America's attempts to appease "Muslim opinion" are depraved and suicidal.

[kc456 0]

Ayn Rand Institute, heh? Since when it's an objective source of information?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

[Fischkoepfin 1]

Well, all I said in my initial post (as in several others) is that I don't think that the rioting mobs should be cause for any action in Europe or the US at all. Nor should their criminal actions be rewarded with so much as a discussion as to whether or not there might be some mistake in anyone's policy. It's a terrorizing mob that ought to be dealt with by the local authorities according to the law. Other than that, they deserve no attention whatsoever. We don't owe those extremists nothing. Not a thing.

I also spoke of the painfully apparent double standard that makes those rioting fools and their "demands" look quite ridiculous. They demand of others what they ain't willing to afford others. They lose.

Fail to see how that could be misread as nationalist...

You're right, what you wrote was not nationalist, and I'm sorry if I suggested that. However, your argument and others in this thread resemble arguments that we see right now that are clearly nationalist, like the Ayn Rand-piece.

You are right there is no reason to reward the mob by viewing it as a spectacle, something sensational enough to pass through to us. However, because we can differentiate between those who take to the streets and riot and those who live in the same area but stay at home, we have to think about what actually caused this idiotic response. It's one thing to punish the criminal, but it's another to work on crime prevention. Censorship is not the way to prevent crime, but not contextualizing the events is not the way to go either. Suggesting that this has nothing to do with our present and past involvement in the Middle East and viewing it as an attack on Western/American values ignore the ways in which the world is connected.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Censorship is not the way to prevent crime, but not contextualizing the events is not the way to go either. Suggesting that this has nothing to do with our present and past involvement in the Middle East and viewing it as an attack on Western/American values ignore the ways in which the world is connected.

There are always two sides to a coin. Sensibilities exist not only in the Middle East and Muslim world at large. Respectful treatment is not a one-way street. The West and America are not the sole source of the Middle East's ills. Contextualizing? Sure. But the whole picture, please...

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Just thought that this might help illuminate the shallowness of the arguments that helped stage the riots and the obvious double standards of those staging them as well as the ignorance of those carrying them out:

Arab paper published cartoons 4 months ago

No outrage when Egyptian publication headlined drawings on Ramadan cover

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted: February 9, 2006

1:00 a.m. Eastern

While Muslims across the world have rioted in the past week against countries whose newspapers have published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, there was no uproar when the same caricatures were prominently displayed in an Arab newspaper four months ago.

The images originating in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September were reportedly featured on the cover and inside pages of Egypt's al-Fagr (the Dawn) in October, during the holy month of Ramadan.

Source

Adil Hammuda, editor-in-chief of Al Fagr, a liberal Egyptian weekly, was astonished when the storm erupted in January. He had reprinted the cartoons that had been published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in his own paper four months earlier, during the first week of the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan...

...But the reprinted cartoons failed to attract much attention.

Source

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Ayn Rand Institute, heh? Since when it's an objective source of information?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

It's no mystery (to some) what Ayn Rand stands for. So it's not like they are hiding behind anything. They aren't afraid to give their opinion. You don't have to believe or like it.

[mikeize 0]

D@mn! Those linked articles (Hindustan Times, and the Ted Rall piece), were just excellent, excellent. Very good points made in both. Love it. Thanks.

-mike

[junglee069 0]

yaawwwwwwwwwnnnn

whats for lunch? anyone?

[almaty 19]

yaawwwwwwwwwnnnn

whats for lunch? anyone?

i think they have beaten this horse enough

[Fischkoepfin 1]

yaawwwwwwwwwnnnn

whats for lunch? anyone?

i think they have beaten this horse enough

There's horse for lunch? Where??

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

yaawwwwwwwwwnnnn

whats for lunch? anyone?

i think they have beaten this horse enough

There's horse for lunch? Where??

Iceland. They eat them.

[almaty 19]

yaawwwwwwwwwnnnn

whats for lunch? anyone?

i think they have beaten this horse enough

There's horse for lunch? Where??

in almaty kazakhstan...........yummmmmmmm trigger

[sheraz 0]

The cartoons are irrelevant at the end of the day, but the debate itself is representative of a continuing ideological and cultural divide between the US and the muslim world in which neither side wants to find any common ground. The author of Ayn Rand article seems to suggest that we should write off a whole culture and community of 1.5 billion people are being irrelevant because they are irrational, and that anti-western sentiment is undeserved.

Unfortunately it is not 'undeserved'. Al Qaeda didn't blow up the WTC one morning because they suddenly felt like it, or because god told them to do it. Their ideology is perhaps more political than it is religious - certainly they dress it up in the trappings of religion, but that is not to say they're one and the same.

Hoever, it is important to recognise that the problems of etoday are rooted in the mistakes of yesterday. As you say we don't owe violent mobs and terrorists anything, and clearly we should not cow-tow to their every whim.

Let the mobs burn their own streets. Yet their is no need to fight a war. If they burn their tires and buildings in their own cities, it should not bother the west. How in the world did they get the time to burn the buildings ? Thats the question. The answer lack of education and work. The solution. We dont have find a solution. Let them all shout and scream and once they are tired, let them realize their own problems. No need to try and educate them cause if they wanted an education, they would not be in the street to begin with. Most of this fundamentalist movement is based on political rather than religious ideology. The youth feel that their parents generation did not get any accomplished. The parents generation was embroiled in socialism. Socialism cracked all over the world and fundamentalism is the first reaction. We all know about america and vietnam but not so much what happened after america left. Vietnam, southeast Asia was plunged into chaos, civil war in Combodia, Laos. Now Combodia and Laos and Vietnam are putting clothing makers in US out of buisness. The fundamentalism in muslim countries is a reaction the end of socialism and freebees that these people had come to live with. After all the chaos, it will change.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

This thread has risen from the grave.

BOO!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

If they burn their tires and buildings in their own cities, it should not bother the west.

They can burn their places all they want and nobody would give a damn. Yet, if it's a western embassy that's set ablaze it's a direct attack on that western country. I don't see how that shouln't bother the west. In times past, the failure of a government to properly protect a foreign diplomatic interest in it's territory was a big deal without anyone trying to make excuses for the unexcusable. In my view, it still is.

[pedroh 21]

viva la libertad de expresion!