I am not trying to be a cow here, but do you have links for the RPG stuff and who was shot with the AK47's, etc? I googled middle east rioters 2012 rpgs. I also cannot find where anyone but the rioters have been injured.

though in Pakistan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/a-look-at-the-latest-protests-reaction-in-the-mideast-and-elsewhere-over-an-anti-islam-film/2012/09/16/8f60662a-0028-11e2-bbf0-e33b4ee2f0e8_story.html

Chanting and flag burning here...

http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/14/13857741-protesters-clash-with-cops-near-us-embassy-in-cairo

Look, I am just googling 'middle east riots' and adding stuff. If you know of specific instances, I would like to see them.

There was an Al Qaeda attack on the Benghazi consulate.

Where else have those things happened?

Or are you just saying they happened everywhere because of some kind of delusion?

just invent things in your head to match what you want to believe.

Just ask a Republican.

It's surprising how often it happens.

There really isn't much point in trying to discuss this, is there?

In HOW MANY places did that happen?

A question containing "how many" calls for a numerical answer.

If you do not know the answer to the question, that's fine.

Do you understand the question or not?

Jeez.

More than one?

Two?

Five or more?

Because if you rattle off a few, then it would seem that the Al Qaeda attack in Benghazi is pretty unrepresentative of the protests.

this notion that all speech would have limits on it -- and speech is already limited -- is just stupid.

Or that it shouldn't? Because if you think hate speech should be limited....doesn't that mean that freedom of speech has limits?

Nor should it be.

But a lot of people do NOT like that concept, even though the reasons for it seem fairly evident to me.

You can rant about hate speech all day long but I'm looking for the violence specifically committed by confirmed OWS members.

Oh, you don't have any evidence. Is that right? Just innuendo that they may have caused violence? Is that right? In other words this is innuendo, designed to imply that some people did this without defining which people did, what their cause was, or anything clearer than "some people say." Is that about right?

because by using the jury system and kicking off posts which are inflammatory and just written to cause trouble this board is a better place to exchange ideas. But many, many people think that should NOT translate to the wider world. What they believe is absolutely just fine for private speech and not only just fine, but necessary to maintain a civil discussion; is considered anathema in the public world.

That really just doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that if limitless free speech is one of our most sacred rights, then it would be held sacred both in private and in public.

If you believe that it is not only fine, but necessary for a society (or group of peers on a message board) to regulate speech to insure the most equitable exchange of information, then why don't you think that would also translate well into a wider world?

Accusing people of a lot of things like treason, disruption and public violence without a shred of proof, or at least implying they did so without a shred of proof.

Which one do you think you are?

the right to unlimited free speech.

Americans trying to change policy here, not so much.

I have been going over threads and posts here today and TRUST me, there is plenty of cognitive dissonance and jumping to conclusions here...just like anywhere else that we like to sneer at because THEY are so illogical.

People really are all just alike, I am starting to think. They may believe different things, but they believe them the same way. And sometimes even just believe the same things while each side maintains that the other is COMPLETELY crazy. I swear, there are posts here both in the threads on Stevens' sexual orientation and about free speech that if you tacked 'And it's all Obama's fault" onto them, you could post them verbatim on the Free Republic and they would fit right in.

but your point keeps getting tripped up by the fact that you have no proof of what you are saying, just a bunch of hearsay.

You are TRYING to make a good point, but that's all that you are doing because you bring no facts, no proof to the table.

'sides,' or to see 'sides' that don't exist in mainstream discourse.

but those voices get shouted down, or people attempt to wedge them into the box of the existing debate (e.g. if you don't like obama's education policy you must be planning to vote for romney & love republicans, albeit there's little difference between the republican education plan & the present one -- that doesn't even compute within the existing frame).

of course there *are* posts such as you describe, but that doesn't mean *everybody* does it or that it's the norm for human beings.

what i will say is that when tempers are high, things tend to devolve into the mainstream box, because the brain turns off when emotions run high.

If there were any doubts about that, the past year of OWS protest with the whole world watching, proved that the US will crush anyone trying to exercise what they thought was a right if they are protesting Wall Street and our sacred system of predatory Capitalism


Just standing on the street with a sign, can get you beaten and arrested in the US if you are protesting the US' most precious institutions.

And some of the same people who will justify this suppression of free speech because they don't like OWS, will then turn around and tell you that we are fiercely protective of the right to free speech in defense of extremely bigoted hate groups.

Well it seems that the free speech of hate groups IS way more protected than that of peaceful citizens trying to draw attention to bad economic policies or any of our wars for profit.

The Oakland OWS wants to take over a building for their headquarters so they vandalized City Hall??

What could have been a good movement has alienated more and more of us each month.

It happened last year. I just used it to illustrate my point.

But you used it to illustrate your point. Aren't you the brightest crayon in the crayola box.

so that I can figure out what you are so all caps about.

the difference hinges on the legitimacy of OWS grievances, which are social/economic, versus the more immaterial grievances of muslims , which is why most of us have trouble ascribing legitimacy to them. but there's arguably a whole lot more going on under the surface of the Innocence-of-Muslims protests. most of us on the internet can't imagine what it's like to suffer decades of foreign domination, threats, war, occupation, etc . and then to finally flip out over having our deepest beliefs mocked. how many of us even have deep beliefs?

the sepoy mutiny started over bullets coated in pig/cow fat.

In May of 1857, a misunderstanding over a piece of weaponry proved to be the last straw for Muslims and Hindus already smoldering with resentment against the British in India. The introduction of the Lee-Enfield rifle, seen by the British as just a nifty new piece of technology, sparked the Sepoy Rebellion — also known as the Indian mutiny or the First Indian War of Independence.

