Will I thought there were no terrorists in the west and it was all a government plot for some obscure reason.

Please Will stay consistant in your ideas, it makes it much easier.

Now assuming that terrorism is in fact real in the west and that 9/11 wasn't some conspiracy of the shadow people, we can talk. Yes we will lose soldiers, and its part of their job as soliders to be in the line of fire. It sucks but thats part of a war and we are in fact in a war. I'm not going to play the 'why do they hate us game', I'm not full of self doubt and loathing looking for an excuse to blame my culture for homocidal maniacs. This is a power play and one thats been going on a long time. They hate us because the powers that be have been teaching them to hate us (and Israel) for a few generations now. Someone doesn't just decide randomly to become a human bomb because they hate you, its a value that has been instilled in them by their leadership.

interesting.

the actual pretext for this thread--which is rapidly becoming little more than a repeat of the politics thread about the pope's speech a week ago friday--has largely disappeared. .


the guy whose opera production is at the center of this tempest in a teapot has made his ENTIRE career as a provacateur.
(again) i think it naive to not see this press release as a simple extension of these techniques.
(like i suggested earlier) maybe the production was axed for other reasons--like the bad reception of its 2003 run---and neuefeld responded by taking it public---at this particular moment--which has generated a huge amount of press most of which is in effect an argument that the production should be put on as some kind of act of defiance, a gesture in defense of free speech--so neuefeld positions himself as some kind of free speech martyr--the only beneficiary of this would be him--the outcome: more gigs for the martyr of free speech blah blah blah.

the actual problem here is simply that the opera company of berlin yanked the production from its schedule.

you DO understand that this is a non-event, right?

so the debate is, strictly speaking, about nothing.

every time I see this thread title I keep thinking the terrorists got Oprah.

Done. Now think about this: We have an all volunteer military. We have people who are sacraficing their lives to be the "waiting jaws." Not only are people siging up to go fight in iraq, when their commitment if fulfilled, they join private security firms and continue the fight. Yes, some die. Yes, its sad when people die. But its their choice to put themselves in that position. The civillians terrorists target are not volunteers, our soldiers are.

You mean that's not what it's about?!
We're talking apples and oranges here, the apples being terrorist apples, and the oranges being Iraqi resistence fighter oranges. Delicous resistence fighter oranges are not terrorist apples, and delicous terrorist apples are not...you get the idea. I'm all for our military stopping terrorism, but let's not confuse the war on terror with the war on Iraq. I'm okay with soldiers stopping terrorists, I'm not okay with them occupying a country that never was any threat to us.

I don't know what's more refreshing; the analogy, or the juxtaposition of Iraq from terrorism.

If I understand this, you reject the idea that we're creating more radicals by being there? The report I saw today was that Al-Qaida in Iraq conceeded that 4000 of their fighters (radicals/jihadists by everyone's definitions) have been killed since the invasion. I know I'm way off the topic with this, but hasn't the Iraqi invasion created more jihadists than its eliminated?

Yup. See my first 3 posts in this thread.

I concur, roachboy. I just now read this thread because I was really curious about why there was more than a post or two.

I'm just pissed off with them self-censoring. Do the production, if it offends someone then you deal with it, don't go pussying around before hand because it may or may not.

It really fucks me off when people over here do that too 'oh look, someone might, possibly, if only a teeny bit, get offended with our countries flag, so your not allowed to put it up'.