Now all you have to decide is if you're going to hold that against me.
That statement was meant to confirm I don't have to agree with what happened to be the consequences of it. Saying it was wrong goes nowhere but appreciating what was gained can do good. Look at Germany and Japan today. Fine places and fine people, both praised for their unique culture and technical prowess. Am I supposed to hold that against them that they came out so good from a war so long ago?
There is some humour in the situation, a cartoon in the Times Yesterday showed the Pope, having disembarked from a plane on a visit, with the customary face pressed to the ground.
A Bystander was saying
"Is he kissing the ground or head-butting it?"
Another remark I noted, referring to the Pope's simulated punch and mainly intelligible to England Football Fans;
That's the sort of thinking that results in tit-for-tat policies, like the Israelis and the Palestinians generation-spanning vendettas ... especially when insulting Religions, funny thought they are, is off limits.
He didn't empathize, he simply stated what one could expect. Correct on your second point, but there's an important difference between sanctioning violence and pointing out what one can expect.
Well I maintain that he did. Maybe he would distinguish between forms of violence - I could believe that- but his words and his actions in saying those words (see the video) illustrated his acceptance that violence was a normal reaction, albeit that he went on to say the fluffy things that we all say. As I remarked he was undiplomatic and had a bad choice of words.
Consider how else he might have phrased that remark ('Curse my mother, expect a punch');
Curse my mother and expect objections
Curse my mother and do not expect favours.
Curse my mother and expect to be ignored.
But no - he used the violent analogy and in so doing drew a link with the fanatics murderous reaction to the insult they perceived.
I think not everyone picked up the issue I raised which was that the Pope made it clear that he empathised with the use of violence by those that felt insulted. His remark was basically saying that if you insult religion then what can you expect but violence.
If that is truly the case then perhaps insults are well deserved.
As it happens, some of the cartoons which have allegedly been published (some were said to have been inserted into the folk law by zealots wanting to provoke a reaction) are in my opinion way, way beyond decency and from a moral viewpoint should not have been published. But people should have the right to insult as well as the right to be offended.
The religious like to claim they are being persecuted and insulted, but in fact the insults have been at a very high level from those of a religious persuasion against those that lack it. Yes and persecution too.
I like radio and it's a kind of media that unlike tv/video can engage listeners into a deep level of connection. I have some ideas about a radio program in order to resist saxonic colonization aka globalization. Subversive stuff.
An interesting point there Belfrager: although I don't agree that TV can't deal with things in depth, there are plenty of programmes which would prove that, but all too often TV is for "Butterfly Minds" . Sometimes I think programme makers are more concerned with showing off their imagined visual artistry than communication with their audience. With Sound as the medium one has to keep more to the point, I think, to keep an audience.
I'm afraid you're stuck with the "Saxons" (aka us civilised lot up here); suffer and learn.
I'm not so sure he's anti-American. I see truth in what he says about America's love affair with guns. You have to go to South American and African countries to find a higher rate of gun-related deaths, murders and otherwise. There isn't one European country that comes close. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Yes I get the impression that if apples were discovered to be the root cause of cancer, then anyone posting here that said Apple Pie was bad for you would be accused of being anti-American.
Normally one would expect a person with the Pope's responsibilities to be more diplomatic in is pronouncements, but his choice of words today 'Curse my mother, expect a punch' is probably the worse thing he could have said; whether he likes it or not, he justifies the use of violence if someone says something another does not like.
In so doing he goes some way to implying justification for the recent attacks in Paris and the others which may follow.
Maybe Religion, all religions, are at their heart inimical to Free Speech.
That's an interesting article, the remark that those who own arms are presumed to be those belonging to a well regulated militia, is something I've not seen argued in that way before.
I have to qualify the last sentence of my previous post. I should have written that I have not personally seen guns other than on the TV. This is because I have occasionally seen news reports when there has been some outrage committed. So for example some footage was shown yesterday in the context of the Paris shooting.
