EFF Looks At How Blasphemy Laws Have Stifled Speech in 2012 278
As part of their 2012 in review series, the EFF takes a look at how blasphemy laws have chilled online speech this year. A "dishonorable mention" goes to YouTube this year: "A dishonorable mention goes to YouTube, which blocked access to the controversial 'Innocence of Muslims' video in Egypt and Libya without government prompting. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, a group based in Egypt, condemned YouTube's decision."
I don't think it should be blasphemy (Score:5, Funny)
All I said was that this piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah!
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Re:I don't think it should be blasphemy (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody is to throw a rock until I blow this whistle... Even if someone says "Jehovah"
Not all "blasphemy" is religious in nature... (Score:4, Insightful)
... try being a right-leaning prof in a large, prestigious college (or in Hollywood), or a skeptic of $prevailingOpinionOnHighlyPoliticizedTopic in the scientific community.
Just something to keep in mind.
Re:Not all "blasphemy" is religious in nature... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not all "blasphemy" is religious in nature... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, nobody gets fired for "right leaning views". But you can find a cause to fire anybody if you look just hard enough. Academia is generally a pretty hostile environment to either social or fiscal conservatives. Most conservatives I know just don't talk about their political views in such environments at all, but sadly still have to listen to the endless left-wing chatter of their colleagues.
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Obviously, nobody gets fired for "right leaning views"
I was chairman of the communist party's local chapter you insensitive clod
Re:Not all "blasphemy" is religious in nature... (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, nobody gets fired for "right leaning views".
In the 1950's, people did get fired (and also denied positions) specifically for being communists. If you're going to claim systemic discrimination against conservatives in academia, you're going to have to show consequences at least as severe as that.
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Juan Williams did. And he isn't right wing, just one of his views was, and that was enough. No tolerance from the tolerance crowd, we call that irony (or hypocrisy)
Re:Not all "blasphemy" is religious in nature... (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew a lot of Communists (big "C") and communists (little "c") in the late '50s and early '60s. Some of them followed the party line, and some of them didn't. Obviously the Trotskyites didn't.
For most of the Communists I knew, the question was, "When did you leave the Party?" Some of them left the Party after the Hungarian revolution, some of them left after the Czechoslovokian revolution.
They left the party because they couldn't support a government that was doing the same kind of thing that the U.S. was doing in Vietnam, Haiti, Chile, Argentina, and Iran -- overthrowing democratically elected governments, and replacing them with compliant dictators.
In other words, most of the Communists I knew had more integrity and commitment to democracy than the right-wing corporate suckups in this country.
So if you're going to talk about the Communist Party, let's open the discussion to the crimes, murders and dictatorship on both sides of the cold war. Let's bring Henry Kissinger and George W. Bush into the dock.
I think history will give credit to the American Communist Party for one great contribution to democracy: the civil rights movement.
If you believe J. Edgar Hoover, the Communist Party was responsible for training the leaders of the black civil rights movement, and showing them how to organize their movement.
Do you know who Rosa Parks was? She led the Montgomery bus boycott, which put an end to racial segregation on the Montgomery, Alabama public transportation system. Do you know who Martin Luther King is? They were trained at the Highlander Folk School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_Research_and_Education_Center [wikipedia.org] where Communists and non-Communists taught them how to develop effective strategies to attack racism, and organize the community to fight it.
Let's go back to the history that your high school may have skipped through quickly. From shortly after the Civil War, up to even 1968, black people in the South (and a lot of other places in America) weren't allowed to vote. Think about that for a second. What's wrong with Communism? They don't have free elections. Well, up to 1968, Americans weren't allowed to vote, because of the color of their skin. And according to William F. Buckley, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, that was fine, and the federal government had no business interfering with state decisions on the matter.
And of course black people were also discriminated against in education, the courts, and everywhere else. They had fucking lynchings.
Think about that. Lynching black people for trying to vote. Are you OK with that? Your right-wing heros were.
The Communist Party, for all its many failings, supported the civil rights movement. The Daily Worker sent reporters to cover the struggle, when a lot of other newspapers were ignoring it.
And in fact, the editors of the Daily Worker, and other Communists, were sent to jail for publishing newspapers and books, holding meetings and classes, organizing demonstrations -- the very activities protected by the First Amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_v._United_States#The_court.27s_decision [wikipedia.org]
People were fired, not for being Communists, but for having left the party years ago, or having associated with Communists, and refusing to testify and denounce their former friends before the House Un-American Activities Committee. And people were fired for defending Communists. Or not denouncing Communists strongly enough.
