Decius wrote:
This page links the cartoon in case you are curious. Yeah, its inceditary, but give me a fucking break.

Hamas members, some armed with guns, stormed the EU office and demanded apologies from EU member states, or face serious consequences. "It will be a suitable reaction, and it won't be predictable," said Abu Hafss, a member of the Al Quds Brigade (an affiliate of the group Islamic Jihad).

A suitable reaction? What are they going to do, draw their own cartoon? "I'll draw this fucking cartoon, man! I'm serious! I'll draw it! You better back down right now or the pen is hitting the paper! I'm not fucking around here!"

The more these idiots prance around with machine guns and threaten to kill people over a cartoon, the more they reenforce the inceditary message the cartoon conveys. If they aren't a violent culture they should put down the AK-47s and act like they aren't a violent culture.

Absolutely right.

I have many friends who are intelligent, compassionate, reasonable Muslims. They live in my street, I work with them, I see and hear them every day. They are good people and good friends.

There is a group in that community however who believe that throwing a temper tantrum is not only a way of getting attention, but of getting what they want. They do not represent Muslims as a whole (no more than the "Nuke the Commies" crowd represented reasonable Americans in the 60s, or the fundamentalists Christians do today) but naturally they get most of the press attention.

In everyone's interest they should do what most of my friends have done - say that the cartoons were objectionable (and they can argue a good case not based on medieval thought systems but on cultural stereotyping) but then they shrug their shoulders and get on with dealing with life's real problems.

And one of those is finding a way to reconcile the reasonable West with reasonable Muslims at a time when the West's idea of a temper tantrum is too readily to go to war.

RE: Tensions continue to rise in Middle East over Cartoons

This page links the cartoon in case you are curious. Yeah, its inceditary, but give me a fucking break.

Hamas members, some armed with guns, stormed the EU office and demanded apologies from EU member states, or face serious consequences. "It will be a suitable reaction, and it won't be predictable," said Abu Hafss, a member of the Al Quds Brigade (an affiliate of the group Islamic Jihad).

A suitable reaction? What are they going to do, draw their own cartoon? "I'll draw this fucking cartoon, man! I'm serious! I'll draw it! You better back down right now or the pen is hitting the paper! I'm not fucking around here!"

The more these idiots prance around with machine guns and threaten to kill people over a cartoon, the more they reenforce the inceditary message the cartoon conveys. If they aren't a violent culture they should put down the AK-47s and act like they aren't a violent culture.

Tensions continue to rise in Middle East over Cartoons

The question, of course, is what exactly the Iranians are up to. They
do not yet have nuclear weapons. The Israelis do. The Iranians have
now hinted that (a) they plan to build nuclear weapons and have
implied, as clearly as possible without saying it, that (b) they plan
to use them against Israel. On the surface, these statements appear to
be begging for a pre-emptive strike by Israel. There are many things
one might hope for, but a surprise visit from the Israeli air force is
not usually one of them.

This analysis is troubling. It suggests that Iran will provoke the U.S. into attacking it, because they want to get attacked.

Stratfor on what the hell Iran is up to...

The Army has approved a new, classified set of interrogation methods...

The techniques are included in a 10-page classified addendum to a new Army field manual...

Army and other Pentagon officials raised concerns that Mr. McCain would be furious at what could appear to be a back-door effort to circumvent his intentions.

"This is a stick in McCain's eye," one official.

Mr. McCain's measure, which the Senate has overwhelmingly approved, would require that only interrogation techniques authorized by the new Army field manual be used on prisoners held by the military....

So, if I understand this.. We have banned torture, but there is no way to actually tell if we just said we banned torture while classifying the information that pertains to how we torture... Or, ideally, if we have a good set of guidelines for interrogation that actually bans torture, but are keeping them secret so our interrogation methods are not publicly known so they can be trained for.

McCain is the only one who even has the appearance of being an honest broker here. Does he have access to see what the current guidelines are? This issue just can't fall off the radar without something happening that convinces the world, or at least many people like me, that we did in fact ban torture. So far, I'm not convinced.

New Army Rules May Snarl Talks With McCain on Detainee Issue - New York Times

Richard Pryor, the caustic yet perceptive actor-comedian who lived dangerously close to the edge both on stage and off, died Saturday. He was 65.

Pryor died shortly before 8 a.m. of a heart attack after being taken to a hospital from his home in the San Fernando Valley, said his business manager, Karen Finch. He had been ill for years with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system.

I will miss him.

Comedian Richard Pryor Dies At 65

Don't Bomb Us - I think the title says it all. I wish our media had the balls that Al-Jazeera has.

This is a story that's gained signifigant traction just about everywhere but here. I wonder why?

