Looks like we need another one. I have some other stuff going on, so it’s all on you.
Open Thread
by $8 blue check mistermix| 131 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
by $8 blue check mistermix| 131 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Looks like we need another one. I have some other stuff going on, so it’s all on you.
Comments are closed.
Kathryn
Scahill’s article in Nation on Yemen — an unsettling version of why “boots on the ground” is probably not the point.
http://www.thenation.com/article/159578/dangerous-us-game-yemen?page=0,0
justawriter
From Ed Brayton:
I posted the other day about the new billboard campaign in Chicago that features a picture of Obama and the text “Every 21 seconds our next possible leader is aborted.” Commenter lofgren left the absolutely perfect response to that message:
MGLoraine
Here’s a thought: lunatic pastor Terry Jones and half-wit NY Rep. Peter King should be airlifted immediately to Mazar-i-Sharif to explain their actions in person to the locals.
While we’re at it, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Donald Rumsfeld should be airlifted to the Sadr City section of Baghdad to witness Iraqis dancing in the streets upon their arrival.
Justice is still possible in my fantasies…
alwhite
@justawriter:
Given what the teabaggers think of government leadership I would assume that this message would make them strongly in favor of more abortions.
alwhite
@MGLoraine:
I understand that the people doing the killing don’t have the wherewithal to get to Florida but I do wonder how it can be that there are no people like them that do have a way to find the good reverend. The ‘man’ is obviously a moron but I really wonder if he thinks the invisible sky wizard will protect him.
Bruce S
To “justawriter” – that’s a good idea in intent, but it’s not the “absolutely perfect response” for a very simple reason that too often eludes us liberal folk: Their message is nine words, “our” response is around ninety.
Moonbatting Average
Is anyone else finding Firefox 4.0 intolerably slow and unstable? I am using Vista, and the browser chugs and crashes regularly. Firefox 3.6 worked well enough, and I like the features and layout of 4.0, but the performance is awful.
Mark B
@alwhite
The short answer is that the Mullahs stirring this up are using Jones’s Koran burning to stir up anti-western hate against the occupying forces. If they just killed or even just blamed him as an individual, it wouldn’t suit their aims. The radical religious leaders of islam and Terry Jones actually have quite a bit in common.
Ana Gama
Here’s a face-palm if you haven’t already seen it:
Glenn Beck is uncomfortable with Donald Trump’s birtherism.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_04/028762.php
MikeTheZ
@alwhite: Sky wizard, no. Police officers, yes. He’s probably going to get a few people here killed in the end.
Roger Moore
@Mark B:
This is the point that needs to be made again and again. The real fight isn’t between East and West or Christianity and Islam. The real fight is between people who want peaceful coexistence and those who want a clash of civilizations. Terry Jones is on Osama bin Laden’s side, not ours.
Amanda in the South Bay
Since this is an open post…
I’m enjoying watching my former denomination, the Orthodox Church in America, implode in scandal. A big chunk of what is going on is supposedly celibate priests and bishops engaging in activity that is very not in line with what this most traditional of Christian Churches (Orthodoxy) teaches.
I swear, the bishops are a bunch of fucking hypocrites (these are the same douchebags that say all sorts of culture war stuff in public to appease their gung ho uber converts) and who engage in private activity that, well…”chastity for thee, but not for me.”
Amanda in the South Bay
@Roger Moore:
I dunno…Afghanis are going to have to learn you don’t kill people over freedom of expression. Colour me a left wing contrarian over this-the First Amendment doesn’t protect religious group’s feefees.
People routinely mock the Catholic Church, Scientology, etc here (and elsewhere in various liberal forums) but I don’t see them killing people over this.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Good grief, it’s windy here. If you have a helmet, arguingwithsignposts, wear it when you go out.
licensed to kill time
@Moonbatting Average:
I haven’t had Firefox 4 crash on me, but pages load noticeably slower than FF 3.6.16 and it eats more RAM. If you go on the Mozilla Firefox forums you’ll see lots of people complaining about these issues. I find myself having to restart the browser multiple times daily to get memory usage back down. I hope they fix these issues because I love Firefox.
Yutsano
@Amanda in the South Bay: It’s not contrarian. But it is projecting our values on them to expect that they should allow freedom of expression just as we do over here. The First Amendment wasn’t created in a vacuum, the logic and reasoning behind it go back hundreds of years in the history of Europe, not just England. The Afghans will have to decide if that is a value they wish to adopt on their own, we can’t just impose it on them.
@licensed to kill time: This really must be a YMMV issue because FF4 is running like gangbusters for me. Maybe it’s some compatibility issue with the software platform. I’m running Windows 7 if that helps.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Yutsano:
I guess my point is that I don’t see the pastor at fault here-he was engaging in his rights as an American, and I don’t think he was doing anything wrong, other than being a jackass (and I do think Obama shouldn’t have stuck his nose in it either).
scav
@Amanda in the South Bay: Well, there are religions here that kill people, especially women (even those that don’t even belong to their congregations), slowly by making medical (and moral) decisions in their name and insist that these same prejudices be enshrined in law and admired by all present.
eemom
@Amanda in the South Bay:
fer realz? Damn, and all this time I’ve been proudly pimping Eastern Orthodoxy as the righteous alternative to Catholicism: priests allowed to marry, no pedophiles, ok with divorce and abortion, etc.
