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[Grakelin]

They don't support terrorism, which is why they are trying to prevent it from happening in their headquarters.

Cowing to terrorists is supporting them.

You say this now, but when it is your life or the lives of your family members on the line, you will suddenly sing a different tune.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

They don't support terrorism, which is why they are trying to prevent it from happening in their headquarters.

Cowing to terrorists is supporting them.

You say this now, but when it is your life or the lives of your family members on the line, you will suddenly sing a different tune.

That's a non-sequiter.  It doesn't have anything to do with the argument.  You could well be right, but the statement doesn't have anything to do with the assertion that by showing the terrorists that their methods are effective they're supporting terrorism.

[Grakelin]

It has everything to do with a discussion on whether or not Comedy Central is supporting terrorism by buckling to their demands under the threat of violence.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

It has everything to do with a discussion on whether or not Comedy Central is supporting terrorism by buckling to their demands under the threat of violence.

No it doesn't.  Let me give you an example.  Say I say that poop smells bad and people who poop are creating a bad smell, and then you say "When you have to take a crap you'll be saying something different!"  Well, that's what you did except replace poop with doing what terrorists tell you to do, a bad smell with supporting terrorism, and having to take a crap with being threatened by terrorists.  I suppose a better word than support would be 'encourage'.  They encourage terrorism by providing positive reinforcement to the terrorist behavior.  'If I threaten people with violence, they do what I want.'  Whether or not someone else in the same situation would take the same action does not change the end result of that action.  Hence, it's a non-sequiter argument.

[fenrif]

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/south-park-episode-is-altered-after-muslim-groups-warning/?scp=1&sq=south%20park&st=cse

Trey parker and Matt Stone talk about how comedy central heavily edited the second episode without their knowledge.

I watched it last night, and aside from bleeping out every mention of mohammeds name, they bleeped out like a full minute of "well i learned something today" speeches at the end, which apparently didn't even include mohammed's name.

laaaame.

[Jreengus]

That was without their knowledge? I was laughing at the whole bleeped end section. I thought it was a dleiberate parody on how ridiculous the censoring had become. It's not funny when you realise it's actual censoring.

[fenrif]

Yeah, I thought it was funny when the first speech was censored, then when the next two were aswell I thought something was up.

[Grakelin]

No it doesn't.  Let me give you an example.  Say I say that poop smells bad and people who poop are creating a bad smell, and then you say "When you have to take a crap you'll be saying something different!"  Well, that's what you did except replace poop with doing what terrorists tell you to do, a bad smell with supporting terrorism, and having to take a crap with being threatened by terrorists.  I suppose a better word than support would be 'encourage'.  They encourage terrorism by providing positive reinforcement to the terrorist behavior.  'If I threaten people with violence, they do what I want.'  Whether or not someone else in the same situation would take the same action does not change the end result of that action.  Hence, it's a non-sequiter argument.

I do not understand the argument you are trying to make. If you are pooping and smelling bad yourself, you are losing the ability to criticize other people for pooping and smelling bad without looking a cantankerous hypocrite. You must have misunderstood what I said, as I'm not debating whether or not the terrorists have won. It is very easy for us to say "you should not buckle to their terrorist demands! That only makes them stronger!" when we are safe and no misguided people with guns know our names. If the day ever comes that it is yourself or your family on the line, however, you will quickly understand why Comedy Central would make the decision they did.

[Andir]

They don't support terrorism, which is why they are trying to prevent it from happening in their headquarters.

Cowing to terrorists is supporting them.

You say this now, but when it is your life or the lives of your family members on the line, you will suddenly sing a different tune.

"When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered." - Dorothy Thompson

"Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live slaves." - Frederick Douglass

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will." - Frederick Douglass

"Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom." - Marilyn Ferguson

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." - Voltaire

I could do this all day!

[Grakelin]

All of these are things said by people who did not have a gun to their child's head when they said them. In fact, Frederick Douglass is the only one out of the four who was at personal risk due to his beliefs. And he was fighting a government, not a violent reactionary group.

[Jreengus]

Worth noting that the people who censored South Park weren't the ones the terrorists were threatening. They were threatening Trey Parker and Matt Stone who had nothing to do with the censoring.

