what does free speech mean to you?

[pianistimo]

Does free speech mean the freedom to speak nastily to others and nothing else?

What about? 

Freedom of speech
Freedom of religion
Freedom of thought
Freedom to do right
Freedom in the context of law (which includes not killing unborn children at 8 months - and doctors being forced to comply against their conscience)
Freedom to love others and not be forced into 'groups' - hmm remember when that happened 50 or so years ago!
Freedom to choose to be free
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
(ie also FREEDOM OF THE INTERNET!  hmm. wonder where that's going?  How about International LAW for all of the above)

MY HUMAN RIGHTS ARE GIVEN TO ME BY G-D.  Who's are yours given to you by?

[quasimodo]

Ask Kayordee 

[tanman]

Ask Kayordee 

lol
you beat me to it.

[db05]

Bach. I mean the author Richard Bach. He said, "The only true law is that which leads to freedom."

[thalbergmad]

MY HUMAN RIGHTS ARE GIVEN TO ME BY G-D.

On pianostreets, they are given to you be nils and if you continue to spam, i guess there is a chance of an enforced vacation.

Why don't you just try a be a little bit sane for a while?

Thal

[Petter]

God damnit can you shut up. For Christ sake.

[lostinidlewonder]

Are you really free when you speak nasty about someone? If speaking nasty about someone makes you think like you are achieving something, or proving something, well, then you are not really living a productive life. If squashing people down makes you feel good then when you are an old person you will be very bitter, angry and annoyed. Then you attract this into your life forever. What a horrible life. Life is not about proving people wrong, its about living your own life.

You don't find meaning of our life through others, first it comes from finding yourself, once you do this you realize it is useless to try to squash people you disagree with. If you disagree you will calmly question why someone thinks a particular way, we are not here to convince one other in this world to believe what we believe, are we so insecure with our own thoughts???

So you may have freedom to be nasty to people but in the end you will be trapped in a pretty nasty personal life.

[db05]

*agress with sir lostin*

[go12_3]

I feel that freedom of speech can be abused by unkindness and thoughtlessness.
Whatever we utter outloud or written can affect those around us. There are times we need to speak up and there are times we need to keep silence, depending upon the circumstances.  People will always express themselves and the only possible way is through  speech or communication.   To communicate thoughts and ideas is a need for us to do daily.  And it is done through literature, music and art.  Throughout time I feel we will always speak freely and when that is taken away, then there would be no communication, no expressions of love, joy. sorrow and anger-----nor any feelings for that matter.  

best wishes,

go12_3

[ahinton]

As someone once said in the dark days of yesteryear when in certain countries homosexuality was severely frowned upon and certain expressions of it punishable by law but that was all at last about to change, "I have no problem with making it legal, as long as no one makes it compulsory"; so it is with freedom of speech - I have no problem with the concept or the practice but that should not confer upon people the right to spout forth incessantly. It's not just the freedom to make derogatory or defamatory remarks about people that is problematic, it's also the similar lack of consideration attaching to those who insist on saying far too much...

Best,

Alistair

[term]

A good & short definition of free speech i heard was: Free spech is the protection of unpopular speech. Because popular speech doesn't need protection.

Free speech requires:
- Someone to enforce it. No right is given until enforced. All we have is temporary privileges, as carlin said. Frankly, in my opinion this whole idea of god given, absolute or inborn rights is the presumptuousness of too wealthy westerners.
- A strong and self confident society. Some people will see the free expression of opinions as a threat to their group, their belief or their identity, because opinion & belief is often consciously or subconsciously equated with identity or persona. They will try to shut up their critics. Therefore, any issue has to be open for debate.
- A thick skin. Free speech means that there will be rational arguments as well as profanity or slander. That's the price to pay for plurality.

[pianistimo]

How about 'death to America'  'death to Israel' ? This is what Turkey, Iran and North Korea spout.  I think President Obama should call a spade a spade.  'Look, if you want us dead - just come on over. Kill the lot of us.  Then, nobody will speak up when your own dictators come down on you.  That should solve the problem.  Everyone dead.'  Btw, I think that nuclear war is bad - but letting terrorists have them and cleaning up the free countries.  THAT's WIERD.

I know there's a lot of bad feelings, and bad vibes from hundreds of years of oppression and mistreatment on both sides.  Imperialism is always supposedly 'the problem.'  However, it has also created roads, infrastructure, waterways, clean drinking water (sometimes), and technology.  It also has created some things that supposedly make us more civilized (freer education, birth control?) - but in some ways - the less 'advanced' cultures know more about family, agriculture, clean living without polluting, and general cultural knowledge that surpasses a college education without any real family connections (which happens in two working parent families).