When I took my first physics course in college, my professor was teaching physics in the U.S. for the first time in many years. He had been blacklisted, and left the country till then. I didn't know that until I read his obituary in the New York Times.
So don't go crying to me about how nobody asks conservatives to dance at the faculty parties. Unlike a lot of teachers in the 1950s, you don't know what it means to be fired for your ideas.
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Obviously, nobody gets fired for "right leaning views". But you can find a cause to fire anybody if you look just hard enough. Academia is generally a pretty hostile environment to either social or fiscal conservatives. Most conservatives I know just don't talk about their political views in such environments at all, but sadly still have to listen to the endless left-wing chatter of their colleagues.
I'm still not seeing any examples. Unfortunately, all of this comes across as playing the victim, much like all the conservative pundits go on about how there's a war on Christmas every year, despite all the decorated trees, colored lights, and light-up santas all over the place.
Point out even one example of someone who was severely and provably impacted as a result of right-leaning views. If it's such a big problem that it's worth drawing a parallel to the blasphemy laws in other countries, there should
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Yeah, or throwing rocks at old people. What's with all these totally arbitrary sensitivities, right?
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Or simply try being a right-winger surrounded by smart people, anywhere. It's rough.
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"a skeptic of $prevailingOpinionOnHighlyPoliticizedTopic in the scientific community."
You are going to have to get used to the idea that evolution is supported by evidence and that the Earth really is billions of years old.
Sorry
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Not weighing in one way or the other, but just pointing out that there is a difference between global warming and AGW (human-caused global warming). One can believe that the first is happening, without believing that humanity is the leading contributor (as the second implies). There are potentially other factors at play as well.
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Don't Hide Behind "Blasphemy" (Score:4, Insightful)
Using the term "Blasphemy" serves to moderate what is truly an abomination: the fanatical intolerance of Muslims for anything that even smacks of an insult to the so-called prophet and they outrageous response that ultimately ends up getting people killed. Ironically, the people getting killed are usually Muslims.
Re:Don't Hide Behind "Blasphemy" (Score:5, Insightful)
There are 2 reasons I can see for the EFF using the more general term:
1. One of the winners was Greece, going after someone who was satirizing a Greek Orthodox monk. It's not always about Muslims.
2. The organization opposes all attempts to censor online speech, not just religiously motivated attempts.
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Re:Don't Hide Behind "Blasphemy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem with most laws over here, they are based on the fear and not some sense. In some airports over here carrying a water bottle carries a torture sentence.
Every government tries to enact laws that mold its citizens to fit one particular morality, regardless of whether it's led by religion, hivemind democracy, or dictatorship. For localized groups that face communal problems, this has usually been perfectly fine. The real problem comes from applying one group's morality (and therefore its laws) to another group. The Internet lets everyone see everyone else's actions immediately, so what's perfectly fine to an irreverent filmmaker with poor taste in comedy can quickly spread as outrage among people with a stricter sense of decency.
To the people who enact and support the religious laws "over there", they make perfect sense, just as the people who support anti-terrorist or gun control laws in America think those laws make sense.
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Any point you might have made later in your post was lost by the lack of perspective demonstrated by your use of the word "torture".
You really dont understand what torture is, and you really need to get a grip on reality. What the TSA does doesnt constitute torture by any remote stretch, and youre ignorant and sheltered if you think otherwise.
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The chain of events that goes from carrying a water bottle to government-sanctioned torment in an offshore prison is little different than the blasphemy-to-death-sentence progression. A minor offense occurs, the perpetrator gets annoyed by the subjective and obtrusive enforcement, a small circus of scandal ensues, and because nobody in the enforcement agency wants to be the guy who let a lawbreaker go [schneier.com], especially one who doesn't seem repentant, the slightest infraction can result in the maximum possible sen
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Or an alarming number of terrorist christians who want to attack a secular government for not promoting their particular superstition.
Have you tried to talk to a christian about the fact the devil is a christian and therefore only christian can be devil worshiper, as most other religions which understands that we cannot judge, much less u
Flag Dessication Laws (Score:4, Funny)
We should, though. Nothing worse than a dry flag, I say.
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And all-knowing and omnibenevolent, too! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, infinitely powerful God apparently needs humans to kill off his political enemies. Censoring them ain't no thang.
