121–130 of 284 posts
..."zombie Muhammed"! ...I REALLY wanna see a photo of that, so if anyone has it PLEASE post it anywhere online! (though, to be fair, resurrection was Jesus' thing, so he would go better with the zombie thing, and maybe the costumed guy got what he deserved for mixing things up...)
> The much-misconstrued statement of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that free speech does not give you the right to shout fire in a crowded theater is now being used to curtail speech that might provoke a violence-prone minority. This is very incorrect to say it is misconstrued. In Schenck vs US, the Court was prosecuting a pacifist who distributed pamphlets protesting the involuntary draft in World War I, arguing tha…
This seems like a false dilemma: either blame the speaker or the doer -- not both?
Moreover, the question is open as to whether or not some speech in some circumstances can provoke violence where otherwise none would have occurred. All you are saying in response to the question is an unqualified "no."
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> "(although it has failed quite miserably so far when it comes to Hispanic and African Americans)." I wouldn't exactly describe African Americans as immigrants per se... It seems to imply a level of volunteerism that simply wasn't there. Anyways, that's a nitpick. > "Note that I'm talking about implementing stricter immigration policies going forward, not getting rid of people who are already here." Right, but how d…
Our current government here in the UK is doing this at the moment. They even revoked a university's license to accept foreign students on a technicality. We make a fortune out of foreign students and with our demographics need them far more than the US, but according to the Daily Mail reading grey brigade if we packed them all off home, all our troubles would be over. Because simplistic, sweeping, poorly thought out…
I don't disagree that foreign students bring a lot to this country, and that the handling of this thing by the government was extremely poor (2), but you're conflating two different issues in order to make a point about the Daily Mail.
It seems like you're guilty of the same simplistic arguments.
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19419395
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/30/london-metro...
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I'm not looking at this from an impartial point of view, I'm looking at this as an American citizen who greatly enjoys the benefits of having been born in a developed nation with global hegemony. I have no illusions about the various immoral and unethical acts committed by the US government over the last 50-75 (and probably more) years in various 3rd world countries in the name of American interests, nor do I think t…
But failing to undertake a proper root cause analysis is harmful to your stated aims. You appear to believe that a resurgent radical Islam is primarily due to the rise of wealthy Arab states, and yet these states are aligned to the West, armed by the West, and also suppress the same radical elements you wish to neutralize domestically. A proper root cause analysis would reveal that violent military intervention coupl…
To add a touch of concreteness, according to "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright (which I cannot recommend enough if you're interested in that bit of modern history), an explicit motivation of Osama bin Laden was the US's continued presence in Saudi Arabia (at the regime's express invitation). The book also contains an account of Hosni Mubarak's rather heavy handed suppression of radicals in Egypt, and how that motivated resistance (although focused on Egypt, they were co-opted by bin Laden).
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> "If you want to fight militant Islam, the first thing to do is to limit immigration from those countries and spread the immigrants out to force assimilation." It would work, but is not very different from banning all white people in order to shut down the KKK. The proportion of Arabs to radical Islamic fundamentalists is so small that it really, really wouldn't make sense. That's a lot of baby for very little bath…
> It would work, but is not very different from banning all white people in order to shut down the KKK. There's a big difference in that those white people are already in America, and getting rid of them would be impossible. Note that I'm talking about implementing stricter immigration policies going forward , not getting rid of people who are already here. > The proportion of Arabs to radical Islamic fundamentalists…
Why can't the article just come out and say what it means? Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. The simple lesson here is that if you want to stop non-believers from doing blasphemy, violent reprisals work . And really, self-censorship is a practical stance, if not a principled one.…
No, it's not just that.
Western politically correct liberals, the kind of people that likes to hell-ban dissenting opinions on social issues on HN too, is all for self-censorship on lots of issues, even without involving the "scare of militant Islam".
People also get the equivalent of "hell-banned" from the media, or get fines and prison terms and such for non-PC talk that has nothing to do with muslims. If you count "hate speech" in that, a loosely defined term that can mean anything, it gets even worse.
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> Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. This is such a stupid strategy. The right thing to do is to look at the root cause of all this. After all, there are lots of angry people all across the world that hate the Western world and want to hurt it, but most can't. What sets the Arabs…
The minute that crude oil loses its relevance to the Western world, the Arabs will just go back to what they were before - a bunch of desert nomads with no real power. You forgot the thousand years when they were inventing mathematics while your ancestors were living in mud huts covered in their own shit. Europe wasn't even capable of syllogism until they stole the knowledge back from the arabs.
What I find chilling is in the age of the internet the comment sections on news sites are heavily censored (e.g. CBC). Which seems to allow a strange mix of viewpoints but what you don't see is what worries me. As for insulting religions it's funny that most times it's religion against religion more than non-religious again religious.
the CBC comments section is heavily censored? Looking at it I didn't think they even had moderators.
I know people who have tried to make a general comment and are denied but others who make far harsher statements seem to always get them posted. It seems not so much censoring as some weird agenda, it's bizarre. A lot of times commenting is restricted which is too bad since I like to see what people think of stories; pro or con.
