Yet another damn terrorist attack

[Dauphin]

If the parliament isn't democratically elected, is it a democracy? I'm thinking of the house of lords here.

I'm not that well informed on British history so maybe Britain was a democracy in the late 1700s. But my impression was that the king was still the most powerful guy.

I wouldn't consider Britain a full democracy (or representative democracy) either, but I was curious as to your distinction, vis a vis the US, which wasn't a full democracy either. It's all shades of grey, and no one event flicked the switch from "no" to "yes".

For your awareness, the 1689 Bill of Rights (following the "Glorious Revolution") set out the monarch as bounded by parliament and set parliament as having supremacy (courtesy of Wikipedia):

The Bill of Rights also vindicated and asserted the nation's "ancient rights and liberties" by declaring:

the pretended power to dispense with Acts of Parliament is illegal;
the commission for ecclesiastical causes is illegal;
levying money without the consent of Parliament is illegal;
it is the right of the subject to petition the king and prosecutions for petitioning are illegal;
maintaining a standing army in peacetime without the consent of Parliament is illegal;
Protestant subjects "may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and allowed by law";*
the election of MPs ought to be free; that freedom of speech and debates in Parliament "ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament";
excessive bail and fines not required and "cruel and unusual punishments" not to be inflicted;
jurors in high treason trials ought to be freeholders;
that promises of fines and forfeitures before conviction are illegal;
that Parliament ought to be held frequently.

And the Coronation Oath of 1688 included:

"solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the statutes in parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same"

* You may find the right to arms vaguely familiar.....

[Ellestar]

Olland: This is barbarism.
Assad: You wasn't saying that when you was sending them to my country.

or something like that

[Nikolai]

What about an entire movie taking the piss out of JC?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian

Probably the greatest satire movie of all time!



I thought Nikolai was only young...

At soon 29, not that young anymore? Sure feel that way sometimes. I loved Life of Brian in any case.

[Hauldren Collider]

I wouldn't consider Britain a full democracy (or representative democracy) either, but I was curious as to your distinction, vis a vis the US, which wasn't a full democracy either. It's all shades of grey, and no one event flicked the switch from "no" to "yes".

For your awareness, the 1689 Bill of Rights (following the "Glorious Revolution") set out the monarch as bounded by parliament and set parliament as having supremacy (courtesy of Wikipedia):

The Bill of Rights also vindicated and asserted the nation's "ancient rights and liberties" by declaring:

the pretended power to dispense with Acts of Parliament is illegal;
the commission for ecclesiastical causes is illegal;
levying money without the consent of Parliament is illegal;
it is the right of the subject to petition the king and prosecutions for petitioning are illegal;
maintaining a standing army in peacetime without the consent of Parliament is illegal;
Protestant subjects "may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and allowed by law";*
the election of MPs ought to be free; that freedom of speech and debates in Parliament "ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament";
excessive bail and fines not required and "cruel and unusual punishments" not to be inflicted;
jurors in high treason trials ought to be freeholders;
that promises of fines and forfeitures before conviction are illegal;
that Parliament ought to be held frequently.

And the Coronation Oath of 1688 included:

"solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the statutes in parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same"

* You may find the right to arms vaguely familiar.....

I see. That is interesting. I did not know that. And yes, there are quite a few similarities to our bill of rights.

[molly bloom]

How often do fundamentalist Christians murder cartoonists?

Care to guess the major religious affiliation of the people responsible for the attempted genocide of Europe's Jews ?

We could also discuss the assorted pogroms carried out in the Tsarist Russian Empire, the pogroms carried out in Roman Catholic Poland (pre-18th Century carve up), the assorted Blood libel massacres in Roman Catholic Western Europe, the expulsion of Spain's Moriscoes and 'Marranos', the autos da fe of the Roman Catholic Inquisitions... and not forgetting the Puritans' attitude to the 'unregenerate' heathens in North America.


The fact that the majority of terrorist or murderous acts committed by individuals or those acting on behalf of organisations allegedly acting in the name of the one of the Abrahamic religions are at this time committed by Muslims, hardly negates all those millions killed in the name of the Lamb of god.

It's worthwhile noting too that the doughty Boers of South Africa were fundamentalist Calvinists, and the lovely people of the United States' Deep South who so cherished their own apartheid states were also Christians.


Christians did this :

[molly bloom]

The civilian government following due process is a completely separate issue to the one being discussed.

