Comment by sosuke
11 years ago
I'll never understand that logic, how does coming to the aide and support of a group that was brutally attacked mean that they are in turn attacking the group that did the attacking? The attack on Charlie was not defensive, defacing the Notepad++ site is not defensive. Defending yourself doesn't mean attacking, and certainly not harming, other people. You only draw more hostility and attacks.
Edit: I am also curious, the language indicates that the hackers feel it is countries versus religion. The actions of someone who believes in a religion do not define the religion. If I do a terrorist act and say it was for my religion, that does not make my religion a terrorist, but it does make me a terrorist. Do the perpetrators of these attacks feel it is countries against religion, or is that just the shield they want to use.
To be very clear I'm am not defending the attack on Notepad ++!
> Defending yourself doesn't mean attacking ...
Here in the U.S. there's a common sports phrase, "The best defense is a good offense." This carries over into our military policies. For example, while other countries may benefit from our military presence, the reason we send our military into a situation is to protect the U.S.. There may be an immediate benefit of protection or it may be a long-play protection (e.g. "placate the nationals so we aren't contributing to the future pool of terrorists"), but ultimately we send our military in to protect ourselves and this is frequently a preemptive defense that can be seen as offensively attacking.
Again, I'm not condoning any terrorist attack, I'm just not buying your statement that "Defending yourself doesn't mean attacking..." I'm also not saying that preemptive offense is a moral correct policy; just that it is a common policy.
What the United States are doing in the Middle East is not morally okay. Not even close. At best it kind of works.
EDIT: If you have 45 minutes, here [1] is a show by German political cabaret artist Volker Pispers rushing through half a century of history with heavy focus on the USA in the Middle East. With English subtitles. It's a disturbing mix between fun and contempt for mankind.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0Ql0VfcRg
I think there are very few cases where the use of military force is unambiguously morally okay.
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Islamic extremism is a relatively new phenomenon, early 20th century. And it has pretty little to do with religion, it's more some kind of revenge for what we, the western world, did to them. Indonesia is the country with the largest Islamic population in the world yet there is little extremism and - it may of course be coincidence - the western world did never much care about them although they have a lot of oil, too. Religion is just the means to an end. All my personal opinion of course, I am by no means an expert on history or religion.
Peaceful folks in Indonesia only killed thousands of Chinese descents and rapped hundreds, in 1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1998_riots_of_Indonesia
It was a really horrible event and I'm ashamed that it ever happened. Whilst racial and ethnic tensions [1] have always existed in Indonesia to a certain degree, the event should not be a reflection of the general populace.
I would like to offer you some context FWIW.
Indonesia was in a really bad economic shape [2], the people were frustrated and angry, and were looking for someone to blame. There were already a lot of resentment due to the wealth disparity between the minority ethnic Chinese and the rest of the population, and the riots and violence escalated very quickly.
The Indonesian army could have defused the situation right away through intervention (i.e. deployment of troops), however they was seen as rather complicit in this event for their non-action. Looking back, the more plausible explanation is that they were busy with their own internal power struggles (there were strong rumours of a Coup de Etat, splitting the army depending on their support of Soeharto).
In the 15+ years since the event, the Indonesians have made significant efforts to repair the relationships with the minority ethnic Chinese, and some progress were made. Just to give two examples (which were unthought of in the Soeharto, New Order era):
Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid), one of the President post-Soeharto, is a proponent of pluralism and provided significant goodwill by declaring Chinese New Year as one of the public holidays, and allowing the ethnic Chinese to publicly embrace their cultural heritage.
Ahok (Basuki Tjahaja Purnama) is the first ethnic Chinese Governor of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. Despite constant opposition and smear campaign from fundamentalist Islamic parties, he is very popular and has a lot of support from the people.
Notes:
[1] - Indonesia has over 300 ethnic groups. Most people speak more than one `language`: `Bahasa Indonesia` and various local dialect(s).
[2] - Currency was highly devaluated (Rp.2000/$US down to Rp.10,000/$US), businesses closed down, and a lot of financial institutions went bankrupt and most of the surviving ones went to a firesale to foreign entities.
