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posted by Forum Goon: Just this one little concession and them they'll be happy.

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so if you wore a jersey for a sports team that your office mate didn't like you would have to remove the jersey ... it just happens that one of the people who was offended was Muslim, and this right wing racist blogger decided he could make a big deal out of it to attack Muslims.

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He's right. It could have been a Piglet doll, an offensive team jersey, or even a woman wearing a sweatshirt. Nothing to get yourself all riled up abou... huh? Wait a second. On that thread, No Yards' reaction was:

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If she wasn't sitting in a "free speech zone" then I suppose she has no argument to make, such is the new democracy of the USA.

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[ 21 October 2005: Message edited by: Albireo ]

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Correct me, anyone, if I'm wrong, but I thought that the rights to all Winnie the Pooh illustrations and labels had been bought at least a decade ago, maybe longer, by the Disney Corp? Yes/no?

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Originally posted by skdadl:
(Is cannibalized the wrong word there?)

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[ 21 October 2005: Message edited by: Bacchus ]

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
I thought he was pretty obviously implying that there was something more than a benign company policy behind the sweatshirt incident.

You don't think?

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And I though it was pretty obvious that I was not making any particular statement in regards to the companies policy itself, but rather the use of one specific incident by the linked blog to make this into some kind of Muslim control conspiracy of our culture.

As for any specific company policy, if it's ok to demand no playboy pinups, or that men must wear ties, then I don't have a big issue with banning images of pigs.

If on the other hand there are Nazi flags all over the place and the staff has a "ridicule the minority group of the month day" on the last Friday of every month, then I might question the reasoning behind banning images of pigs.

As for the Airline referenced in the other thread, does the Airline in question also ban every T-Shirt that has printed on it any form of political statement, or off-colour word? Does the Airline hand out HR policy books to their passengers outlining acceptable dress code for customers?

But maybe instead I should take a cue from your responses on that other thread and just assume it wasn't the message the images present but that the pigs are naked and have their genital area exposed.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
pigs qua pigs? Or pigs per se?

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As for the Airline referenced in the other thread, does the Airline in question also ban every T-Shirt that has printed on it any form of political statement, or off-colour word? Does the Airline hand out HR policy books to their passengers outlining acceptable dress code for customers?

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Like you I can only guess, but I'd guess that like the British office, it's complaint-driven. Someone complains and they look into it. I doubt the British office has a policy book that forbids cartoon pigs either.

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But maybe instead I should take a cue from your responses on that other thread and just assume it wasn't the message the images present but that the pigs are naked and have their genital area exposed.

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Or assume that in both cases, someone complained.

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But anyway, since your motives are always so pure and consistent, maybe you can address the issue and tell us if you think that the suggestion of a Muslim takeover of British culture is justified.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
Like you I can only guess, but I'd guess that like the British office, it's complaint-driven. Someone complains and they look into it. ...No more than you'd ever think that the woman who was asked to remove her offensive sweatshirt suggests anything other than a company policy.

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Plus, there is something I'm not getting. Surely Muslims -- and people of other persuasions, such as Jews -- do not object to pigs qua pigs? Or pigs per se?

Isn't the problem just the ingestion of pigs?

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The official "regulatory" issue is pig ingestion. But swine imagery is regularly used to symbolically represent moral impurity. As well, some (ie, all) Muslim cultures extend the ban on eating pig into a major cultural shibboleth where the pig itself is characterized as an impure state of being. I have relatives who don't want to talk about pigs ("Isn't this a Muslim household or something???")---nevertheless they don't always associate cartoon representations with the real thing. I wouldn't be surprised if orthodox Jews see it the same way.

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posted by Hephaestion: And as for cannibalism, many years ago Captain Cook discovered that south sea islanders (I can't recall if it was Tahitians or Hawaiians or whom) who were cannibals had a specific term for the cooked bodies of their enemies. Translated, it meant "long pig", apparently because we taste like pork. Oh dear...

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posted by Ken Burch: When you asked if the politician got in "hot soup", were you speaking figuratively?

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posted by jrootham: The deft speaking sensibilities of Mel Lastman.

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Lastman joked about Africa ("I'm sort of scared about going there, but the wife is really nervous," he said to a reporter. "I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me")

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[ 25 October 2005: Message edited by: deBeauxOs ]

Indeed, he did say "I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me"

And, yes, it did scuttle Toronto's Olympic bid.

But, aside from Mel's impropriety, cannibalism remains a fact of life in Africa, and a major driving force in many African sub-cultures.

Anyone who has read Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands With the Devil is aware that while Mel's comment was impolitic, it was not out of touch with reality.

Even the United Nations recognizes that cannibalism is a major problem in Africa.

We all want the world to be a certain way. We all want to believe that everyone in the world is motivated by the same core values that we want for ourselves and our families: peace, prosperity, to raise our children in a loving home, to worship or not worship as we see fit.

Wisdom begins when we can truly realize that other people and cultures may not share the same motivating core values that we want to believe are universal.

Cheers!

Lost Budgie

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posted by Lost Budgie: But, aside from Mel's impropriety, cannibalism remains a fact of life in Africa, and a major driving force in many African sub-cultures.Even the United Nations recognizes that cannibalism is a major problem in Africa.

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[ 06 November 2005: Message edited by: deBeauxOs ]

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We all want the world to be a certain way. We all want to believe that everyone in the world is motivated by the same core values that we want for ourselves and our families: peace, prosperity, to raise our children in a loving home, to worship or not worship as we see fit.

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And of course "our" politicians are embodying these noble principles by launching aggressive wars on the basis of bullshit, sucking money out of the pockets of the poor and giving it to the rich, abandoning children to crumbling underfunded public schools, and enshrining fundamentalist Christian dogma deeper and deeper into the machinery of government.

"A major driving force? Isn't that a tad judgemental, and complety unfounded generalization? In the article you cite, cannibalism would appear to be, along with rape and your garden-variety bloody carnage, a specific strategy used to traumatize and psychologically torture the targets of ethnic and political massacres."

Actually deBeauxOs, cannibalism is such an integral part of many cultures in Africa that, for instance, when planning logistics for military operations, the military in Nigeria, Congo and Rwanda allow for the calories obtained by cannibalism. In other words, some modern field units conducting actual military operations in Africa are expected to kill and eat prisoners as part of the supply chain.

The United Nations has documented this, as did Dallaire in his book.

Cannibalism isn't exactly confined to Africa either.

Although Lost Budgie considers himself to be a fairly well-read student of history, and especially World War II history - until recently, I was unware that when planning military land operations and support logistics, the Japanese battle staff factored cannibalism of prisoners of war into the equation.

In other words, Japanese troops were expected to obtain a certain amount of calories from the killing and eating of prisoners captured during battle.

"No way" you say. "Never heard of that - an outrageous piece of fiction. Couldn't possibly have happened."

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Originally posted by Lost Budgie:
Wisdom begins when we can truly realize that other people and cultures may not share the same motivating core values that we want to believe are universal.

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