18 responses
Really Depressing.
Going to be a hot summer in Europe -- Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain.
I'm really not sure what to say after watching that. I was quite surprised to see a URL to a Wikipedia URL at the end of the film. I wonder why Wilders would point people to the online encyclopedia while claiming it's the official website of the film. I'm sure that caused numerous problems within the Wikipedia community. I like how they handled it on the page: there's a disclaimer separating their work from the film. The URL goes to a disambiguation page—a page used to point to several different entries with the same or similar names.
we're in the same boat -- I don't endorse that link, I'm just presenting it because it was long-awaited and certainly controversial. it's illiberal and rude to condemn an entire religion, and it's illiberal and rude to try to suppress content you don't agree with. there's enough illiberal rudeness to go around, I guess.
it is illiberal and rude to supress all religions equally? not just individual ones you don't agree with?
I don't tell people what to eat, how to dress, which invisible friends to talk to. I expect the same in return. seems simple enough.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7d9_1206624103 works better now. The link in the posted story is now broken, i think.
Liveleak has been taken down as well.
liveleak pulled it. still available at google video (for the momenthttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410&q=fitna+video&total=1335&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1
so that I would say is worse than whatever stupid content the movie holds. It is a bad movie - not well done and woth content that disgust me by the picture it paints but still to remove it beacuse of threats is giving in to the true evil supressers of free speach.
But now we are back to the exact challenge posed by the movie, no? The conflict between liberal social values (like freedom of speech) and the values of a particular religion (in the US we struggle with christian extremism mostly, but this movie is about muslim extremism).
todd you are right. That is the excact conflict that goes on all over these years. A conflict I believe is very much enlarged by the medias hunger for drama. The current media climate gives global airtime to almost anything these day - even jus 50 people burning a Flag in Afganistan or 100 people maching against a movie - and those events are not really that significant compared to the number of muslims in the world. A little more perspective from the medias side would help a lot and maybe get us out of the hostile "them and us".
I just heard a brief in the 6 minute National Public Radio news at the top of the hour about how and why some video sites are pulling the film and what the general reaction has been to the film so far. I don't think the reporter specifically said which sites are removing the film.
As the world tilts away from broadcast media toward "social media" (people selecting the news for themselves and their friends), it's interesting to think about what it implies for terrorist messaging. Videos of planes crashing and people being beheaded are available on the internet today, but they don't spread virally. That suggests that people (sensibly) have a built-in reluctance to share the content that terrorists would most like to have published. Unless online culture takes a major turn towards desensitization and this stuff becomes "ok to share" .. I would guess that the media shift is very bad for terrorists in the long run. Dare we hope?
i'm not going to watch the film. propaganda is propaganda, whomever is producing it. but there is no way to deny that a very powerful faction of the Islamic religion is bent on violent world domination. as offensive as the neocon's term "Islamofascism" is, it's also apt: there is a group within the Islamic faith whose rantings and (incorrect) interpretations of the Qur'an read like a transcription of Mussolini's "La dottrina del fascismo." so yes, don't watch the film. don't accept the false assertion by many that "the Muslims are out to get us." but remember that there ARE people out to get us - and some are Muslims. although i worry a LOT more about the American religious right, personally.
Agree with jhota and I not going to propogate the propaganda via viewership.
Here's a bit about Liveleak's decision to remove, then reinstate the film.
So I actually watched it. It is propaganda, but I'm fascinated by Europe's inability to accommodate immigration and the role of new Islamic immigrants to europe. so watching the film was like amateur anthropology.
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