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New phenomenon? Have you had your head in the sand?
Classical civilization was destroyed by Islam!
Headlines from a few Centuries ...
5th Century - Spain: knights defeated and heads cut off, placed into a pile so high a man on horseback could not see over it.
7th Century - Muhammad sends Khalid out, destroys Jazima tribe. - Khalid at the Battle of Olayis spend 2 days rounding up the loses and cutting off their heads in a dry stream bed until it ran red with their blood. - Khalid takes the Captain of the Zoroastrian tribe, cuts his head off and lets the blood drain into the soil then rapes the wife of the Captain on the bloody soil! This is the nature of Jihad! - Umar's conquest of Jerusalem; makes all Christians and Jews dhimmis (3rd class semi-slave).
8th Century - Attack on Sind: 26,000 Hindus slaughtered. - Armenian Nobles and their families (children too) herded into a church and burned alive in it. - Euphesus: 7,000 Greeks enslaved.
9th Century - All new churches destroyed. - Amorium: massive enslavement of ALL Christians. - Egyptian Christians revolt over the jizyah (the dhimmis tax under Shariah).
10th Century - Thessalonica: 22,000 Christians enslaved. - Seville: All Christians massacred. - 30,000 Churches destroyed in Egypt and Syria.
11th Century - 6,000 Jews in Morocco murdered. - Hundreds of Jews in Cordoba murdered. - 4,000 Jews in Granada murdered. - Georgia and Armenia invaded. - Hindustan: 15,000 murdered; 500,000 enslaved.
12th Century - Yemen: Jews forced to convert or die. - Christians of Granada deported to Morocco. - India: many cities wiped out, convert of die: 20,000 enslaved in a single town, the rest beheaded.
13th Century - India: 50,000 Hindu slaves freed by conversion. - 20 year campaign created 400,000 new Muslims out of Hindus. - Buddhist monks butchered, nuns raped. - Damascas and Safed: Christians mass murdered. - Jews of Marrakeesh massacred - Tabriz - forced conversion of Jews under threat of death.
Are you getting the TRUE PICTURE yet??
14th Century - Cairo riots; churches burned. - Jews of Tabriz forced to convert (see above) - Tamerlane (makes Hitler look like a saint!) in India kills 90,000 in a single day. - India: another 30,000 slain. - Tughlaq took 180,000 slaves.
15th Century - Tamerlane devastates 700 villages. - Iraq: Tamerlane annihilated Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. - Constantinople falls to Islam after 700 years of relentless wars.
16th Century - India: son of Tamerlane destroyed temples, forced conversions. - General build two towers of human heads following victories so high you could not see over them. - Nobel women commit mass suicide to avoid sexual slavery and rape.
17th Century - Jews of Yemen and Persia forced to convert or die. - Greek Christians forced to convert or die. - Persia: Zoroastrians persecution taken to new heights. - India: 600,000 Hindus murdered by Akbar.
18th Century - Zoroastrians nearly wiped out world wide as persecution increases. - Jews of Jedda expelled. - Jews of Morocco wiped out. - Hindu persecution continues in increasing levels.
19th Century - Iran: forced conversion of Jews (do I need to say it?) under pain of death. - Jews of Baghdad wiped out. - 250,000 Armenian Christians slaughtered in Turkey. - Remaining Zoroastrians in Iran wiped out.
20th Century - over 1,000,000 Turkish Armenians massacred in jihad.
Are you getting the drift on how BAD ISLAM is?
Let me say it again: Classical Civilization was DESTROYED by Islam!!
Of course, but you are not entitled to personal facts. Islamic extremism is a 7th century phenomenon and it never went away.
7th century? This is pretty immediately after the inception of Islam. What happened during that time frame?
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I'll play 'devil's advocate' here for a moment. I'll be sacrificing a lot of internet points, but I'm not in a great position to begin with. :)
Do let me pre-emptively say: I unequivocally condemn the recent killings of the cartoonists. I unequivocally support the right of anyone to say anything.
