Well now I'm not sure what your point really is. Since you dont really believe that child porn and Muhammad images are equally wrong, there is nothing really to answer here.
I'm just saying that the Western World had better take a close look in the mirror before judging other people on the particulars of what they find profane.
I think the west ought to realise just how good we have it here, and realise that many many others do not and when we cow-tow to some sensibility bullshit (at the cost of free speech) it is those very people we are letting down. There are people fighting and dying for freedom in the middle east right now (and I dont mean US soldiers - I mean the ME citizen themselves), and when we lower the bar and say its ok because they are of a different culture - we piss on them and the people within out culture who have died to give us those rights.
And I want to make this point very clear. I am all about tolerance, but if you use violence to demand special treatment I am not interested at all at how important that treatment is to your culture/religion etc. The ideas that underpin western culture, are not to be traded or compromised. On some philosophical level you can say that all culture is equivalent, but you only have to spend a few months living in a particular culture to comprehend just how better western ideals are. And this isn't about westerners being superior, as there is nothing about any other peoples that prevents them from having the same ideals. Its about our ideals being superior and the fact that barring a few areas we actually do live up to them.
But religious freedom is a human right. They have a taboo and it involves images of Muhammad. Out of respect for the peaceful Muslims who aren't violent it's beneficial to respect Islam.
Freedom of religion is a human right, but respect of your religion is not. As an atheist, I can tell you that much of what is said by preachers in the street is disrespectful of atheists. I find the belief that I will be tortured for all eternity very disrespectful. But I don't demand them to respect me, just like Catholics cannot demand I respect their holy crackers. Neither can Muslims demand that the image of Muhammad be sacrosanct. This is just how it works is a free society.
In a multicultural society, there is good reason to behave respectfully to beliefs you do not share. But when such things are backed up with violence, then it crosses a line, and this is about making it very clear that such things will not be tolerated.
It's not like the majority of Muslims are violent so why blame the entire religion
Nobody is blaming the entire religion. Put it this way - if some atheists beheaded someone for saying "atheism is crap" or something similar - I would be the first to hold this banner. I would look down on anyone who felt it was more important to preserve "respect for atheism", then to reprint or otherwise display such as statement. In fact I would feel that this very act was doing more for this cause. Otherwise there is something very wrong with your priorities.
Ignoring that your particular example is illegal, and addressing your main point, what if someone posted legal things I found offensive on my street (not vandalism mind you), I would ignore it as I do many other things I find offensive in my daily life. Would there be outrage? - depending on the thing maybe - and that's fair and good. They have a right to cause us offence, and in turn some might exercise their right to protest (personally I wouldn't give it the publicity by protesting it). If they caused property damage there might be lawsuits, but otherwise there wouldn't be a case to answer. However someone threatened them with violence for doing it, I certainly would speak out against it.
The main point is that you don't have a right not to be offended in a free country. If someone offends you - feel free to offend them back, or you know - consider being the bigger person and exposing the other as petty. I might even support you for it. However, threaten violence and all free people ought to align against you.
And that is what this is about. This is not about causing offence for fun, its about taking back a boundary which has been slowly eroded by extremist elements among Muslims (and rather shamefully supported by the mainstream) who have declared that drawing images of Muhammad is punishable by death. They have backed this up with murder. As we saw with the south park debacle, some in the west have caved. We are here to defend our freedom and defy those who would threaten us into submission.
Don't start this equivalency bullshit - we are giving them teapots calming to be depictions of Muhammad, in response to threats of violence. If western civilisation falls, it will be because its people lacked either a spine or a brain to defend its core ideals.
BTW the HRE was never more than a collection of monarchies (as were most 'states' at the time), and not particularity (for the time) religious. It had a primarily political beef with the pope that led to the pope vs anti-pope thing which they lost. The fallout from this lead to Protestantism later (you will note that the Germans were the first to jump on board). A better example would be the papal states which was a theocracy that got its ass handed to it by secular armies, and disappeared until the rise of fascism.
If you want examples of Christian led countries/movements doing crazy things take a look at Africa - e.g. Lord's Resistance Army doing all sorts of happy things under the banner of Christiandom - which is recognised as a terrorist organisation by the US. Witches are still brunt every now and then. This kind of thing will always occur under the right situations.
This isn't about ridicule just for fun. This is one group of people demanding special treatment (i.e. no drawing of Muhammad etc.) on the basis of their beliefs and threatening (and carrying out - so its not an empty threat) violence against any who dont give them this special treatment. This is simply not acceptable. And this ridicule serves as a way of showing that we are united in this perspective. If this offends someone more than murdering someone in the street then they have their priorities way wrong and I dont have much sympathy for them.
TL;DR: We aren't the students picking on the weird kid, we are the students uniting against a bully who wants to do things his way.
"Portugal, Europe" - is there another continent that has a country called Portugal? Also those noobs deserve to go down after the stunt they pulled in the Spanish civil war.
I'm not sure that this is about free speech. If the blagger, once identified, has nothing to do with the proceedings, nothing will happen to him. If he has then there will be legal consequences. Nothing here that impinges on free speech.
Hang on - if that is how you play things then you need to explain to a felon who has done his time and just wants to get on with his life but now has to stay in jail forever why he cannot be freed. If you can convince him that he should stay in jail forever then you can do that but otherwise letting him go is the only solution that exists right now.
That's usually a byword for eliminate - there is really no way of making it go faster without removing some avenues of appeal. If you remove some avenues of appeal then you run into the danger of executing (more) innocent people.
'Why' is explained above. Atheists have not demonstrated an adequate method for instilling the necessary values on as wide a scale as Christianity.
I have read this but not caught the 'why'... what exactly is the method that Christianity used to instil the necessary values on a wide scale? Why haven't all Christian nations, ever since Christianity became the majority been liberal democracies or otherwise bastions of liberty? What has changed in this instilling of values around the 18th century that allowed a country founded on liberty that had not been possible in the previous 15+ centuries? Why do countries that have lost Christian majorities still maintain liberal democracy governments?
We may need to interpret the laws created since the original Constitution was written, but the Bill of Rights is not up for interpretation it just is. They are rights given to us from above not from man. We do not give rights to each other. We are born with those rights and no one has the right to take them from us.
I'm sure you are taking a bit of artistic licence when you say this - but I think it disservice to the great achievement that man really did give each other these rights (not anyone above). This is an incredibly important point that we should be very much proud of. Secondly its unrealistic to expect the applications of the bill of rights to be obvious in all situations, which is why they are interpreted by the courts. Note that many things we take for granted about them (such as them applying to states as well as federal Govt.) were not originally intended.
It seems to me everyone wants to "Interpret" the amendments to what suits them, when the original writers themselves wrote what they meant them to be.
And I assume you are the go-to man for this:P ? Everyone complains about judicial activism only when it goes against their ideas, but in reality because the bill of rights is not 3000 pages long and list every possible situation any adaptation to a novel situation will be an interpretation. Given that the constitution itself specifies for this to occur I cannot imagine that it goes against any founding father intent.
Very interesting - however you would only get accurate results in terms of monetary value from this if there was > full employment. Also you have to take into account that humans are not rational decision makers and probably would underestimate the danger (i.e. we dont estimate long term, small chance dangers very well - we usually just ignore them rather than take them into account).
Works well in Australia. For the minor parties its a good place to start. The lower house is more about local issues, whereas the senate is about larger issues that dont necessarily have enough local interest to get a seat in the lower house but enough so that they can have a seat in the upper house. For the major parties, people who are on the fence often vote one of the major parties in the lower house and for the other one in the upper house so that there is no complete control.
Keep in mind the other side to that equation. In china the developers simply get the government to kick out the people that live where you want to build. It sure is great for the developers but not so for the people that live there that lose their home. If a development was planned over or near your house you would want a say - and if you want a say that is going to take time and money - and if you want your say to actually matter then that might require the process to iterate several times, perhaps eventually cancelled.
I don't think there is an easy way of doing quick and cheap development without rail-roading people.
My first inclination when you mentioned the evolution wars was to retort that it wouldn't be an issue if Government wasn't so heavily involved in education.
Well that's technically true as then teachers would not have a responsibility not to mix religion into classes. However that doesn't exactly seem a better solution.
Even without the involvement of the Federal court the local population voted out the school board members that were pushing the creationist agenda.
But not before they tried to have a go at preaching creationism, wasting taxpayer money and effort of parents to fix. Note that this was by no means the end of their efforts as can be seen in Texas.
Besides, why the focus on the religious right?
You brought it up by saying they have no real power! Wtf does that have to do with democrats and gun control???
In both cases that's only due to the constitution and to a degree the judiciary for making it so - in Terri's case they even passed a bill solely for her "benefit" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay#Terri_Schiavo). To say they have no real power I think is wrong - take a look at the re-writing of history going on in Texas, the continuing brouhaha over evolution (almost all presidential nominees declared they didn't believe in evolution, none stated flatly that they do) - its really a troubling situation.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just saying that the Western World had better take a close look in the mirror before judging other people on the particulars of what they find profane.
I think the west ought to realise just how good we have it here, and realise that many many others do not and when we cow-tow to some sensibility bullshit (at the cost of free speech) it is those very people we are letting down. There are people fighting and dying for freedom in the middle east right now (and I dont mean US soldiers - I mean the ME citizen themselves), and when we lower the bar and say its ok because they are of a different culture - we piss on them and the people within out culture who have died to give us those rights.
And I want to make this point very clear. I am all about tolerance, but if you use violence to demand special treatment I am not interested at all at how important that treatment is to your culture/religion etc. The ideas that underpin western culture, are not to be traded or compromised. On some philosophical level you can say that all culture is equivalent, but you only have to spend a few months living in a particular culture to comprehend just how better western ideals are. And this isn't about westerners being superior, as there is nothing about any other peoples that prevents them from having the same ideals. Its about our ideals being superior and the fact that barring a few areas we actually do live up to them.
Oh snap! Good one sir! Apart from the fact that, you know, Muslims aren't ridiculing anyone and instead are killing folk.
But religious freedom is a human right. They have a taboo and it involves images of Muhammad. Out of respect for the peaceful Muslims who aren't violent it's beneficial to respect Islam.
Freedom of religion is a human right, but respect of your religion is not. As an atheist, I can tell you that much of what is said by preachers in the street is disrespectful of atheists. I find the belief that I will be tortured for all eternity very disrespectful. But I don't demand them to respect me, just like Catholics cannot demand I respect their holy crackers. Neither can Muslims demand that the image of Muhammad be sacrosanct. This is just how it works is a free society.
In a multicultural society, there is good reason to behave respectfully to beliefs you do not share. But when such things are backed up with violence, then it crosses a line, and this is about making it very clear that such things will not be tolerated.
It's not like the majority of Muslims are violent so why blame the entire religion
Nobody is blaming the entire religion. Put it this way - if some atheists beheaded someone for saying "atheism is crap" or something similar - I would be the first to hold this banner. I would look down on anyone who felt it was more important to preserve "respect for atheism", then to reprint or otherwise display such as statement. In fact I would feel that this very act was doing more for this cause. Otherwise there is something very wrong with your priorities.
Ignoring that your particular example is illegal, and addressing your main point, what if someone posted legal things I found offensive on my street (not vandalism mind you), I would ignore it as I do many other things I find offensive in my daily life. Would there be outrage? - depending on the thing maybe - and that's fair and good. They have a right to cause us offence, and in turn some might exercise their right to protest (personally I wouldn't give it the publicity by protesting it). If they caused property damage there might be lawsuits, but otherwise there wouldn't be a case to answer. However someone threatened them with violence for doing it, I certainly would speak out against it.
The main point is that you don't have a right not to be offended in a free country. If someone offends you - feel free to offend them back, or you know - consider being the bigger person and exposing the other as petty. I might even support you for it. However, threaten violence and all free people ought to align against you.
And that is what this is about. This is not about causing offence for fun, its about taking back a boundary which has been slowly eroded by extremist elements among Muslims (and rather shamefully supported by the mainstream) who have declared that drawing images of Muhammad is punishable by death. They have backed this up with murder. As we saw with the south park debacle, some in the west have caved. We are here to defend our freedom and defy those who would threaten us into submission.
Don't start this equivalency bullshit - we are giving them teapots calming to be depictions of Muhammad, in response to threats of violence. If western civilisation falls, it will be because its people lacked either a spine or a brain to defend its core ideals.
BTW the HRE was never more than a collection of monarchies (as were most 'states' at the time), and not particularity (for the time) religious. It had a primarily political beef with the pope that led to the pope vs anti-pope thing which they lost. The fallout from this lead to Protestantism later (you will note that the Germans were the first to jump on board). A better example would be the papal states which was a theocracy that got its ass handed to it by secular armies, and disappeared until the rise of fascism.
If you want examples of Christian led countries/movements doing crazy things take a look at Africa - e.g. Lord's Resistance Army doing all sorts of happy things under the banner of Christiandom - which is recognised as a terrorist organisation by the US. Witches are still brunt every now and then. This kind of thing will always occur under the right situations.
This isn't about ridicule just for fun. This is one group of people demanding special treatment (i.e. no drawing of Muhammad etc.) on the basis of their beliefs and threatening (and carrying out - so its not an empty threat) violence against any who dont give them this special treatment. This is simply not acceptable. And this ridicule serves as a way of showing that we are united in this perspective. If this offends someone more than murdering someone in the street then they have their priorities way wrong and I dont have much sympathy for them.
TL;DR: We aren't the students picking on the weird kid, we are the students uniting against a bully who wants to do things his way.
7/10: Perhaps too great... :D
Syndicate wars is a documentary.
"Portugal, Europe" - is there another continent that has a country called Portugal? Also those noobs deserve to go down after the stunt they pulled in the Spanish civil war.
I'm not sure that this is about free speech. If the blagger, once identified, has nothing to do with the proceedings, nothing will happen to him. If he has then there will be legal consequences. Nothing here that impinges on free speech.
The funny thing is that that part of the onion is not fake - the responses people make are, the but news they are responding to is real.
Hang on - if that is how you play things then you need to explain to a felon who has done his time and just wants to get on with his life but now has to stay in jail forever why he cannot be freed. If you can convince him that he should stay in jail forever then you can do that but otherwise letting him go is the only solution that exists right now.
That's usually a byword for eliminate - there is really no way of making it go faster without removing some avenues of appeal. If you remove some avenues of appeal then you run into the danger of executing (more) innocent people.
'Why' is explained above. Atheists have not demonstrated an adequate method for instilling the necessary values on as wide a scale as Christianity.
I have read this but not caught the 'why'... what exactly is the method that Christianity used to instil the necessary values on a wide scale? Why haven't all Christian nations, ever since Christianity became the majority been liberal democracies or otherwise bastions of liberty? What has changed in this instilling of values around the 18th century that allowed a country founded on liberty that had not been possible in the previous 15+ centuries? Why do countries that have lost Christian majorities still maintain liberal democracy governments?
We may need to interpret the laws created since the original Constitution was written, but the Bill of Rights is not up for interpretation it just is. They are rights given to us from above not from man. We do not give rights to each other. We are born with those rights and no one has the right to take them from us.
I'm sure you are taking a bit of artistic licence when you say this - but I think it disservice to the great achievement that man really did give each other these rights (not anyone above). This is an incredibly important point that we should be very much proud of. Secondly its unrealistic to expect the applications of the bill of rights to be obvious in all situations, which is why they are interpreted by the courts. Note that many things we take for granted about them (such as them applying to states as well as federal Govt.) were not originally intended.
It seems to me everyone wants to "Interpret" the amendments to what suits them, when the original writers themselves wrote what they meant them to be.
And I assume you are the go-to man for this :P ? Everyone complains about judicial activism only when it goes against their ideas, but in reality because the bill of rights is not 3000 pages long and list every possible situation any adaptation to a novel situation will be an interpretation. Given that the constitution itself specifies for this to occur I cannot imagine that it goes against any founding father intent.
That's what I said as well, but the judge didn't buy it!
Very interesting - however you would only get accurate results in terms of monetary value from this if there was > full employment. Also you have to take into account that humans are not rational decision makers and probably would underestimate the danger (i.e. we dont estimate long term, small chance dangers very well - we usually just ignore them rather than take them into account).
Works well in Australia. For the minor parties its a good place to start. The lower house is more about local issues, whereas the senate is about larger issues that dont necessarily have enough local interest to get a seat in the lower house but enough so that they can have a seat in the upper house. For the major parties, people who are on the fence often vote one of the major parties in the lower house and for the other one in the upper house so that there is no complete control.
What's the climate like there?
That's mostly an urban myth - see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
Keep in mind the other side to that equation. In china the developers simply get the government to kick out the people that live where you want to build. It sure is great for the developers but not so for the people that live there that lose their home. If a development was planned over or near your house you would want a say - and if you want a say that is going to take time and money - and if you want your say to actually matter then that might require the process to iterate several times, perhaps eventually cancelled.
I don't think there is an easy way of doing quick and cheap development without rail-roading people.
My first inclination when you mentioned the evolution wars was to retort that it wouldn't be an issue if Government wasn't so heavily involved in education.
Well that's technically true as then teachers would not have a responsibility not to mix religion into classes. However that doesn't exactly seem a better solution.
Even without the involvement of the Federal court the local population voted out the school board members that were pushing the creationist agenda.
But not before they tried to have a go at preaching creationism, wasting taxpayer money and effort of parents to fix. Note that this was by no means the end of their efforts as can be seen in Texas.
Besides, why the focus on the religious right?
You brought it up by saying they have no real power! Wtf does that have to do with democrats and gun control???
In both cases that's only due to the constitution and to a degree the judiciary for making it so - in Terri's case they even passed a bill solely for her "benefit" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay#Terri_Schiavo). To say they have no real power I think is wrong - take a look at the re-writing of history going on in Texas, the continuing brouhaha over evolution (almost all presidential nominees declared they didn't believe in evolution, none stated flatly that they do) - its really a troubling situation.
To completely blow your mind - did you know we have virus DNA in our DNA? Some of which has even been adapted for our internal use.