No I don't think so. The old tradition of unarmed police in the UK is worth hanging onto.
I picked out a couple of sentences in that article you posted --- "(in the UK) The alternative to maintaining order through consensus is through fear. While Britons are fond of their police, Americans are generally scared of theirs, and go to great lengths to avoid coming to their attention."
I can only speak for the UK - maybe it is like that in the US. maybe not; perhaps others would like to comment on that. But in the UK people do generally like the police although there are exceptions with some communities, certain racial groups and the criminal class. Not that I group those together as automatic bedfellows but any class that has put itself aside or has been put aside is likely to develop an us-versus-them mentality.
Nowadays there is ready access to arms by the police but this is for special units, not the general rule and is only used exceptionally. That policy has led to unarmed police being hurt, that is true, but it does maintain the underlying body of belief that the use of arms on our streets is abnormal and it remains rare albeit that I admit it seems to grow more common.
I have only once seen a policeman hold a gun (where there was some some of operation going on in a motorway service area) aside from ceremonial use. But then I don't live in (insert your own city that you want to insult!).
And where Sanguinemoon did you get the "fact" that Russia supplied the Ukrainian rebels with that missile? If Kiev based or conjured up by the White House with unverifiable "facts" tehn I have to say that I moved from Primary School to Secondary at 11 years and left fairy tales behind.
Sang does not say it was a fact, he says that it is the most likely scenario.
Some time ago took the trouble to struggle through the Geneva Convention on he garment of Prisoners,; maybe I should repeat the exercise, which was done in the context of Guantanamo Bay, of mavbe not because it's hard work.
My recollection is that it's a document reflecting "old fashioned" standard (not that such is necessarily bad) and the bottom line seemed basically to be that if you wore uniform you ere covered by the convention, otherwise not.
I suspect that there is something similar in age for the definition of terrorist, at least as far as internationally agreements are concerned.
Other than that G.Bush's definition seems to apply - you're either for us or against us.
But there are cases when police don't do that - it depends on the individual I suppose. When Lee Rigby was assaulted an decapitated by a couple of fanatics in London, the police were charged by the perpetrators who (as the man stated afterwards) was indent on killing them if he could od dying a "Martyr's Death". He had a knife and the policeman who shot him nevertheless aimed to wound. The other person I think had a gun but he too was wounded. See here for more details --- Covered in blood and wielding a gun: Moment police shoot armed men 'after they murdered soldier Lee Rigby on streets of Woolwich.
I can appreciate the force of argument for having a "shoot to kill" option but there is still the context. In the UK if there is a shooting incident by the police there is an automatic independent review of the circumstances to see if the shooting was justified and some responsibility lies on the policeman who did the shooting to make his justification - I would assume this is still is also the case in the US although I'm not sure about the independent aspect.(?)
String I cannot fathom why you are so oddly puzzled at my statement. It could not have been more explanatory. Once again I will repeat that there are NO statistics nationally for the number of people shot down by the various police forces over there. Saying that the FBI were told years ago to start amassing these did hot happen either. Heavens, I could have figured that out in first year of secondary school.
rjh - my apologies for delaying my reply.
I was puzzled because it seems to me that there is in fact data on this (to which I referred in the link I gave) so I thought I might have missed a nuance of meaning in what you wrote.
..... it is NOT possible to get statistics nationally of the number of police killings unlike the routine shooting of civilians killing each other which we know as around 10,000.........
Well I agree with Oakdale to the extent that the subject is worth discussing, but I do feel that it is the wrong discussion. More important in my view is the culture and its impact on the way people behave.
We may be dismissive of riots by coloured people in a white dominated country but the next moment moan about the (white) Russians while making fluffy remarks about Eskimos oblivious of the fact that we have swapped the bad-guy race for the good-guy race and vice versa. So concluding broad-brush things about skin colour is, by its nature, inconsistent.
Video killed the radio stars...