Okay, so there is something to consider here: indeed there are now more than a billion Muslims in the world who would not have killed these cartoonists, or even approve of the act of killing these cartoonists (I understand some will take issue with the latter part of my statement, this is just my current reading). Insofar as the 'I am Charlie' statement can be interpreted as approval of the supposedly offending cartoons, the statement could be said to be needlessly confrontational. It's turning things into a combative us (non-Muslims) vs them (Muslims) orientation. Look no further than this very cartoon for proof of this -- this is how these Muslim hacktivists interpreted Notepad++'s 'I am Charlie' stance.
I don't think this is strictly a freedom of speech issue. I saw a good example of this in a Reddit comment: when you enrage someone by calling them racist epithets, and they strike you back ... are the rest of you going to take the racist's side by repeating the racist epithet that invoked the retaliation? Mohammad is a very sacred symbol to Muslims, re-publishing offending material (and similarly approving of the cartoons by saying "I am Charlie") is just needlessly insulting and distressing the plenty of other moderate Muslims. The more this is done, the more those moderate Muslims will feel pressured and start to feel the need to also take a position... and guess whose side they will incline towards? They're surely not going to just throw away their religion, they'll probably verge toward an extremist position.
I'm only suggesting that the 'I am Charlie' sloganeering is a little too hastily thunk, a little too unthought. Of course absolutely everyone should have the right to say such a thing, but a mature and reasonable person would practice caution before saying it. I do admit though, that it's a bit of a challenge packing a sentiment like "I don't think Charlie cartoonists should have been killed, they should have the right to say or mock anyone, but I do generally disapprove of content that's racist, antisemitic, holocaust-denying, sexist, etc." into a nice 3-5 word long slogan.
Actually a slogan I saw a lot in the Marche republicaine here in France is:
I'm Muslim, I'm Jewish, I'm Christian, I'm Atheist, I'm a Policeman, I'm Charlie
Which I think is much better and is a much more inclusive symbol.
The thing though is that Charlie Hebdo is not a publication that only published offensive cartoons about Mohammad, they published offensive cartoons about everybody and were quite equal handed in the offensiveness... It's very far from being a racist publication, on the contrary.
But only when they published antisemtic content did they have to do something: http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/152585/charlie-hebdo-fired...
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It struck me as a resonant response to the proclamation of empathy made by France's newspaper (Le Monde) after the 9/11 attacks: "Today we are all American" [http://www.history.com/topics/reaction-to-9-11].
Truly. Had it not been for France, the Colonies would have remained under the auspices of the King of England. Likewise had it not been for the Colonies, the French, and indeed the whole of Europe, would most likely be speaking German today (perhaps - few today are familiar with the ties the Nazis had with radical Islam in the 30's and 40's) I firmly believe that had the Allies lost the war, Europe would have finally succumbed to Islamic Jihad much faster than it is today.
France has 5,000,000+ Muslims; In Italy, the fastest growing "religion" is Muslim and it's also the second most practiced "religion" there today and closing much too fast for my tastes. I put religion in quotes because I do not believe, now, nor will I ever believe that Islam is a religion. It is a cult created and pushed by a sadistic, ego maniacal, self obsessed rapist and murderer seeking only to justify his tastes for evil, death, destruction and misery.
I pray for Muslims worldwide, that they find the light that is Jesus and through HIM, find their way to the true Father. Allah is but Satan in disguise and Satan is the FATHER of ALL LIES!
I don't think the sloganeering is hastily thought, I don't think it is thought at all. It doesn't need to be. Freedom of expression ingrained in Western culture and you would find it very difficult to believe someone should be executed for expressing an opinion. Fined, jailed, maybe, but never executed.
To think of 'I am Charlie' as supporting the cartoons themselves would require you divorce the victims from their fate. Essentially, you'd have to make a leap of logic, and focus on the selfish part (i.e. they offended Muslims) and at this point you no longer deal with rational argument.
Essentially the devil's advocate argument is 'a mature and reasonable person should practice caution before saying anything that may be taken out of context by any party that is sufficiently upset', which is nigh impossible.