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Well, infinitely powerful God apparently needs humans to kill off his political enemies. Censoring them ain't no thang.
I guess that's why they call their God omnimpotent, or something like that. Whatever that means.
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To stay on topic, I think that he is omnipotent. But he is also very old, so probably he just doesn't know how to write an email to the rascals at Google. Or he is just slightly less of an idiot than his followers and has a more humorous and positive outlook on eternal life.
Hmm (Score:2)
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Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because Google can do what it wants doesn't mean it is above criticism for its actions. Any racist shitbag can spew whatever racist nonsense they want. At the same time, I can call them out as a racist shitbag all I want.
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but they do have the right to tell you get your own soap box if they don't like what you're saying.
Well, yes, that is exactly what I said.
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YouTube isn't exercising a "right to say thinks" of their own. They are simply providing infrastructure that allows others to do so. Just like the phone company isn't responsible for the content of the conversations they carry.
YouTube should be allowed to determine what it is saying on its network
That's a slippery slope. Once YouTube or any other content host begins exercising editorial control, they could be held liable for failing to do so. And then if they let something slip by that offends one group, that group will sue for blasphemy or some other form of imagined discrim
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How are they going to 'be held liable'? Unless there is some law that says otherwise (there isn't) they can decide what they will and won't host. They have been doing just that since their inception (find a lot of porn on YouTube?).
If someone is going to sue YouTube for blasphemy, they are going to do that regardless of what OTHER content YouTube hosts or doesn't host.
And you can't (successfully) sue someone for 'imagined discrimination'. If you are going to sue for discrimination it has to be about some
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Huh? Content hosts have had their own policies over what they deem acceptable and have exercised that control since their inception. There is no risk here of opening themselves up to trouble. You have no right to say whatever you want to say on their private infrastructure. They could decide to censor any and all religious talk on the site and there's not a damn thing anyone could do about it from a legal standpoint.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't, but I and the EFF can use their free speech rights to criticize them.
The Tragic decline of Apathy and Moderation (Score:3)
It isn't about religion, but the decline in Moderate thinking.
With the internet people in general get caught up in a competition on who is the best in their group.
I don't have the citation and it has been a few years (and I am too lazy to look it up for a slashdot post), but there was a study that shows the stricter groups (Religions, Parties...) have a better retention and growth rate then the groups that are a bit more moderate.
So a Religion that says you are going to Hell unless you follow these commandments are more popular and tend to last longer than a religion that states if you are good of heart than you will be saved.
The same thing is happening with political parties, Parties are creating stricter guidelines to say what it means to be in the party. The difference between a republican and democrat isn't as simple as Small Local Governments vs. Large Centralized government. But to an array of policies often contradictory to each other that define the groups stances.
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there was a study that shows the stricter groups (Religions, Parties...) have a better retention and growth rate then the groups that are a bit more moderate.
Then why are the "fire and brimstone" Christian denominations shrinking while the "Jesus died to pay for your sins" nondenominational Christian churches thriving and growing?
Sorry, but the citction you're too lozy to look up is completely necessary in light of the facts.
Free Speech, Privacy, IP & Slander (Score:4, Interesting)
What interests me is the tensions which exists between Free Speech, Privacy, Intellectual Property and Slander. There are Non-Trivial Tradeoffs involved, making this a domain where opinions are more divergent and definitions far trickier to formulate. Attacking an Idea or an Institution is quite a different story than attacking a Person.
Saving lives (Score:4, Interesting)
Youtube's blocking of that video was an effort to save lives. I'm not convinced that the production of the "Innocence of Muslims" wasn't intended to have the effect it had. Perhaps as a people those who are murderously offended by such things need to grow up and get a thicker skin. I'll grant that. But any words, religiously themed or not, which are intended to offend are reprehensible. And I applaud Youtube for taking steps to mitigate the disaster that video initiated.
Beyond this, so many people (Americans especially) have this "I may not like what you say, but I'll die to defend your right to say it" attitude that sounds good on the surface, but which denies a basic fact, which is that words which are intended to be hateful do hurt. There is no place for any action which is intended to harm, whether that action is picking up a stick or a pen. There is a difference between an unpopular idea expressed in good faith, and one intended to offend. And while differentiating may be difficult, in an age of instant global communications, at least Youtube stood up and tried. They made a call with what they will allow on a network they own. No one should have gotten murderously angry over this video, but the fact is some people did. And you may not like suppressing ideas, but there may be some people alive today who wouldn't be if that video wasn't turned off for a time. Which of those people is the EFF going to tell shouldn't be alive today?
