NEWS: Straw man in a shit storm.

The thing you don't get is that the West is fully capable of engaging in acts of Medieval barbarity.

Dead is dead Upbitight. Torture is torture. Bombs are bombs.

Innocent people are dead, innocent people are tortured or imprisoned - some simply for what they believed.

You want us to believe that it matters what the belief or governmental system of the killers and torturers is - it doesn't

You want us to believe that it matters if someone is killed by an IED or a cluster bomb - it doesn't.

You want us to believe that it matters if you are killed because you are defending your country against an occupying force or because you are homosexual - it doesn't.

Dead is dead.

No one is "protecting" fascists. People are simply pointing out that great evil can be purpetrated in the name of good.

Shades of gray dude, shades of gray.

Oh, get over yourself.

Look.

Muslim extremism and radicalism frightens and disturbs me. I have not the slightest amount of problem admitting and acknowledging that.

I just watched the first part of this BBC show tonight about Western Muslim men (a small number, but nothing to be dismissed out of hand) and of course it's fucking disturbing.

But I'm simply not prepared to excuse the West (and in particular the current US administration) for foreign policy blunders that make us less safe rather than more. Nor its trampling all over its own core values in its rush to seek bloody vengeance on people from a country not directly connected to the attacks of 9/11.

So, how's this? How about you answer the following.

Is the continuing detention without trial of David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay, awaiting some vague military tribunal at some unspecified future time
i) a violation of Hicks' human rights to a fair and proper trial, or
ii) the inevitable outcome of his actions, and nothing less than he deserves?

I'm wondering what your value system tells you about his situation. My hunch is it is likely to tell us a lot about you.

It doesn't require special cognitive talent to understand what I wrote. If you miss context, search on your friend's posts. Otherwise, fuck off.
KTHKS!

i meant what i said with a laugh - i should have used a smiley or somehting. i was just amused - uptight's just a dude on the internet, but your post made it sound like he was satan or something. no offence.

No one is attacking the west. No one is defending Islamic extremism. You are the one who raised the comparison.

You on the other hand are, categorically saying, ad nauseum that it is not merely acceptable, but righteous, to sodomize our captives, launch rockets into apartment complexes, kidnap people and ship them around the world to be tortured by other Islamic extremists, detain people without charge, hold secret tribunals, beat torture and kill people based on the flimsiest of evidence and on and on and on.

Are Islamic regimes on the whole more "barbaric" than western ones? Perhaps, depends on your definitions, but regardless of the comparative level of abuse, you're the only one here applauding it. Thats what you do.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

I really wouldn't bother trying to reason with uptight. He apparently thinks with his knees to judge by his knee-jerk reactions in this and other threads. And, moreover, there is a vein of antipathy to people unlike himself and who do not share his values, which runs close to the surface in virtually everything he posts.

Three "values" I'd recommend for his consideration:

1. Value other peoples' values, even when unlike your own, as long as they do not appear to be doing people harm.

2. Assume that intelligent, rational, humane people have good and valid reasons for the choices that they make, even if they are not the choices YOU'D make in the same cicumstances.

3. Allow that Islam is the deeply-held faith and ruling way of life of very many ordinary, peaceloving, lawabiding, responsible people all over the world and that it is a force for good and a source of stability for most of these people in most the the states where Islam is the dominant religion.

When, if he can cope with this adjustment to his prejudices, he has reflected on these matters, perhaps he would stop demonising Islam and its customs and teachings on the basis of the actions of a tiny number of its adherents.

I'd still like an answer from Uptight on this though.

Well then, can you hold your breath longer that far south of the equator? Because it doesn't look like the fish will take this bait.

*...turning .... blue ....*