[Andir]

All of these are things said by people who did not have a gun to their child's head when they said them. In fact, Frederick Douglass is the only one out of the four who was at personal risk due to his beliefs. And he was fighting a government, not a violent reactionary group.

"Dorothy Thompson ... is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany (in 1934)" ... she may not have had a gun to her head, but she was active during a very tumultuous time in Earth's history.

Not quite sure right now about Voltaire and the time of that quote, and sure... the others may not have been done under threat of death, but that doesn't make them any less real.  Bowing to violence has historically been the pin in the cogs.  Look at how Saddam came to power... look at any historical dictator.

Look at The United States war for Independence.  Should I dig up quotes from that era?

[Zombie]

All of these are things said by people who did not have a gun to their child's head when they said them. In fact, Frederick Douglass is the only one out of the four who was at personal risk due to his beliefs. And he was fighting a government, not a violent reactionary group.

If you bow to terrorist tactics and let the fear take hold of your actions, then you permit them to put a gun to your child's head. It's just like a lie by omission. By giving in to threats of violence, you are positively reinforcing the notion that you can always get what you want by threatening to blow up a building or threatening to shoot someone.

If your life, or the lives of those you love, are on the line, it is because you have allowed them to be through your failure to show that you will not bow to threats of violence. Through your failure, you have put lives on the line.

I know you'll come back with, "Well, they could try to harm you anyway!" My rebuttal? Of course. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Our lives may be on the line either way, seeing as these extremists seem to think our very ways of life are decadent and immoral. This wouldn't be a problem if their solution weren't to kill all the decadent and immoral people.

If you want to cling to the notion that the threat of death is sufficient to stop you from fighting against oppression, then by all means do so. There are those of us who do not wish to lie down and let people like this run roughshod over everyone. The point of episode 200 and 201 seemed to be that there are all these people around the world, stars and religious figures alike, being poked fun at... And there's one group of people who think that, not only are they better than everyone else and above any criticism but that any criticism is punishable by death. That is wrong. My beliefs may differ from yours, but do I have the right to say that because you think we should bow to terrorists just because a gun is held to our heads that you should die? No, I do not and I will not. No one deserves to die for something they believe or for something they say. Each action merits and equal and opposite reaction, and killing someone over a cartoon is childish, immature, and the pinnacle of arrogance.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

No it doesn't.  Let me give you an example.  Say I say that poop smells bad and people who poop are creating a bad smell, and then you say "When you have to take a crap you'll be saying something different!"  Well, that's what you did except replace poop with doing what terrorists tell you to do, a bad smell with supporting terrorism, and having to take a crap with being threatened by terrorists.  I suppose a better word than support would be 'encourage'.  They encourage terrorism by providing positive reinforcement to the terrorist behavior.  'If I threaten people with violence, they do what I want.'  Whether or not someone else in the same situation would take the same action does not change the end result of that action.  Hence, it's a non-sequiter argument.

I do not understand the argument you are trying to make. If you are pooping and smelling bad yourself, you are losing the ability to criticize other people for pooping and smelling bad without looking a cantankerous hypocrite. You must have misunderstood what I said, as I'm not debating whether or not the terrorists have won. It is very easy for us to say "you should not buckle to their terrorist demands! That only makes them stronger!" when we are safe and no misguided people with guns know our names. If the day ever comes that it is yourself or your family on the line, however, you will quickly understand why Comedy Central would make the decision they did.

Yes, it's clear now that you don't understand.  What I am saying is:  Bowing to terrorist threats of violence encourages terrorism.  Period.

In the context of the discussion it doesn't matter whether any particular person would bow to terrorism if they were being threatened with violence (And I'm pretty sure the people who censored South Park didn't have guns to their heads or those of their families.) because that's a completely different argument.  Let me restate:  Whether or not a person who is saying that bowing to terrorist threats of violence encourages terrorism would continue to do so when they were being threatened with violence by terrorists does not in any way change the fact that submitting to threats of violence encourages terrorists to continue threatening violence.  Nothing you have said counters that statement.  Your statements do not follow.

Incidentally if people only bowed to threats of violence when the threat was as immediate as a gun pointed at someone's head that would go a long way towards discouraging terrorism.