Slashdot Mirror
Where To Find Opus On Sunday
Berkeley Breathed has a note up on his site: "Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.."
Oh my. Well, I guess I can see why the newspapers are nervous after the Danish cartoon thing with Muhammad a while back. Still, the Danes seem to have more backbone than the American newspapers, especially since Muhammad isn't depicted or even mentioned in the strip.
Opus is the descendant of what was once Bloom County. If you don't know what Bloom County was then I feel sorry for you. Missing that cartoon is like never having read Calvin & Hobbes or The Far Side. Great comics are few and far between. Usually we get left with crap like Cathy and Garfield that recycle jokes day after day.
from Berkeley or the papers, what is there to discuss except conspiracy theories and baseless accusations.
I guess it's still news... even if it's a little under cooked.
Anyone have any facts. Not Fox news or Bill O'Riley brand facts but real information?
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
you COULD have followed the link which would EVENTUALLY have led you to the comic. i really do hope you're doin' your job a little bit mor effective. i mean, it's weekend and such, so you really can waste your time doing searches.
;) )
on the other hand this is not really about a comic strip, but about religion and freedom of speech. it's about the climate of fear that's been constructed ever since 9/11. it's about the same as here. (first link i found, didn't want to waste MY time doing searches
Except that Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side are both funny.
I assume you don't read newspapers much (niether do I), but it's one of the few national newspaper comic strips (and, according to Wikipedia, made by a pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist). It looks like the most recent strip has been censored for political reasons (which should be obvious from it's content).
Opus is political and social issues satire comic. In other words, it appeals to people older than you.
The terrorists have won. I guess I'd better start praising Allah and learning how to beat my wife.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Well, Bloom County was funnier than Doonesbury..
Oh, wait.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Opus is an orphaned penguin who ends up living in a house with a lot of other misfits and weird people. He was one of the stars of "Bloom County", Berkeley Breathed's amazing cartoon strip which ran from 1980 to 1989.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2007/08/26/opus/i ndex.html
The second "censored" strip is dated next Sunday, so I guess it isn't available yet.
The shareholder is always right.
I, for one, don't welcome our Islamic overlords.
Please mod parent "over-rated" to hide it and mod this correct version up, if you wish.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
this is not really about a comic strip, but about religion and freedom of speech
Like water and oil, they don't mix.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
Hot Air suggests this is the offending comic strip. Read the full story at Hot Air.
Unselfish actions pay back better
you COULD have followed the link which would EVENTUALLY have led you to the comic.
Or they could have just linked to the comic. Because most of us are not going to bother to go looking in September for the other one.
comic
As for the censorism: I am sure Slashdot will be full of "we wouldn't censor stuff like this if it was about Christianity/etc., so why should we pander to Islam?". Now, technically that is correct - far worse material appears about Christianity than Islam; there is far more sensitivity towards Islam. However, I don't think that makes it wrong to do so. As I see it, there is a solid basis for attempting to not offend Muslims (whereas what I am about to say now is extremely offensive to them): They can't take a joke. Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else.
Some people deserve special treatment not because they are special in a privileged way, but because they are special in the 'Special Olympics' way.
should this news article be moderated as troll bait?
I don't know, I can understand the reason, and I can summarize it like this: Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
How is this news? If anything, it's the sumbitter trying to make a big deal over a newspaper declining to run a tasteless comic.
If the same newspapers refused to run a comic strip that made fun of Jews, would slashdot also post the mirror on the front page? Is there some sort of implcit or subconscious bigotry at work?
So after screwing around at Salon.com:
Today's strip is here. And all strips here.
He's the beloved author of "Programming with Ack!" and "Configuring and using thpbbt on Unix systems". Learn your roots man.
What the hell is that going to do for my Sunday hangover? I think I'll stick with aspirin, but thanks for thinking of me.
What?
Are you sure about that? I don't think I'd trust some of the more fundamental Christians not to do it.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Yeah yeah, commercial sitcom, we are above that. Sure but in that show plenty of jokes are made about jews. No problem. Other entertainment makes fun of religion as well, and apart from a few protests and boycots it just goes by. Life of Brain made fun of jesus, how many people were killed in the following riots?
In "the west" in modern times we have more or less come to an understanding that it is NOT okay to inflict your believes upon everyone else. It is also acceptable to be made fun off, even if you do not like it because freedom of speech is more important then your hurt feelings. Because sooner or later everything is going to hurt someone.
And suddenly the west finds itself with a group that seeks to go back to the dark ages. I am NOT talking about islam here, I am talking about religous fundementalists who once again seek to enforce their worldview upon everyone else, through force if need be. These fundies exist among ALL religions right now, jews in Israel voicing opions that would make hitler blush, christian fundies seeking to censor all media, india got its share of religious extremist and offcourse there is a sub-group of muslims seeking to make sharia the law worldwide.
Yet something really dangerous is occuring. The jews are far too small a group to be noticed, the christians are too corrupt, the hindoes barely matter in the western world but the muslims, now they seem to have gained a lot of control.
For instance, holland does not like the pope (catholic), not even the dutch catholic do. Any attempt by the pope to say that holland should do this or that is just laughed off. Yet if muslims speak, well, then the dutch quake in their boots. How come the catholic religous leader is safe to ignore but muslim religous leaders are not?
Offcourse there are differences, the pope doesn't even control his own country Italy much (see gay marriage and abortion laws), while entire countries are controlled by Islam. It is safe to make fun of a old guy in a silly dress, not so safe of the leaders who control your oil supply.
Your question is wether it would have been the same if this comic made fun of jews (why this religion and not say christianity, the majority religon in the US), then tell me this. When was the last time such a comic was banned? A movie? A play? A book? A song?
Judge the banned material on its own merits, then ask yourselve if the same reaction would have occured has another religion een involved.
You can either have freedom of speech or you can try to appease one group with long toes. But be aware, the first time you do that, another group will take notice, and will want to be protected as well. If you had your way, pretty soon you would no longer be able to publish anything anyone disapproved off.
That might suit you, afterall you call Opus, about as harmless a comic as you can get, tasteless. What next, censor garfield for walking around without pants?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I don't know, I'm not a Christian either. Fuck them while I'm at it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
As a web developer, I have little sympathy for people who break site navigation and then complain that they can't navigate. There's no sin in using a session cookie to provide dynamic content.
Having said that, my browser supports cookies (Opera on a DS both with and without a cookie management proxy, HoTTProxy) and I still get that message. I'm not very sympathetic to that brokenness, either.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Seriously.... Opus / Outland is one of THE classics of American comics over the last 25 years, with some of the most biting satire (political and other) you'll find. Personally I'd rate is as the best US comic ever. But then I'm from a country where most people actually read comics (Norway - with 4.5 million people, our comic magazines regularly have larger circulations than most US ones could ever hope for, and even some newspaper strips like Ernie have their own monthly magazines)
If you've missed Bloom County / Outland / Opus you owe it to yourself to catch up. There's a great collection called "Opus: 25 years of his Sunday best" that'd give you a good introduction, though you'd miss out on the daily strips of the early years (the current incarnation of the series is only Sunday panels)
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else.
Dude, I don't know what amazing utopian neighborhood you grew up in, but in most of the rest of the world, that kid you just described gets it the worst.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
*Sigh!* Never mind.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
What country is it published in?
I have never heard of it (I am a UK person, so I am surprised to see mention of Doonesbury which I do know).
The cartoon is quite tame. Just compare to some recent Spanish ones involving their royal family ...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
"Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic."
Does the phrase "Lord's Resistance Army" not ring a bell?
Western publishers are self-censoring anything remotely offensive to Muslims. This is just evidence that threats, intimidation and terrorism work. Americans will go to any lengths to "fight terrorism" by invading countries basically uninvolved in terror, but given the chance to simply stand up and say: "we won't be intimidated by threats" the press folds like a three legged card table. Grow a pair!
It's a great way to dehumanise your opponents.
They're not like us, not human, they're infidels. They're not human, they're Jews. They're not human they're muslims/heretics/atheists. It makes mass murder much easier if you don't have to think of the people you're butchering as ordinary people, you can think of them as sub-human, animals to be slaughtered.
It's a pretty standard propaganda technique. It's been used for thousands of years. What saddens me is that it's still successful.
Deleted
Well, yes.
I have a feeling the original "Bizarro Slashdot" parent post was absolutely sarcastic, and everybody fell for it. The penguin reference was obvious.
Actually, my view of this post is that it wonders why it is "News for Nerds" and why should a cartoon be singled out for censorship. There must be hundreds sharing that fate everyday. And judging by the knee-jerk reaction of all the other posters explaining how Opus / Bloom County / (...) were absolutely important in their life (though half of those posters agree that it's not as funny anymore) makes you wonder on all those postings that focus on certain cultural references associated with geek-ness. I read "Bloom County", never read "Opus", doesn't mean I want it to follow me in this forum.
The original article is not about 'Net censorship. It about a craftsman who can't find his market anymore in mainstream media and tries to find a new sponsor.
Well, there's this direct precedent of people being murdered over a barely offensive cartoon to Muslims. As far as I know, that's never happened with the loony fundamentalist Christians (who sort of seem to seek getting made fun of, let's them fit themselves into this "victim" frame).
