As we read news reports about violent responses to the video, from people who seem to be quite confused about who produced the video, it's important for all of us to remember the basic issue here. The basic issue is whether people in free countries, like most readers of Hacker News, are going to be able to enjoy the right of free speech throughout their country, on any subject, or whether any American or Dutch person or other person accustomed to free speech who happens to be within reach of attack by a crazy foreign person has to prepare for war just to continue to exercise free speech. On my part, I'm going to continue to comment on public policy based on verifiable facts and reason and logic, even if that seems offensive. I am not going to shrink from saying that people in backward, poorly governed countries that could never have invented the Internet have no right to kill and destroy just because someone in a free country laughs or scorns at their delusions. The people who are destroying diplomatic buildings and killing diplomats are declining to use thoughtful discussion to show that they are anything other than blights on humankind.
AFTER EDIT: Reporting by the New York Times, citing other news organizations, on the origin of the video and how viewers became aware of it:
These sorts of incidents make me wonder why we even care about "democratizing" these countries. It's clear that they're stuck in the Middle Ages, and I don't think any amount of intervention is going to change that. You can't forcibly change an entire culture by throwing money and soldiers at it.
Seems to me the right thing to do is to make it as easy and seamless as possible for those who share our views to leave their countries and come to America. It's not like we have any shortage of space in this country, and as long as the people we bring are contributing to the economy and have a modern value system, it can only be a good thing for us too.
You have made a common mistake of conflating 'democracy' with 'intolerance.'
The fundamental issue is that you've got people in place A who have different moral values and rules than people in place B, The folks in place B worry their values will be destroyed by access to the media from place A.
In this example the folks in strict Islamic nations are upset over a film which mocks the key figure in their religion. In the US devout Christians had much the same sort of anger over films that portrayed inter-racial marriage (and the implied intimacy). A few of the radical Christian clerics exhort their followers to violence in defense of their Christian beliefs under fire by their perception of an increasingly amoral society.
Has nothing to do with democracy, middle ages, or religion and everything to do with what are, and what are not, those so called inalienable rights that the insurgents talked about their independence manifesto. Driving a consensus on this issue is Hard Problem(tm) which the UN and others have been working on pretty much from the start.
"A few of the radical Christian clerics exhort their followers to violence in defense of their Christian beliefs..."
The big difference being that this is always followed by official condemnation.
Where are the muslim moderates at times like these? The community leaders to come out and say, "calm down everybody, this is not what our religion is about". Absent as ever. As much as the moderate muslims may deny it, their silence speaks pages at times like these.
I even see it in westernized muslim friends of mine, who just sheepishly grin and say "but it's mohammed, our religion says we shouldn't disrespect him".
Where are moderate muslims at times like these? Probably busy not killing people and making a living. If moderate muslims had anything to say about this topic, how would you know about it? Honestly, is there a TV channel for moderates that I could look up?
> You have made a common mistake of conflating 'democracy' with 'intolerance.'
The reason why I've conflated them is because democracy is almost always a prerequisite for tolerance. Sure, it's possible for a non-democratic country to be tolerant, but that is a rare abnormality.
Moreover, the reason why I put the word "democratization" in scare quotes in my previous post is because I was also using it with the underlying meaning that exists in America - "to transplant our culture/values into another country".
Not sure if I can agree with 'democracy' (which I believe you're using equating to the US style of representation) is a prerequisite for tolerance. The Dutch have had a monarchy that was pretty tolerant on a lot of things for a while (just as an example of it not being required). I'd be Ok with saying that democratically formed governments are more likely to be tolerant because tolerance works toward enhancing the number of votes they can get.
But your second comment is scary indeed. "transplanting our culture/values", especially when it comes to US culture and values, is an offensive thing to a lot of people in the world. The US State department pushes exactly one 'value' (and no 'culture') which is that the people who are governed have the right of electing the government they want. Period. There aren't any constraints put on the kind of government the people pick, be it heavily church influenced, strict representation, constitutional representation, etc.