Which “division” are you speaking of? I haven’t heard of any scandal amongst the Greeks. Not that I’ve been paying attention.
Amanda in the South Bay
@scav: That’s not really what I was talking about. I’m of course referring to physical violence against people that mock and disdain certain sects. Its pretty obvious that the Catholic Church and various fundygelical groups don’t do that here in the United States.
Yutsano
@Amanda in the South Bay: He didn’t do anything wrong legally. He is of course well within his rights to burn a Qu’ran just as much as burning the book of Dianetics. He also bears the responsibility of the consequences of said action. He doesn’t get the right to say, “Hoocodanode?” after his actions cause offense.
scav
@Amanda in the South Bay: It’s good just to clear that up then. But people end up equally dead. The jackasses over here egging on violence elsewhere don’t seem necessarily superior to jackasses elsewhere to me.
jeffreyw
lunchtime
RossInDetroit
@Moonbatting Average:
My wife installed FF 4 this morning and it lost all of her bookmarks. She has Xmarks so she’s OK but I’d hate that. FF was always too slow for me so I switched to Chrome and never looked back. All the functionality of FF and much faster, especially on my ancient and memory-crippled laptop.
eemom
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Arguably, however, they would if they could. It’s a bit harder to get away with that sort of thing here than it is in Afghanistan.
At least, there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t behave in exactly the same way, if they lived in a similarly lawless place.
Salem Witch Trials, anyone?
Yutsano
@jeffreyw: NOM!! Did you poach them first?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Amanda in the South Bay: I agree that he wasn’t doing anything wrong by our lights. Not taking into account the possible effect of one’s words is a different kind of wrong.
We are an easy target to hate for that part of the world. If we recognize them as being part of our vestigial, feudal-medieval past, do they have any context to recognize us? We must seem deeply alien and weird to Afghanis. Gotta proceed with caution.
eemom
@Yutsano:
That’s right. Moral responsibility is a different animal from the First Amendment.
(Though you could argue about whether he bears moral responsibility, as well.)
Also, doesn’t anybody remember that this whole disaster pre-happened six months or so ago when some other asshole (or maybe the same one) just THREATENED to burn the Quran, and it got all that press with even Petraus saying it would make things worse in Afghanistan, and eventually he called it off?
MikeJ
@Yutsano:
The consequences of his actions are a pile of ashes. You can’t be held responsible for what people who don’t like you do.
It’s exactly like saying that a woman who gets an abortion is responsible for the murder of Dr. Tiller.
Amanda in the South Bay
@eemom:
the point is that those groups *can’t* do that here: I thought those were the kind of values we are supposed to be exporting to the ME-learn to live with other people mocking your religion.
The scandals are in the Orthodox Church in America-the successor to the old Metropolia-that part of the Russian Church known as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America which was granted its autocephalous status by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1970.
For example-Bishop Benjamin of the Diocese of the West signed a letter with the other Orthodox bishops of California urging their flock to vote yes on Prop 8. And the dirt that people have been discovering about Benjamin online, makes him to be a fucking hypocrite of the highest order. Protip: If you come out in public against same sex marriage, you’d better have a squeaky as fuck personal life.
WaterGirl
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): He may not have done anything that is illegal in the U.S. It was morally wrong, in my opinion, because the resulting violence was predictable, even if we couldn’t predict the specific details of the violence it would cause.
If this was an episode of Law & Order, wouldn’t they go after this terrible man for depraved indifference or inciting violence?
scav
@Amanda in the South Bay: “Exporting” values like freedom =/= expecting to see our exact culture and exact socio-political system mirrored everywhere.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@WaterGirl: Just wait until Sam Waterston gets his ass on the witness stand!
Amanda in the South Bay
@scav:
Not resorting to violence when people criticize your religion is hardly something specific to the US, and I daresay a good thing to export.
Amanda in the South Bay
@WaterGirl:
Blah, L&O fetishes police and prosecutors. I’m no Radley Balko libertarian, but the way the authorities are portrayed in the L&O series almost wants to make me one.
scav
@Amanda in the South Bay: sure, to me, but then I don’t see the value of a throwing a hissy fit when someone doesn’t wish you a happy holiday in exactly the correct phrase.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@MikeJ:
If everyone in this world were that thick skinned and literal minded, would there be any symbolic acts of any kind?
Yutsano
@MikeJ:
An abortion is not a deliberatively provocative act and (almost always) not a theocratic statement. The burning of the Qu’ran was. Jones intended there to be a hateful reaction to this. He got it. Forgive me for not feeling sorry for him for getting flak for it.
scav
And look, Amanda, we’re not (at least I’m not) arguing with you about ideal ideals necessarily, I’m just not buying into the perfection of our own side of the deal. Oh, and with what Yatsano is saying. ETA: to be very clear, I agree with Yutsano
Keith G
@MikeJ:
I guess I need to see the flow chart.
