Sadly it is people like you that make all these atrocities seemed somehow justified. No harm in mocking religion especially when it is flawed to f@@@. I am also pleased That CH continues to mock these evil freaks and hope more people do. It called freedom of speech and if you don't like it go and move to Saudi or Iran and preach your rubbish, there (oh no you can't because you are not allowed to speak your mind there).
I do not know how far you are prepared to go in defending 'freedom of speech' Ellers. I have nowhere defended the actions of murderers so don't try to catagorize me as 'one of those sorts'. At the same time I cannot fully defend Charlie Hebdo - they did not deserve what happened, but, at the same time, the media does have some responsibilities in a multi cultural society. Try reading some of my other texts - Religion, culture and race are so intertwined that an attack on one almost always entails an attack on the other. Is an anti Jewish comment religious, cultural, or racist ? I do not have to go as far as Saudi Arabia - there are many countries in Europe which have existing laws defending religious minorities from vilification and ridicule, Germany being one of those. Charlie Hebdo would have restrictions in any number of European states, including Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Every country in the World has some kind of restriction on freedom of speech either to protect racial or religious minorities, or to protect state secrets, or to do with libel etc. or to protect against inflamatory material being published which could be used as an incitement to violence or a threat to public order.......the list goes on. The question is - where should those restrictions be ? I do not consider the publishing of material which only has the goal of ridiculing and inflaming others to be justifiable.
Well done, you have woken me from my slumber. I read this thread but won't post on it unless severely agitated (Brexit, Trump et al don't justify that anymore, though this thread does give a superb snapshot of the state of the national psyche, always worth reading). I can distinguish between race and religion, as can all people of reason. What you are arguing is a complete denial of freedom of expression, including your right to post your opinion. To equate Charlie Hebdo to Nazi propaganda is both inaccurate and misleading. The Nazi's persecuted the Jews as a race, as you well know, whether or not they are really a 'race', whatever that means. The entire state apparatus was called into action to pursue this objective. Charlie Hebdo is a single magazine which directs its fire in all directions, mainly at the French establishment. It's biggest crime is that its not very funny (though that may be down to my schoolboy French). Of all the nationalities you list only the Arabs would be classified as 'semitic' (and even then only by knuckle dragging eugenicists who don't understand that we all share nearly 100% the same DNA, whatever our skin colour). I have no idea what point you are making there. Islamophobia is obviously different to anti-semitism. One is fear of an idea, the othe is hatred of a 'race'. For clarity, I am not an Islamophobe. I don't fear Islam at all, I just despise all religion as ignorant gibberish which holds people back. If individuals choose to subjugate their minds to this crap, that's their call. As soon as they force this rubbish on others, including their own kids, it's everyone's business. Islam is at the top of the list because of the carnage that is done it its name, and I really don't care whether the violence is an accurate interpretation of the 'faith', or whether Western countries are to blame for the rise in Islamic fundamentalism. Civilised people don't do this ****. There are millions of poor, uneducated people all around the world who resist the temptation to blow themselves and others up. Here is how freedom of expression works: John Major makes it clear that he thinks Brexit is a bad idea. Goldie calls him a potential traitor No blows, let alone bullets, are exchanged. But there is some good news. If you ever want to return to the UK you will find yourself at home on nearly any University campus, where the 'safe spaces' would guarantee your freedom from being offended. Which is a ****ing tragedy. As I have said a number of times on this thread, freedom of expression is exactly my freedom to give offence, and your's to take offence. Going back to sleep now.
Bloody hell who woke you up? Top post although you had to bring Goldies name into it. I am so pleased we agree on freedom of speech and religion.
I take the point about religion being intertwined with race and culture, but in my eyes that is a complication that is easily resolved by those affected - don't define yourselves by your religion.
Hard to disagree. Come back soon. My view, too - but I'm an atheist, so it isn't too much of a stretch for me to feel that way. I know far too many people with strong religious faith who do define themselves by it. I've no idea how to persuade them otherwise. They don't see it the way you & I do.