Opus isn't (I don't think) in any British paper. Bloom County was printed with If... in The Guardian for many years back when. Opus fell out of Bloom County.
And Bloom County and If... were the best there was.
Direct link to the cartoon.
A cartoon that criticizes women's attempts to act superior and also discusses Islamic religious practices is too complicated for most newspapers.
Of course, banning it gives it publicity, too.
Anyone who thinks that the U.S. media back down from anything offensive to Moslems has clearly never listened to talk radio or read conservative political commentators. These folks would have a great deal of dead air and missing prose if they couldn't offend Moslems in ever more creative ways (suggesting nuking Mecca is a popular one, for example...)
But meanwhile, I completely agree with much of the previous commentary: this strip is making fun on two individuals, and is not remotely comparable to the Danish cartoons. Most Moslems would find it funny and the rest, well, some people don't find anything funny. And the stereotyping is mild compared to what the strip has done, for example, with New Age hippies, Leisure Suit Larry lounge lizards, penguins, and so forth.
[Usually not relevant but despite the Slashdot moniker, I'm neither Arab nor Moslem, though I've lived for a while in the Middle East. I just happen to like the theories of the dude I've stolen the name from and he's like, sort of dead...]
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
It's unfortunate that this post got marked down as a troll.
I never "got" Bloom County either. It just wasn't my kind of thing, I guess.
Ah, you mean the people that come to this American website to bitch and moan at us for not being them?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
To those of the Muslim faith: don't take it the wrong way. This is how a culture comes to terms with something new. You're now "in" so to speak.
... but in most of the rest of the world, that kid you just described gets it the worst.
Yes he does, and he's also the one that eventually loads up on high-caliber firearms or high explosive. Generally speaking, taunting mentally unstable people is a bad idea.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Watterson was right, you know. As great as the moments were that Calvin and Hobbes gave us, it did get to the point where I would say things like "OK, another week of violently killed snowmen" when I read the Monday strip. Some of the new versions of old jokes could get a chuckle or even possibly even a snort out of me, but it was typically one in a week or so of strips.
Of the three strips cited in the parent, only The Far Side didn't appear to lose anything over the years. When Larson quit in the mid-1990s, the strip was still as funny and as bizarre as it had been when I first saw it in the early 1980s. It also holds a special place in my heart as one of the greatest mainstream outlets of nerd humor. Futurama has taken that to much higher levels of sophistication (I have a Ph.D. in physics and completed requirements for a B.S. in math, and some of the science and math jokes on Futurama have blown right over my head), but The Far Side did it first and probably better. The Far Side's influence in academic circles was so great that a joke term from a Far Side panel in 1982 has been adapted for informal use by scientists in the field. There's something to be said for nerd "in jokes" so "in" that a trained theoretical physicist, one who happens to be known for how observant he is, can totally miss them, but there's also something to be said for a single panel on the comics page that brought nerd sensibilities to the larger public more effectively, which The Far Side did. I was a kid/adolescent for most of the 1980s, and I remember lots of non-nerd adults liking The Far Side. Larson brought "our" (nerd) culture to a wider audience in a more positive way than just about all portrayals of nerds in popular culture did before or have since.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
If they can't take the soft stuff when they're kids (and when you're a kid, that's all it is), how are you supposed to handle being an ADULT?
All this toned-down crap for kids is preparing them to fail when they become adults. In baseball for kids now they don't keep score and nobody wins or loses, everyone gets the same sized trophy. Well, in the real world it doesn't work that way.
I can understand a parent wanting to protect their child, but that goes too far. Everyone experiences failure, why not prepare your child for the first time a girl turns him down (or the 94th time), the first time he's fired from a job, the first time he gets robbed, and so on. Your child may be your beautiful perfect child, but they will experience loss and failure in the real world just like everyone else. By not preparing them for that you're only making it harder for them when they experience it for the first time.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
'nuff said.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
There are people who have invisible friends. Why is there a line in making fun of their belief? There really isn't. You don't get to draw lines in the sand when it comes to free speech. Once you put one restriction on it it is no longer free.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
> Just because you have the freedom to offend, does not obligate
> you to exercise that freedom frivolously.
I find headscarves offensive; just because Muslims are free to wear the hijab does not obligate them to exercise that freedom. Right?
Anyone remember the South Park episode "Cartoon Wars", where the show was making fun of the western reaction, and itself was censored? The irony for me was that they had an episode maybe a year or two before that where Mohammed was clearly shown as one of the super heroes in the "Super Best Friends" episode. There hadn't been a blip back then. What's even funnier is that if you watch South Park reruns, the "Cartoon Wars" episode still has the controversial scene censored, but the "Super Best Friends" has been shown since with no alterations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park
The Cartoon Wars episode was played uncensored in the UK, and the world failed to end - go figure.
The Digital Sorceress
Well, the comic creator's freedom of speech isn't really an issue here since the Federal Government didn't do anything to stop the comic. The individual newspapers said "We won't publish it because we're afraid of being murdered by the self-proclaimed Religion of Peace."
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Here ya go. It looks like, depending on your neck of the woods, editors won't run it because it either has a tasteless sex joke, or because it might offend Muslims.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I disagree. It's not like Special Olympics special, it's like a neurotic, insecure adult who hasn't stopped being a child/teenager yet. In that case, a fair amount of ribbing and poking to help them grow up may be just what the doctor ordered.
Sure, you may get yelled at or hurt a bit in the process, but it'll be worth it in the long run. Time for Islam to grow up.
Same goes for the fundamentalist Christians who also behave like unruly teenagers. I've met quite enough of them to know whereof I speak. Time to grow up, kids.
Let me guess, you're from Yurop?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
The Danish cartoons was deliberate trolling based on the religious taboo of depicting Mohammad. It succeeded beyond expectation.
This strip is not really about Islam, but about two individuals one of whom is "religion shopping". The description of Islam in the cartoon is vague enough not to offend any Muslims.
Sure ... but I used the phrase "mentally unstable" for a reason.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Brought to you by Sharia Law. Let us bow our heads now...
damaged by dogma
By the way this story comes as Afghanis are getting annoyed, to say the least, about having a verse from the Koran on donated "blasphemous" footballs.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic.
Muslims won't start murdering people because of a comic. They've been murdering people because a few muslims with a lot of money resent western influence in their business/political affairs, and a few Muslims with no money, jobs, hope, or anything else are willing to buy into their propaganda and blow themselves up.
paintball
"Yes he does, and he's also the one that eventually loads up on high-caliber firearms or high explosive. Generally speaking, taunting mentally unstable people is a bad idea."
In the case of Islam, the believers are not mentally unstable, and their goal is to use Political Correctness to stop any criticism of their beliefs.
It is working.
Slashdotters rage against government or business threats to freedom, but for some reason the most oppressive and backward (which given the competitiion is saying a lot!) religion in the world often escapes attack. Careful distinction is made between supposed religious theory and practice so that one avoids attacking the ideology. Odd since religion = political belief = superstition.
The freedom we enjoy today is not the result of religion. It is the result of freethinkers and the weakening of religions stranglehold on society. Islam in practice seeks to impose such a stranglehold. I therefore advocate attacking it, relentlessly and without apology. To defend religion is to endorse it. Ridicule is the best weapon against superstition.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I actually went back to Sunday to make sure it was the same one. Of course, we'll see about next week but you can't apply a blanket statement to all of them.
Course, I shouldn't be too surprised that Philly sez 'bring it'!
So you're saying that Muslims are a bunch of sensitive neurotic kids? Is that what you're saying!?
There is a striking difference between perceived Islam and perceived Christianity: With Christianity, they are perfectly willing to die for what they believe. With Islam, they are perfectly willing to kill for what they believe. Now, where the truths actually lie is somewhat irrelevant.
Newspapers deciding not to carry an article or comic is not censorship. Those are private businesses and they have the right to decide what does and what does not appear in their materials. Censorship would be if the government stepped in and said it couldn't be published. I know it's easy to want to use strong words to get your point across, but in this case, it is simply wrong.
Love sees no species.
There seems to be a view in America that something is only censorship if the government does it. This is nonsense. It's just that in America the constitution *prevents* the government from doing it. It's still censorship even if it's legal.
I'd say education is the best weapon against superstition, but failing that (or when dealing with people that refuse to be educated) ridicule is a good choice. It's more difficult to gain followers for your particular brand of religious mindgrabbing when most of the potential candidates are laughing at you.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
As for the censorism: I am sure Slashdot will be full of "we wouldn't censor stuff like this if it was about Christianity/etc., so why should we pander to Islam?". Now, technically that is correct - far worse material appears about Christianity than Islam; there is far more sensitivity towards Islam. However, I don't think that makes it wrong to do so. As I see it, there is a solid basis for attempting to not offend Muslims (whereas what I am about to say now is extremely offensive to them): They can't take a joke. Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else.
I call bullshit! As a Christian, seeing a Cross dipped in a jar of urine is just as offensive as a Mohamed giving Peter a salmon helmet is to a Muslim. The difference is that I won't go blow shit up over it. Christians are taught to forgive. Muslims are taught to die in defense of Islaam. THAT is the difference. That sensitive neurotic kid will carry a can a gasoline over to your house and burn it down while you sleep. Of course, he'd make it a point to pour most of the gasoline in the doorways to prevent escape and start the fire in the baby's room, just to make sure his point gets out on the 5 O'clock news.
