[Rhodes22-list] what is list etiquette? Ignore That!

[Steve Alm]

Brad,

Thanks.  I mostly agree with the article however calling for "perspective
and objectivity" is a waste of breath.  By definition, "extremists" are
incapable of that.  (And I don't just refer to Muslim extremists.)

As I understand it, Islamic fundamentalists object to Democracy because it
puts men in charge of the law instead of Allah and the Koran--(Qu'ran?)  So
if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be like flushing the Bible AND
the Constitution.  That's the perspective WE need to keep in mind.  It's
easy for us to sit back and condemn the Muslim extremists for over-reacting
to a tiny little blurb that may or may not have been true, but if the Koran
IS your whole world, how could you not protest?  They already view
themselves as the losers and they're getting desperate.  Violent reactions
are as predictable as the sunrise when some country half way around the
world strips you of your entire life/value and crams their own ideology down
your throat.  What did we expect?

What bugs me is what Don Rumsfeld had to say: "Oh, you've got to be very
careful what you say..."  WHAT?  Look who's talking?  Frankly, I wouldn't
doubt that the story was indeed true and Newsweek was pressured to retract
it.

Slim

On 5/18/05 11:01 AM, "brad haslett" <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Ric,
> 
> I was responding to your post when my daughter put her
> elbow on the keyboard (I'm home all week playing Mr.
> Mom.)  Ignore that first post.  At least she didn't
> call 911 like she did when she was 1 1/2.  Those cops
> still think I'm lying.
> 
> Anyway, I've been too busy to make any pithy political
> comments but not to busy to read.  Here's an article
> from today's Chicago Tribune.  Not only is it funny in
> its own way but dead on the money correct.  This is
> neither left nor right folks, just a fastball straight
> down the middle.
> 
> Brad
> "CoraShen"
> 
> 
> Seeking sanity in the asylum
> 
>   
> 
> By Kathleen Parker
> 
> May 18, 2005
> 
> Reaction to an inaccurate Newsweek report that led
> recently to rioting and death in Afghanistan suggests
> that hysteria is, indeed, contagious.
> 
> To briefly recap, Newsweek reported in a small blurb
> May 9 that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay
> had flushed a Koran down a toilet in attempts to get
> Muslim terror suspects to talk. Once the Newsweek
> story was broadcast abroad, the usually reticent
> hate-America crowd erupted in mass pique. Havoc
> ensued. At least 15 Afghans died and many more were
> injured.
> 
> All because of a story that may not have been true.
> The "knowledgeable U.S. government source" who told
> Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and John Barry about the
> flushing apparently wasn't so knowledgeable. At the
> risk of seeming insensitive, may I suggest that c'est
> la guerre and urge everyone to follow Dr. Lamaze's
> always-useful advice: Breathe deeply and focus.
> 
> What we need here is a little perspective.
> 
> First, we all can agree that flushing a Koran down a
> toilet, if physically possible, would be both
> insensitive and rude, though Westerners generally have
> a higher tolerance threshold for such offenses. Put it
> this way: You could flush a Bible down the toilet in
> front of Goober in Kabul, and it's unlikely that
> Mayberry suddenly would be awash in blood.
> 
> Without disrespecting true believers of Islam, one
> also could debate the relative miseries of seeing our
> favorite scripture disappear into the plumbing versus,
> say, watching airplanes fly into buildings, killing
> thousands of innocents. Remember, these are terrorist
> suspects captured after 9/11, not kidnapped members of
> an Afghan boys choir.
> 
> The apparent Newsweek mistake was regrettable, but we
> should beware of allowing ourselves to mirror the
> emotional reactions of people who were by no measure
> justified in their response--even if the story had
> been proven true.
> 
> The same people foaming over a reported act of
> blasphemy didn't flinch while executing women for
> stepping outside sans burqa. I'm afraid my moral
> outrage in favor of the morally outrageous is tapped
> out.
> 
> While the world was reacting in righteous indignation
> to the Newsweek report, another story was circulating
> about Turkish women in Germany being executed by
> family members in "honor killings" sanctioned by
> certain interpretations of the Koran. Their offense?
> Acting like Western women. Or, in the pithy words of a
> 14-year-old Turkish boy who was justifying an
> execution: "The whore lived like a German."
> 
> Before the good Muslim world objects, let me assert
> what shouldn't need saying: Islam isn't the problem
> here. The problem is ignorance and the right-wing
> Islamist faction that will use the Koran for its
> purposes, whether to incite a riot or murder a woman
> who refuses to wear her headscarf. The enemy is
> extremism.
> 
> I have no interest either in defending Newsweek or in
> justifying interrogators' methods, but let's be blunt:
> Those rampaging in Afghanistan didn't need a reason to
> riot; they needed an excuse. That the media provided
> one is regrettable, but that regret needs to be
> tempered by perspective and objectivity.
> 
> Instead, much of the anger the past several days has
> been directed not at the Islamist extremists who went
> berserk, but at the reporters who apparently got the
> story wrong. What if they'd been right? Should
> Newsweek not have reported it? Would the riots have
> been justified if someone had flushed a Koran?
> 
> We might debate those questions, but meanwhile we
> should resist the urge to overreact as some have in
> suggesting that the press should be restricted or
> stifled. Although imperfect, a free press is one of
> our nation's highest expressions of freedom and the
> thing that separates us from the same right-wing,
> authoritarian, extremist forces that we condemn. Yet,
> an alarming number of Americans, their faith in
> journalists damaged by recent scandals, have lost
> sight of the meaning and importance of a free press.
> 
> A recent University of Connecticut survey found, for
> example, that only 14 percent of respondents knew that
> freedom of the press was part of the 1st Amendment.
> Only 55 percent of those surveyed strongly agreed that
> newspapers should be allowed "to publish freely
> without government approval of a story." Now there's a
> finding to warm the cockles of a Taliban heart.
> 
> Once we start asking the government for permission to
> publish, we become partners in propaganda and cohorts
> of authoritarianism. Far better to risk mistakes--and
> even riots from the lunatic fringe--than to forfeit
> the right to question authority.
> 
> Mistakes will be made, but freedom means living to
> say, "I'm sorry."
> 
> Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist for the
> Orlando Sentinel, a Tribune newspaper. ----------
> 
> E-mail: kparker at kparker.com
> Copyright ? 2005, Chicago Tribune
> 
> 
> --- brad haslett <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>> --- Rik Sandberg <sanderico at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> Cheryl,
>>> 
>>> Somehow, I don't think that "political screed" was
>>> all there was to that message, was it? Wasn't it
>>> just one of Ed's little signature addendums? I
>> think
>>> I'd do my best to get over it if you want to hang
>>> out on the Rhodes list, because, we talk about
>> most
>>> anything here, sometimes even politics. Maybe it
>>> would be good if you went to
>>> 
>>> www.rhodes22.org/list
>>> 
>>> and read the charter. Then you can decide what is
>>> appropriate .... or not and and decide whether you
>>> want to stay .... or not.
>>> 
>>> Rik
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Cheryl O'Grady <cheryl.ogrady at mail.com>
>>> Sent: May 18, 2005 8:49 AM
>>> To: The Rhodes 22 mail list
>>> <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
>>> Subject: [Rhodes22-list] what is list etiquette?
>>> 
>>> I don't think it is kosher for someone to use my
>>> email address from the list to send political
>>> screed.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is
>>> that good men do nothing."  Edmund Burke, Irish
>>> philosopher
>>> 
>>> __________________________________________________
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>>> 
>>> 
>>> __________________________________________________
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>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> Yahoo! Mail
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