What I think would be nice is if the cultures of the world respected one another and lived in peace.  Peace day - supposedly brings this.  What if it was peace for a year or a thousand years?  And, not at the expense of any race.

BTw, as we speak, terms of peace are being negotiated between President Obama and the President of Iraq.  Perhaps, by some chance, there will be a thanks to President Obama for letting Iraq have a president instead of a dictator.  Remember Saddam Hussein?  He would throw his own people to lions for entertainment.  He was the reincarnation of what one would think was Nero.  Definately a strange man.

[db05]

I think President Obama should call a spade a spade.  'Look, if you want us dead - just come on over. Kill the lot of us.  Then, nobody will speak up when your own dictators come down on you.  That should solve the problem.  Everyone dead.' 

Good idea. Have your war in American soil, and then you'll know just how bad it is. A Christian country supporting war is the biggest contradiction I've ever seen.

[pianistimo]

We support freedom at the expense of dictators:

The War Crimes of Saddam Hussein

By Tom Head, About.com
See More About:

    * saddam hussein
    * iraq war
    * international human rights

"Saddam Hussein (2004)"

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein appears before a war crimes tribunal in this July 2004 photo.
Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Early Life: Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on April 28th, 1937 in al-Awja, a suburb of the Sunni city of Tikrit. After a difficult childhood, during which he was abused by his stepfather and shuffled from home to home, he joined Iraq's Baath Party at the age of 20. In 1968, he assisted his cousin, General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, in the Baathist takeover of Iraq. By the mid-1970s, he had become Iraq's unofficial leader, a role that he officially took on following al-Bakr's (highly suspicious) death in 1979.
Political Oppression: Hussein openly idolized the former Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, a man notable as much for his paranoia-induced execution sprees as anything else. In July 1978, he had his government issue a memorandum decreeing that anyone whose ideas came into conflict with those of the Baath Party leadership would be subject to summary execution. Most, but certainly not all, of Hussein's targets were ethnic Kurds and Shiite Muslims.
Ethnic Cleansing: The two dominant ethnicities of Iraq have traditionally been Arabs in south and central Iraq, and Kurds in the north and northeast, particularly along the Iranian border. Hussein long viewed ethnic Kurds as a long-term threat to Iraq's survival, and the oppression and extermination of the Kurds was one of his administration's highest priorities.
Religious Persecution: The Baath Party was dominated by Sunni Muslims, who made up only about one-third of Iraq's general population; the other two-thirds was made up of Shiite Muslims, Shiism also happening to be the official religion of Iran. Throughout Hussein's tenure, and especially during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), he saw the marginalization and eventual elimination of Shiism as a necessary goal in the Arabization process, by which Iraq would purge itself of all perceived Iranian influence.
The Dujail Massacre of 1982: In July of 1982, several Shiite militants attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein while he was riding through the city. Hussein responded by ordering the slaughter of some 148 residents, including dozens of children. This is the only war crime on which Hussein has been charged, and he will almost certainly be executed before any other charges go to trial.
The Barzani Clan Abductions of 1983: Masoud Barzani led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), an ethnic Kurdish revolutionary group fighting Baathist oppression. After Barzani cast his lot with the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War, Hussein had some 8,000 members of Barzani's clan, including hundreds of women and children, abducted. It is assumed that most were slaughtered; thousands have been discovered in mass graves in southern Iraq.
The al-Anfal Campaign: The worst human rights abuses of Hussein's tenure took place during the genocidal al-Anfal Campaign (1986-1989), in which Hussein's administration called for the extermination of every living thing--human or animal--in certain regions of the Kurdish north. All told, some 182,000 people--men, women, and children--were slaughtered, many through use of chemical weapons. The Halabja poison gas massacre of 1988 alone killed over 5,000 people. Hussein later blamed the attacks on the Iranians.
The Campaign Against the Marsh Arabs: Hussein did not limit his genocide to identifiably Kurdish groups; he also targeted the predominantly Shiite Marsh Arabs of southeastern Iraq, the direct descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians. By destroying more than 95% of the region's marshes, he effectively depleted its food supply and destroyed the entire millennia-old culture, reducing the number of Marsh Arabs from 250,000 to approximately 30,000. It is unknown how much of this population drop can be attributed to direct starvation and how much to migration, but the human cost was unquestionably high.
The Post-Uprising Massacres of 1991: In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the United States encouraged Kurds and Shiites to rebel against Hussein's regime--then withdrew and refused to support them, leaving an unknown number to be slaughtered. At one point, Hussein's regime killed as many as 2,000 suspected Kurdish rebels every day. Some two million Kurds hazarded the dangerous trek through the mountains to Iran and Turkey, hundreds of thousands dying in the process.
The Riddle of Saddam Hussein: Although most of Hussein's large-scale atrocities took place during the 1980s and early 1990s, his tenure was also characterized by day-to-day atrocities that attracted less notice. Wartime rhetoric regarding Hussein's "rape rooms," death by torture, decisions to slaughter the children of political enemies, and the casual machine-gunning of peaceful protesters accurately reflected the day-to-day policies of Saddam Hussein's regime. Hussein was no misunderstood despotic "madman." He was a monster, a butcher, a brutal tyrant, a genocidal racist--he was all of this, and more.