Don't Bomb Us - A blog by Al Jazeera Staffers

Since van Gogh's murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness.

Messy. As recently as 1995 it was the predominate view of the U.S. Embassy to Canada that Canada would break into multiple separate countries within 20 years. Today that outcome is no longer considered likely. The reason is that from the 50's through the 90's the Canadian government engaged in a serious effort to make its various constituants feel as if their national identity represented them. Canada is a lesson in both how to succeed at this, and how difficult it is. This is why I don't have great hopes for Isreal. The jewish identity of Isreal as a state cannot provide a meaningful identity to it's muslim citizens. This will inevitably and perpetually cause tension, unless all of the muslims move out, or the state changes it's identity to become more inclusive, or the state is destroyed. Unfortunately, I don't think Isreal has the cultural maturity to choose the middle path, and I think the other outcomes are terrible in terms of their human costs, and I don't find the status quo acceptable either. I see problems in every direction there.

Can Holland create an inclusive national identity like the United States? I think so. I think England can too. I'm more worried about France.

On the other hand, I bristle at the thought of people being exhiled for preaching. If they advocate violence, then yes, but to attack tolerance as the issue is to invite the requirement that a national identity requires that 3rd generation Englishmen have the same culture as 50th generation Englishmen. This is impossible, and it will create more strife, not less. At the same time I don't think that people who are citizens of a country should operate their own "cultural" legal system. Democratic states should not allow communities to practice Sharia. It is the legal system of the country, and the people's equal footing before it, that makes a binding national identity meaningful. This is the lesson of American history. The constant accumulation of federal power in American history happen precisely because one nation could not exist with radically different legal systems in different regions. There is a balance. Its important for states to be laboratories of democracy, and to reflect slight regional differences, but American history has consistently shown that erring on the side of too much "legal diversity" results in significant tension and perhaps war.

The result must be that what it means to be English must be defined by who England's citizens actually are today. Not who they were 200 years ago, and not who they would like to be, but who they actually are. That identity must be one which every citizen can accept as his or her own identity.

It took Canada 5 decades to get French and English people to live together as a single nation and the project is far from complete. I fear getting Islamic fundamentalists to feel French is a far more daunting task.

Francis Fukuyama - A Year of Living Dangerously

"We are all here in China that represents quite a lot of opportunities, not only on the business side, but also on the social side," Yang said.

"We look at our users' interests, without our users we don't have business."

At the same time, it was essential that Yahoo employees abide by local laws as well, he added.

"I would not put our employees at risk in anyway, shape or form and when it comes to issues such as seeking user information we have a very clear cut set of rules."

"The government of any country has engaged with us through legal documentation or legal procedures, we get a lot of those every day around the world."

On the heels of Yahoo helping China bust journalist Shi Tao, Jerry Yang is in China taking part in the Internet Summit being thrown by Alibaba. Who thinks they would have been welcome there if they didn't hand over the information? I don't.. And I'm not just talking about the summit.

Bill Clinton is also attending.

"In China, I think that so far the political system and restraint on political speech in the Internet has not seemed to have any adverse commercial consequences," Clinton said.

"It will be interesting to see whether that is true of the future.

"In America, the Internet is this wild cauldron of dissenting voices, we have now whole different media over the Internet with all the blog sites in America," he said.

Clinton nails it. Its all about the market. Its the Chinese internal market that must put the pressure on the Chinese government. An internal approach is better than an external one. In China's eyes, any pressure from outside to change their approach to speech would be seen in a light akin to terrorism. The Chinese citizens need to be the ones to fly the Internet into Beijing. To stretch the analogy for all its worth, the pilots cannot be Chinese trained in America for their actions to take hold in the society. It must come from within. They can do it based on our ideology, but lets not be so blatant about it as to put it in the context of a state based attack. Put your faith in freedom and people. In this case, the Chinese people.

The next person standing in front of a tank will be holding a laptop with Wifi.

Yahoo's Yang say hands tied in China Internet censorship case

Snurched, stolen, thefted, nicked and generally swiped from all around. I will unapologetically update as and when ... unless someone objects to being quoted in which case I will, in fact, apologise.

quotes on LJ from British citizens about the bombing.

Hooray for us Brits
I particularly like the comments about tea (the great lubricatant of our civilisation) and the comment that to make Britain grind to a halt arrange an inch of snow (we stop curtesy of God and England (if you're English} penalty shoot outs)
nuts to the terrorists

you and me and the devil makes three -

Now if this doesn't make you proud to be a tennessean, I don't know what does.

I read this article and was so disgusted by our police departments' corruption that I had to recommend this link.

---Opheria

'Policing Gays'