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GIK - For once there are strightforward answers to your questions - rare indeedReader comment on item: Should We Blame a Florida Pastor for Deaths in Afghanistan? Submitted by Michel C. Zala (Switzerland), Apr 12, 2011 at 10:21 I indeed forgot a few other culprits in my post who contributed tragically to those 50 deaths. While - quite amazing indeed and rare - the press, including literally all main TV Channels in the US refused to report Jone's Quran burning, as the consequences were thus obvious, his own people uploaded the video to UTube, from where it found its way to Afghanistan. From there, the causality chain get's a bit diffuse, as there are two scenarios, where either Karzai, trying in a moronic attempt to pre-empt a backlash, addressed and condemned the burning in an official speech, upon which the Taliban picked the story up and eagerly distributed the news, or, the second preceded the first. Either way, Karzai, yet another corrupt construct of western intervention, was instrumental in giving the issue coverage and recognition, inasmuch as islamists eagerly and opportunistically used the video to incite violence with their followers. It does not really matter, what came first, but Karzai also must be condemned severely for his self-righteous and opportunistic, corrupt and disgustingly insincere effort to gain approval with Afghani mainstreet. O'Reilly from Fox News confirmed a few days ago, that Fox had decided not to report on Jones. The fact that the other Newsorgs followed suit, leads me to believe that literally all of them kept silent for the same reasons. In the context of my last post, where I deplored our civil liberties and Rights to be degenerated from within, for the first time in recent history the Press was willing to sacrifice their Freedom of the Press, to report on anything at any time, for the greater good. Some even say that this restraint happened at the request of the White House. For once and as opposed to WikiLeaks, where I would feel the same (list of terror targets or the Gunship attack), I sincerely applaud the media for their restraint, which kept the action bottled up for over 2 months. In response to your own burning in your own backyard, my answer is simple. If you upload a video of it to UTUBE, and the thing goes viral, which is in this context an absolutely distinctive possibility, then you will accept implicitly, that someone may get killed. Jones, with a couple of dozen followers in his congregation, was about as known as I am. His notoriety stemmed only from his planned and published intent to burn a Quran publicly and the correponding initial press coverage. Unfortunately the press gave him exposure at first, so, when he later actually followed through on his promise, even the video alone logically went viral. I am pretty sure, that If I searched UTUBe, I could quite possibly find other (unknown) individuals burning Bibles, Qurans and other religious texts. The question remains, if UTube should implement some restrictions, call it censorship, as pretty much all major forums on the internet do. UTube, lacking any serious control mechanism, most definitely is a platform, which is by far most often abused under the umbrella of Freedom Of Speech. They use the same arguments as cheap excuse, as WikiLeaks does. But when people start to die because of content published, I dare to venture, that something is seriously wrong with our interpretation of our Rights. In my book, islamist demagogues, Jones, Karzai, UTube and the actual fanatics who did the killings, are all directly responsible for 50 deaths. Mark my words, if and when one of those terror targets on the CIA list, leaked to and published by WL gets attacked, a lot of people may start to look at WikiLeaks less as heros of Freedom of the Press, but more as co-conspirators too. I share the semtniments of those, wo support prosecution of the US analyst, who actually leaked the intelligence, for high treason, in asmuch, as I feel that Assange should be prosecuted at least for espionage and, if indeed an attack occurs, as co-conspirator. Back to the topicv at hand : Hence, in my analogy, islamists provided the powder keg, UTube the fuse, Jones lit it and Karzai added Nitro to the mix. All of them either implicitly accepting, some of them intending and some refusing to consider the consequences of their actions. All of them thus to blame. All of them guilty in any moral or ethical court. Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". << Previous Comment Next Comment >> Reader comments (116) on this item
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