I don't know whether to laugh or cry... so, I'll laugh my ass off.

@Ian Cooper



How do you think we felt when planes flew into the twin towers? How the hell did you think we felt, when people jumped out of the windows? How do you think we felt, when they where celebrating in the streets passing out candy?

You sit there, and tell me that I'm part of the problem? That some how I make them feel bad? Because I call them terrorists, I'm "discriminatory" against muslims? That was the point of this mod right?

Anything, any racism, they did to them self through all the wars they caused. And let me tell you something, I am calling them what they are. Terrorists, Rats, scum of the earth. Name one thing these people have created? name one! All they have ever done is destroyed. And anyone that was killed by our Army, is on them. They attacked us, unless your one of those idiots who thinks otherwise.

Now feel free to call me a "hate monger" or a "racist" because of what I said.

Theres your freedom of speech.

This honestly doesn't surprise me. Since Shirley Ann Jackson came to the campus there have been numerous times where the Administration has thought it more appropriate to use a heavy-handed approach and to abandon discussion with the parties involved.Their are multiple instances of enacting broad-sweeping changes that directly affect the student body without consultation or discussion.

Understandably they have the ability and the right to shut down a site that is hosted on their servers. We each signed a document explaining our "rights" while using their resources. However, the page involved was one outside of the network and not hosted by RPI itself. There should have been some discourse with the club leaders in my opinion if they found the reference offensive, but shutting down an internal site due to an external one is inappropriate.

While I disliked the college repubs, this doesn't seem right with the information that's been presented.

@Ebonheart

Or, *ironically* for a technical college, completely misunderstood where the comments were being stored? ;)

Another person's freedom of expression, is someone else's terroristic threat.

How funny it is to have the tables turned on the bigots at RPI.

@ Jabrwock

Point taken, but do remember humanities stupidity hit rock bottom long ago; and it's still digging.

@nightwng2000

Damn you, now where's a cloth to wipe my monitor? Now I need to fetch another cup of coffee... ;)

what would be the "loosest interpretation" of "terrorist safehaven"?

I am split between 'ha ha taste of their own medicine!' and 'what they were doing was wrong thus doing it to them is also bad'

They're mad because they were expressing themselves, and they got the boot. Yet they felt it perfectly ok to "demand" and "threaten" (financially) the college stop someone else from expressing themselves on campus.

Awesome.

@ cpt crunchie

The loosest form of "Terrorist Safe Haven" would be "Corporate Law Firm"

Despite my own personal opinion of the College Republicans being a club for spoiled little pricks with rich parents, they still don't deserve to be censored. Two wrongs does not a right make.

@lumi

They used frames or something to show the blog in question through their on-campus page. I can't for the life of me find the original blog (found it last night), but someone snapped a pic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zulma/2323052674/

"Ironically, the website shut down was the official RPI College Republican page. The terrorist safehaven comment resided on a separate blog not controlled by the school. "
Thats the problem I have with the school shutting down their page. It was not made on the school run site, it was done on another site. This to me is a case of the school school stifling their right to free speech by trying to control comments made in a place where the school has no authority. If the comment was made on a school site then I would understand, but it was not so although the name calling was distasteful, the school should not be punishing them for it.

You know what's REALLY ironic? RPI is trying to prove it's software can pass the Turning test. Hopefully they didn't use the admin staff to do the testing. ;)

@ Jabrwock

I still don't think he has the right to produce really really bad movies that use the "unlimited ammo" cheat.

The chief by-product of the American university system for at least the past 20 years has been politcally correct thought and speech control in the guise of higher education. Opposing opinions are unwelcome and often punished (if the university thinks it can get away with it).

I think this just shows that the people running that school are extremely insecure, weren't hugged enough as children, and can't take criticism very well.

While the statement is very different from Mr. Bilal's exhibit in that one is fiery rhetoric crafted to manipulate people's fears, and the other is an art piece meant to show the impacts of US foreign policy, the same basic principle applies: Are they tasteful? Maybe not, but do they deserve to be suppressed?

oops should have posted the last comment in the other story.

What do they say? Turn about is fair game?

It is funny that I had feeling that if they got a taste of their own medicine they would cry censorship.

I am outraged!

These people where bringing light to a serious issue, that the school is a terrorist safe haven, and that the people there are "republaphobic". I demand that the whole quote be shown and then it would be considered Poetry. We then should turn it into a mod ware there are terrorists at the school, and you have to stop them. This will bring further light to the issue.