Here is a bowl full of fun:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/sc-dc-republicans-budget-20110404,0,1584409.story
Larkspur
@Moonbatting Average: Oh, dear. I had an “uh-oh” moment when I had the option to install the new Firefox, so I held off. I was going to check out reactions first. Of course, because I am lazy and easily distracted, I have not done so yet. So it was by chance that I saw your comment and realized that possibly I have dodged a teeny bullet.
Anyway, thanks.
WaterGirl
@Amanda in the South Bay: Now I’m gonna have to go look up Radley Balko.
Yutsano
@Keith G: It’s basically the exact same plan he had before, he just didn’t get his super budget making powers to pass it by fiat, so now he has to sell folks on it. Never mind the fact that he’s trying to totally rewrite how the ACA works with the Medicaid proposal in there. It’ll pass the House I’m sure then die a quiet death beyond that. We could have another shutdown this year.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Amanda in the South Bay: True. It plays on the anxieties of the middle classes. Doulbly so, SVU
Me, I root for the perps on Cops. (Run, you motherfucker, run! Aw, damn. Now you’re caught.)
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
Yes you can. He isn’t burning the Koran just because he wants to start a fire. He’s burning it because he knows that it will provoke Muslims to violence. It doesn’t matter that the people he’s provoking are nominally his enemies or that they’re half a world away. The consequences are both foreseeable and intended, so he is fully morally culpable.
jeffreyw
@Yutsano: No, but I cooked them for a spell over low heat, covered, before adding them to the pan with the peppers.
PurpleGirl
@eemom: It was the same asshole. And he did try to burn a Qu’ran and that skateboard guy took the book away from him.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Agreed, but Afghanistan does not have a first amendment. in fact, nobody does.
Tim, Interrupted
@MikeJ:
This seems correct to me.
Did the Muslim rioters/murderers take note of the fact that on the day this one U.S. citizen burned a Koran, approximately 299,999,999 other U.S. citizens did NOT burn a Koran? Where was their joy at that fact to balance their manufactured outrage at the other?
Tim, Interrupted
@Roger Moore:
If I tell you I am going to kill your mother the next time you dare to tilt your head at an angle I don’t admire, and you then eventually offensively tilt your head and I kill your mother does that make you morally culpable?
FlipYrWhig
@PurpleGirl: The skater guy, Jacob Isom IIRC, disrupted a Koran-burning event in Amarillo TX. It wasn’t Terry Jones, it was a sub-Terry Jones yahoo.
Brachiator
Since this is an open thread and discussions about authoritarian regimes can be wearying…
I am just having fun watching music companies get their panties in a twist over Amazon’s cloud service. Instead of trying to bash Amazon over licensing rights, they should be doing everything they can to support Amazon which, in one deft stroke, not only stunned the Apple iTunes juggernaut, but also gave a competitive leg up to every upcoming Android tablet. If demos of new tablets don’t prominently display Amazon’s cloud player, then these people truly deserve to be slapped down with a bunch of iPads.
I also enjoyed how tech columnist Andy Ihnatko astutely noted how Amazon also schooled google, which doesn’t seem to know how to roll out products unrelated to search, while also making the case for a Kindle tablet to directly compete with an iPad.
hmmm. Apple. Google. Maybe this is about authoritarian regimes.
Jay C
@Moonbatting Average:
I upgraded to FF4 (running W7 Home on a Dell laptop) and haven’t noticed any problems one way or another.
I don’t like the new toolbar layout, and HATE the lack of copy-and-paste (Yeah, I know: Crtl+C, Ctrl+V – it just takes getting used to, I guess) on the (now-absent) File menu; but otherwise it’s been fairly OK.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Tim, Interrupted: If Roger has to go to as much trouble to tilt his head as it takes to round up your followers, alert the media, and make a big showy display of burning the Koran, then yes. Roger would be morally culpable.
The phrase “symbolic act” has two words in it.
licensed to kill time
@Jay C: Perhaps you know this, but if you click on the orange FF button and go to Options and put a check by Menu Bar you’ll have it back on top with File, Edit etc as before.
Also, if you miss the status bar function, install the addon Status4evar to add it back.
tofubo
redo some push buttons on your dash for your vee wee
http://carstyle4you.com/index.php?cPath=16_22_33_47
Roger Moore
@Tim, Interrupted:
If I deliberately tilted my head that way because I want my mom out of the way, I think I would be morally culpable. That’s my point about “foreseeable and intended”. Jones burned the Koran not just with the knowledge that Muslims had promised violence in response; he did it with the specific goal of provoking that violence. I don’t think he’s as bad as the people out there killing people because somebody mistreated a book, but he’s not a lot better.
Yutsano
@Brachiator: If California and Washington have a tech war, you think the rest of the world would notice?
MikeJ
I would add, the so called man of god down there in bumfuckistan Alabama or where ever, is a jackass, but still not morally culpable for those murders.
Amir_Khalid
I run Firefox 4 with Windows Vista Ultimate on a rather low-end 1.7Ghz laptop I got in ’08. I didn’t lose my bookmarks when I cut over from Firefox 3.6.16. I have been s firefox user since Version 1, and have never had problems with slow page loads that were attributable to any version number of Firefox. In all that time, Firefox itself has only crashed on me once or twice.