Re:Saving lives (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have the right to not be offended.
No, it's rewarding intolerance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "saving lives" it's rewarding intolerance by showing sensitivity to intolerance. It also creates a precedence that says that you recognize their intolerance and will react affirmatively to it again in the future, guaranteeing another intolerant reaction.
Is it wrong to purposefully offend someone? Sure, that's Ethics 101.
But Ethics 201 asks more questions about what intent means and what it means to be offended and how far you can go to react to that offense.
By most civilized standards, rioting and killing people in response to a video is also unacceptable.
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Ding ding. This is exactly it. YouTube's knee-jerk reaction and everyone condemning the video openly just affirms that these radical groups are going to keep doing what they do because it works.
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which is that words which are intended to be hateful do hurt
NONSENSE. You sound like the biggest douche on the planet with that statement. When I was coming up it was "sticks and stones", now its douchebags like you with your "fluff is the new real" crap. Ya feel hurt now, little boy? I suppose you do. I guess that means you have every right to lob a bomb my way. I have NO USE for you and your ilk, you immature little fuck. I'll call ONE MAN who has more substance and fibre in his body my friend before I take 100 of you "words hurt" buggars as acquaintances.
"Words
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I didn't say you get to use violence as a remedy, I'm saying that the reality is that people were using violence as a remedy and that Youtube did the correct thing. It's fine for some airy-fairy rights-obsessed intellectual in the EFF to say that all censorship is wrong, but there were real people with real guns at peoples heads. Which innocent are you willing to sacrifice for the ideal of never taking a video off of Youtube? A video made with the intention to inflame hatred.
I'll tell you what, hero...
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I do not know what your intention were in writing the above post. Maybe you wrote it purely for own reasons to blow off some steam or you felt that someone was wrong on the internet [xkcd.com]. But if you also want to influence other people, politeness is much, much, much more effective than insulting them. And to other people not target for the insult you risk appearing childish by calling the other person douchebag etc. So I kindly ask you to consider being more polite. Not because I felt insult
Muslims always want an excuse to be "offended" (Score:2)
No amount of appeasement will ever satisfy them. If it isn't a silly video, it's a silly cartoon, or "santanic passages" or whatever.
Kill the infidels where ever you find them, right?
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But any words, religiously themed or not, which are intended to offend are reprehensible. And I applaud Youtube for taking steps to mitigate the disaster that video initiated.
While I agree that setting out to deliberately offend people for no good reason isn't normally a good thing, the idea that deliberately offending people is automatically reprehensible is unrealistic idiocy. If someone claims that it's fine for a father to rape his own daughter, I'm not going to mince words in describing what he is.
There is a difference between an unpopular idea expressed in good faith, and one intended to offend. And while differentiating may be difficult
That's kind of academic unless we can be certain that these Islamic nutjobs will notice that differentiation. Even today you'll find more conservative Christians who'd rather see
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Youtube's blocking of that video was an effort to save lives. I'm not convinced that the production of the "Innocence of Muslims" wasn't intended to have the effect it had. Perhaps as a people those who are murderously offended by such things need to grow up and get a thicker skin. I'll grant that. But any words, religiously themed or not, which are intended to offend are reprehensible. And I applaud Youtube for taking steps to mitigate the disaster that video initiated.
Yes it is a great day when murderers can get someone censored merely by claiming the speech as the excuse for killing someone. Lets keep appeasing these people since if we all cower in fear they will never kill anyone again. *rolls eyes*
The future is now! (Score:2)
Wot? (Score:5, Funny)
Blasphemy is for wimps. Real men use heresy or apostasy to distinguish themselves from the common infidel.
Keep pushing. Religion is brittle. (Score:5, Interesting)
The nuttier religions may be about to crack. In the US, the number of people reporting "no religion" has doubled in the past decade. [pewforum.org] There are now more than twice as many atheists and agnostics (4%) in the US as Jews (1.7%). "Unaffiliated" is at 16.1%. Islam only has 0.6% market share in the US, and Mormonism is at 1.7%. Total US "Christian" is at 78%, but that's self-reported. The number of people who say they go to church is about twice the number churches report showing up.