So this isn't about sensitivities toward Muslims. It is about a fear of reprisal. Which is what really pisses me off. When the gov't does something to fight terrorism, people say it's all about fear and that they would rather die than have the government listen to their phone calls, if they should ever make one to Pakistan. But when a liberal newspaper bows in submission to Islam, people make excuses about some politically correct bullshit.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
There's no sin in using a session cookie to provide dynamic content.
Explain to me how the offending comic counts as "dynamic content" such that it would conceivably require a cookie to get to?
It uses a static JPG, at a static path, linked by a static (except for ads) page, accessible via a well-defined click-path from the Salon main page. Nothing about that requires cookies.
Now, personally I have stopped caring about cookies, since Firefox will clear them (and all "private data") on exit. But mechanism aside, I must second the GP's point - No cookie for you, Salon! Except that instead of depriving myself of whatever I may want to see there, I simply let them set whatever useless (and short-lived) cookies they want, if it makes them feel better to think they've "tracked" a "new" viewer every time I visit.
There are lots of different kinds of nut jobs, these are just some examples which will be familiar.
The punch line includes an element of irony. Steve's girlfriend will be submissive, and he likes that idea, until he realizes that he's also probably not going to get laid. It's a slapstick punch line to cap off what is really a more sophisticated sarcasm.
Of course, if you don't realize that this happens all the time, perhaps it's not so amusing. Stories of completely insipid "spiritual quests" like that of Lola Granola appear from time to time in the infotainment media. They always seem to be stories of weak minded people who must have a life philosophy handed to them on a platter, but somehow manage to reject one or two or three in a row before finding "the right one". The infotainment media inevitably dishes out these stories deadpan, like we're supposed to learn something from these people who clearly have demonstrated one overarching trait, which is a militant refusal to think critically.
Every time I see a story like this, I'm amazed that nobody ever points this out. Rational analysis, basic logic, and skepticism are not taught, and most people don't manage to acquire it on their own.
Here's the most recent example of a Lola Granola-style spiritual quest trumpeted as heroic in the media: Rejecting radical Islam -- one man's journey (Daveed Gartenstein-Ross ). Note the headline, then read the story. This dude didn't reject radical islam, he wandered aimlessly through major religions and dangerous philosophies, trying each on like a new shirt. Now he's apparently working for the FBI. I hope that this guy is closely and carefully supervised by somebody with stronger pro-democracy, free-thinking, free-living convictions. And for freedom's sake, don't give him a gun or access to any important secrets.
So, if you're aware that this stuff can happen in real life, the strip is really very amusing, subtle, and funny.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
He should swap out Opus for Tux and write jokes about file systems and text editors. Now that would be funny, and would no doubt boost his circulation.
Yes, this is the strip. It is published today in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, to their credit.
Ummmmm...you just pretty much summed up everything that is *wrong* with the world today. If more people told others to fuck off, the world would be a much better place.
Wrong. Time in and of itself does *nothing*. There was no gradual erosion of religion from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, but rather a sudden interest in reason, humanism, and worldly living brought about by the rediscovery of classical philosophy (primarily Aristotle) through scholars like Aquinas. It's ideas that make the difference, not a matter of waiting out the clock. Sadly, in this day and age, I think that most of the Muslims with ideas capable of tempering ultra-orthodoxy are likely to find themselves in the West.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
As I see it, there is a solid basis for attempting to not offend Muslims (whereas what I am about to say now is extremely offensive to them): They can't take a joke.
There is no right not to be offended. If they can't take a joke, they need to get over it. And the Washingont Post's editors should be ashamed of themselves.
This isn't about Islam, it's about the timidity of American newspapers. American newspapers exist mostly now to deliver advertisements to the people who still subscribe. And to provide a warm, old-fashioned 'newspaper reading experience' to their subscribers. They no longer are the primary news source or political support medium that they were 100-50 years ago. Most newspapers are owned by a handful of corporate chains who what the ad revenue flowing in from the local supermarkets and the columns filled with 'kittens stuck in trees' type of stories. The last thing that they want is biting social commentary in their comics sections.
... I don't understand this).
As you can imagine, newspaper readership is falling. Decades of boring trivia has decimated the numbers of intelligent readers. Plus the endlessly dumbed down writing style which makes every article read as if it were written for middle-school audiences (USA education level for 12-14 year olds). Bland, stupid, boring, and late with the breaking news, newspapers tend to focus on serving the needs of 'the upside of the bell curve' where few Slashdaughters are to be found.
It's interesting to see that the local heavy advertisers are also developing web sites to showcase their newspaper ads so people with broadband can simply bookmark and download whatever ads that they used to watch in the newspapers. Plus Craig's List and eBay are removing the need for classified ads (along with the tendency of newspapers to put these ads up on their own websites
So basically newspapers are becoming the prime information source for those people who can't handle going on-line. And those people are fewer every year.
Again, banning these comics has nothing to do with concern over offending Islam. It has everything to do with ensuring that the newspaper product will be as boring, sanitized, and removed from controversy as humanly possible.
Salon's whole business model is based on either 1) seeing an advertisement, and getting a cookie to be able to see their content for a set amount of time (the cookie's lifetime) or 2) having a paid account, and having a cookie to prove it.
I have a paid account. They have fine stories.
Here in the middle of the outhern bible belt, the Atlanta Journal Constitution did run Opus today.
Of course, Atlanta is no longer like the Old South at all. But there is still an element of the American Taliban here; I'm sure by the end of the week the Journal will feel like it has fallen on a fire ant nest.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
When you reach your limits, you punch someone. You don't shoot people. Pondscum like that deserve everything they get, plus the added privilege of rotting in hell purely for being about as big a coward as humanly capable.
Sorry to break it to you, but school shootings are in fact a PRODUCT of the sissy generation. Being picked on and picking back is a part of growing up.
Next you'll argue against the firing of less capable workers because hey... *whiny voice* they have limits, toooooooo. *whiny voice*
The mere fact that you even talk the way you do makes me wonder if humanity wouldn't be better off if your sort wouldn't just take a hike in front of a speeding Mack truck.
Wanker.
----- Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious. - Paul Valery
"...and their goal is to use Political Correctness to stop any criticism of their beliefs. It is working."
Probably impossible to verify, but it definitely seems plausible. Thank you for illuminating that for me... :)
You're mistaking constitutionally protected freedom of speech with the inherent human right of expression. Censoring this comic was not unconstitutional, it was spineless.
Interesting, that's a Malaysian newspaper and Christians are a minority there. Next door in the Philippines, I've seen cigarette ads with Jesus and they're 90% Catholic. I'll try to get a picture when I'm there next week.
Actually, the most offensive thing I ever saw there was a shop with side by side posters on the wall, one of the blonde-haired blue-eyed Catholic Jesus next to Brittney Spears.
Offense is absolutely in the eye of the beholder.
Without arguing your point, I would simply like to know how you can reconcile that statement with the fact that an atheistic ideology (communism) was responsible for the death of 60M-100M in the last century and the enslavement of nearly half the world's population.
I would like to blame drug prohibition and such on my fellow Christians in this country, but it's an untenable position given that the same drugs are outlawed in China and Russia. Similarly, China has some of the strictest anti-porn laws in the world.
It's a simplistic attitude to think that religion in and of itself is the culprit. But it's just human nature, with religion being the excuse. To believe otherwise is to ignore history.
Do you have ESP?
This has nothing to do with restricting free speech. This is about how far people who don't want to offend others (like major newspaper editors) will go. You personally are welcome to say whatever offensive material you can come up with as always, just don't expect it to land on the front page of the Washington Post.
Often attributed to Voltaire is the notion, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Self-censoring Opus shows us exactly how seriously the MSM takes that notion.
The culprit is not religion in and of itself, but the undertone that marks both religion and collectivism: the philosophy of altruism. By altruism, I do not mean simple generosity, but rather the belief that a man's standard of value should not be his own life and happiness, but rather his duty to others: God, the state, his brother-men. It is the ultimate dismissal of human life and values.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd.
Religion is clearly not the sole cause of humankind's problems, but it clearly is one of several significant causes, while at the same time having no demonstrable benefit to society.
It's as absurd as those who decry the "intolerance" of the religious while themselves being intolerant of the religious.
I tolerate religion to the point that I will defend your right to worship, in the same way that I will defend the right of people to kill themselves with drugs and alcohol, to cheat on their wives, or to commit suicide. It is not the purpose of government to keep people from believing in, or doing, stupid things; giving government or companies the right to discriminate based on religion is simply bad public policy.
But that's all that religious tolerance means: to tolerate religion and not interfere with its exercise. It does not mean that I have to accept, or stop criticizing, religion or religious behavior. I consider many religions immoral, some of them downright evil, and, of course, I need to speak out against that, just like followers of those religions speak out against what they consider immoral behavior in others.
I hope we can reduce the practice of religion, just like we can reduce alcohol, drug addiction, HIV, spousal abuse, and illegitimacy, and I hope that, at the same time, we can remain tolerant of the people suffering from those afflictions.
The problem with the invisible friends routine is it's simply stupid (Note I didn't say YOU are stupid, I said the routine's stupid).
What do you believe in?