@MikeJ:
Despite being a preacher, Terry Jones is no man of God. He’s a provocateur like Roger Moore says. He got precisely the reaction he set out to provoke. And now he wants retaliation for that reaction — i.e. an escalation in hostilities.
CaseyL
The pastor is a nitwit who is loving every minute of the attention he’s getting – attention he wouldn’t be getting if the religious nutbars in Afghanistan weren’t so obliging as to go up in smoke with the Koran he burnt.
Y’know, I feel for the people in the Arab countries whose lives have been laid waste by American military adventurism, and/or by their own leaders. But one of the things that keeps me from ever self-identifying as a “progressive” (as opposed to an old-fashioned liberal, which I am) is the tendency, when faced with stories like Arabs rioting and killing over cartoons or burned Korans, to justify the rioting and killing “because it’s their culture and we really cant’ condemn that.”
Oh, yes we can.
Vicious misogyny is also their culture, along with equally vicious tribalism.
Just because groups of people are oppressed does not make them blameless when they do something repulsive. Nor will I understand, absolve, and be sympathetic when they do something repulsive as a gesture of Anti-Americanism, even when I am very opposed to whatever it is the US is doing over there. I can and so oppose our continued presence in Afghanistan as counterproductive and useless. That does not change the fact that Afghan culture, particularly the tribal cultures, is savage and reprehensible.
AAA Bonds
NATO just asked us to continue air strikes in Libya.
AAA Bonds
@Brachiator:
Anyone got their hands on actual Kindle sales numbers yet?
Keith G
@Tim, Interrupted:
Doesn’t make sense.
Look, I have no love for the major religions, but burning holy books (maybe any book)is an act of thuggery, protected in the US though it is. And it was and an act of thuggery with predictible consequences.
Of course, the mobs are responsible for the deaths and destruction. Still, if one of my friends had been killed, I would visit that troublesome preacher with my holy crobar.
Keith G
Legally he is not, but morally he certainly is as this was a forseeable outcome.
MikeJ
@Keith G: Remember when whatshisname the biologist guy over at scienceblogs did something mean to a cookie? If a deranged Catholic or a Keebler elf had killed somebody as a result would he be responsible?
MikeJ
How about Andres Serrano? Is he morally responsible for anything that xtians do?
How do I get this protection from my own act and the ability to blame any evil I do on others? Is it just having a reputation for violence to begin with? The more violent I am the more I can blame other people for anything I do?
“Dude, you should have known he’d kill somebody when you offered him light beer. He’s just a savage. Can’t hold him to our standards. All the bartender’s fault.”
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
You don’t. I think this is your basic misconception. When I say that somebody is guilty of provoking violence, that doesn’t absolve the people who actually committed the violence. There’s no conservation of guilt, where spreading the blame around automatically reduces the amount that sticks to any guilty party. Instead, spreading the guilt just makes everyone guilty. Jones is guilty of incitement and the Afghanis who killed those UN workers are guilty of murder.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
There is wisdom behind your humor. There is already a global tech war going on. China is fighting google. Various companies and countries are doing everything they can to impose draconian copyright standards and to impose intellectual property laws that would protect their profits and stifle innovation and competition.
There are attempts to block music streaming programs in their infancy. Various countries, including the US, are attempting to require that they be given “backdoor” keys to allow them to look at emails,etc.
The funny thing is that some geeks are willing to allow the authorities anything they want. I’ve been listening to some tech podcasts recently and was amazed to see some people, for example, laugh at Germany’s attempt to allow people to opt out of google’s street view because the technology was just too cool, or others who don’t seem to care about privacy violations as long as they can play games and stream their music and videos.
bryanD
I’m running Firefox4 on my tiny 512MB XP system and boy does it zip along nicely. (Like maybe 100% more nicely then the v3.6 which was fairly quick already)
PS. I never fell for that paid-media Vista offensive for one half-second. Vista is a big fat smelly slob. Hell, it fainted at it own debutante ball and rolled down the fucking stairs, crushing the staircase. XP? Decent and stable.
Amir_Khalid
@MikeJ:
No deficiency in Christianity or Christendom could give me, as a non-Christian, license to burn a Bible — whatever the likely or actual reaction from Christians. Because burning Bibles (or anyone else’s scriptures) is wrong in itself, whether or not it is protected by constitutional guarantees of free expression.
Pastor Jones’ Quran-burning is an intentional provocation to Muslims, and he is fully responsible for the consequences.
The Afghans who rioted in Mazar-e-Sharif and killed those UN staff are likewise fully responsible for their violent reaction, which involved the deaths of innocent third parties. I don’t see anyone on this thread saying that Jones’ Quran-burning lets off from having that responsibility.
Amir_Khalid
@bryanD: I only use Vista Ultimate on my own (then) new laptop because the copy was a media freebie from Microsoft Malaysia. Otherwise I would have preferred to stick with XP. Nearly everyone agrees, Vista is the Windows that should never have been.
