do. Yes, by your culture and world view's standards, your culture and world view is correct, and any other culture and world view is wrong.

I'm a Whig more or less. A progressive. I see a natural progression from the hunter gatherer cultural pattern to agricultural empire to industrial democracy. These transitions are difficult. The Middle East is still transitioning from an agricultural empire pattern where autocratic highly religious cultures are dominant. Middle Eastern faith based codes of morality are even further behind the times than a typical American faith based bible thumper's view.

Ideally, everyone would be focused on getting everyone fed and forming governments that will respond to the People's needs. In this less than ideal world, clerics and politicians care more about maximizing their own power and public presence than The People. Neither side of the Atlantic has a monopoly on fire eating power hungry (expletive deleted.)

Yes. Correct. You can promote your world view as being less vile than other world views. Fine. The question is whether your world view is promoting peace. If you claim that you have a basic right to do things that are known to trigger violence, there's a problem, no?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

It is natural for YOU to believe what I said, too. Quit pretending you're not an American, OK?

Not all Americans have the same world view. Not all Americans are rigidly bound to an extreme way of looking at things, are utterly incapable of seeing other points of view.

Just a lot of them.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Not all Americans have the same world view.

All Americans (or damn close to it) believe in freedom of speech. All Americans (or damned close to it) believe that some kinds of speech, although entitled to freedom, are despicable.

You are one of those who do.

Also, the fact that those two propositions (freedom of speech and the fact that some kinds of speech are despicable) are not incompatible, is NOT something that is dependent on values. It's a logically-inevitable fact that they can both be true. That either of them actually IS true is a values statement (ALBEIT ONE YOU AGREE WITH, SO QUIT THE PRETENSE, PLEASE), but that they are not in conflict is a statement of objective fact.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Not all Americans have the same world view. Not all Americans are rigidly bound to an extreme way of looking at things, are utterly incapable of seeing other points of view.

Just a lot of them.

What!?!? Did you even read the excerpts from the recruitment video? Try listening to their point of view before you go telling us what it is.

Originally Posted by Weave

So Im bigoted now? Show one bigoted thing I've said here....because I haven't. You know Playwrite, it is possible to argue your points with others without attributing thier point of view to being a bigot or evil.

Then make a clear concise statement that while you believe in the freedom of speech you condemn the use of that precious gift to spread bigotry in a way that kills those affording you that gift. Otherwise, it's a little tough for others to sort you out.

Originally Posted by Weave

And its also possible to do so without attacking them personally or using profanity. Im wont claim I'm perfect al the time but in that respect but I at least Im trying...and I'll admit when I've gone too far. You do this repeatedly using terms like "tea-bagger" etc. with impunity and its ridiculous.

Look, I've been on both sides of war and peace - actively. There's things on both sides that I liked about myself (I've even forgiven Jane Fonda) and things on both sides that, well. I rather not have listed on my gravestone. So, I can easily accept heartfelt feelings from others regardless of where they lie on that gradient and what experiences they have had.

The one thing I can't stomach is chickenhawks that put other family's kids in danger without a moment's thought or real concern. It drives me crazy. I usually disengage, but if I stay in the ring, well, you've seen a sliver.

Originally Posted by Weave

And By the way, you are arguing on a hill of sand. When most of the liberals here agree that freedom is speech should be defended and not being politcally correct, you've lost the argument. When your hero Obama agrees that there WAS NO justification for the attacks, you've lost the argument, when Hillary makes 2 speeches now saying this was not justified, you've lost the argument...

Youu seem to be a very angry person...how sad....

You obviously have no ideal what my argument is. That may be partially my fault, but it may also have something to do with you not yet having some hard knocks in life that I honestly hope that you actually never experience.

I'm moving on.

Stock market is now less than 5% from its all-time high. At least so far today.

That will make a lot of people feel good about their retirement potential.

Can't be bad for Obama. Are you better off than 4 years ago? Hell yes!

Originally Posted by playwrite

Stock market is now less than 5% from its all-time high. At least so far today.

That will make a lot of people feel good about their retirement potential.

Can't be bad for Obama. Are you better off than 4 years ago? Hell yes!

The stock market?


You are back on my ignore list.