Cartoons and common sense

Progress. How should I determine who called the rally? Or what if the rally was spontaneous? Absolutely incorrect. You've railed about strawmen; how surprising now to find you knocking down one of your own.The point is that we determine what a rally is about based on what message the rally is putting out. That's what rallies and protests are for; message propagation. All one has to do is observe the message that is being explicitly sent. In the case of the protests in question, that's not only a message of "we're offended by these cartoons", but also "we're going to commit acts of violence" and "we hate Jews."Despite the fact that the majority of the protestors may not share those last two messages (a point that has yet to be established, however), those messages are certainly being sent from within the protest. That makes them as much a legitimate part of that protest as any of the other messages; trying to argue otherwise puts you in the ridiculous position of claiming to be able to scan the minds of the multitude and figure out exactly what messages they approve of and which they don't. I think I've made it pretty clear that I can't accept this. People can't be "hijacked" into rioting. People who don't want to riot leave and go home so that they don't become part of a riot. Everybody who stays stays because they want to join the riot. Let me remind you of the forum guidelines a second time:

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Always treat other members with respect. Argue the position, not the person. Avoid abusive, harassing and invasive behavior. Avoid needling, hectoring and goading tactics.

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Usually, in a well-conducted debate, speakers are either emotionally uncommitted or can preserve sufficient detachment to maintain a coolly academic approach.

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-- Encylopedia Brittanica, on debate

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I don't find your attitude "coolly academic".

By the way, whe you quoted me above, you missed an important part of what i was saying.. that is CENTRAL to my argument, and central to the questions you do NOT seem to want to answer.

I am simply asking for an answer to the questions I put to you. I answered the questions you put to me. please do similar.I wrote in CAPITALS in a attempt to make sure you saw what I was writing.Are you going to answer the questions I put to you or not?if not there is no point in continuing.Is there a moderator out there? opinions please? I am asking questions of crashfrog, and he is simply ignoreing them.
is this in the spirit of debate?

My question was what evidence you have that allows you to do this. I apologize for not clarifying that I meant from protestors of MidEast origin. There are many stated views. How do you come to choose what is representative of the majority? You have pointed to specifically extremist signs which are roundly criticized by members of the Islamic community (including the mideast).

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

If you ask a question two or three times and they won't answer it, they aren't going to. Obviously there can be problems in understanding what a question is and that might take a bit of back and forth. But if you have stated it clearly and the person just blows it off, they don't have an answer.Mark such posters in your mind so you don't waste as much time in the future.If it helps any, while I haven't read all of your exchanges what I have read made sense to me.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

I thought I did answer it. No, I can't accept that a minority of militants have somehow "hijacked" an otherwise totally unobjectionable protest.I'm sorry but I don't know how to be any clearer than that. Is the constant name-calling? Need I remind you of the forum rules a third time?

Observations of these protestors, to the extent that observations via the media are accurate. I accept that they may not be but that doesn't appear to be the topic of discussion. That which the majority seems to support, either by active acclaim or passive approval.

Could you be clearer about which question you believe he's asked that I haven't answered?

You could start by thinking beyond the 30 second news flash. When a rally or protest is called it is billed/advertised as an "anti war" rally or a "kill bush rally"
I feel it is safe to assume that the vast majority of the people attending that rally are there to support the spirit in which that rally has been called. Now we have progress indeed. so you admit that not everyone in a rally may share the hardline sentiments of a few? this is a very different stance to your earlier posts where you infer: as holmes states and you seem to agree: 'control the majority', maybe, but to fool the public vieing on the 6 O clock news it appears all you have to do is have a few misrepresentative signs. I believe the viewing public is at fault here not the genuine protesters. well then.. there is no point continuing. Every year WTO protests are ruined by a combination of a militant few, and heavy handed police. you seem happy to assume that everyone at these protests is therefore a hardline militant. we disagree.This message has been edited by Creavolution, 02-09-2006 05:44 PMThis message has been edited by Creavolution, 02-09-2006 06:01 PMThis message has been edited by Creavolution, 02-09-2006 06:09 PMThis message has been edited by Creavolution, 02-09-2006 06:12 PM

nope... you didn't... try again. where.. exactly have I been constantly calling you names?you may remind me of the forum rules as many times as you like. they will not change, and neither will my argument.edited quotation htmlThis message has been edited by Creavolution, 02-09-2006 05:58 PM

Hal_Jordan tells me that you were a monk for a year and I would like to learn from you. I am interested in Buddhism. Please reply.