Brachiator
@AAA Bonds:
Don’t know. But here’s something more from Andy Ihnatko’s recent column:
And here is the method to Amazon’s madness. Their Kindle device and Kindle software development are separate areas. Amazon not only sells a physical device, they let you install Kindle software everywhere. Because ultimately they are in the book selling business, not the device business. And it makes sense that people want to have access to an ebook that they buy anywhere and everywhere.
Which again, is what makes Amazon’s cloud music player such an awesome move. Play your music anywhere.
Tim, Interrupted
@Roger Moore:
OK…I can live with that take on it, though I really, really bend over backward on the side of freedom of speech, which also guarantees freedom of douchishness.
Amanda in the South Bay
Well, I suppose your deference to Christian feefees is your right, though I’m pretty sure the invective hurled here against Christianity is just as bad.
Amanda in the South Bay
Is it okay for a conservative to kill someone who burns a flag?
4jkb4ia
NYT: Former Steeler Darnell Stapleton as head coach of New York women’s team
Also Adam Liptak takes to Week in Review to muse about the uses of class actions.
Tim, Interrupted
@Keith G:
Of course, the mobs are responsible for the deaths and destruction. Still, if one of my friends had been killed, I would visit that troublesome preacher with my holy crobar.
You contradict yourself, number one. And number two, your act of violence would lower you to the level of the rioters in AFghanistan. Ever hear of trying, at least trying, to act in a civilized manner? Civilization requires a hierarchy of acts: Burning paper with words on it is at a lower level than beating people with crowbars or beheading them. It is not a difficult concept to grasp.
Your revenge fantasy might make a little teensy more sense if you first booked a flight to Afghanistan and made plans to confront your friend’s actual killers with your Crowbar of Holiness.
4jkb4ia
Did I mention that the Cardinals are on KMOX, from which they never should have left?
Yutsano
@Brachiator: Just as a fun exercise: look at the job listings Amazon has posted in the Seattle area. Then divide out the ones specific to Kindle. The vast majority are software development and maintenance of the platform. They’re going all in on this and it must be paying off huge dividends for them because they’re expanding like gangbusters.
Brachiator
@Amir_Khalid:
I disagree. While I think that book burning is despicably anti-intellectual, on one level I would be as appalled if you burnt a copy of Huck Finn as if you burnt a Bible. But more because it demonstrates the burner’s stupidity than because he might be burning a supposedly sacred text.
And as long as no one is being denied access to books, you can have book bonfires all day long.
I agree about the provocation, and wished that it had been avoided, but those Muslims who allowed themselves to be goaded into bad actions are responsible for what they did.
One possible difference in views here, is not just issues of freedom of expression, but also views about the degree to which one must respect any religion, or show deference or respect to a religion or its adherents.
Keith G
@Amanda in the South Bay:
If you are being serious, you are missing the point.
The wrongfulness of the killing is not being debated. It is the culpabilty of a person who knowingly performs an act that will inspire an emtional reaction – when such reactions have turned violent in the past.
4jkb4ia
Burning a Koran is a hate crime just as burning a Torah would be understood here to be a hate crime. (I am glad my husband strongly believes this.) Then it comes down to whether the idea of a hate crime makes any sense in your conception of the First Amendment.
Tim, Interrupted
@Amir_Khalid:
Because burning Bibles (or anyone else’s scriptures) is wrong in itself, whether or not it is protected by constitutional guarantees of free expression.
I totally disagree. I was raised Christian, and am still some form of my own version of evolved Christianity, and you can burn as many Bibles as you damn well please, and I don’t give two or even three shits. If I am freezing and have only a bible left to burn, I will throw that sucker in the stove without hesitation. Any Bible is merely paper and ink. Burn one and there are a million to take its place. Same for the Koran. It is the ideas and concepts represented within these books that are of value, and those can never be destroyed.
I think anyone of any religion who would harm another person over the destruction of easily replaceable ink and paper, identical to millions of other already existing volumes of ink and paper, is a dangerous, criminal fanatic looking for EXCUSES to vent their free floating rage.
The person burning a bible or a koran is just that: a person burning a bible or koran to express an idea through a representative action. Big whoo. The best reaction would have been to highlight the utter smallness and insignificance of the act in the grand scheme of things, or to completely ignore it.
S. cerevisiae
I am running FF 4 on my Mac and it seems to load pages faster and the upgrade kept all my bookmarks and toolbars. So far no problems.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amir_Khalid: No deficiency in
There is something to this. Does Jones know nothing about fucking manners? Why be an asshole. Because he can? I cut the insides of a bible out one time. But I didn’t invite the press to record the event. have some fucking respect. Geez.
kdaug
@Moonbatting Average:
Running slick as snakesnot in Win 7 (good rig, though).
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts:
Bingo. That’s what this entire affair can be boiled down to. Jones’ total lack of respect of any world view but his own. And it was UN workers that suffered the consequences.
4jkb4ia
Disclaimer: This comes from my mind being poisoned by John Yoo, and I will go with what Amir_Khalid said. But did this guy have specific intent? Did he think to himself, “The Koran itself is more of a provocation than anything I can do by burning it?”
The mob was in part morally responsible because they went out and killed people who had nothing to do with the Koran burning at all.
scav
@Tim, Interrupted: But Tim, that only works within your conception of the sacred: like it or not, admire it or not, there are other conceptions of the sacred in which the physical and tangible can take on sacred import. Look at certain forms of Judaism (I don’t know if they all do it) and the care they take with all pieces of paper that might contain the word G-D? What do you think would be the reaction of large chunks of the local populace if the NEA funded a dance where the finale was pissing on Communion Wafers?
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
Very interesting. The other thing that comes into play here is that Amazon is going to have to be very nimble now that states are coming after them for sales and use taxes on product sales. The company must come up with new products and services to maintain its position against these new challenges to its business model.
Amir_Khalid
As a physical object, a Bible or a Quran is indeed just paper and ink. As is a copy of Huckleberry Finn. But it isn’t the destruction of mere paper and ink that gives Pastor Jones a self-righteous thrill, or inflames rioters in Afghanistan; it’s his expression of contempt and hatred for Muslims and what we hold to be the word of God.
That’s why people burn books, to show contempt and/or hatred of those who espouse the ideas in those books.
Jones’ Quran-burning was constitutionally protected free expression, but it was a hateful, intentional provocation and thus wrong. The Afghan rioters’ reaction was also hateful, and their murder of innocent parties was obviously wrong. I’m not letting either him or them off the hook here.
4jkb4ia
@Tim, Interrupted:
You’re saying that because you are used to printing. First link in Google about the burning of the Talmud in 1242. That was every copy they could find in France, essentially. The ideas and concepts in the Talmud could never be destroyed. But they were written down precisely to preserve them and to keep alive a community of scholars in more far-flung places than before. To have studied the entire Talmud in depth you have to be maybe not a flaming genius but more learned than usual. Once the Talmud was destroyed, the ability to study and learn new things was gone.
It appears that there was a triple play.
gelfling545
@MGLoraine: I was given to understand that ,traditionally, Muslims believe that lunatics are under the protection of God and so may not be harmed. Jones certainly fits the bill. Unfortunately our culture has seen fit of late to give such prominence to lunatics that it can be difficult for outsiders to recognize them as such. Instead of being the little regional nut case that he is he gets international media promotion.
Brachiator
@scav:
They get to complain, protest, and write nicely worded letters to the editor. They don’t get to burn shit down or kill people.
@arguingwithsignposts:
There seems to be a big deal about people not being assholes, as though this substitutes for a systematic moral or ethical standard. It doesn’t. Aaron Sorkin catches this well in The Social Network, where the Zuckerberg character’s motivations and actions, whether they cause anyone harm or damage, is reduced to whether anyone will think he is an asshole.
It’s funny, had you invited the press to record the event when you cut pages out of the Bible, you could have passed it off as performance art. And mocked the rubes who might have been offended.
@Amir_Khalid:
Here is the dilemma. Some people believe that some expressions of contempt are permissible. So you have two values colliding here.
And it seems to me that the pastor’s actions were futile. He cannot have any real effect on Muslims or what Muslims hold to be the word of God. None. His insult is empty.
MikeJ
@4jkb4ia:
Uh, no. You can’t have a hate crime without a crime. Criminalizing the idea is makes it *thoughtcrime*, not hate crime.
I say this as someone who fully supports the concept of hate crimes. Some crimes are committed aimed at more that just the primary victim. They are efforts to intimidate the community by action against one person.
Burning a book isn’t a crime, therefore it can’t be a hate crime. A hate jackassery.
Tim, Interrupted
@scav:
Why bring the NEA into this? We already have the example of Andres Seranno’s “Piss Christ” in which he made what I think is a beautiful photograph out of a cheap crucifix submerged in what is alleged to be his own very golden urine.
If the reaction of the “locale populace” had been murder and rioting, it would certainly not have been justified or in any way mitigated by the fact of Serrano’s “provocation.” As it was, there was plenty of verbal protest and multiple exhibit cancellations.
I think the douche pastor could easily have framed his Koran burning as an artistic/political act designed to expose the insane fanaticism of many if not most Muslims, which certainly was the case in the afghanistan reaction. Muslims on the other hand, ought to be calling attention to the vast majority of muslims who did NOT react in such a way and conducted themselves peacefully, with no regard for what some dude in america was up to.
As for the “have some respect” meme developing in this thread, may I say fuck that. I do NOT respect the Catholic Church, nor the Lutheran Church in which I grew up, nor the Muslim faith as it is widely practiced, nor most of established Christian religion, and any way I choose to non violently express that is fine and dandy and every bit my right. How morons respond to my action is a reflection on them, not me.
Tim, Interrupted
@Amir_Khalid:
Amir, if he truly believes the practice of the Muslim faith itself to be hateful and destructive, how can HIS burning of it be anything other than justified, in his eyes and that of the law? I believe the Catholic Church has done far more harm than good overall. If I express that feeling by melting down a few rosaries and making a collage, how is that “hatefulness” in any way “wrong?”
I guess I’m trying to say that EXPRESSION, as long as it is nonviolent and not directly inciteful of immediate violence, is not wrong or right, it just IS. And if the pastor’s heart is full of hate, that is HIS problem, not anyone else’s, unless they CHOOSE to make it so.
I did a humorous cartoon once of an Easter Bunny being crucified on a cross. In part, I was expressing my ambivalence about certain things. If someone who saw it had killed me or anyone else as a reaction, do you believe I bear some responsibility for their action? If I had not made the drawing, the killing would not have happened. Yet the law and I believe, morality, would hold that they and not I are one hundred percent guilty of the crime. It is sort of an uncomfortable, gray area, and gray is all we have.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tim, Interrupted:
Is burning a non-violent act?
Roger Moore
@Tim, Interrupted:
Sure but the message he’s sending is that Americans hate Muslims and have no respect for what they hold sacred. That may be a perfectly legal message to send, but it’s not one that’s easy for Muslims to ignore. That’s especially true because our defense of his legal right to do so looks a lot like an endorsement of his point to somebody from a culture where burning holy books is punishable by death.
Again, I don’t want to pretend that Jones’s actions are as bad as the murderers in Afghanistan, but let’s not pretend that he’s an innocent who’s just interested in exercising his first amendment rights. He’s an evil man who’s trying to foment all out war on Islam. That he’s doing so by provoking Muslims to attack us rather than by attacking them himself makes little practical difference. He’s still an enemy of peace and sensible policy.
Tim, Interrupted
@arguingwithsignposts:
I think you already know this, but I’ll spell it out: “Non-violent” as it applies to violence against actual, physical, flesh and blood human beings…you know, as opposed to paper and ink.
Burning inanimate things is…just burning. You know, flames, heat, etc. Do you consider it an act of violence to light up your fireplace?
arguingwithsignposts
@Tim, Interrupted:
analogy fail there Tim.
ETA: is burning a cross by the KKK “non-violent”?
Tim, Interrupted
@Roger Moore:
Wrong. The message he is sending, as it is received by a calm, rational, non fanatical, objective, observer, is that HE and his few acolytes hate muslims and have no respect…
Why should we dumb down everything to the lowest possible denominator of dumbshit, herd thinking, whether by muslim or christian fanatics? fuck them all. they are stupid.
And, of course, I have to ask what is the level of offense to Muslims caused by this little burning, as measured against the level of offense caused by the U.S. military and its enablers in the last decade, and how many non muslims have been killed in reaction as a result? Why, one must ask, is all this breath being wasted on the burning incident?
Tim, Interrupted
@arguingwithsignposts:
Lord, yes, to my mind, it is absolutely a non violent act. I don’t go for banning speech of any kind. And yes, I know it’s been outlawed in some places, and I think that is bullshit.
Yutsano
@Tim, Interrupted:
Jeebus H Bieber on a candlestick. You answer your own damn question then continue to make a fool of yourself. Have at it.
Amir_Khalid
@Tim, Interrupted: Terry Jones resorted to a hateful, intentionally provocative act to protest a religion he sees as hateful and violent. Hateful, intentionally provocative acts are wrong, no matter what beliefs you hold that might justify such an act.
I’ve already argued upthread that as the provocateur, Jones is morally culpable for those UN workers’ deaths, just as the rioters who actually killed them are legally culpable for the killings. If you act like a bad guy, what makes you the good guy?
arguingwithsignposts
@Tim, Interrupted:
Actually, burning a cross isn’t “speech.” it’s an act. just like burning a flag isn’t “speech.”
Amir_Khalid
@Brachiator:
Oh, he’s not doing it to shake any Muslim’s faith. Or even to express his own faith. He’s doing it to piss us off and provoke violence.
Tim, Interrupted
@arguingwithsignposts:
Justice Thomas speaking…?
look, just because you or a court say something is or isn’t so, doesn’t mean that I have to agree. What the hell good is freedom of thought or “speech” if non violent physical expressions of same are banned? Burning a cross is an expression of thought, just as speech and writing are physical acts expressing THOUGHTS, which at least theoretically are supposed to be free in this country.
Tim, Interrupted
@Amir_Khalid:
First of all, you have no way of knowing.
Second of all, for the purposes of this argument, his intent doesn’t matter. He exercised his free speech rights. Period. It’s not hard to understand.
If the dude who ran off with the Catholic Jesus wafer a couple of years ago had been responded to with a beheading, would you be saying it was his fault for provoking the Catholics?
Are you seriously holding Muslims to a lower standard of civilized behavior than you would others? Isn’t that kind of condescending?
WaterGirl
@Amir_Khalid:
Agree. This guy is not a man of god; he is a provocateur.
MikeJ
@Tim, Interrupted: I’d agree cross burning is ok, with the obvious caveat that it be on their own property. Obviously burning a cross on somebody else’s lawn is an act meant to intimidate, as well as being criminal trespass, arson, and a few other things.
Getting your moron friend together on your own property to act like a douche bag shouldn’t be a crime.
MikeJ
@WaterGirl:
What’s the difference? Jesus was a stone cold dick to those money changers.
Amir_Khalid
@Tim, Interrupted:
Please see my comment at #92, and note the last paragraph.