Saddam Hussein was unquestionably one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century. History cannot even begin to record the full scale of his atrocities and the effect they had on those affected and the families of those affected.
Make no mistake: The ouster of Saddam Hussein was a victory for human rights, and if there is any silver lining to come from the brutal Iraq War, it is that Hussein is no longer slaughtering and torturing his own people.

(Article edited because author thinks that before 1991 the whole thing was OUR FAULT?  We Are damned if we do, and damned if we don't).

I suppose the USA should apologize?  I think that evil was done by both sides - and there is no doubt that mistakes were made - but the general idea was to overcome evil with good.  And that is the intent of 99% of our military - unlike some juntas and militias with the evil intent to do in their OWN population!  This is never done by our miltary (so far).

[term]

How about 'death to America'  'death to Israel' ? This is what Turkey, Iran and North Korea spout. 

How are whole countries spouting anything? And Turkey certainly didn't say death to israel. I think the way you approach those countries is what creates hatred and differences between cultures, because in those countries there are fundamentalists making similar generalizations - thus making all americans devils because some air force pilot dropped a bomb on a wedding.

I think President Obama should call a spade a spade. 

And he can do that.  
The slogans you mentioned just reflect the opinion of those people about us foreign policy or israeli foreign policy. Of course they're hateful and questionable, but i don't see why they're so relevant, as if hateful comments against arabs haven't been made in europe or the US.

[pianistimo]

You are entirely right, until it becomes an issue of what is promoted BY THE GOVERNMENT!  THE GOVERNMENT.  The LEADERS.  Btw, Mein Kempf is a best seller in Turkey.  I've heard that the general policies have already been laid out in the books - so for terrorists to use them beats figuring out their own plans from scratch.  It is no surprise that the basis in the middle east IS RELIGIOUS.

Here - we are 'intellectual' and don't need G-d.  But war is still in people's minds and hearts. So, whether we feel religious or not - it doesn't matter.  The facts remain that in the middle east - the representation of Jesus Christ is Jerusalem. The holy city. Capital someday of the world.  It is an issue because the bible says it will be an issue until Jesus returns.  Call him 'Allah' or 'Jesus' or 'the Savior' - He is meant for all people and will bring peace to the nations.  And, not as king of the Jews - but King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The bible says that 'we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers - against the darkness of this world, against wickedness in high places.'  So...the ideals of the governments will be basically thrashed when it all comes down.  The first things to 'go' in the millenium are said to be 'idols' and weapons of war.  They'll be turned into plowshares and pruning hooks - and nation will not lift up war against nation....neither shall THEY LEARN WAR anymore.

[term]

You are entirely right, until it becomes an issue of what is promoted BY THE GOVERNMENT!  THE GOVERNMENT.  The LEADERS.

We can talk about that all day long, but i don't think you can make the case for how evil the leaders of other countries are and how us or european leaders are saints. But go ahead if you wish.

However i think you spend too much time putting blame on these countries. Could that be? You know the underlying differences right now between us and middle eastern governments, the wars, iraq occupation, trade disagreements, ideology, and whatnot. I'd rather pay attention to the issues instead of talking about how the others are more evil than we are, whether that's true or not.

As to Mein Kampf in turkey, so what? People have bought it. Neither do many people there read a lot of books nor is turkey a relevant chapter in the history of antisemitism. Bavaria has the rights for the distribution of mein Kampf and they stopped it, it sold well because it was just released. If they actually allowed it worldwide, you know how many would buy it just out of curiosity? I'd buy it too, just to know what he wrote. Guilty by association, am i now a nazi and a terrorist? Please.