Capitalists worship a giant invisible hand (and sacrifice people to it).
Socialists believe everyone will be honest and decent if they get elected.
Democrats believe in a 300% tax rate.
The NRA wants everyone to have their own Rocket Launchers.
The ACLU never defends anybody but Scum.
The French believe everybody is male (liberty, equality and fraternity - nothing about sorority there) (Yes, some English wags actually used this line in print discussing the revolution).
Quantum Physicists all keep cats locked up in boxes, how cruel.
People who believe in George Washington all think he was stronger than the Incredible Hulk (to throw a silver dollar across a broad river)...
There's no real belief or opinion that can't be oversimplified to the point of looking absurd. Name a few beliefs of your own, and somebody will be glad to reduce everything you stand up for to a sound-bite and try to make you look like a fool too.
Most Christians, Muslims, etc. believe that God is a spirit - what's so strange about believing that a spirit is invisible, it would be even stranger if they thought that it wasn't. Now you want something really silly, try the trinity. That three in one business is weird enough to be part of Scientology's schtick.
Now as a Christian, I'll gladly defend your right to make fun of us. Yes, you should be able to make either jokes or serious and realistic criticisms of my beliefs. The real question is, are you, I or anyone else actually benefiting from making this particular criticism?
Who is John Cabal?
It is the ultimate dismissal of human life and values.
On this we disagree; duty to others is in many cases an affirmation of a recognition of the value of human life. Where I think duty becomes problematic is when it is applied to abstractions of people, or to people in the aggregate, especially when that aggregation is not the primary beneficiary-in-fact of the fruits of the duty-labor. Most governments, for example, are this way, where there is an explicit duty to the 'people of a nation' when in most cases the benefits of the duty are received only by a small number of the total citizenry.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
There were more "offensive" things about muslims (and rednecks) in the first couple of minutes of the first episode of "Little Mosque on the Prairie" that this particular cartoon.
One unintentially hilarious thing that happened after the airing were the people expressing outrage at how non-muslims were depicted as dumb rednecks. Good stuff.
STFU about slashdot bias.
I've never read it in a newspaper, but that hasn't stopped me from reading most of them.
Well... I just read the strip on gocomics (actually I read it in thunderbird with help from isnoop.net's comic strip snagger http://isnoop.net/comics/ but that's not so important). So I'd say I had to do the least job so far (not having to find it otherwhere and missing it.) =)
Communist societies forced atheism to get rid of competition for "the party". Their killing lots of people had nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with their leaders being power hungry asshats.
Maybe not
It's not for nothing that one of the few places in the world where US comic artists tour for conferences and signings is Scandinavia (as a bonus, some US series such as Ernie have more than once features sequences drawn specifically for the Scandinavian audiences).
In many larger European countries you'll find a greater focus on European series (particularly French and Belgian series have a long heritage), but US imports are at the very least available in comic book stores.
There are of course some backwaters in Europe where comics aren't doing very well (unfortunately for me I'm currently living in the UK - one of the worst of them, though even here US imports are available in comic book stores in all major cities; the problem is an almost complete lack of European series here).
For those harping on free speech issues, I'm curious if you would object to publication of the Anne Frank/Hitler Cartoon? (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/155865.php) Would you put it up on your website? Funny how it went unpublished in the US.
If you can't actually defend your side with facts, it's not valid. Ad insultium attacks are not a real defense. The AC fails it.
I didn't take his post as an advocation for bullying. Rather, the reality of the world is that there are bullies out there.
You don't always get what you want in life, and generally life can be a motherfucker at times. What we don't need to do is teach our
children that the world is how we would LIKE it to be. We need to work towards this Utopia that some of us might envision, but we prepare them
for the hard, cold reality: the Utopia will likely never exist.
When you raise a child with the delusions that everyone will treat them fairly and there are no losers in life, then you are breeding a
generation of people who do not know how to deal with adversity. These are some of the people who end up shooting others because they cannot
cope with the reality of an imperfect world.
Asked and answered.
Honestly, I didn't know anyone still got worked up about cookies. I'm paranoid to the point that I wrote some GPLed anonymous remailer client software because I didn't trust the closed source alternatives, but even I don't bother disabling cookies anymore.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
can be convinced of the value of the sacrafice for the greater good-...
did no atheist EVER throw himself on a hand-grenade?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Were the Columbine shooters motivated by religion when they did, essentially, the same thing?
I'm an atheist, by the way. I just find this argument against religion facile and specious.
he's also the one that eventually loads up on high-caliber firearms or high explosive. Generally speaking, taunting mentally unstable people is a bad idea.
Which is why the newspapers are afraid to run a comic strip that might offend Radical Muslims. Never trust any person or people that can't laugh at themselves.
We are all just people.
Probably impossible to verify, but it definitely seems plausible. Thank you for illuminating that for me... :)
Well, given that the American free press is afraid to publish a goddamn comic strip I'd say it's working rather well. And that's just disturbing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Contrary to your point, things like Columbine and VA Tech didn't happen 50 years ago when middle class school yards were a lot tougher than they are today. If everyone "plays nice" until high school and then suddenly you face being ostracized for the first time when you are 15 or 16 you will not have the skills to handle it well, but you will have the size and knowledge to let you rage do far more damage. I was picked on a lot in elementary school, and I used to get in a lot of fights (that were as vicious as I could make them at the time) If I reacted with the same level of anger when I got to high school I would have literally killed someone. That didn't happen because I learned to control my temper while I was still young. I learned self control and how to "get over it" when I was still small enough to be dragged away by the smallest of teachers, and before I understood that there are more effective ways of hurting people than punching them. Social rejection and mockery are a part of life. Just because there are rude people in the world does not excuse others from acting like ticking time-bombs.
We are all just people.
No, the culprit is the belief in your ingroup's superiority, and in violent evangelism. In religion, it's being called God's chosen people. In Communism, it's more political. Your philosophy is centered around this stuff.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The Crusades.
WW2 (remember, the Germans were christians and they didn't forgive the Jews/athiests for being different).
Spanish Inquisition.
No one race/religion/group is perfect, so pull your head outta your ignorant ass.
There is, however, a right to register your offense.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I don't know, I can understand the reason, and I can summarize it like this: Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic.
Do you really think Islamic extremists would stop killing people if no one published inflammatory cartoons?
Maybe the editors were concerned about offending nudists or the Amish?
I see all this angst about how the Post didn't publish the comic, but it's right here on their website (you might have to register with the Post to see this, which would probably involve cookies, in case you care).
Adults, if they feel their workplace is mentally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive towards them can quit and go someplace else. If it's bad enough, they can press charges or sue.
A kid in school can't leave. They just have to either put up with it, or lash out.
How the heck does that prepare someone for the real, grown-up world? The only part of the real-world where the bullying dynamic works the way it does in school is prison. And maybe, to a lesser extent, the army-- but nowhere else.
You don't think they'd censor the same thing if it was about the Christian Right, or about Jews? Any way you slice this, it's a pretty direct attack on someone's culture. That, and it just wasn't funny. ::shrug::
If the newspapers don't publish it, then some people cry OMG CENSORSHIP. If they do publish it, then someone somewhere out there will be offended and cry OMG RACISM. It doesn't matter in the end though... since either way will draw more publicity and more people will probably read the comic than would have seen it in the first place anyways.
Do you really think that many people have read it?
I've only read Shame, but I'm pretty sure that I missed out on a very large quantity of cultural references and perhaps a large part of the satire. From what a friend told me, 'The Satanic Verses' is somewhat inaccessible if you don't have a familiarity with Islam and India/Pakistan. I'm not sure I'd understand any references to Khomeini, either.
For today's comic for the nerd culture, incidentally, you could do a lot worse than xkcd...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
No,he's the kind that turns out normal like the rest of us.
If he did turn out as you describe, most of us would be dead precisely because there are so many like him.
You can't stop picking on that kid, can you?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
If this bothers you, please write to "opinions@washingtonpost.com" and let them know.
Wrong.
Both are supposedly taught to forgive. It only took me about a minute on Wikiquote:
That's from the Qur'an. Looks like it's not only preaching forgiveness, not only charity, but secret charity, because if your charity was public, you might be doing it out of vanity.
And let's not forget -- Islam does accept Jesus as a prophet.
But both sides are also perfectly willing to pervert their belief until it's unrecognizable. Think of the Crusades, of Nazi Germany, of any of the things Christianity has done in the name of God...
But I'll tell you what -- God isn't happy with any of us. But here's the trick: That article is about all of us, not just people you disagree with.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
All this time I thought everything past our borders was an artillery range.
I would say that Artifakt's post is extremely relevant as it illustrates the point. The post would never have been made had the word 'god' not appeared in the post it was replying to.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'll never look at 3-in-1 Oil the same way again. I had no idea.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
The real question is, are you, I or anyone else actually benefiting from making this particular criticism?
Absolutely. By making fun of Christians, the reality-based community makes it harder for you to impose your superstitions on the rest of us.
The difference between me and you is that once I convince you to keep your fractured, pathological myths out of the voting booth and out of my child's classroom, I'll go away and leave you alone.