"The choice of technology wasn't the cause, but it certainly was the trigger," said Glynn Wood, professor of international policy studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "The troops saw it as one more example of foreigners having no sensitivity to them."

To load the new rifle, soldiers had to first bite off the end of the cartridge. The cartridge was well greased — with a combination of beef and pork fat.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80075&page=1

for yourself to be leaping to conclusions.

Because that was NOT a very popular line of thinking around here at the time.

Oh my. Pot paging kettle - *psst* - you are black.

A new low for OWS critics.

No, I am not an OWS critic. And the murders have been widely attributed to a well organized terrorist attack, NOT the rioters.

The only people murdered in the riots have been rioters by the police of their own country. And NO, they haven't been using RPG's and mortars and whatthefuckever.

I feel faint. Surely all of these things are associated and to be conflated with OWS.

Thank you very much for lumping Occupy in with murderers in the same manner Bush lumped Saddam in with 9/11. Stick them side-by-side and allow the human associative mechanisms go to work.

And of course, pay no attention to the work we've done to directly face issues which perhaps only Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich will face, much less DO a single thing about. You're welcome.

And I'll take it here that everyone knows exactly what has occurred in Oakland so they may make educated decisions based upon an OP entitled "400 arrests" etc.? Here are the stories of those unlawful "arrests". NEVER assume the cops are in the right, especially OPD, NYPD, LAPD, APD, etc.

http://occupyobservations.blogspot.com/2012/01/oakland-officials-caught-in-lies-about.html

Like, *really* concerned that the rumor she heard about OWS might be true. *Like* *really* concerned.

You'd imagine they'd be more Concerned about the guns, threats, and racism (much less the stone-solid idiocy) of the tea party, who managed to elect goons like Scott Walker, who is currently having people arrested for having protest signs or banners, or even SINGING, in the state capital. Not making that up!

you don't believe in, and in fact are vehemently against when it profits you .

in a particular empirical situation as identified by those involved, directly and as stakeholders, individually and to whatever collective extent they agree upon.

what do you have against conversational english.

If a contradiction is reason-based*, it can be justified, that is, if rational aspects of people's experiences are identified that justify some variation in a principle, individuals should consider their experiences and make those identifications in their experiences and decide about what variation in whatever principle is acceptable to each person. There will be some over-lap in all of that, amongst some individuals, and there will also be relatively unique aspects of experiences and principled decisions, so each person needs to know which is which, so they can choose freely.

This is called "situational ethics" and churches preach against it as THE secular humanist evil of all time, supposedly because, as some religious say, situational ethics mean "there is no right, nor wrong, just do whatever you want."

That's a lie.

A situational ethos is based upon the assumption that what makes something right or wrong is inherent to, is encoded in, the specific details of the situation under consideration and what an ethical INDIVIDUAL person has to do is to honestly figure that out and to make decisions for themselves about that and then to accept the responsibility/consequences for his/her own decisions.

That's why religions don't like situational ethics, because situational ethics are not derived from external authorities and power. That's kind of funny, because if you look at the life of A MAN named Yeshua, that personal moral capacity to live one's own life is what you see and that's why many of us call him Lord (despite whatever bunk religions have attached to his memory), for what his life showed us about identifying and accepting personal responsibility for living the truth as honestly as one can.

What makes any given contradiction bad is if there is, not only no (valid & reliable) rational experiential foundation for changing a principle, but also if whatever non-rational foundation there is is dishonest/invalid. Which, IMO, is what religions often sell, by externalizing the whole process and by actively opposing or interfering with authentic personal identification/internalization.

*I have a preference for reason, because it just gets me through the day, but there are older forms of non-rational/intuitive understanding that humanity used (more or less functionally) for 100s of thousands of years before the rise of rationalism amongst the ancient Greeks some 2800 years ago (though technically rationalism pre-dated the Greeks, I'm pretty sure, it just didn't achieve critical mass until the Greeks formalized it).

**Contradictions can rise out of those non-rational/intuitive forms of knowledge too, but they're harder to share (except as art) and, being more inferential, they are less reliable, but again not necessarily invalid in and of themselves, it's just that there's so much more going on in those kinds of knowing that can increase invalidity.

The man Yeshua, a.k.a. Jesus, and other such figures throughout the time of humanity on Earth, may have been one of our more synched-up/valid intuitive knowers.

............................

Hope! you don't mind this riff. You kind of asked for it, 'cause you wouldn't just let me off with my earlier post.

how I get into your logic, so I usually understand you fine.

I know that I'm condensing my writing too much. I should be more aware that my style is too heavily dependent upon people being aware of, for example, what is meant by the word "necessary". I know that they know the definition of such words, like "necessary", but my internet writing style depends too much on people being able to see the relevance of those definitions in somewhat unusual contexts . . . . kind of like you.

I scared them off by asking for facts. I'm doing it right

Speak your mind. Do not destroy. Do not kill.

Easy as that. I don't see what the problem in understanding is.

without destructive violent rioting and vandalism.

These possibilities require a different level of commitment, which I learned something about around the Lawrence, KS, Occupy from a fellow known as the Tree Poet.

or dealt with the Oakland PD.

are Anarchist losers that are still financially dependent on mommy and daddy (who never forced them to get a job in their lives). They try to crash legitimate, peaceful protests just so that they can break windows and steal stuff. Stupid kids.

I don't think anyone here is opposed to people protesting against the movies.

It's the violence and bloodshed and a little bit the complete violation of sovereign territory by storming embassies.

and facts get in the way of a good talking point about why xy&z are bad despite the midst of a national tragedy.

I would love to contribute to the legal defense for whoever did this.