Bloody hell, Stan, you wake up and misquote me! I didn't say Major was a traitor (which is a legal term of art related to Treason), but that his current acts of undermining the Brexit negotiating team were at worst treacherous. He is doing the EU negotiating team's job for them, rather than putting on a united front to help get the best deal possible for the UK. At the bottom of it, is an intent somehow to trip up the exit and stay in the EU in all but name. No problem with the rest of your post. Hope you can stay awake long enough to keep posting
There is no such thing as a misquote anymore Goldie, just an 'alternative quote'. Treacherous acts are usually committed by traitors, but in the post truth world this is open to individual interpretation. I regret using the example (but couldn't resist) as it may detract from my point, which was that you can disagree with someone without stuffing your backpack with fertiliser and a detonator and blowing them and yourself up. Though QPR fan takes out former PM in Long Room at Lords would make a fun headline. Night night.
So sorry to wake you from your slumbers Stan. If the Nazis had persecuted the Jews only as a race, then their hatred would have applied also to Arabs, who are also semitic people. Initially the Nazi ideology may have been racial but it managed to fuse other elements as well. The holocaust was the pinnacle of around a thousand years of anti Jewish sentiment in Europe. You can still see in the stained glass windows of churches in middle and eastern Europe how the Jew was depicted as drinking the blood of Christian babies. It is no coincidence that support for the Nazi regime was strongest in the Catholic regions of Germany - it built on this fertile soil. The Nazis also managed to reinforce the equation Judaism = Communism. In other words, their success lay in the successfull blending of various elements - it cannot be dismissed as purely racial. Charlie Hebdo is only a magazine - but, it is part of a state which has designated vast swathes of people of Arab origins to a ghetto like existence on the outskirts of their cities. Even the few successfull ones are only ok. for scoring goals for France, but nothing else. They are also part of a state which forces women to disrobe on beaches in the South - so much for freedom of expression ! You talk of the carnage done in the name of Islam - I condemn this wholeheartedly. But do we cast all Americans into the same pot because their government kills thousands yearly in drone attacks ? No. we don't do that because generalizations are apparently things we only have for 'other' people. You speak of freedom of speech - yet use the expression ' ignorant gibberish`to describe the beliefs of others. We can very easily measure the amount of people who killed in the name of religion (and whatever the number it is too many) - but can you measure the far greater number who may have refrained from killing for exactly the same reasons ? Yes there are some who define themselves according to their 'one and only religion' - but they are not 'religious' people, because they are excluding themselves from the rest of humanity. If you believe in God then you are forced to accept that God loves diversity, and that if he had wanted to create a World of people all believing the same, then he could have done so - so a really religious person accepts diversity. Do the militant atheists do this ? All I hear from some of them is a constant battering of others ideas based on the most arrogant smug certainty.
What sort of reply is that supposed to be, or didn't you get past line one ? Anyone who was against the system was likely to end up there - all political opponents, Communists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses - members of the SPD. The groups with the lowest survival rate were Gypsies and Communists. This is all well known - so I don't see what your comment is about.
Eat-and-flee gang 'hit second Spain restaurant' 39 minutes ago please log in to view this image Image copyright El Rincon de Pepin Image caption The owner of El Rincon de Pepin said the mystery guests owed €10,000 Police are investigating whether a gang who ate thousands of euros of food in a restaurant in Spain before fleeing had targeted another eatery. Last week, about 120 diners, who had consumed about 2,000 euros of food and drink, left a restaurant in northern Spain as dessert was due to be served. It has now emerged a second restaurant only 10km (six miles) away was previously targeted in the same way. The owners said they believed they were the victims of the same group. In the first case, the group, purporting to be celebrating a baptism, paid a deposit of €900 ($950; £770) to eat at the El Carmen restaurant in Bembibre, in the north-western Castile and Leon region. "It happened in the space of a minute," owner Antonio Rodriguez said. "It was something they had planned and they left in a stampede." El Carmen's case felt more than a little familiar to Laura Arias, the owner of El Rincon de Pepin, a restaurant in nearby Ponferrada. The group told her they were celebrating a wedding, she said, and ordered a fairly basic menu. They paid €1,000 as a deposit, but consumed €10,000 ($10,600; £8,600) worth of food and drink. "There were 160 of them and they all disappeared. Suddenly. Within five minutes," Laura told the BBC. "That was the unusual thing. "Usually people leave over time, and you expect someone to come to talk to you and say they will settle the bill the next morning or something. But they didn't say anything, they just disappeared." The unusual crime has been reported to police, but Ms Arias is in no doubt who is responsible. "It's the same people. We can tell from the photos." Reports in northern Spain quoted witnesses as saying the group was from eastern Europe. On Monday, the Diario del Leon newspaper reported (in Spanish) that two ringleaders had been identified and that police were working to establish firm links between the two cases.