I have suspected for a while now that ALL religions are forms of institutionalized mental illness, so the neurotic kid in the neighborhood analogy is quite revealing. That said, there comes a time when you have to go on with your life and stop worrying about what the loony kid down the block thinks. That said, this really is a bit offtopic.
i'd say more "actually performing needlessly violent or stupid acts", "acting like a ticking time bomb" seems to be a label that gets attached to acting in any way deviates from the norm these days.
yes yes, tis ramblely, but i think you know what i mean heh.
Ice Cream has no bones.
You've obviously never been in a situation where leaving your current job would most likely bankrupt you, otherwise you'd know that sometimes you can't leave a job until you find another that pays as much or more. Furthermore, you can't just "quit" life in general aside from suicide, and you'll get a lot of the same crap you got in school in the "real world".
Berkeley Breathed sure has shown more courage than Wiley Miller. While Non Sequitur has ripped on the Christian religion often, he's never once touched the truly horrible aspects of Islam. Anyone that finds that more than a bit hypocritical is free to point this out to him at: wileyink@earthlink.net .
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
No, we actually offend Christians quite often. The difference is, when we offend Christians, they don't stage riots and burn down embassies.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
That's the beauty of modern American Christianity - the sects are so fragmented that it's trivial to distance themselves from any sort of unpleasantness by saying that the perpetrators weren't really Christians.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
How the hell did this get modded Flamebait?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Sure, you can register your offense, but that doesn't mean that any should muzzle themselves because of that. In the case of the comics page, if something offends you, turn the page. Move on to the next comic. There is something patently evil about the modern prevailing attitude that if it offends, it must be censored.
I completely agree that if one missed Bloom County, they missed a lot. But ask a teenager to read Bloom County now and they wouldn't understand it. It is very time dependent with a lot of late 80's, early 90's pop culture references. Granted, some of those references are timeless, others (like Bill the Cat for president) aren't.
Well, on the other hand, Bill the Cat could have probably done a lot better than our last two presidents.
Most Christians, Muslims, etc. believe that God is a spirit - what's so strange about believing that a spirit is invisible
The believing in spirits part.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Here's facts for you.
Bullshit. You have no facts. Produce a list of papers which have cut the strip and then you can begin to think around the word, "Fact". Produce non-isolated examples of the kind of liberal bias you are accusing of in those papers, and then you can begin to sell your point.
Since you can't do any of this, what we really have here is a typical example of Right Wing emotionalism. (The operative emotions being Fear and Hate, which the typical Right-Wing Bush supporter allows to direct his Judgment and Rationality.)
Newspapers are a collection of ideas folded together into a sheaf of reading material. The Typical Right-Wing brain is naturally going to sift out things to get angry about, regardless of how balanced the reporting might be, which in a typical newspaper today, is totally not balanced at all. I see propaganda wherever I look, and think that the so-called "Liberal Media" is an utter and complete sham designed to support the Military Industrial Complex. But I hail from the Left of Left. Can you tell?.
That's not a conscious choice on my part, by the way. It's a result.
It's the result of how I choose to live:
I choose to live with my emotions under control; to not let fear rule my thoughts and actions. --To seek rationality over knee-jerk emotionalism. --It's not that I have anything against emotions. I love emotions! They guide us and make us human. But there's two ways to be human. You can let emotions show you how to let compassion be your guide, or you can let emotions lead you through fear. Fear is easy. Fear is basic, reptillian brain stuff. It's the default setting. The one which evolution has been moving away from for a ba-zillion years.
If the media were truly 'Liberal', we would know a great deal more than we do through it. We wouldn't be at war, for starters. (Since the Bush admin keeps on repeating straight-faced, shameless lies in the psychopath's knowledge that doing so will make people believe them even with gobs of contrary evidence sitting right out in the open, one should also keep on repeating the Truth. . .
"There were no WMD's in Iraq. The Bush team LIED, saying that Saddam could launch an attack in 45 minutes. (Remember that?) They even delivered the age-old sales line, 'The Troops will be home in ten weeks.'" And people fell for it! They actually fell for it again! --And now hundreds of thousands of regular people are dead while a small group of people has made millions. You want to talk facts? THOSE are facts. You cannot dispute them unless you are insane. We do not have a Liberal media. Pulling Opus was either fear related, (editors believing their own lies and not wanting the frightful hand of Islam to blow up their offices. (Groan.) --Or it was a manipulation designed to spark outrage in people like you and play on everybody else's fears. But whatever the case, I can assure you that it had absolutely nothing to do with compassion.
As it is, we must spend enormous effort cross referencing stories and digging and back-checking just to scrape out truth from the mountain of misleading crud served up every day. I know several guys who work in journalism. Each one of them is a true liberal in the political sense, and they report (privately) the same thing. To quote one of them (as best I can from memory):
"If you speak out against the party line on anything, then you don't work. There is no truth in journalism. We're all whores or robots. This is a disgusting, juvenile, toxic industry where the only successful people in it are incredibly ignorant, back-stabbing and greedy, with no care whatsoever about truth."
-FL
It looks to me like he grew up in... didn't say any faith, except "liberal", which could count, I guess.
He then tried radical Islam, then Christianity.
So that's two, at most three. Hardly "wandering aimlessly... trying each on like a new shirt."
I'd actually have a bit more respect for him if he'd at least considered a few more -- then he'd be making an informed decision, at least as much as you can about religion. As it is, I'm betting he was raised Christian, tried Islam, then defaulted back to Christianity when Islam didn't work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It is important to notice that the sharp criticism of the way women act in the U.S. is probably a bigger reason that some newspapers banned the cartoon than concern about Islamic practices.
In the U.S., women spend most of the money, because they do the shopping.
Oh use some logic. The Crusades were 1000 or so years ago. The Spanish Inquisition was hundreds of years ago. And the Germans were Christians? Maybe, but Nazism was not Christian. Defending radical Islamist terrorists who today slaughter thousands of innocents every year by saying "But Johnny did it once too!" is not only childish but insults the intelligence of the reader. (And don't respond by talking about the US military. The difference is they are following rules of civilized warfare like wearing uniforms for one thing, and not attacking innocents as their main targets like terrorists do.)
Not sure if I'd say decades... maybe centuries...
How long have priest and rabbis jokes existed?
The various Christian groups generally just call for boycotts and protests... same as most Muslim groups...
The difference I see is that if you have a "Christian" calling for more, the majority of the Christian groups will turn around and say that the "Christian" calling for more is wrong... whereas when an imam calls for more, you rarely hear about other imams saying that the one calling for more is wrong...
Nephilium
Just trying to pull back from all the tangents that've been posed all around this. If the editor of a paper doesn't want to publish something - then so what, it's his paper.
If you don't like what's in the paper, then just don't buy it.
In the UK we have our famed tabloid The Sun (this would be the national paper with the highest circulation). The Sun features "Page 3" - basically you open any issue and on the third page there's a topless woman. That's it, no news content, no social critique - just a picture.
The fact that the Washington Post does not run a similar feature, is not because it's illegal (actually, it might be in the land of the free, but that's not the point I'm trying to make). My point is that within a nanosecond of the idea coming up at the editorial meeting, somebody might point out that it would not be conherent with the editoral policy of the paper - or would 'anger' more of their readers than they'd 'make happy' (which is pretty much the point of the editorial policy).
The cartoon is available, just somebody doesn't want to publish it in their paper.
Actually, it's the pro-Christian stuff which tends to be censored, like the Easter "BC" strips.
As to why newspapers are so much more sensitive to Muslim concerns, simply perform the following operation:
1) Find a transcript of C3PO's conversation with Han Solo at the end of the chess-like game in "Star Wars".
2) Edit the transcript as follows:
a) s/droid/Christian/g
b) s/wookie/Muslim/g
c) s/pull people's arms out of their sockets/cut people's heads off/g
For all the media's claims of championing free speech, they generally trumpet it loudly when they face no real penalty to do so - it's easy to "speak the truth to power" when that power won't actually respond with violence.
Yes, that's strange, but my point was that thinking of spirits as immaterial and so invisible makes more sense than claiming they are simultaniously non-material and have a property only material things can have. It's something like when Quantum Chromodynamics names some properties of Quarks after colors. That sounds pretty strange, but it would be a whole lot stranger if they were claiming things smaller than a single wavelength of light actually had certain colors, rather than it being a result of metaphor and figurative language.
Who is John Cabal?
But that's beside the point. The real issue is how far you can go within social constraints. No one made a law that said that B.B. couldn't draw those cartoons. His publishers just decided not to carry them. No freedom of speech issues there. Social restrictions are often far more powerful than legal ones.
The difference between me and you is that once I convince you to keep your fractured, pathological myths out of the voting booth and out of my child's classroom, I'll go away and leave you alone.
You're absolutely right - I'll let you take your own opinions into the voting booth, and you can teach children your viewpoint, and I'll still go away and leave you alone. In fact, I'll do it now.
Who is John Cabal?
I'll still go away and leave you alone. In fact, I'll do it now.
If only I could believe you.
Have never heard of Opus or Bloom County. Maybe they're only popular in the US?
Managed to get brought down to "0, Troll" for asking legitimate questions. Ouch.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
"Communist societies forced atheism to get rid of competition for "the party". "
They also replaced theism with the "cult of personality". Same drug in a different bottle.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"Without arguing your point, I would simply like to know how you can reconcile that statement with the fact that an atheistic ideology (communism) was responsible for the death of 60M-100M in the last century and the enslavement of nearly half the world's population."
