Sara,

What about the argument that these videos are a decade old and the industry standards have changed? Should we invade Germany because we see newsreels of Hiter? (shhh, don't give Bush any ideas.)

What is needed in this debate is an objective study of the industry today.

The behavior in the videos should be stopped. If it has, then great. If it hasn't, then take them to court. The answer isn't in finding the guy that does their dry cleaning and threatening to off his mom.

jackson,

You really lose any point you were trying to make by claiming you know just how cosmic mojo would react in any given situation. You are greatly exaggerating what she's saying for effect and that too waters down your attempt at making a point.

Why not get some evidence that this kind of thing does still go on, that unnecessarily cruel acts are still being performed. If you had evidence that it still happens and isn't dealt with promptly by the companies involved, I bet you'd have many more people agreeing and wanting to do something about it. As it is, all I've seen is decades old video and internet myth.

Anonymous said,

"Dictionaries don't just appear out of thin air - they are written by people with prejudices"

Actually, they are written by large groups of people and quite a few editors. If a definition ends up far out of line with other dictionaries, it'd hurt their business, so they all tend to be similar. You really think all those people manage to have the same prejudices and work them in to the dictionary?

"everyone seems willing to throw the word terrorist around"

I had mentioned in an earlier post that we should stop calling it terrorism. These SHAC actions are crimes and should be treated as such. Calling it terrorism doesn't help matters. In fact, the whole "war on terrorism" is a bunch of nonsense that'd be better solved with concerted police activity. They call it a war 'cause it sounds more manly and keeps people scared.

This article isn't making excuses, it is examining partial, potential underlying causes. There's a huge difference. Those here that are saying "This isn't worth examining" or "Oh, sure blame Bush for everything" are missing the point entirely. These are exactly the reactions addressed by the old saying "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it."

This article helps establish context, that's it. It isn't placing blame or excusing. And yes, Bush's policies are part of it, the political leanings and history of the Danish paper do matter and the people rioting, burning and killing, as well as their leaders who are using it for their own ends are in the wrong. These are not mutually exclusive.

I've been reading the comments on most of the articles about the cartoons and the reactions in the Middle East. Around half complain about something not being covered in the articles that was covered or posts complaining based on what they seem to think would be in them had they bothered to read them. It strikes a very strange tone so see someone complaining that Salon said X when that didn't happen at all. Try reading, I hear it is fundamental.

You're all right in taking the author to task for suggesting the religious communities in this country would do anything so violent if their beliefs are offended. You'd think that somewhere in America there were people assasinating abortion doctors or bombing abortion clinics and set up web sites exhorting people to do more of it.

I'm sure it'd be laughable to think Christian groups would try to deny rights to people because of their sexual orientatation, make up statistics about how horrible they are, pretend it is science and demonize them in public. Surely no-one would attack people in a bar witih a hatchet because of such things.

Christian groups certainly wouldn't scream and yell and demonstrate because a movie depicted Jesus in a way they didn't like, or because a TV show portrayed someone conversing with Jesus, or because a pop star pretended to be a TV Christian offering cooking tips on how to make "cruci-fixin's".

I'm certain that here in the enlightened West, these things could never happen.

Binkley,

Bzzt? You might want to get that bee before it stings you. It's been buzzing in two of your posts.

"How many buildings have the "Christian Right" burned down"?

Including the KKK? Scores. Just abortion clinics? Don't know the specific numbers, but quite a few. How many abortion clinics have the muslims blown up? See, I can play the silly, overspecific definition game too.

"How many newspaper editors have been thrown in jail for publishing an article?"

Don't know. How about I go look for some numbers on that while you tell me the number of women that have been harrassed, screamed at, tormented and manhandled because they were trying to get to an abortion clinic. We'll come back and compare numbers.

"How many of the Saudi embassies in "The West" have been burned down for their nations habit of burning bibles and imprisoning missionaries?"

So what, you're suggesting this is a good idea now? How about this, how many synogogues, black churches and mosques have been firebombed, burned down or vandilized in some way by "christians" that thought they knew better?

Hint: None of the answers are "zero".

Lots of people say Marino doesn't deserve to be called an "all time great" 'cause he never made the Superbowl. He's a QB, he was supposed to lead his team there. Ted Williams is an all time great partly 'cause he didn't have that pressure. Marino was a selfish hack who never learned the skills that emphasized his teammates instead of himself, like handing off well.

Elway was the same, but lucked out by getting a great RB in his last few years and realizing that if he didn't work with him he'd go out a loser.