Did something like that in NY. Went out for a biz dinner and and one of the traders went to the bathroom. We all left. He had to pay the bill. After that no one would go for a piss towards the end of the meal. t
With some reluctance....... Whatever the motivations and techniques of the Nazi anti Jewish enterprise, comparing a French satirical magazine to them is hysterical. The fact is the Nazis defined the Jews as a race, however idiotic that may be, and persecuted them as a race. They went to the trouble of producing a load of bogus physiological 'facts' to define Jewishness. Of course they were the pinnacle, or nadir, of two millennia of persecution, so what? Oh, its all to do with religious ignorance, isn't it?And I suspect that you may have offended many Catholics by implying they are all anti Jewish (not that I care). The French state is built on four principles - liberte, egalite, fraternite and laicite. The last is the French concept of secularism, which keeps religion out of government, schools, public life etc. I rather like it, though it may have contributed to some of their problems. It has been a foundation of the French Republic for a very long time, and is very clear to any migrant. Religious fanatics are excluded from the French mainstream, very explicitly. As to ghettos, sadly poor people end up living in the poorest areas. And for some reason (I haven't looked into it) Muslims don't seem to do as well as other groups economically as migrants. The Burkini ban was overturned by the French courts, far from 'forcing women to disrobe' the state stood up for their right not to. To the considerable irrititation of many French people. Shame that their own religion doesn't stand up for their rights. Cologne, its a pretty weak tactic arguing women's rights in relation to Islam. Glad you didn't forget the knee jerk anti American stuff. They are far from perfect, but I for one am glad their drones have killed about 2,500 Islamic terrorists since 2009, and agree its a shame that around 300 civilians have also been killed. No figures I have seen add up to 'thousands yearly'. But your facts may be 'alternative'. Or just a pile of lies. I believe religion is 'ignorant gibberish', I can be honest about my viewpoint, that IS freedom of speech. I prefer it to lying so as to avoid offence. I'm quite happy for you to set out your views with equal strength, and anybody else I might not agree with, even if I find them offensive. Indeed I welcome it, how else can you have a debate? You have set out your concept of God. How is it less arrogantly smug certainty to claim you are right and all of the other religious believers who hold different views to your 'God of diversity' are wrong? I assume you believe in one God, and have excluded all the other alternatives out there. I have just taken that thinking one step further and dispensed with all of the mumbo jumbo. You are nearly there, like all monotheists, keep trying. Us atheists have a right to be smug - we are free.
How do you know that I am a monotheist Stan ? I have absolutely no problem with you being an atheist as long as you do not use words such as 'gibberish' about my ideas - words which I would not use about yours. I presume you to have thought out your ideas, and not just grabbed them out of a hat - and I ask you to do the same back. I have no right to try to convert anyone - because, if I believe in God, how can I value a God who is interested in forced conversion. This is one of the fundamental errors of fundamentalism - how can God value a conversion made through fear ? Either belief is there or it is not - and there can really be no debate between a believer and a non believer, because the former has taken a blind leap in the dark to believe in the unbelievable. But, at the same time, I am as 'free' as you are - how could a God value anyone who had no free will ? I believe in a creative force, but can, in no way visualize what form that may take - because it (or they) belongs to the infinite world, and I to the finite one. If you press me on the subject then I see myself as somewhere between the Shamanist, the Sufi and the Quaker - make of that mixture what you will - with a large bit of the Anarcho Communist thrown in......confused ? But not a monotheist ? I did not mean to insult all Catholics by implying that they were all anti Jewish, just made the observation that anti Jewish activity has always been strongest in predominantly Catholic areas.
I find it slightly embarrassing that the libertated minds of atheists think that ridicule is such a potent weapon. Perhaps mocking the poor kid in school is really the enlightened bullies way of tackling poverty. With regards to Islam, I think it's sad that the objective would coincide with that of the radicals - make Muslims feel isolated from the Western world. All hail us free thinking exponents of free speach. That's free speach within the confines of the law (damn those Westminster bureaucrats who deprive us of the true freedom to mock race, gender, sexuality and to throw around slanderous or violently hate driven monologues). It's a shame our freedom of speach is used to it's fullest extent to act like arseholes. I may be an atheist but I'm obviously one of those unenlightened, yoghurt knitting type of atheists. I will keep pursuing this true nirvana.