>Freedom of expression ingrained in Western culture
Not so much(it is only for things westeros are not emotional of)
http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/3/5578984/mozilla-ceo-resigns...
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/02/tech/social-media/facebook...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/john-galliano-fired-anti...
http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/03/02/greek-doctor-arre...
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True freedom of expression is not ingrained in Western culture, that's a myth. In Europe and in America as well, you either get your platform taken away or possibly face prison time when you say antisemtic stuff, when you say anti-black things, when you say hateful things, etc.
Where and who is arbitrarily drawing the lines for what constitutes permitted freedom of speech?
And, of course no-one (except fringe extremists lunatics) is saying execution of the cartoonists was an appropriate reaction to insulting cartoons.
You are wrong beyond belief!
There are not a billion Muslims who would not have killed! Sure there are a few "radicals" that want all infidels beheaded but the remaining Muslims want the radicals to do the beheading.
For it says in the Qur'an Surat At-Tawbah 9:5 - And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.
Let me rephrase for you: convert or die.
Are Christians even polytheists?
They would emphatically say no, but the Trinity suggests otherwise.
Three distinct entities, with distinct personalities, goals and natures: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Son forgives easily, the Father holds grudges for generations. It's an unforgivable sin to blaspheme against one, but not the others. Meanwhile, the description of the Trinity as essentially distinct aspects of a single being is similar to some interpretations of Hinduism. There is at least a superficial (and not at all radical) case to be made that Christianity is monotheistic in name only.
So would, or do, Muslims consider Christians to be polytheists? I don't know. But it seems they would need to for that verse to really apply.
Although... Christian teaching holds the Old Testament to be as sacred and inerrant as the New, and that has many examples of God (the Father) commanding His people to stone the unclean and murder the infidels (which at the time would be anyone not a Jew, because of course the God of Israel was, exclusively, the God of Israel, (until He wasn't)) and the Book of Revelations is almost entirely about a holy war between Christians and Everyone and Everything Else.
Yet, I doubt you would find the majority of Christians or Jews holding to such a violent and literal interpretation of scripture. Some, yes, obviously. In the US at least, apocalyptic Christian theology is big business (just see the Left Behind and assorted clones in any bookstore) and big politics.
Nevertheless, it is no more the case that all Muslims want the infidels dead (but only a few are willing to pull the trigger) than it is that all Christians want every woman on her period within the city limits to be stoned to death. The truth is, most religious people are hypocrites, and the world remains the better for it, and both Islam and Christianity could (and have, now and then) justify genocide and hate with their Scriptures if they wanted, because both religions come from a time when those were SOP for religions and societies.
A lot of people seem to feel that way. I don't get it though. Given the circumstances, you'd think everybody understands that the "je suis charlie" thing is just a gesture. And even if people intent insult when they use the phrase (to make a point, I guess) I still think that would be okay (given the circumstances).
// Funny how both you and the notepad++ people felt the need to add a disclaimer btw.
> Given the circumstances, you'd think everybody understands that the "je suis charlie" thing is just a gesture.
The popular sentiment on most forums (at least ones I've seen) seem to equation the 'je suis charlie' statement with effective re-publishing of the offending cartoons.
You've gotta understand that Mohammad is a very significant and sacred symbol to Muslims everywhere. Printing cartoons Mohammad doing weird things is pretty seriously distressing moderate Muslims -- it's like if someone in America were to making fun of black people being slaves -- it's a no-no, you don't go there, it crosses a line, it's insulting black people, why do that? Of course everyone should have the right to print absolutely anything, but we adults should distance ourselves from childish and belligerent content like that.
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Why is it so many bleeding heart liberals (coming from a fairly liberal person) defend a religion that treats women as second-class citizens so much? What's in it for them besides the right to be preachy?
>how does coming to the aide and support of a group that was brutally attacked mean that they are in turn attacking the group that did the attacking?
It's in the same way an abusive parent will see a child defending the abused parent as attacking the abusive parent --when what the child is doing is defending the other parent.