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Minor quibble here.... but I'm pretty sure you could take just about any type of imagery and find some group that is offended by it. I mean where do you draw the line? (although obviously, some lines have been drawn since we don't see rape cartoons)... It's an interesting and I think relevant subject

Please forgive this off-topic message, O Elder Admins: FN, e-mail me if you want to continue this discussion, so we won't derail this thread full of cartoons and, uh, common sense. My address is in my profile. I'm not much of a Buddhist teacher, though I don't mind sharing my experiences.I was fortunate to enjoy an extraordinary opportunity, FN, but I was not a monk.I enjoyed a close friendship with an ROK (Republic of Korea/South Korea) special forces colonel who was attached to our unit. We had managed to stay alive together in another place before being deployed to Seoul. I called him Bruce Lee; he called me John Wayne.One night we visited an old moon-viewing pavilion together, where the nobles of ancient Korea would float bamboo cups of rice wine in a circular stream, the game being that you composed a line of poetry just as you started the cup floating away, and the next person in the circle had to have composed an appropriate next line by the time the cup arrived, then drink it, refill it, and send it on its way again; by the time everyone had taken a turn, a poem of complex form was complete.Neither his English nor my Korean were good enough to make a single-language poem, so we challenged each other with lines from Beatle songs instead. The stream had long since gone dry, so we changed the rules so that he sang a line or so from a Beatles tune, then emptied the cup. By the time he had emptied the cup and refilled it, I would have to be ready to sing the next line.Once we worked our way through a song, we'd sing the whole thing together. As you can imagine, this got harder the longer the game went on (though the singing seemed to get better), and some of our songs were strange hybrids of many Beatles tunes; a bit of the Stones may have snuck in here and there as well...Anyway, that night Col. Lee spoke of his plan to retire to a monastery in the mountains for the life of contemplation and meditation he would have preferred, though he was an accomplished warrior, in terms of both traditional martial arts and modern tactics. I expressed my envy; he invited me to join him there for an extended retreat when we were both civilians again.Eventually I did just that, and I was able to remain there most of a year before other obligations took me away.Although I tried to adopt the rigors of an initiate's training as best I could, the older monks understood my limitations and gave me lots of special consideration.They taught me to sit still, to clear my mind of thoughts and attachments, to distance myself from pain and discomfort (something I already had a knack for), to let anger go (somewhat)...I learned a little bit of martial arts--mostly how to get hit hard by younger, more highly trained men and boys without feeling too bad about it. I learned that my strengths as a fighter were an extremely hard head, heavy fists, and a high pain threshold: their advice was to ignore self-defense, something I didn't do well, anyway, and strike to win as soon as possible.I learned that my way is not the way of the monastery, but also that there is a way that carries the monastery within--a way to act in the world that is not entirely of the world, a way to both move and be still, focused action that is not attached to outcome: a detachment that is not passionless, an empty-mindedness that is not dull.It is this way that produces the wonderful calligraphy and landscape scrolls of the Zen artists, both spontaneous and disciplined, and the gorgeously, perfectly asymmetrical ceramics. It is the source of "Zen and the Art of Tennis," (or something like that) a faddish book of some years back, which advised players to get out of their own way and trust their reflexes and training.I learned to value peace, and I learned to believe it was possible for me.

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You are right Omnivorous, peace is what we should be aspiring to.As I see it, there are extremists on both sides. There are the Muslim extremists, who take the Quran at face value and want to convert the entire world to Islam by force. Then there are the freedom-of-speech extremists; I actually believe that many Westerners talk of freedom-of-speech like it too is a sacred tenet. I'm sure you've heard the following quote at one point:"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."It's quite a stirring sentiment, but there's definitely something a bit 'extreme' about it. Few Westerners like to question the sanctity of freedom-of-speech, and it takes a truly brave person to explicitly state where they draw the line that divides acceptable and unacceptable speech. Rather than defending these cartoons to the death, maybe those in the position to appease the Muslims should do just that (by whatever means), for the sake of peace.Also, this whole situation has put a somewhat intellectual bent on what are mostly quite juvenile cartoons. How? If a non-Muslim Brit saw a cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban printed in an English newspaper, they would likely cringe. Even if they laughed, it would only be because the cartoon was so radical and against-the-grain. But the cartoons have somehow been given an air of credibility. Maybe it's foreign-movie syndrome (where a film seems smarter than it is because it's in subtitles)?Another fact that might put the cartoons in perspective: they were printed in a far-right newspaper. The Jyllands-Posten is known for its aggressive anti-immigration stance. See here for evidence of this (page 40 onward).This message has been edited by Zawinul, 02-09-2006 09:20 PMThis message has been edited by Zawinul, 02-09-2006 09:21 PMThis message has been edited by Zawinul, 02-10-2006 11:21 AM