Ok time to punch up the blog a bit with a different theme. Change can be good. Let me know if you think this one is.
Archive for August, 2010
So I am going to take my own advice and take it easy for the rest of the day with the exception of a couple of scheduled review posts.
If something really jumps out and me I might hit it but otherwise I’m just coasting today.
Theologically to say the least…
Posted: August 1, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/newsTags: bad form, christianity, islam, religion
…Islam has issues.
But I’ve never been one for burning books.
Analysis for me is pretty easy for me on this one. The so-called “International Burn the Quran Day” is geared to the sheer shock factor. It’s beyond incediary, ludicrous and a waste of time. And worse, this kind of behavior (burn the Quran/Koran day) distracts from the clear downsides to Islam. It sells books too, apparently. But in the end it is this group’s right to do as they please on their property – free speech (including liberal pet projects like flag burning) is sometimes ugly.
I’m with Left coast rebel here. Burning books seems kinda anti-American to me.
They get 10 out of 10 for not being afraid of the inevitable fatwa but they also get 0 out of ten for giving Islamists an actual cause for grievance. Going nuts over a cartoon? Nonsense! Burning their holy book, yeah I can see getting angry over that.
This of course doesn’t change the fact that it is protected first amendment speech and violent retaliation is the act of barbarians.
Oh and the Anchoress makes a great point:
But I have to wonder about Rick Sanchez, here. His points are not badly made, but I wonder why he showcased this fellow at all? As one of the deacon’s readers points out:
While I don’t support the burning of the Quran, I can’t help but wonder where CNN and Rick Sanchez were when we had the atheist college Professor Paul Z. Myers desecrating the Eucharist on posting pictures of the act? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall Sanchez grilling Myers in a CNN interview. It gives credibility to the statement that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice.
Just so; I have to wonder whether Sanchez highlighted this story because a) it feeds into the public perception of Christians as intolerant and stupid and b) it is fodder for a potentially huge story: the inevitable fatwa against this man and the tensions his ideas will foment. Is Sanchez stoking this little twig in hopes of reporting on an eventual conflagration down the road?
Either way its bad form and will have a bad end.
Memeorandum thread here.
I say, Anti-Semitic? You’re Daft!
Posted: August 1, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/newsTags: antisemitism, england, Israel, jews
Just because our prime minister calls Gaza a prison camp and an open air prison (Strangely Mr. Cameron didn’t direct any ire toward Egypt who controls the other border of Gaza) doesn’t mean we are anti-Semitic.
Just because we condemned Israel over the gaza flotilla doesn’t mean we are anti-Semitic.
Just because we kowtow to Islamists in our own country doesn’t mean we are anti-Semitic
And this stat doesn’t mean anything:
London’s Metropolitan Police “report that since December, there have been four times as many anti-Semitic attacks as attacks on Muslims, even though there are seven or eight times the number of British Muslims as there are Jews,” said British lawmaker Denis MacShane, who chaired the country’s first parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism.
After all we know that the London Metropolitan Police are a notoriously biased organization
Next thing you know you’re going to claim that Howard Zinn was a communist or something.
Update: Memeorandum thread here, would have included it up front but I was on the wife’s pc and she wanted to use it
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