Anti-Islam film protests spread across Middle East

bruno

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This is manufactured outrage- it would be interesting to know who is behind it. While the President of Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood are expressing support for the embassy staff in English- they are saying something different in Arabic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...65ce7e-fd9b-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html
In a measure of the tension between American diplomats in Egypt and their host government, a minor tempest broke out Thursday on Twitter between representatives of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and the official U.S. Embassy feed.

The English-language Muslim Brotherhood Twitter account posted a message of support for the U.S. Embassy staff, saying that the group was “relieved” that no staff members were harmed and that it hoped relations between the countries would be maintained through the “turbulence of Tuesday’s events.”

In response, the U.S. Embassy Twitter feed, which is maintained by several embassy public affairs officials, said, “Thanks. By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those too.” It was an apparent reference to the Muslim Brotherhood calls for further protests.



It seems to me that we constantly are rediscovering why the MidEast's history is primarily one of strong man governments rather than democracies. BBC had an interesting little snippet of analysis on that subject

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19584734
AnalysisThe demonstrations, and violence, which have spread through the Middle East and North Africa are a reminder that, in this part of the world, religion and politics are often the same thing. Religion defines lives and is part of people's identities in a way that secular Europeans forgot long ago.

It is a big part of the political transformation that has been happening since the Arab uprisings started last year. In the old Middle East, there used to be protests against the United States and its Western allies when they were perceived to be attacking Islam - everything from insulting the Prophet Muhammad to invading or bombing.

The authoritarian rulers of police states who depended on western support always kept them in check. But now the old red lines have gone
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Where The H+ll are the Marines? Probably in Tripoli. Bengazi was a Consulate and protected by Civilian Contractors (all four of them). But Cairo Egypt? Come on! Guaranteed they were told to stand down. Shoot them as they enter US sovereign territory. The whole thing is manufactured.. They cry crocodile tears and accept Billions. And most of the demonstrators can't read or write. Not a lot of University Students in the crowd. Not very PC of me.
 
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The film is just a pretext. This is an all-out push to intimidate the West into restricting speech so that Islam and Muslims are established as a privileged class beyond criticism.

An University of Pennsylvania professor is calling for the arrest of the filmmaker.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-09-12/Sam-Bacile-Anthea-Butler/57769732/1

"While the First Amendment right to free expression is important, it is also important to remember that other
countries and cultures do not have to understand or respect our right...."

And apparently, neither do University of Pennsylvania professors.

She is saying that Muslims do not have to respect the freedom speech, but non-Muslims have to respect Islamic blasphemy law. Why the inequity?
 
The film is just a pretext. This is an all-out push to intimidate the West into restricting speech so that Islam and Muslims are established as a privileged class beyond criticism.

An University of Pennsylvania professor is calling for the arrest of the filmmaker.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-09-12/Sam-Bacile-Anthea-Butler/57769732/1



And apparently, neither do University of Pennsylvania professors.

She is saying that Muslims do not have to respect the freedom speech, but non-Muslims have to respect Islamic blasphemy law. Why the inequity?

That professor is well out of line. :thumbdown:

It's pretty hard for me to fathom that a professor at an Ivy League college (or any college for that matter) would advocate for arrest of a filmmaker for making a movie.
 
The film is just a pretext. This is an all-out push to intimidate the West into restricting speech so that Islam and Muslims are established as a privileged class beyond criticism.

An University of Pennsylvania professor is calling for the arrest of the filmmaker.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-09-12/Sam-Bacile-Anthea-Butler/57769732/1



And apparently, neither do University of Pennsylvania professors.

She is saying that Muslims do not have to respect the freedom speech, but non-Muslims have to respect Islamic blasphemy law. Why the inequity?

:thumb: Dead on Balls Accurate. I'd have no problem giving the entire middle east a new industry and economy. Turn them into a glass factory. So tired of this having to respect others but they don't have to respect us.
 
The film is just a pretext. This is an all-out push to intimidate the West into restricting speech so that Islam and Muslims are established as a privileged class beyond criticism.

An University of Pennsylvania professor is calling for the arrest of the filmmaker.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-09-12/Sam-Bacile-Anthea-Butler/57769732/1



And apparently, neither do University of Pennsylvania professors.

She is saying that Muslims do not have to respect the freedom speech, but non-Muslims have to respect Islamic blasphemy law. Why the inequity?

Wow. I'm probably uninformed, but I don't recall anyone in a public position ever saying that we should "understand (accept)" other's choice not to respect our right of free speech before. That pretty much directly contradicts everything we've fought for the past 236 (or so) years.
 
Wow those crowds are really

angry and dangerous. What these people fail to realize, which many in the past have also failed to realize, that the most dangerous thing on this earth is an angry American Public.

They would do well not to piss us off.
 