I view Communism as "blowback".
It only took root where decadent theistic societies failed so badly that the desperate populace wanted an alternate ideology to justify and focus their rage against those who exploited them.
The body count is merely a function of modern killing methods and the size of the primary (Russia and China) Communist countries.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"Is Islam the dominant religion where you live?"
No, and I would not have it spread any more than I would Communism.
It is infesting Europe, and slowly working its way into the US. BTW I've seen the best Islam can do (KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar) with a vast budget.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Welcome to 21st Century Journalism in America, where integrity is found only on Comedy Central and in the funny papers.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Actually, I HAVE been in a situation where I couldn't afford to quit. I could, however, begin looking for another job while still working. It's utterly exhausting and miserable to look for a job while still going to an unhealthy job at the same time-- but the option is there to at least TRY to get into a healthier situation. And in the long run, it is well worth it.
I just read them in glorious Islamic Extremist girlfriend of Steve Dallas color at brunch.
Nice head coverings.
Want fascism? Move to America or Saudi Arabia - free of charge.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nobody is claiming that. Religion is one huge cause of problems. There will still be other causes but we would be better off with fewer problems, yes?
Logic. Check it out.
Yes, and mind that that place is little more than another mouthpiece for Malkin that attempts to be lighter than the "fanatics of Semitism" site (where you're likely to see them offended by Islam enough to wall themselves in).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I find it funny that the guys at Hot Air can't bring themselves to admit that a liberal website, salon.com, are the brave ones hosting the comic strip. Most of the comments are about how the political left is bending over backwards to appease radical islam.
Ain't cognitive dissonance a bitch?
The Crusades
To recapture the Holy Land and much of Europe from Muslim invaders. This happened how may hundreds of years ago.
WW2 (remember, the Germans were christians and they didn't forgive the Jews/athiests for being different).
Uh, the Nazis were not Christians. Sorry.
Spanish Inquisition.
This was a purging of Muslims (Moors) from Spain. Unfortunately, Jews were lumped in as well. Anyway, how many hundreds of years ago was this?
No one race/religion/group is perfect, so pull your head outta your ignorant ass.
I never said that. I said that an "artist" dumps a cross in a jar of piss and it is called art. Same when an "artist" makes a portrait the Virgin Mary out of elephant dung or porn pictures. Even more recent was a chocolate Jesus in New York. Patrons were invited to "nibble their favorite part". Of course, all of this is encourage to show freedom of speech and expression.
But, Holy Shit! Have Opus make a comment that could be considered offensive to Muslims and a bunch of "free speech supporters" from Berkley and several other newspapers from around the country ban it.
So rather put words in MY mouth, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and start writing these newspapers the same letters you would write them if they banned the cartoon because it is offensive to Christians. You know you would be having a shit-fit if you thought this was because these newspapers didn't want to offend Christianity. If not, you are showing your own personal biggotry against Christianity.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
How dare you strip credit from William T. Cat - who personally spit up the hairballs those titles were first written on!!!
Perhaps for some reason I'm unique in being able to read it on the Washington Post?
p u/
http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/wpo
I will point out I first looked at it quite early Sunday morning, so it could be that my browser cached it and won't let it go. But it seems to be there to me.
I just checked with a different browser, and indeed it is there. Can someone who can't see it at the Washington Post tell me what shows up instead? I'm a little puzzled by why the finger is being pointed at them.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Both are supposedly taught to forgive. It only took me about a minute on Wikiquote: Really? Do you think Theo Van Gogh would agree with that. Of course not! He's dead. He was murdered for making a film that offended Muslims. Actually, "The filmmaker focused on the shameful abuse of Muslim women by Muslim men in Europe."
Why don't you ask those three Christian school girls that were beheaded in Indonesia. Well, since the girl's are dead, I'm sure their parents of these dead girls will like to hear how forgiving and tolerant Islam really is. I think the beheading of their teenage daughters kinda gave them the wrong idea.
You should tell the brothers of Hatin Surucu that Islam is forgiving. You see, her brothers killed her. They said, "The Whore Lived Like a German". I don't think they got the same memo you did about Islam being forgiving. I think they either didn't read the Quran verse you quoted or read several others that contradicted it.
Want to tell me some more how Islam is a forgiving religion of peace? There were several terrorist attacks this weekend I can link.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
"If you're about it call me antisemitic for that remark, stop and think about that for a second."
It isn't anti-Semitic (or anti-Jewish, since all Semites are not Jews nor are all Jews Semitic) to point that out.
I also point out that it eventually backfired and is now being used vigorously against them.
People should beware when they use such techniques to stifle debate and criticism because they can be turned against them.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Can't believe it's currently only modded at "1"
Hyperic Community Manager
- the crusades are, collectively, certainly a low point for organized Christianity, but they're also monstrously complex socio-military-political events. there were genuine territorial encroachments into the byzantine empire by muslims empires that at least the first crusade was (on the surface) a direct response to, and most christians don't translate "forgive" into "let them get away with crimes" (making no arguments here as to the appropriateness of the "crimes" label or of making that translation).
- you've got to really stretch to believe WWII was about religion, or that Nazi's were a particularly Christian organization. certainly the leadership wasn't, and wrote so quite explicitly. this isn't the same as the "they're not really christian" argument pseudo-apologists are likely to make, this is more about historical context.
- the Spanish Inquisition was the most famous, and the most brutal, but it's worth noting that it reported to the King of Spain, not the Pope, unlike the rest of the contemporary Inquisition. note also that the Inquisition was much broader, both in scope and in time - it still exists, today called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. the Inquisition - especially during its darker periods a few hundred years ago - are probably the clearest examples of Christianity abandoning Christianity, but your example will be even more sound if you drop the "Spanish" (as it'll omit a whole bunch of odd political issues).
- the most compelling example in my mind is the abortion clinic bombings. it's modern, explicitly "Christian", and entirely antithetical to both any honest reading of the New Testament and every major Christian denomination.
but, again, you're overall point is correct and your parent here is an ignorant fool. Muslims are taught the value of mercy the same way christians are. i think it's fair to say there's differences in the religion, and that those differences impact what we see from them in the world today, but teachings about forgiveness and mercy aren't them.i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I'm not exactly sure why the Post Syndicate spiked this strip. If it was about Islam, it was very gentle stuff. The joke was more about the Lola Granola character's interpretation of a religion she just picked up the day before, than it was about the religion itself. And in the strip from last Sunday, Opus mocked Jerry Falwell. Did any of his followers threaten to murder Mr. Breathed?
No-one of any belief has the right not to be offended. I'm sorry if an opinion offends radical Islamists. Let them explain why it is offensive so that we can all learn something. Our society is strong enough to handle the likes of Piss Christ by Maplethorpe. If a segment of Islamic society is so fragile that we must spike a cartoon which gently mocks them (lest they get angry and commit acts of terror) then we are no longer living in a Western Society.
The Washington Post Syndicate ought to be ashamed of itself. This is Cowardice.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
While I'll preface this with the obligatory "speaking out of my ass" warning, the current conflict between Christianity and Islam may not have nearly as much to do with religion as is claimed (by Islamists as well as their critics). I think it has a lot more to do with history and economics.
Whether we like it or not, most of the history of Islamic countries is a history of constant Western meddling. We're not just talking about the Crusades, we're talking about the British empire, other European-controlled colonies, on up to 20th century American involvement. And there's a lot more of that than people now remember (or learned about). The first democracy in a predominantly Muslim country, for example, happened fifty years ago -- in Iran -- but as happened all too often during the Cold War, given a choice between an anti-American democracy and a pro-American despot, America backed the despot (the Shah of Iran). Not many Americans understand how much America, Britain and other "Christian" countries actively did to screw up that region, but the people there definitely do.
Religion comes into play, I think, mostly because it's a great motivator to bring together people who feel victimized and oppressed. God doesn't want you to be in this condition and if you bring the fight to the infidels, God will be on your side. It's easy to portray what we're seeing in Islamic countries as a function of Islam, but ever heard of the Rwandan genocide? It's as horrific as anything you can find in the Middle East -- estimates range from 500,000 to 800,000 people killed in the 1994 massacre. Rwanda was a predominantly Christian country. And darned if they weren't told that God was on their side. (Some pastors of the time have been convicted of war crimes since then.) You want irony? Many of the survivors of the genocide converted to Islam, because Christianity was the religion that went after them -- and it was the tiny Muslim communities in Rwanda that gave them protection.
This is really the key to understanding this phenomenon: Rwanda and countries like Iraq and Afghanistan have a lot of similar problems, from ravaged economies and little infrastructure to histories of oppression. What they do not have in common is religion. Christianity's presence didn't keep people from rising up and killing one another in Rwanda; Islam's presence isn't what compels people to do so in the Middle East. It's very easy to focus on ostensible differences between Christianity and Islam, but if you're really trying to understand the roots of Islamic terrorism, religious teachings are more red herring than Rosetta stone.
StarTribune published it in Minneapolis, even put it on the front page of the comics below dilbert! woot!
-- dieman - Scott Dier
A very well put post.