Ok, really now. I don't think making a mod about killing the president is on par with this but hey, what do I know? I think it was sort of strange for them to call it what they did. I mean they did stop the mod from being displayed and then the kid was banned from school or something right? Does not seem like to much of a terrorist safe haven.

But they shutdown the whole site because one guy made a comment on a blog? That seems...stupid. Thats like shutting down the whole art (word escapes me) thing just because of that mod.....

@ gummy:

Read the article. It wasn't a student, it was an artist from the Institute of Chicago who was invited to show his exhibit (I think that's the word you were looking for at the end there) at RPI. There was full disclosure; they knew the topic and content of the presentation beforehand, and okayed it.

Then the CRs found out and raised a stink because it was "un-American" and, accused the art department of being a "terrorist safe haven" for allowing Bilal to present on campus. As a result of this, and letters (including threats to withdraw funding) from other republican alumni, RPI suspended the exhibit indefinitely; essentially, they shut him down and told him to GTFO.

Now, they've shut down the CRs' website because of it's connection to another blog that had the "terrorist safe haven" quote posted. Which could be pretty sketchy, depending upon how tenuous the link is between their official page and the blog that had the quote posted. Since their page is down now, it's hard to verify, unfortunately.

For handing out stupid, unnecessary, wrong-minded punishments for minor infractions I bite my thumb at thee.
For over-reacting to a very minor situation with the aforementioned draconian punishments (both the republicans and the art exhibit), I wave my fist at thee.
For going about a serious issue so blindly that you negatively affect innocent people and ignore the real 'problem' I cringe at the very sight of you.
For responding to criticism not through discourse or counter criticism or even explanation but rather heavy handed censorship I spit in your direction and I wish you bad luck.

You make me sick.

Somebody needs to explain to them that taking down the College Republicans' site for no good reason does not balance out cancelling the exhibit for no good reason.

As much as I would like to laugh at the College republicans getting hit with the same thing they did to Bilal, I can't support this anymore than the removel of the exibit. It was wrong when Bilal has his right to free speech stifled and it's just as wrong not that it's happening to the College republicans.

http://boards.1up.com/zd/board/message?board.id=games&thread.id=637150

Thats a link to an article about this as well. Posted in the forum. Heres the part I found interesting.

"Bilal's "art game" further modified the latter title, placing the player in the role of a character who must convince an Iraqi civilian (whose image was deliberately designed to look like Bilal himself) to go assassinate the president by blowing themselves up in a suicide bomb attack."

Sounds great yea?

Heres further proof he's an idiot.

"He created the game, he says, in order to "hold up a mirror" to an American society which believes that such a game is perfectly fine when it is an American killing Iraqis, but which finds itself outside of its comfort zone when it's the other way around."

I don't know about you, but the games I play are killing terrorists. Not innocent Iraqis. Unless of course he is saying all Iraqis are terrorists? Or does he consider the terrorists to be innocent?

@Jabrwock

I have never even seen or played the game quest for saddam. And thats just one game, he makes it sound like this is a big problem or something. Point being he is grasping at straws. I just checked the download stats of the game at download.com

Only 4,087 downloads. I doubt its much higher any place else. It's a stupid game and he is using it as an excuse.

Let's put this in perspective:

Firstly, the college Republicans lobbied to get the exhibit shut down - i.e. they tried to limit someone else's freedom of speech. They succeeded. In my view what they did was wrong. The school bowed to pressure, and although they had the right to refuse to show Wafaa Bilal’s exhibit, they had originally given him permission, so what they did, while not technically wrong (the school has no responsibility to show anyone's art if they don't want to), was not fair.

Secondly, as I understand it the school shut down a website owned by... THE SCHOOL! It was a website that the Republicans were using, but it was not 'their' website. The school can shut down that website at any time without giving any reason because they own it. It's not like the school is doing anything wrong here.

So what was done to Wafaa Bilal was unfair. What was done to the college Republicans is completely fair, as well as being karmic, ironic and a whole lot satisfying.

@Vinzent

Go back and read your self help/psychology books.

@gummy
Well mathematics originated in the middle east, many forms of construction, most religions (granted thats not a good thing in my opinion but people like it). There's quite a lot really.