[ahinton]

Mein Kempf is a best seller in Turkey

No, that remark is a turkey. the volume to which you refer is Mein Kampf. Mr Kempf (first name Freddy), on the other hand, is a pianist.

Here - we are 'intellectual' and don't need G-d.

Few have said such a thing on this forum. You're evidently going to give us all indigestible doses of Him, regardless; look how much of it you've posted already since your otherwise welcome return!

But war is still in people's minds and hearts.

Not in mine.

The facts remain that in the middle east - the representation of Jesus Christ is Jerusalem.

And in the American east it is Collegeville, presumably...

The first things to 'go'

Leave go of "go"...

They'll be turned into plowshares and pruning hooks

Implements of contemporary agribusiness these are not, in case you'd not noticed...

Best,

Alistair

[go12_3]

May we keep in mind that is is a PIANO FORUM and not posting such topics as
the government and leaders and religion.  Sure , this thread is on free speech, but it is getting off course from the main topic of this thread.....which is now

about war.......   Keep the main topic the main thing here....

[thalbergmad]

May we keep in mind that is is a PIANO FORUM and not posting such topics as
the government and leaders and religion. 

Now that Princess Pa as back, you will get nothing but.

I guess you missed her last visit.

Thal

[db05]

May we keep in mind that is is a PIANO FORUM and not posting such topics as
the government and leaders and religion.  Sure , this thread is on free speech, but it is getting off course from the main topic of this thread.....which is now

about war.......   Keep the main topic the main thing here....

go, we can talk about anything here... Yes that's pianistimo all right, you just missed her the last time. I think you're a bit alike, though. 

[thalbergmad]

The bible says that 'we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers - against the darkness of this world, against wickedness in high places.' 

Not everything in the Bible is correct and a lot has been left out.

Here is the proof

&feature=related

Listen and learn something for once.

Thal

[ahinton]

go, we can talk about anything here... Yes that's pianistimo all right, you just missed her the last time. I think you're a bit alike, though. 

This is indeed the Anything but Piano sector of the forum, so its purpose is for matters not necessarily related to the piano - but on what evidence do you base you last statement here?

Best,

Alistair

[aslanov]

Does free speech mean the freedom to speak nastily to others and nothing else?

What about? 

Freedom of speech
Freedom of religion
Freedom of thought
Freedom to do right
Freedom in the context of law (which includes not killing unborn children at 8 months - and doctors being forced to comply against their conscience)
Freedom to love others and not be forced into 'groups' - hmm remember when that happened 50 or so years ago!
Freedom to choose to be free
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
(ie also FREEDOM OF THE INTERNET!  hmm. wonder where that's going?  How about International LAW for all of the above)

MY HUMAN RIGHTS ARE GIVEN TO ME BY G-D.  Who's are yours given to you by?

YOU'VE GOT TO BE F%$#ING KIDDING ME!
Hooollllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

question
1)what rights does god give you? and where are these rights written? are they in the bible? really? truly? what are these rights and can you please cite them instead of ominously saying "GOD GAVE ME MY RIGHTS! HOW EVANGELICAL AM I!?!?!"

as usual response to your posts.
stop wasting your time.
you realize nobody here even thinks your sane enough to take your arguments for any value EVEN if they are religious to begin with, which most of as aren't.
i havent even been on these forums for much time and im already getting kinda CHEEEEZED.

[iroveashe]

Just curious: Does pianistimo go to a religion site and posts in the Anything but politics and religion board threads with huge rants about the art of piano playing?

[thalbergmad]

Just curious: Does pianistimo go to a religion site

If only she did, we would not be spammed with her nonsense.

She is mental enough to be thrown out of a religion forum.

Thal

[go12_3]

go, we can talk about anything here... Yes that's pianistimo all right, you just missed her the last time. I think you're a bit alike, though. 

 
You may discuss anything here,  as far as I'm concerned.  It's that freedom of speech???

[lostinidlewonder]

I believe that freedom of speech is not God given. Freedom of speech highlights what society you are living in and has to do with the physical world. God is not at work in this world at the moment, he is sitting back, the clockmaker. We have a personal relationship with him but this does not effect our say in the material world we are living in that is left to government and mainstream society. What belongs to the dying world belongs to the people, what lasts forever belongs to God.

Women have very little voice in Muslim dominated societies, this does not mean that God has taken this away from them, humans have taken it away from them. The social structures that we live in determine how we are able to live our life with our "voice".

I find it wrong to consider what ones goverment does reflects what every person who is ruled under that government believes in.

[communist]

We do not have free speech, if you said something bad about the president, cop &...
you would get in trouble