First, in response to the whole Muslims are merciful bit, I invite you to read this post. So either Muslims are not doing what they are taught when the kill all these people, or they are being taught something different entirely. Now, I understand that there are really peaceful muslims, but it seems to me that everywhere that Islam takes hold, shit like the examples I've given become more and more common.
As for abortion doctor bombings... How many of those have happened this century? (here is hint, it's looks like a capital "Oh") Do you really think it is a fair comparison to compare abortion clinic doctor murders to Islamic terrorism? How many planes have Christians hijacked and rammed into hospitals or clinics that perform abortions?
And while I certainly don't condone abortion bombings, I still don't think it is fair to compare it to Islamic terrorism. Theo van Gogh was murdered for making a movie that Muslims didn't like. He was killed because he hurt someone's feelings. The fatwa taken out of Salmon Rushdie was taken because he insulted Islam. No one was hurt, mind you, just insulted. An abortion doctor is murdered because he is going to be killing babies in the eyes of his killer. There is a difference between feeling insulted and genuinely thinking you are saving a life. Again, I don't condone it, but it is not a fair comparison.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You speak from your ass well!
In response to Rwanda, that was a civil war between the Hutu and the Tutsi, neither of which is a church. Just like the US Civil War was not about religion, neither was Rwanda's.
As for the "Western Meddling" excuse for Islamic rage, it doesn't really explain all the other Islamic terror NOT in the west. One example would be the Christian school girl beheadings I linked to in the parent post. Other examples would be attacks in Somalia, Pakistan and Thailand. All three of the attacks were today, by the way, just today! None of these were attacks against the West. So either we have really good security here in the west or Muslims are angry about more than "Western Meddling".
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
How is this flamebait chief?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Islam is a religion followed by a billion or so people.
There's not just a "moderate crowd buried under all that hate", but it's by far the huge majority.
There are plenty of whacko Christian fundamentalists out there as well, and some of them are in office. Let's not lose perspective just because Fox News (and the rest) are propaganda organs which show us only that which makes a small group of white psychopaths very rich.
-FL
I agree with your comments. --Indeed, I don't give money to pan handlers for several of the reasons you outline, (except for those odd times when I break the rule based on my own assessment. No one rule can define every eventuality).
The point, as you say, is to use the thinking muscle to make choices. Emotions are a type of internal guide, and they are very important. But the rest of the brain should never be turned off. --And fear should always be questioned and analyzed as it usually results from some part of the self which needs work.
-FL
See, you can never EVER bad-mouth Dilbert on Slashdot. Every time, you get marked-down by the same drones that read Dilbert and find joy and comfort in self-identifying their shitty lives with the shitty lives of the idiots in the strip.
Here, let me highlight it for you, so you don't have to read the whole thing:
Cite me something out of the Qur'An that excuses any of what you just said. Or cite me something out of the Gospels that justifies the Crusades.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The hell I am. The very limited data you point to is interesting, but cannot be used at all to make such a point as you seem to be trying to make. There were some very big publishing companies not represented on that list, and I noticed that several of the ones which were listed were just name holders; mostly owned by larger conglomerates which went un-examined. And even then, 94% of the campaign contributions represented were given up by individuals working in those companies. Well, shucks! I thought I was pretty clear in my post that I knew several journalists, all liberal-minded, who attest to having almost zero control over the content they work to provide. The company owners are the ones who dictate direction, not the employees. And who owns publishing?
Well, I did a quick check and it seems, just as a general for-instance, that nearly all the books published in America come, when you climb the ownership chain high enough, from one Bertelsmann, a German company which survived WWII when other publishers foundered, and they did so by working arm in arm with the Nazi party, agreeing to publish only party-approved crud. Carrying this ethic in mind, Bertelsmann flourished and is today one of the most powerful publishing firms on the planet. They also happen to be a family business with no public shareholders, so they get to do exactly as they please. Indeed, (according Wikipedia) the Bertelsmann Foundation which directs the publishing empire, is a non-profit organization and political think tank set up by the founding families. Hmm. Non-proft. Think tank? Old money? Now when you put all of that together. . .
This isn't conspiracy fluff. It's how it really is. A conservative political think-tank is in control of the books in the bookstore. So don't give me, "Liberal Media".
Then take a look at who owns the rest of the media. --The other giants which control the TV you watch and the newspapers you read. It's almost entirely owned by old and very conservative money. So who gives a hoot how many shackled libby would-be journalists are making campaign contributions to a corrupt democratic party? It doesn't mean a thing when they have no say in how Israel is represented or how the press releases from the Pentagon are published word for word, etc. And don't forget the good ol' secret services. They openly admit to having had agents directing the media fifty years ago, and there is conjecture that they are doing it again today. Ooops. It's not conjecture. With AT&T's relationship with the government's clandestine organizations having been outed, we'd be insane not to suspect all the same activities with regard to above-the-law agencies sitting on the press. I think we'd be nuts not to think that the US spies never actually left after WWII. Heck, with the red menace and all. . .
And even if you discount all of this, a quick afternoon looking at what the U.S. media says and how when compare it to the reality of the situation, anybody who cares to can quickly see that we have anything but a "Liberal media".
-FL
I've hit Wikipedia to learn that it's a comic strip about a penguin. Is this strip popular amongst nerds?
Well yes, at least among grey-beard nerds who remember the predecessor Bloom County comic strip taking sides on pre-internet, pre-Linux Mac/PC fanboy wars. Take a close look at the design of Oliver's PC, the Banana Junior.
The simple absence of religion isn't sufficient to improve things. You have to replace it with something better, not the same thing only instead of slavishly following a prophet of "God" you slavishly follow the Party Leader.
While muslims may not be mentally unstable in the DSM-IV sense
(infinitely debatable), and indeed the vast majority of nominal muslims
are likely no more or less stable than median nominal atheists, hindus,
christians, jews or buddhists, I think it is quite clear and not in the
least genuously debatable that a genuinely held belief in the most
basic tenets of Islam quite compellingly and logically leads to a duty
of violent struggle, both internal, spiritual, and external, as in the form
of warfare. It is important, therefore to understand that the "War
on Terror" so-called is in fact a war on genuine Islam. The goal of
those who manage it is to render Islam an impotent geopolitical force.
This can only be done by stomping out obedience to the teachings
of the Koran on the geopolitical stage. This in turn can only be done
by crushing at least one of (1) democracy in the Ummah, and (2)
observance of Islam.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The Jews actually have been persecuted as severely as the Muslims think they are being. Not to say the reflexive cries of antisemitism that emerge periodically are always, or even usually, correct, but criticism of Jewish beliefs has more regularly lead to slander of same, which has more regularly led to murder. No one's alleging that the Muslims eat Christian babies every friday.
Christianity holds that it IS the reality-based community, and that you
are living in a fantasy world where anthropic effects occur by a cast of
dice and tornados passing through junkyards assemble flight-ready
777s on a predictable schedule.
My contention is that by making fun of a viewpoint you oppose, you are
in fact doing a severe disservice to your own. Intelligent people recognize
ridicule and insults as the desperate refuge of a rhetorician without an
honest argument.
The difference between me and you is that I won't try to control the way
you vote, or where you send your child to school.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I think they would fulfill all moral obligations by only saying your services are no longer required. If they hire you to provide a service they aren't morally obligated to publish anything you write. They may be obligated to pay you, but not publish.
People buy newspapers based on credibility(truthiness) and entertainment value. If your article provides neither, then why publish?
I was the kid who was smaller growing up. And now I'm a (mostly) stable adult.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
One of the issues I have with this story and the reactions that follow is that people are TREATING it like his freedom of speech is being trampled on.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
http://movies.about.com/od/moviesinproduction/a/op us093004.htm
This was from 2004. Maybe this is the final media push before the movie announcement so that it goes the way of the Simpsons.
An animated comedy starring the popular Opus the Penguin from Berke Breathed's "Bloom County" comic strip.
Director: Berkeley Breathed
Writer(s): Berkeley Breathed
Cast: Not Available
Release Date: December 19, 2008
Official Site: Not Available
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Genre: Animation, Comedy
Rating: Not Available
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
The real question is how did it get to +5, then drop back to +3 without anyone modding it again?
Do you have ESP?
A major Christian protest where someone is carrying a sign saying "Behead those who Insult Christianity" and maybe we've got something to start talking about.
Right now the public face of Islam is that of violent jihad. Until that is changed then we have things like a cartoon being refused because it happens to mention Islam and jihad. Have you read the strip in question?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294779,00.html
Hugs and kisses!!!!
Well. . .
Actually, the only way you could possibly think that is if you spend too much time absorbing the signal from those American news agencies, which as a hard rule offer only a small sliver of truth and plenty of falsehoods.
First of all, every muslim I know is very much opposed to violence. These are not mythical people. They are moms and dads and students and decent working people. I wanted to know what was really going on, and so I made an effort to find my own information. Go visit your local mosque and meet the people there and ask questions. You may be surprised to learn that they are people like any other with the same human drives and emotions, etc. The moderate Muslim is hardly mythical. I don't think their religion is any better than Christianity. It's just as limiting as any other, but as a group, the people who worship under Islam really aren't the depraved lunatics they are made out to be. Further, there is indeed outcry from many sectors of the Islamic religion which is opposed to violence. You just never hear them because it simply isn't reported by the American media. But it's certainly there if you go looking.