All I can say is thank God ROTC does not have a bunch of cadets attending CULP in some of these countries right now. I know of at least one cadet that was in Tunisia.

There was even concern for my son's group in Bosnia when their bus got caught in a huge back up due to an accident in the mountains of the Serbian region of Bosnia. The Embassy had arranged Helicopters ready to go pick them up. the term they used to describe them was "High Value Targets". Traffic opened up and they were able to move, though I think they were looking forward to the helo ride.

My thoughts are with any Americans still in that region.

Good point NorwichDad.
 
By "Glass Factory" you mean the Big One. And sand into glass:thumb: They don't have to respect us but they should fear us. The people in the streets couldn't read a newspaper let alone a news report. Jimmy Carter just jumped in with his opinion. And when will we get Pi**ed off enough.
 
From a post on facebook:

In 1986, when he (Reagan) was President, Libya killed Americans.

He bombed their leader's house. Libya was quiet for 25 years.

Then someone apologized.
 
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Unfortunately, I don't even think "Fearing" the USA is even an option any more. We've gone from a country that was "RESPECTED" by our allies and "FEARED" by our foes. Now; no one respects or fears us. Whenever anything controversial happens IN or OUT of our country, our "Leader's" first response is to "Apologize". The same think happened in Egypt.

They definitely do not fear us, and they sure in hell don't respect us. Gotta love our political correctness. Don't want to offend anyone. Such a crock.
 
Sad to say, I feel like American citizens and our military are more unsafe today than ever before...overseas and at home.

If these groups will not respect us (and I don't think they ever will), then we need them to FEAR us!!!

Watching these brave men come home to Andrews....very, very sad...
 
I'd like to see us be able to not rely on them. The quicker we can reduce our dependence on oil, the sooner that part of the world can learn what it's like when we don't need them. A broke mob can hurtle stones at our embassies, but its a lot harder to export that back here at home without the money to finance them.
 
Because of the deep cultural divide and the hard line militant views from the ultra consevitive factions in these regions, respect is something that will not come easy. While these intense Anti-American views are not shared by everyone, the loudest voices get the most attention. Even after 10 years of war we are still trying to learn how to combat those that hate us while not alienating those that do not, it's a very hard and a very thin line to walk.

To bring these countries to a point where they fear us seems to just breed more anger from the more militant factions. There does not seem to be an easy answer, we've tried both, being aggressive and being passive, and neither has worked out very well.

My thought, develop a cheaper Hybrid, and a better battery. Become energy independent. Have no further need for what they sell and take our ball and go home. Until then the whole thing is going to continue to be a mess.

I ackowledge that my thought is a simplistic view, but it would be a start.

Hornetguy,
It seems we cross posted with similar views, Great minds....
 
Agreed. :biggrin:

I'd rather not care about them than try to figure out how best to make them respect/fear us.

Except "not caring" doesn't prevent planes from crashing into buildings or fields....

Simply ignoring them does nothing. We have oil in the Arctic and Gulf.... just need to drill and refine it....

Light a fire under the ass of a countries leader to control its people.... and you have a smaller problem.
 
Except "not caring" doesn't prevent planes from crashing into buildings or fields....Simply ignoring them does nothing.

Lot of African militants that want to hurt us, too. They lack resources to make it work. The 9/11 hijackers had a lot of money to plan, train, and execute. It doesn't make it impossible for them, just much harder.

We have oil in the Arctic and Gulf.... just need to drill and refine it....
Won't do a thing to solve the problem. Oil is a global commodity. So long as we use it and provide a market, it will sell. We buy very little OPEC oil, but we support the global price, thereby allowing them to make billions. Flooding the market (something we probably can't even do), won't change that as they price manipulate. We could talk through so many scenarios where we try and flood the oil supply to cut their profits and we end up losing every time. Increasing domestic production still helps them maintain importance in the world. Losing the largest consumer of their product and THEN big things happen. That's just thinking in a vacuum and ignoring the global implication of energy technology cheap enough for us to replace oil use. But I'll settle on this point unless you want to go through a discussion on it.

Light a fire under the ass of a country's leader to control its people.... and you have a smaller problem.

Yup, let's remove the need to maintain safe oil supplies and announce that any country willing to harbor someone planning or executing a strike against us will be hit back. If we don't need oil, a Saudi/Iraqi/Iranian/etc. retaliation is a credible threat and they don't have power over us through oil markets to stop us.
 
Lot of African militants that want to hurt us, too.

Um.... and they have.... more than once.

As for oil as a commodity, it's going to stay that way, whether you remove some of the demand, demand will remain. You can lessen the NEED for oil, but it won't go away. Drill and refine your own oil, you effect the price, but make no mistake you have many other countries that will continue that demand, and therefore the markets will remain.

Beyond that, a majority of the United States will be dependent.

And that's not even considering the number of products that have oil based ingredients.
 
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