maqroll

Might as well put a Messi video up, we aint signing that player!

by all accounts it looks like sinclair and gil. just wonder if delph is gone. my guess is yes.

Oo, that reminds me

It's so cold in New England tonight that I'm presently wearing: Wool socks Cotton socks Slippers Boxers Thermal long underwear Sweat pants Track pants Bigger sweat pants T shirt Long sleeve shirt Long sleeve thermal shirt Thermal hooded sweatshirt Knit Aston Villa hat Knit hat with flappy ears I hope I don't get lucky tonight, cuz it'll take 20 minutes to get all this crap off

wow, so so ghey

I highly recommend the United States vs Whitey Bulger on Netflix, shows how corrupt the Boston FBI was in the 70s and 80's and how incestuous the Boston underworld and local/state/federal government was. Very slick documentary and a fascinating story. Watch this before the Johnny Depp biopic comes out.

I read about that somewhere alright. I doubt the plain Orange helmet will change it'll just be a seahawks style jersey change. I just notice they have two first round picks again in this years draft. I hope they don't waste them like they did last year. its the browns.

Gil has signed for Villa, according to Wikipedia, lol

Technically going by your definition almost any kind of prejudice or discrimination can be racism, which I think is a little ridiculous. It is not my definition, it is a general definition of racism. Tell me, what race are you? It's one definition - the law defines it differently. White British, that's what I put in the last census. Is it a social construct? Yes, but then so are most things. Like religion, for example.

As abhorrant as racist speech is, making a comment should not land someone in jail. Anyone should have the right to stand on the sidewalk and say he hates Muslims, or he hates Christians, etc. Now if he says he hates Muslims and thinks they should die, that's when it becomes incitement, and incitement should be prosecuted. That people think someone should rightly be arrested for expressing an unpopular opinion is sad.

Omariqy has a great point about hypocrisy, and I'd totally overlooked it. In France, if you deny the Jewish Holocaust or say something anti-Jewish, you will be jailed. So it seems France, and to a lesser extent other Western countries have a highly selective set of criteria used to determine what speech is worthy of protection under the law and what speech is deserving of punishment. I hope this situation peels open a broader debate about it.

Hurry back, Cardboard Ron

That is certainly a problem. In the UK at any rate, even most of the practicing Christians tend to be very liberal in their interpretation of their faith. There are very, very few Bible literalist/creationist types. And most of them would describe themselves as tolerant of other faiths, Islam included. But what they really mean is that they expect Muslims to of a similar liberal stripe to themselves, the sort that maybe have a copy of the Qu'ran in the house, but probably don't attend the mosque, do wear western clothes, etc. - what I call "C of E Muslims". But seeing women covered from head to toe, work colleagues needing areas where they can pray several times a day, and so on, runs massively counter to the secularising trend of the last fifty or even hundred years. They are uncomfortable with it. Frankly, I am too; I find it deeply depressing. Three flights from NYC to Tel Aviv within the last two months have been delayed from takeoff, one as long as 12 hours because Hasidic men refused to sit next to women. Incredible. They should have been arrested on the spot. If they were Muslim, I bet they would have been. If you want to live in a Western country, you must adhere to it's laws and norms. If you refuse to do so on religious grounds, you should either be deported (if you have dual citizenship) or fined and jailed. That's what makes yesterday's massacre so egregious. It was an affront to core Western values of freedom of the press and free speech. If the killers are French citizens, it is doubly distressing, because they will have completely rejected those basic values in favor of a stupid fairy tale.

Ravens are gonna get crushed

doesnt fit the us versus them narrative the media likes to propagate

On the whole, no, but today it would seem that cartoons are indeed the thing that inspired this attack.

Ah, I suspected so!

Wish I could just press fast forward to Saturday

As would I. What I wouldn't struggle to take seriously is the idea that the attack against a newspaper critical of Islamic extremism is in fact an attack against the West's concept of freedom of expression. I think the attackers see the world differently. They see attacks on Islam in their view, and decided to take revenge on behalf of themselves (or their group). I agree, but the inescapable byproduct of their attack is that the democratic ideals of freedom of the press and freedom of expression are attacked as well.

I've read the Russians

As would I. What I wouldn't struggle to take seriously is the idea that the attack against a newspaper critical of Islamic extremism is in fact an attack against the West's concept of freedom of expression. No, IMO that's the kind of thing people will read into the attack after the fact as it is analysed, perhaps. But their actual motive will be more petulant, direct, and less abstract. Attack someone that had mortally offended their apparent faith, in the aim of vengeance, and enforcing respect for their particular brand of nonsense and further instill fear generally to force that respect in the population at large. I don't think our viewpoints really diverge too much here...