Generalisations about any group is a bad thing, doesn't matter what the grouping element is. It's why so many people are offended that jack thompson assumes all game players are drug addled idiots or how many people assume that because someone identifies themselves as conservative or liberal that they're automatically in 100% support of all the viewpoints of said party.

If you say that all muslims are terrorists then you're as racist and stupid as all the people who say that black people should still be slaves, all asians are good at math or all white people are inbred retarded redneck hillbilly dicks like you.

If you say it that is...

(I'd have put a "figuratively speaking" joke in but I think that's long past its prime now)

@gummy

"How do they portray the jews?…..hmm? I believe they teach that it’s ok to kill the Jews because there not human, there apes. Thanks for your input though."

Oh please, don't even go the infantile "well they do it too!" route. Grow up. That kind of behavior wouldn't excuse a 5 year old, why should you get to use it?

Does that mean single minded prejudice originated there too?

@ shady8x:

"The college had every right to do what it has done throughout this controversy, but this last one shows that it isn’t much of a technical college…"

...How do you figure that?

@ most of the other people in the thread

There isn't really a single legitimate reason to dignify gummy with any responses. I think you all realize that, so let's put it into effect, please.

If our soldiers, who paid with their lives so the people in other countires can enjoy the freedom we are having here in USA learn that our very freedom is begin take away by our own government aho's with a agenda.

How would they feel??

@ Nightwing:

"Since the blog was imaged/linked on a page on the college’s servers, and the college web administrator knew this, then maybe they understood better than initially thought."

I can pretty much guarantee you they knew exactly what was on the page, links, content, images and all. This is not the first or second time RPI has dealt with this sort of thing (college clubs with "questionable content" available on or through their official pages). See the previous snafu with the RIAA over the Phynd and Celery engines a few years ago.

They may be a lot of things, but they're definitely not clueless about tech.

@Ebonheart

"All the wars they caused?! Apprently you know NOTHING about history. For what 200 years the Christians waged an unceasing war to “Reclaim teh holy land!”"

Speaking of historical ignorance... Regardless of the excesses of the Crusades (and I'm not justifying those, there's plenty of blame to go around on both sides of THAT historical nightmare), the fact is that they began as a pretty justified reaction to a hostile religious faith that for several hundred years had made significant conquests throughout Asia and was encroaching on Europe (they had already conquered most of Spain and were pushing hard into Southeast Europe). A large group of Christians pushing back against Islam and saying "no thanks, we'd rather be Christian in our own lands" sounds like a justification for war to me. The later Crusades to redeem the Holy Land began as a result of the Muslim reaction to the earlier Crusades when they began cutting off Christian access to Christian holy sites in the region.

It's a lot of bloodshed over a nonexistent God, true, but if you get caught up in "they did it first!" You find that there's ALWAYS an excuse to go to war. One of Osama bin-Laden's justification for his war against the West was "The tragedy of al-Andalus" or the Christian Reconquista of Spain by, you, the Spanish. It also puts into perspective the rest of your "We should understand them!" statements. If they're justified in hating us for what we did to them, why aren't we justified in hating them for what they did to us? Are we better than them (and isn't that racist)? Either both of us are morally responsible for our actions or none of us are. To claim that Muslim terrorism is solely a response to Western political misdeeds is a subtle form of bigotry -- as if they're only capable of reacting to what we do and not formulating their own opinions and ideology and acting out of their own sense of morality.

The other thing I find fascinating is how people looking to "understand" the problems in the Middle East refuse to extend the same courtesy to Islamic fundamentalists they do to Christian fundamentalists in America. No one ever seems to doubt that the actions of Christian fundamentalists are wholly inspired by their belief in God and their God's message. Yet despite the fact that Islamists have been screaming the religious motivations for their actions at us for years, Western apologists continually justify their murderous hatred as a reaction to politics or poverty (despite the fact that most terrorists are middle-class -- bin-Laden was rich, his number 2 was a doctor) or "colonialism" or "imperialism" or whatever "ism" the US is guilty of today. They have said again and again that we are "Dar-al-Harb", the House of War, they are of Dar-al-Islaam, the House of Peace or Submission. We must convert or die. Why can't we take them at their word the way we would a Christian zealot?

And, of course, everything always comes down to Israel. The only racist state in the Middle East where Arabs serve as elected members of the government. I wonder how many Jews there are in the governments of any other country in that region?