Besides which, it wasn't that long ago, perhaps 30-40 years when Europe was ruled largely by dictatorships which, incidentally, had universally stringent gun control. So you don't get a pass on that.

Are you mentally ill, or simply unable to count ?

I'm not prepared to count the UK as a democracy in the 1700s. Not a dictatorship either, but the king still had a lot of control, yes? Or at least the aristocracy.

H.C.

The monarch's powers had been severely limited by the Glorious Revolution and the installation of William and Mary as replacements for James II & VII.

Perhaps you should read a little something about the evolution of British parliamentary democracy before offering inaccurate opinions on it...

[molly bloom]

I am curious as to why a parliament led country is not a democracy.

I am curious why anyone would think that the United States in the 18th Century was a democracy and Great Britain of the same time was not. I do get a bit tired of mentioning Dr Johnson, but it seems however often I do, it doesn't seem to sink into some thick skulls.

[Felch]

blah blah blah

I used the present tense for a reason. Let's try to keep this discussion to things that have happened in the current millennium.

[Jon Miller]

I'm not sure how you can buy the idea that buying ads on a tv station, paying for a book to be written, or making a movie is drowning out other speakers.

It is obvious. On the first case consider the limit where all the airtime is bought groups backing a single candidate. Then realize that fairly often we have pretty close to this scenario.

For the other two imagine the case where you only see books or movies promoting a single candidate.

The above is actually what exists in Russia and is why they don't have a functional democracy. Everything that is anti-Putin or for alternatives is drowned out by the Putin machine.

Now the core issue isn't really money but is rather the amount of speech which is purchased or otherwise acquired. And it is done by both the Democrats and the Republicans in the US depending on the 'region'.

So what I would really like is a divorce on the amount of speech and money. Like each candidate (not party in the US) has X amount of different speech spots. A wealthy candidate can make his speech spots look very snazzy, but it doesn't mean he (or people who support him or oppose others) can take all or the even the majority of speech spots.

This wouldn't even go to address biased spots like Fox News or MSNBC. But I think the improvement gained by the above suggestion or something similar would mean that tilted news could exist as desired by market forces or wealthy pockets.

JM

[Jon Miller]

and the lovely people of the United States' Deep South who so cherished their own apartheid states were also Christians.

Terrible and monstrous. But it is difference because it was Christians doing it to other Christians who believed the same as they.

That is why we don't tie is to their Christianity or to the fact that they were meat eaters (or heterosexuals, mostly), but rather to the fact they were white southerners.

JM

[DinoDoc]

Care to guess the major religious affiliation of the people responsible for the attempted genocide of Europe's Jews ?

Paganism?

[molly bloom]

I used the present tense for a reason. Let's try to keep this discussion to things that have happened in the current millennium.

How convenient for you if we do.


And why forget about the Holocaust (for instance)? Difficult anyway, as the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau is in just over two weeks time.

But it is difference because it was Christians doing it to other Christians who believed the same as they.

J Miller

Yes, but for what reason ? No better reason than that they disagreed with the colour of a person's skin. The white Protestant fundamentalists of America's Deep South in the 20th Century also discriminated against Roman Catholics and Jews too, but were less avid in restricting their ability to breathe.

[Felch]

Explaining to molly the difference between Positive Christianity and actual Christianity isn't really worth the effort.

[Lorizael]

Most of the people in that lynching photograph are facing toward the right. I think we know what conclusion we can draw from that.

[molly bloom]

Paganism?

Yeah.

For once, don't be as stupid as you can be.

Master propagandist of the Nazi regime and dictator of its cultural life for twelve years, Joseph Goebbels was born into a strict Catholic, working-class family from Rheydt, in the Rhineland, on 29 October 1897. He was educated at a Roman Catholic school and went on to study history and literature at the University of Heidelberg under Professor Friedrich Gundolf, a Jewish literary historian renowned as a Goethe scholar and a close disciple of the poet Stefan George.

He combined verbal warnings that, as a result of the war, "the Jews will pay with extermination of their race in Europe and perhaps beyond" with careful avoidance in his propaganda material of discussing the actual treatment of the Jews, i.e., any mention of the extermination camps. Goebbels's anti-Semitism was one factor which brought him closer to Hitler, who respected his political judgement as well as his administrative and propagandist skills.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goebbels.html

I don't think I need to go into much more detail.