Some religions need a high level of coercion to maintain market share. For most of the period since the decline of the Roman Empire, Catholicism was the worst offender. It took several wars in Europe to overthrow that tyranny. Today, militant Islam (and its mirror image, ultra-orthodox Judaism) struggle to keep their members in line and coerce their children into their grip.
That isn't about religion. It's about power. Political power. The religions that fear "blasphemy", demand obedience, and want theocracy are political organizations. They should be treated as such. They have no moral right to demand that they not be criticized. Indeed, citizens have a duty to point out their failings and fight their excesses.
So keep that "blasphemy" going out. Religious leaders, not their followers, should be afraid. (And up the production value; "Innocence of Muslims" was ineptly executed. Read "Florence of Arabia" [amazon.com] for what's needed.)
History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. - Jefferson
YouTube is a business (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A real shame (Score:5, Insightful)
that is not why anyone got killed. the problem was between the left ear and the right ear of religious whackjob killers. they will kill again for no reason
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the problem was between the left ear and the right ear of religious whackjob killers. they will kill again for no reason
So, umm, what valid reason did these guys have then? [wikipedia.org]
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Neither group had an acceptable reason (either may have been valid).
They appear to have been motivated by the delusions of religion and ideology, respectively.
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I think I see Godwin lurking just around the corner.
Re:A real shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying something for fear of some group of asshats using it as an excuse to kill people is being a coward. These people would have killed even if the film hadn't been made. It was nothing but a convenient excuse.
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Try walking into a bar and deliberately insulting somebody's religion... See how long before the owner throws YOU out for running your mouth.
There are lots of cases where management will shut you up because the topic of discussion causes fights. In the case of that video, it was created to be insulting... No point to leave the discussion where it can be used to start fights by either side. It's basic civility not censoring at that point.
Re:A real shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, they didn't kill because of the film. Almost none of the people outraged by it had even seen it. It was used as an excuse for why they were killing people. Nothing more. If the film had not existed something else would have been used as the excuse. You're ether incredibly naive or stupid to think that stifling free speech in some misguided attempt to appease a bunch murderers is the right thing to do.
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What? Lets talk about the Danish caricatures. The problems was not them, but a long thread of events that created friction, and when the caricature came around, the friction busted a bubble. IoM has the exact same event pattern: If was just the last event in a long line.
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Irresponsible, maybe. Antisocial? Only if the killers were the majority. They are not.
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No one is helping them do anything. They are making up flinsy, post hoc justifications being murderers. Stop being an idiot thinking that this film gad anything to do with their actions. It didn't. It was merely a red herring.
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So in a world where there are people that will kill to protect slavery, slavery should never be criticized?
Being willing to kill to prevent something from being said does not make it wrong to say that thing. It just makes you wrong.
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So in a world where there are people that will kill to protect slavery, slavery should never be criticized? Being willing to kill to prevent something from being said does not make it wrong to say that thing. It just makes you wrong.
Nobody is arguing that kiling people who say a prohibited thing is wrong. Another wrong thing is a presumption that it is OK to push unstable people over the edge into violence rather than pulling them back.
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Well it depends on what you do to push them. Now I agree that the Innocence of Muslims was a piece of crap, likely designed to do exactly what happened (although I might be giving the author too much credit, he could just be an idiotic asshole rather then just an asshole), and the movie should not have been made.
But should Youtube have censored one asshole to appease another? Once they started doing that, where would they stop? When the only content available was selected readings from the Koran?
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This film didn't push them to do anything. The "outrage" over the film wad nothing more than a post hoc excuse to try to deflect that the were murdering people.
Re:A real shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Tolerating the existence of "people ready to kill over an insult" is the problem, not the insult itself. But how do you get rid of those people without becoming the person that can't be tolerated? That's why people like Dawkins come in and say things like "every one of you who tolerates the belief in a supernatural power makes this problem worse, because these beliefs are always going to be mutually incompatible." His point is to start from the viewpoint that everyone who believes in the supernatural is defective, and should be fixed instead of tolerated.
So I'd say you're exactly half right. Insulting people's religions is antisocial. But if it's part of an attempt to get rid of it, it's not irresponsible.
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It's necessary to first do away with the notion that it is acceptable to kill (or even hurt) someone over a religious dispute, however serious, before you can make inroads on belief itself. Once that goal is achieved, the urgency of the latter seems a great deal lessened.
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But how do you get rid of those people without becoming the person that can't be tolerated?
That's an age old dilemma that was answered by Aristotle. "We make war, so that we may have peace". You have to become them for a while. But the thing is, they can never become you.
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The people ready to kill over an insult need to be removed from society or chill out. It is an irresponsible and antisocial act to allow people to kill over hurt feeling. I find someone saying fuck jehova offensive but it doesn't make me mad and want to kill someone.
How do you propose to prevent people from hurting each other over bullshit? Really, what's your practical solution that isn't worse than the disease?
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Other than educating them to not be asshats, not much. That doesn't justify censorship just because someone will use someone's speech, movie, song, etc. as an excuse for murdering someone.
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Exactly, finally somebody gets it. When something posted on YouTube starts causing riots, they should thak that off. It was "free speech" only in the sense that I can yell insults at you from across the street.. When people start fights over the speech it's time to shit them up. Mostly, they blocked the video from countries where they knew it would just cause trouble... Where it was INTENDED to cause trouble.
YouTube was trying to be responsible.. ID guess they got a polite call from the US State department
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For a moment there, I thought you were talking about Salman Rushdie, but then I realized that he just wrote an unfunny 'let's stir some shit up' book, not a movie.
My bad.
So wait, which one do you think deserved to die again?
(I think I still have Satanic Verses in the bookshelf somewhere, just that I can't be arsed to crack it open.)
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- The KKK would wish for the enormous numbers of followers (hundreds of millions world wide)
- The KKK would wish that democratic leaders would just bend over and appease them
- The KKK was a 'secret' society, the scimitar yielding hatebeards are in the open (without caps that is)
- The KKK was. (yes there are a hand full left, but that hardly counts does it?)
- The KKK were never demanding respect and a 'different treatment' to their wishes as the Mohammedans are. (le
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Even in muslim countries, islamists were more or less a secret society too until 30 or 20 years ago. They were only recently permitted to crawl out of their holes (where they should have remained).
As are the islamists: a political group hellbent on shoving their twisted worldview down other peoples' throats (be they regular muslims or not).
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The KKK, in its heyday:
- had millions of members constituting a significant percentage of the white population in the areas they were active, and a larger number of sympathizers
- had prominent elected officials in its ranks, and was involved in killing officials that did not support them
- were about as secret as your church membership about who was in it
- were firm believers in Protestant Christianity (their most important symbols were crosses in various forms)
- committed atrocities with the full support of
Re:Good luck on this one. (Score:5, Funny)
Considering the UN's liberal agenda of stifling free speech, and the US submitting to trampling over its constitution, we are facing another step closer to an Orwellian dystopia. See where the slippery slopes lead?
That word doesn't mean what you think it does. I suspect you use it often.
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My suspicion is that in the universe that Fox News and right-wing radio inhabit, the words "communist", "socialist", "liberal", "fascist", "Democrat", and "evil" are all synonyms. Closely related terms include "Muslim" and "moocher".
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Considering the UN's liberal agenda of stifling free speech
I see a contradiction in terms there. Either you're stifling free speech, or you're liberal. You know, that's the word that is cognate to "liberty".
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American definition of Liberal has nothing to do with liberty. You are thinking of Libertarians.
The term 'Classical Liberal' is commonly used to separate to distinguish from 'Progressives' (more or less a synonym for 'Liberal').
Of course you already knew this. I'm posting in against the small chance that you were confusing someone.
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Of course you already knew this.
I have no idea what the American definition of "liberals" is, since I experience serious cognitive dissonance whenever they use it. The only thing I've been able to work out is that they use regularly it in contexts in which I'd use the word "douchebags". Of course, that doesn't mean that it's just a generic synonym for just that, with no other meaning attached. So, no, I didn't.
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They hate it, they would kill for it, yet they don't want to see it banned or blocked.
Are they fucking mental challenged? WTF with these people, eh?
Anyone who believes that God chose a pedophile warlord as his prophet, and that his message of "peace" is to kill unbelievers is totally mentally screwed up
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Stop capitalizing god, is shows unnecessary respect for absurd superstitions.
Bilbo Baggins is also a fictional character. Does that mean we should stop capitalizing his name? Of course not, because capitalizing a name has nothing to do with whether or not the noun being referenced is real. Though you may have a point when it comes to He, Him, and all the other pronouns that people capitalize when referring to their particular flavor of God. However, such capitalization isn't always about showing respect.
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