No matter what Ann Coulter says, we liberals aren’t beholden to the desires of the wacko Islamic fundamentalists. Thus I’m exceedingly glad that Wikipedia decided to prove they have more balls than half of Europe and America’s governments and refuse to take down images of the prophet Mohammad just because of the protests.
More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam, which prohibits any representation of Muhammad. But the defiant editors of the encyclopaedia insist they will not bow to pressure and say anyone objecting to the controversial images can simply adjust their computers so they do not have to look at them.
The images at the centre of the protest appear on most of the European versions of the web encyclopaedia, though not on Arabic sites. On two of the images, Muhammad’s face is veiled, a practice followed in Islamic art since the 16th century. But on two others, one from 1315, which is the earliest surviving depiction of the prophet, and the other from the 15th century, his face is shown. Some protesters are claiming the pictures have been posted simply to ‘bait’ and ‘insult’ Muslims and argue the least Wikipedia can do is blur or blank out the faces.
Wikipedia has a legitimate reason to host the images: they are a source of information and asking anyone to scrub their site simply because something offends you is the height of both arrogance and stupidity. Well done, over 180,000 Muslims.
And heck, even if they didn’t have a good reason, tough nuggets. If something offends you, avoid it. It’s a non-crime. It is, in fact, a non-offense, a non-crime. You were not harmed, not damaged, your life was unaffected. Kowtowing to someone’s desires to stop offending them is just cowardice. I’m glad Wikipedia stood up.
Categories: internet · religion
I honestly cannot believe some things are capable of being debated. It’s a real comment on how far we’ve fallen when things like “spying on the citizens with no oversight or legal responsibility” are up for discussion. So reading about the standoff between Dems and the White House over the telecom immunity is kind of a nice combination of hilarious and depressing. Things like this:
[Director of National Intelligence Mike] McConnell believes retroactive telecom immunity is critical to national security. Failure to provide it could result in telecommunications companies challenging FISA court orders as a way to further insulate themselves from future lawsuits, he argued.
Already, he says the roughly 40 lawsuits filed against telecom companies nationwide has chilled the private sector’s willingness to help the intelligence agencies in ways unrelated to electronic surveillance. Exactly how is classified, and he won’t elaborate.
“I’m talking about the things they’ve done to help us track terrorists,” said McConnell. “They did lawful things at the request of the government under the conditions they’ve done it for 50 years.”
Okay let’s review. McConnell is claiming that fear of lawsuits will cause telecom companies to be loathe to cooperate with the spying. However, they were doing lawful things. So apparently the telecom companies are going to be afraid of being taken to court over not breaking the law. Personally I wasn’t aware they could be taken to court for doing nothing illegal, much less that such a lawsuit could be lost.
With this administration, there seems to be a pattern. If they’re simultaneously asking for either an expansion of a law or powers while insisting that nothing they’re currently doing is illegal, watch out. Words of wisdom: no one asks for legal immunity if they’re genuinely doing nothing wrong.
Categories: spying · white house
As I started to write this, it occurred to me just how sad the state of things is that any time I hear about something like the US having evidence that Iran is funding militants in Iraq, rather than thinking “we need to do something about that!” my reaction is “I’m sure this’ll turn out to be another heap of BS.”