Secondly. . , there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many of the bombings attributed to Islamic fundamentalists are indeed orchestrated and funded and encouraged by the various secret services from opposing nations who have a lot to gain from seeding fear into the world. It's a fascinating, albeit sad subject, which again, I looked into because I wanted to know what was really going on. Whenever a big social change comes about and the government starts instructing people, I like to find out what their game is. There always seems to be a game. I don't like to be manipulated or to play the shmuck, so I need to collect my own data and do my own thinking. Thus, if you want to understand the world, it is imperative that one researches beyond the state propaganda organs. The London bombings are an excellent example; the official story is riddled with holes and corruption. The Israeli government also, (and in particular) has a large stake in maintaining a negative world view on Islam. --Land grabs and power and manifest destiny and all that. It's called a 'False Flag' maneuver when one country self inflicts damage to blame upon another so that the populace will agree to further military spending, reduced freedoms and all the various fascist systems which are so seductive to governments. (It's SO much easier to run a country and feather your nest when everybody is too frightened to argue with you.)
Often people, upon hearing this, will knee-jerk with the cry of, "Conspiracy!" and stop listening. That in itself is fascinating. I ask people why they have such a strong reaction to the word and ask them to look inside and ask where the original knee-jerk stems from. Nearly always, the initial replies will be will be surface, rationalist stuff, but with enough time and numerous examples, the flaws are exposed. (False knowledge always contains flaws, otherwise it wouldn't be false. It's easy enough to deconstruct falsehoods because they come with their own inbuilt self-destruct buttons.) Once people are willing to look beneath their own defense systems and find out how those systems were installed and who worked to put them there, it becomes much easier to see through the fog and to recognize when one is being manipulated and used.
-FL
But both sides are also perfectly willing to pervert their belief until it's unrecognizable. Think of the Crusades, of Nazi Germany, of any of the things Christianity has done in the name of God...
Hitler did not do what he did in the name of any Religion other than his own belief that only Germans should be in Germany. What whacked source of information made you think Christianity had anything to do with Hitler?"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
However, that's a point where "war" and "conflict" definitely aren't synonymous; a lot of conflicts are religiously motivated. There are obviously non-Islamic cases of that, too, certainly throughout history and even in recent times, but it seems that the most violent parts of the world currently often have strong Islamic influence or control.
The other point, though, was simply that those violent parts are also in pretty dire straits economically. They're second- or third-world, with everything that implies about resources. Historically, those conditions are frequently associated with increased crime and brutality, and are prime breeding grounds for revolution. My strong suspicion is that if more Islamic countries were like Dubai economically, more of them would be, well, like Dubai. (I'm aware Dubai isn't without problems on various levels, but you probably see what I mean.)
"Western meddling" wasn't an excuse, more an observation. Again, looking at broader conflicts, I think that's why a lot of the anger gets directed toward Western interests -- it's not have-nots envying haves, as some critics have suggested, but have-nots resenting the feeling that the haves kept coming over and screwing with them, often leaving the have-nots even worse off than when they started. I didn't mean to suggest that's the driving force of everything that could be characterized as "Muslim anger," though; it has more to do with the anti-Western trend running through it.
Now I'll throw a wrench into things with a random musing. One of the biggest differences between Islam and Christianity occurred to me after I wrote that last post: age. Islam is the 'youngest' of the major world religions, which means they're not that much older currently than when Christianity was engaged in the various Crusades. I wonder if there's something about the stage of the religion currently that magnifies its ability to be used as bludgeon.
I'm sure someone will read this and say, "Hey, didn't you just argue it was economics?"; I give economics higher weight (especially at a macro level), but I'm not discounting religion -- particularly one that's a very, well, crusading variant. The second- and third-world conditions are the fire, but that doesn't mean religion doesn't come along and throw gasoline into the mix.
Oh, come now. Unplug for a minute.
I did a quick (like five minute) scope around and found a ton of stuff. Here's a sampling. .
I think we're both pretty much right across the board, and very wrong at the same time. If there were a single, simple reason that drove people batshit mad, we would have solved this problem years ago.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Ha ha. That gave me a good laugh.
But seriously, when I post that way, I do it deliberately. After posting a couple thousand comments on Slashdot, I've found that it's fun to play with the medium provided in order to explore new ways to deliver thoughts. I'm sorry it irritated you, but I actually quite like the format. I think it's neat how it allows for a natural semantic rather than strictly logical flow from subject to content, and I think it's cool when others do the same. Still, perhaps it's not such a bad idea to repeat the first line just to keep everybody happy. Though, I find it sounds like a hiccup. Whatever. Your comments have been noted, and I will continue to explore in the ways I find interesting.
Cheers!
-FL
It is being alleged by many that they're all terrorist maniacs. And past persecution gives you no right to bear a chip on your shoulder.
If you can read this you've gone too far.
this whole thing is full of unfounded statements. you don't know any "Christians" who thought the abortion bombing was okay? well, i do. and i spent most of my time in a very moderate, affluent, northern-NJ presbyterian church. i certainly imagine it's worse elsewhere.
and no, i don't believe you. the Koran has rules for how Muslims are to treat other people (at least Jews and Christians; i think non-Abrahamites are more or less fair game). this is abundantly clear if you take a historical perspective somewhat longer than what Americans are generally comfortable with; early in the last millennium, Muslims were far more accepting of both Jews and Christians in their territory than the Christians were of either the others. the Crusades provided the most vivid examples of this (with Christians slaughtering whole cities, including just folks who weren't the right kind of Christians), but there's plenty of others. a thousand years ago, the center of Jewish thought and scholarship on the planet was Baghdad. what a difference a millennium - and a few dozen wars - make.
i see Muslims condemning the actions of the radicals all the time. leaders of the faith as well as people on the street. i've never met one who thought it was a good idea. if you need to go find some (do you know any Muslims?), check out CAIR, or MPAC, or IEC, or CSM, or MCB, or... you get the idea. even the heads of Iran said it was outside what Islam supports.
but that last one gets to the heart of the problem: you're conflating politics with religion (which is understandable, i guess, since the leaders of very many middle eastern countries do that intentionally). Iran hates us not because Islam tells them to, but because our idiot president entirely discarded their reform efforts and publicly called them "Evil", thus giving substantial support to their previously-waning hard-liners. oh, and because (and this goes for the rest of the area) we've destabilized the part of the world they have to live in, caused significant increases to regional terrorism, and acted unilaterally, without UN consent, to overthrow a sovereign nation who'd made no offensive moves towards us.
oh, and because we continue to support the nation with the worst human rights record in the region, including supplying them billions of dollars in arms and giving tacit support to their WMD program.
i'm not arguing that there aren't differences between religions, and especially not in the forms witnessed today. in my (rather politically risky) opinion, Islam is a few centuries behind Christianity and Judaism in terms of their understanding of their own faith, mainly because they lack an continuous tradition of free exegesis (when Christianity opened up to the idea that maybe the bible wasn't the literal word of God we saw very dramatic transformations). Jews have had a continuous overwhelming emphasis on traditions of study, questioning, and interpretation for about three thousand years (largely picked up from the Greeks). they taught it to the muslims, who were doing pretty well indeed (certainly better than their contemporary western Christian counterparts) until the Crusades destroyed the high point of their civilization and thrust them back into the dark ages. to say that there's a fundamental difference in the teaching of mercy is pretty flatly false, and a grotesque (and unhelpful) oversimplification of some very complex issues.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
the abortion clinic violence, on its own, is certainly not on the scale of what we see in the Islamist Arab world, sure, but it's of like kind. oh, and that number's not zero; there's at least one bombing in 2001, an attempt on 2006-09-11 (nice pick for a date, jackass), and numerous cases of arson throughout this decade (although it has been backing off since about 2002). but the abortion clinic violence isn't the only issue. throw in Matthew Shepard and all the other men and women persecuted or killed for their sexual orientation; in the US, at least, that's an overwhelmingly religious-motivated hatred. one's bound to throw in the KKK and the Army of God. there's the NLFT in India. certainly the numbers are different, but don't pretend it doesn't happen.
if you want to look for large-scale examples of Christians behaving in profoundly un-Christian ways, take a look at much of Africa. many of the conflicts going on there are at least largely religious in nature, and the Christians certainly don't get to come off as the "good guys" there (nor do the Muslims; they're all behaving pretty abhorrently).
and i take objection to your claim that, on a case-by-case basis, it's not a fair comparison. murder is murder. you don't have the right to kill people. i don't care whether it's because you have a philosophical difference with them over when ensoulment happens (because that's really what the religious aspect of objections to abortion is) or a philosophical difference with them over the honor of the creator. neither does anything to justify the act, so murder is still murder.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
My thought while reading the comic strip, "A girl who isn't trying to be like every other airhead in the U.S.? I'd date her! "
You see when you're being cruel to someone, you're really helping them. Obviously they're pussies if they think otherwise.
So if I tied you up for hours, constantly punching you in the face until you passed out again and again, you'd really be in a position to be thanking me for de-sissifing you so thoroughly.
Wake up. Only the people who dish it out ever think like that.
People have been vicious and cruel to anyone they don't consider their own for as long as there have been people. Only the rationalizations, and the forms of cruelty change.
So are you fighting your local god-botherers with the same fervour you maintain against muslims?
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven