That AUP sounds kind of ridiculous. I don't plan to burn any Korans, but I don't want my hosting provider to decide what content of mine might offend its personal sensibilities, either. One of many reasons to use https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ imo.
When your obvious hate speech has been denounced by both the Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan and the President of the United States as dangerous to troops and civilians overseas, I sympathize that someone might say "I want no part of this. I'm out."
I think saying this offends their "personal sensibilities" is understating the circumstance. It's now an international issue. They have a right to say it and a right to do it, and other people have an equal right to disassociate themselves from it.
I like Petraeus, but he holds a lot of the responsibility for this getting out of hand. He should have publicly called the guy a meaningless nut who shouldn't be paid attention to, and then privately called him up and kindly told him to knock it off... I'm getting tired of the media sensation around this idiot and the world leaders who are preening over it.
I wonder if he (and others) should have completely ignored the issue. Clinton, for example, made a couple of mentions of it in recent speeches, also saying that she wished it weren't in the media, but it were her mentions of it driving the media stories. Take away those things and it starves the media fire of fuel.
And, of course, the media themselves aren't going to stop publicising it because issues like these (the mosque in Manhattan, blah blah blah) are moneymakers and talking points. You have to wonder if enraged protesters abroad would even know about this nut-job "pastor" of "world outreach" (laughable!) if he had been more or less ignored from the beginning.
I don't think Petraeus is to blame. What can the dude do other than to call people to calm and dignity. A nice gesture of peace coming from a military man!
But the media and the whole hype machine we all feed with our tweetmania about stuff like that definitely helps fuel the fire in the belly of such loosers as the Gainsville Koran burners. I can't wait to hear Chomsky on this!
Sure, I'm not saying it was immoral for them to do it, just that I don't want to put any websites I control under such an AUP, because it's far too broad and subjective.
I agree this case is more than "personal sensibilities"; I was referring to their AUP in general when I said that, which has much more leeway for banning things. For example, what constitutes "promoting illegal drugs"--- is that only sites that are actually selling drugs, or will they pull the plug on a site advocating drug decriminalization, if the site becomes controversial? Would they pull the plug on xenu.net if it were hosted there? What's the threshhold for creating "a risk to a person's safety or health"? Are extreme-sports sites problematic? Does "assist others in defeating technical copyright protections" include discussions of emulators, or sites that host academic research on DRM schemes? The whole thing just gives me no confidence in hosting anything there.
Look, as much as I may disagree with Terry Jones, the only direct victim of his "hate speech" will be an inanimate object. If he was planning to burn, say, 200 copies of "The Audacity of Hope", there would be hardly any reaction to it. Burning a book does not kill troops and civilians overseas; suicidal fanatics, easily incensed by the smallest details of what Western democracy allows, do.
People do actually burn American flags on a semi-regular basis, don't they? I've heard of some court cases stemming from it (which the flag-burners have generally won), but no violence, at least not in the past few decades.
Given that some groups of Muslims have had their places of worship firebombed for the terrible crime of worshiping while Muslim, I have great confidence that if Muslims ever got together in the US for a flag or Bible burning, they would face retaliatory violence.
When you are performing an act that you know will cause a certain reaction you are either: 1) trying to make a statement or 2) intentionally trying to cause that reaction.
Whatever consequence is direct in this case does not eliminate the logical reasoning that provoking the Muslims would have its effects on troops and civilians serving in Muslim communities around the world.
Terry Jones probably doesn't see this 'DIRECTLY' but if the burning ceremony does happen, I bet it will become the headline speech for radical clerks and recruiters for Al Qaeda and the Taliban for months maybe years to come. We forget that not all non-militants in these areas like the United States...many only seek a more valid reason to join the cause.
It amazes me that this guy who preaches peace and the 10 commandments does not think his actions could lead to the deaths of Christians one way or another. I don't go as far as saying "burning a book does kill troops and civilians overseas" but the indirect result of this action is probably the same.
This is free publicity for radicalists, an event that would be preached as prove America is an enemy of the muslim world and their actions in the middle east are unsincere and what not.
I think that's probably true, but I'm wary of this line of arguments. For example, anti-Vietnam-war protestors were accused of endangering American troops by emboldening the Viet-Cong, and the journalists who published the Abu Ghraib photographs were accused of inflaming Muslim opinion by doing so, some commentators even going so far as to say that the decision to publish the photographs meant they had blood on their hands.
And that's all probably true. Anti-Vietnam-war protesters did endanger US troops and South Vietnamese civilians by emboldening the Viet Cong, and do in fact bear a great deal of responsibility for the fact that the war was eventually lost. The folks who chose to publish the Abu Ghraib photos and make a huge deal out of an incident of prisoner abuse no worse than what probably goes on a dozen times a year in any US civilian prison, likewise bear some responsibility for the provocation there.
I'm wary of it as well. But war protestors are protesting against US policy; the purpose of exposing abuse is to prevent it from occurring again. As far as I can tell, the Florida group are protesting the existence of Muslims. All are legally protected, but I'm comfortable drawing distinctions for myself for how I treat them.
> When your obvious hate speech has been denounced by both the Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan and the President of the United States as dangerous to troops and civilians overseas, I sympathize that someone might say "I want no part of this. I'm out."
Care to explain? I've clearly missed something as I have no idea what you're talking about. We host with Rackspace at work and have no issue with cron jobs...