> The US State department pushes exactly one 'value' (and no 'culture') which is that the people who are governed have the right of electing the government they want.
This is the official policy, but everyone knows it's bullshit. Using post WW2 changes as an example, we quickly forgive countries that Americanize (such as Japan), while we quickly forget allies who veer off on their path (such as Russia). We overthrow democratic governments who oppose us and bring back monarchs who are on our side (such as in Iran), while we prop up oppressive monarchs who support us (such as in Saudi Arabia).
And I recognize the fact that it's offensive to transplant our culture/values, which is why I think it's best to just try to bring those people who already agree with our culture and values to America. Let the extremists kill one another - we just need to get the bystanders out of the way.
The Soviet Union did not 'veer off their path' they continued it until Reagan and their policies ran them out of money. Stalin killed more Soviets than the Germans.
Afghanistan was a modern, progressive country in the 1960s. It has devolved into a paranoid backwater after decades of attacks, occupation and other meddling by external powers - first the USSR and then the USA. Let's recall that the Taliban were formed out of the [terrorists|freedom fighters] that were trained by the Pakistani ISI and financed by the CIA to undermine the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Afghanistan was a modern, progressive country in the 1960s.
I am old enough to remember the 1960s, and accounts from people who traveled to Afghanistan in the 1960s, and I would like to see more evidence for this extraordinary claim. Until I see the evidence you kindly provide, I will be hard put to believe that "modern, progressive" is as appropriate a designation for Afghanistan at any time in the last 500 years as it has been for, say, Denmark all that while.
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the first reply from new user gongador linking to a photo essay I remember seeing not too long ago. I had that photo essay in mind as I described "Afghanistan was a modern, progressive country in the 1960s" as an extraordinary claim, as I think the photo essay shows by concentrating its description of Afghanistan only on the largest urban center of the country, rather than the rural countryside seen by other travelers. The majority of the population of Afghanistan have never lived in Kabul, and illiteracy has always been high there, especially among girls and women.
I agree, it's hardly representative of the whole country, which is why I referred to the photo essay as a viewpoint rather than claiming that (the whole of) Afghanistan was a modern progressive country in the 1960s.
I have no knowledge of what life in Afghanistan was like in the 1960s, I just remembered reading this essay and looking at the photos some time ago.
If I recall history lessons from school correctly, customs and habits formed by a country's elite (most often in the country's capital) tend to spread and be mimicked around said country. I wonder what life in rural Afghanistan would have been like today had not the USSR and the USA got involved.
EDIT: Sigh, this should have been an edit in my previous comment of course.
>I am old enough to remember the 1960s, and accounts from people who traveled to Afghanistan in the 1960s, and I would like to see more evidence for this extraordinary claim.
Go read some books then. That they had religion and that they didn't had rock n' roll and modern luxuries didn't mean they were not a progressive, tolerant country compared to what it has become today.
It's not about literacy and poor living in villages either. It's about living in a tolerant go-about-your business place and a civil-war/starvation/religious nuts running the show place.
You're right, a riot where 4 people are killed is indicative of the country being stuck in the Middle Ages. Likewise, Brevik and the Aurora shooter killed 20x this, each; must mean that Norway and the US are stuck in the Mesolithic era.
Maybe Norway, but are you kidding about America? There are tons of shootings in America all the time. Not all are big mass mutli killings. That's how you know there's a problem, merely 4 people dying probably wouldn't even make the news.
There was recently that one where some white supremicist stormed a sikh temple and shot people. That's just the most recent one in my memory, wasn't that a few weeks ago.
Hyperbole doesn't help anyone. Sure, America is a lot more violent than Western Europe, but both America and Western Europe are so much less violent than a veritable warzone like Afghanistan that even trying to claim otherwise doesn't achieve anything productive.