4jkb4ia
@MikeJ:
I went and found this hilarious link by Dahlia Lithwick on the Virginia cross-burning case where Thomas wrote the famous dissent. On the one hand cross-burning is speech. Both cases taken by the Court have said that. On the other hand cross-burning is a clear example of the motives for having hate crimes legislation. So the Court got around this by saying that you could criminalize having the motive to intimidate. Once you have the motive to intimidate and frighten people understand that the metaphorical essence of a hate crime is there. Then I have to admit that burning a Torah is more clear-cut. A reasonable person should be able to know/understand that the Nazis did this and that the effect will be to intimidate and frighten.
And to be fair, my husband said that burning a Koran SHOULD BE a hate crime.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tim, Interrupted:
We can disagree without acting like dicks about it, though. WBC, KKK and Jones are just acting like assholes to provoke. And other people take it the wrong way. Quick, draw me a picture of Mohammed.
Amir_Khalid
@arguingwithsignposts:
Them’s fighting words, mister! ;-)
scav
Shit, is tim still going on? Brilliant. We’ve got the equivalent case to three kids, one of which said to the second: “You’ve got poopy breath!” at which point the second kids hauls off and punches the third and, while some of us want to put two kids into time-out, timmo insists on praising the first kids use of free speech. Presumably, he’s got something else fueling this blah blah because it’s otherwise pretty damn inexplicable. And Tim? Yeah, I pulled in the NEA because there pretty well was a shit-storm when somebody tampered with a physical form of something sacred because that was the freaking point I was making, that the sacred can take physical form which at that point you seemed to be denying. Carry on being perfectly correct in your own mind.
Yutsano
@Amir_Khalid: Hey hey now, no need to draw out the daggers here, we’re all friends.
@scav:
He will. Of that point I have absolutely no doubt.
MikeJ
@scav: I don’t think anyone is praising the asshole preacher. There’s a difference between saying he’s not morally culpable for those deaths (and he’s not) and saying he’s an ok guy.
Obviously he’s a dick, but that doesn’t make him a murderer.
Tim, Interrupted
@scav:
oh please. just because the cross is sacred to you doesn’t make it so to me. Just because the koran is sacred to a muslim, doesn’t make it so to me. You can respect what you want. I can make fun of it or burn it as long as it’s not your property. I certainly didn’t say the crucifix in Serrano’s pee was sacred or not because that doesn’t really matter one way or the other. He had every right to do what he did and so he did it. Good for him.
None of this is new.
Brachiator
@Amir_Khalid: RE: And it seems to me that the pastor’s actions were futile. He cannot have any real effect on Muslims or what Muslims hold to be the word of God. None. His insult is empty.
Some decide to let the pastor get to them. Are you going to suggest that provocation can only lead to one result?
@scav:
I missed the part where you showed that anyone was killed because of any NEA controversy. I do recall people mocking the bourgeoise, conventional, whitebread views of people who don’t get the joke of “transgressive art.” I do recall people saying that the whole point of being an artist is to offend. Muslims, of course, excepted.
Tim, Interrupted
@Yutsano:
As will you. So what? Do you think you have received wisdom on the correctness of your position? If so, you would make an awesome fundamentalist Christianist or Islamist.
Amir_Khalid
@Brachiator:
I don’t suggest any such thing. And do remember, the vast majority of us Muslims have chosen not to respond to Terry Jones’ provocation.
arguingwithsignposts
What about the whole yelling fire in a crowded theater thing? I’m curious.
Yutsano
@Tim, Interrupted: I said I was done with you. I meant it. Now leave me be. I shall certainly extend you the same courtesy.
Keith G
@Brachiator:
Tell that to the families of the dead. They are affected.
Brachiator
@Amir_Khalid: RE: Some decide to let the pastor get to them. Are you going to suggest that provocation can only lead to one result?
Point noted. I do not presume that Islam is a monolith, nor do I believe in collective guilt, or any variation of such nonsense.
@Keith G: RE: And it seems to me that the pastor’s actions were futile. He cannot have any real effect on Muslims or what Muslims hold to be the word of God. None. His insult is empty
The murderers are the ones who have to answer for this. The pastor is irresponsible, but this is not the same thing as being culpable.
Brachiator
@arguingwithsignposts:
I am not sure what you are getting at. Are you arguing for a Crazed Muslim Exception to the First Amendment?
There is an assertion by some, not unreasonable, that religion and religious symbols should be accorded deference and respect. But while there is freedom of expression, and a right to free expression of religion, there is nothing, and no tradition, of according any particular religion respect. To the contrary, pissing on religion, even if it causes fights and even an occasional war, is part of the tradition.
It’s also telling that many in the Balloon Juice commentariat mock the very idea of a need for civility in blogging and any other expression, no matter the consequences. It’s perfectly fine to shout STFU in a crowded thread, no matter how much it contributes to an atmosphere in which violence might take place.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brachiator: Thank you for your response. I mean that.
Tim, Interrupted
@Yutsano:
ummm…are you deluded that BJ is some kind of Southern Gothic play? The above sounds like a line out of Tennessee Williams.