That's because Afghanistan was a warzone and still is; but to make snide aspersions as to where these nations are 'stuck' based off of acts of wanton violence is wrong and belies a blind hypocrisy.
The unfortunate truth is the world has been very much connected politically and economically ever since WWII, and more so every single day. What happens in those shitholes will eventually come back to U.S. in some way or another. So Obama's appeasement and apology approach really won't work very well, because sooner or later you have to deal with the shit that you were trying to avoid for so hard.
We'll never know because we put in just enough forces to achieve a tactical victory, but I suspect it would have been a different story if say 150,000 troops for 10 years were traded for 500,000 troops for three years.
In a mostly illiterate society I suspect the entire way of thinking behind things like honor killings has a shakier foundation than we would suspect.
If over the period of turning from a 10 year old into a 13 year old, or from 13 to 16 the Taliban were a joke, you would notice, and when the American troops were gone you would still remember that they were not cool.
The cause is lost because a decade of little boys growing up think that fighting against occupiers is cooler, and whatever the leaders of those groups say must hold some weight.
If instead they learned to read, so that they had access to enough thinking to realize how small their elders' minds were, or if they learned math which is uncontroversial, but champions thinking over authority, they would have the foundation to overturn a tradition of validating cruelty and intolerance.
Little kids are perceptive, and a few years of seeing intolerant elders and militants as losers, even if only for a small portion of their youth, may have made an immeasurable difference.
I'm absolutely appalled that this thing supposedly cost $5M to produce, though. If the trailers are any indication, this is the worst piece of garbage (quality-wise) that I've ever laid my eyes on. I've seen $20,000 movies that looked better than this thing. I'm not talking about the contents, I'm talking about the quality! I mean come on, the sound is lame, the bluescreen scenes are absolutely horrible... I could probably do just as well in my back yard with about $5000 worth of equipment and a few friends! Well, if I had 59 friends...
Well, I would recommend you don't make a better version of a film that inspires murderous religious zealots to randomly take life. Stick to stuff that just makes snobby film critics spew their lattes in disgust.
$10,000 in production costs, $4,990,000 million in post-production security.
I watched a 13m51s 'trailer' that was linked from one of the NYTimes stories. It's hilariously awful, and further: some of the most-likely-to-offend, specifically anti-Muhammad/anti-Islam lines are clumsily dubbed in with different voices than the main actors.
Thus I suspect there's a chance that even the actors didn't know completely how their performances would be used: they might have thought it was some other period drama, that then via redubbing it had its offensiveness "turned up to 11".
Your suspicion turned out to be correct. At least one of the actresses in the movie spoke out about the fact that they were actually cast for "Desert Warrior", a movie with absolutely nothing to do with Muhammad. They never even spoke the name! Everything was, as we can clearly see, dubbed in post-production.
I don't even know what to say or do about the top comments here:
"The people ... are declining to use thoughtful discussion to show that they are anything other than blights on humankind."
" It's clear that they're stuck in the Middle Ages, and I don't think any amount of intervention is going to change that."
And plenty more
This kind of sad attitude is exactly what maintains the status quo. This "we invented the internet so we are endlessly right and better than you" attitude.
People are mad because "they/we"[?] created like the most offensive video in a bit (I'm sure if I made a $5 budget video of jesus eating babies there are plenty of people in the Bible belt of the states who'd like to kill me) and just wantonly posted it online and then use the reaction to say that those people are degenerate and inferior and always were and always will be.
Do you have any idea of the greater context? I mean lets start with American meddling in the whole middle east region? Drone strikes on families and funnels and weddings killing entire families. And then downhill from there.
I think people forget to begin with there is some pretty bad american sentiment out there.
Top it with leaked pictures of depraved sexual torture from american POW camps and more desecration of holy books and it suddenly looks like America is working over time to piss people off.
So yes, you take a historically poor, starving and undereducated people and do this to them, and they are going to get violently mad.
But to maintain such disdain towards them just feeds the problem.
We desperately need to engage them, to understand them, to win them over, to promote education and health and food [probably in reverse order].
This kind of arrogant hubris makes me really sad that this supposedly smart community can be so stupid with issues out side of machines and dealing with tolerance and the world as a whole and different societies. Such narrow mindedness is just... well it shows us up to be no better than those we are maligning despite all our supposed advantages
>This kind of arrogant hubris makes me really sad that this supposedly smart community can be so stupid with issues out side of machines and dealing with tolerance and the world as a whole and different societies. Such narrow mindedness is just... well it shows us up to be no better than those we are maligning despite all our supposed advantages
You must forgive me for being intolerant of intolerance. The state religion (which, btw, going against is likely to get you killed) is used, daily and regularly (unlike the USA where Christianity's greatest day-to-day crime is saying mean things and holding back progressive legislation) to justify barbaric acts of cruelty against women and others. Acid attacks, stoning, the works.
So you are damn right I maintain disdain towards such a culture. I identify as a moral relativist to a point, but I can't justify, under any possible system throwing acid in the face of a woman for having sex or saying something.
It is an utterly backwards, barbaric, hateful culture. If calling a spade a spade makes me intolerant, so be it.
That's just it. You can't just change a culture and a religion like that - it has to happen organically. Ask a US armed services member what happens when you come in and try to force change on a nation.
And it is coming around, albeit very, very slowly. Women just gained the right to drive in some places.
There is nothing you or I can do, from within the USA, to effectively change the culture of a third world nation. I'd love to be proven wrong.
Oddly Saudi Arabia has just the other mindset, and is being wonderfully effective at working against the US. They are pouring tons of money into their religious schools which in many places are just the only place you can even go for any education. And so they are raising a new generation all over the world. All through out the middle east, but even more audaciously they recently opened on of their schools in central Paris to much controversy.
So yes, I agree short term forced solutions like armed invasions are extremely poor ways to effect chance (except retrograde) I do believe economic engagement and education promotion are the key. And yes, it takes longer, I agree you can't really change anything this drastic in any kind of short term (10 years is a short time). But there are long term ways we can effect change faster than ignoring it (imho ignoring it will probably let it get much worse)
So we can wait and see, does the American invade and destroy all infrastructure way work? Does the ignoring the problem and insulting it work? or does deep long term engagement and education work.
My bet's on the way the Saudi's are taking it. Which imho sucks for everyone.
This is an example of what I think is EXACTLY the right way to be moving forward: empowering a new generation and showing them freedom and other of our beliefs rock and giving them education to think critically not emotionally.
It will take time but this x100 or x1000 I think is the way to start changing things
Why the hell do "we" have to do anything? How about withdrawing all troops, aid, and support - since it's clear that when we meddle in their shit, it gets worse?
What about members of that culture living in America ? Is it racism to "point out the spade" ? It is beyond obvious that this hateful islamic culture is not going to stay contained, whatever Americans' thoughts on the issue.
It is painful to see that the only "moderate" reaction is a few tweets. Everybody seems to be too afraid of these backward muslim morons to point out that they are backward islamic morons.
I'd love to live in a world where live and let live works, but that's not this world. Islam started with massacring Jews, atheists and Christians by the thousands, and the only advancement since has been increasing numbers.
And please keep in mind that 10th century Egypt was >95% Christian, when evaluating their "tolerance" (and frankly a reading of either Egyptian or Spanish archives from during the relevant periods easily reveals that muslims were not, at all, tolerant during those periods).
what does that have to do with this board's general close and simple mindedness when it comes to geopolitics and interacting with different cultures. It seems like a lot of the people here have the depth of a tom clancy novel
AFTER EDIT: Reporting by the New York Times, citing other news organizations, on the origin of the video and how viewers became aware of it:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/obscure-film-moc...