COURAGE
COURAGE
When you know it’s hopeless, but you do it anyway.
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picture: dunno source, via our lol builder. lol caption: mAlise
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Where is this? And what the heck is going on..?
camera placed between hooded doofus and his buddies.
No camera placed BEHIND hooded doofus and his buddies. The camera-man is not that dumb.
Supporting anarchy is NOT courage!
You’re funny.
JDR-Beantown, you need to review the definition of courage. Doing something that you believe in regardless of the odds requires courage. Supporting anarchy can be courageous: King George III thought that the American Founding fathers were anarchists and yet we think of them as courageous. You can be courageous and wrong, you can be wrong and stupid and still show courage.
Doing something your AFRAID to do is courage. If you’re so stupid that you don’t know you should be afraid, there is really no bravery involved.
Fear is a pre-requisite for courage. Anarchists by and large are too stupid to have fear.
“mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.” If you believe strongly enough in your cause then fear is mitigated by those beliefs, see the stories of various martyrs who went willing to their deaths rather than betray their faith – that’s courage. Speaking truth to power requires courage, sitting at a lunch counter in Montgomery knowing that you might be hauled off and beaten, that’s courage, risking arrest for civil disobedience requires courage, standing up in front of a tank in Tienanmen square required courage – were those people wrong or cowardly? All of them might have been described as anarchists by the establishment, others of us call them heros.
wouldn’t that also include suicide bombings?
There is an extraordinarily fine-line between courage and stupidity.
Standing up in front of a tank in Tienanmen square required courage.
Vandalizing cities and throwing stones at policemen intending to
harm them is gratuitous violence. Mind you that these people usually
cover their faces when they engage in such activities, because they, well,
don’t have the COURAGE to take responsibility of their actions. They just
want to cause harm.
you’re aware the police also cover their faces and avoid taking responsibility for their actions in such situations?
I don’t see much difference between the two, actually.
“Anarchists by and large are too stupid to have fear.”
That line actually made me laugh. LMAO
It’s nice to know who wants to be wearing the boot stamping on a human face forever… thanks for the headsup!
Hi ‘ummmm’,
Do more research outside of Faux News.
Thanks.
Anarchy is in essence “Non hierarchical Cooperativism” . Don’t you like the sound of that? This person is fighting for something he believes in such a manner that I doubt you could ever do. Email me if you want to continue the discussion, I have a few things you need to read…
alaricmeister@gmail.com
I love posts like these…they remind me I’m not alone.
supporting anarchy is supporting fuller democracy and the abolition of private property in support of equality. Go tell the people in the spanish civl war, fighting hopelessly against a dictator backed by the Nazis that they were not courageous.
Or a bunch of Poles who held their street for a week with nothing more that plates painted black, while horse cavalry charged tanks…
WTF – This is hopeless. It’s not courage and it’s not funny!
Ah, but what if those are police working for a repressive regime? Is it courageous then?
Yeah that’s stupidity, not courage…
Or deliberate martyrdom.
In bed…
with a penis.
To the death…
Fail on me, that was supposed to read: To the Pain…
At least you beat me to the punch.
And that was the combo breaker apparently though I take credit for a fumble.
*kills the apparently*
Damn my typos… Damn them to typo hell and the land of disembodied fingers.
. . . of a strange. . .
shaved gerbil…
Why shave a gerbil? Or do I really want to know?
And combo breaker here too. Damn… I forgive you though.
@_@
Richard Gere likes them better that way.
*grabs bleach*
*hooks up IV drip into vein*
*dies instead of thinking about that*
MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I was trying to figure out how to work this site a bit yesterday (I don’t get how to do just about anything on here) and saw your profile pic (under rohrho’s friend list). . . very nice. Anywho, the probably wasn’t appropriate to point out after you said “with a penis” but oh well.
. . . and a tissue.
Oh yes, the Captain is quite lovely.
its self-defense against an armed, aggressive, militant group of the state.
So you actually think the police would be there to beat him if he was not throwing rocks around him? Allso, I bet that he knows that if the police would actualy beat him a little, media would be all on his side and he would be a hero among his own kind. This is not courage.
So, what is courage, mon brave?
I’d say courage is doing something you believe in even though you know it will put you in danger, that is not really the case here.
the picture is from the december 2008 greek riots, which were sparked by the murder of a 16 boy by a cop. and id also like to point out to all those talking about anarchy… this person is not necessarily an anarchist, only someone pissed off that the greek pollice forced is so unprofessional and ill trained that one of its members shot a teenager who was not threatening him.
Not courage.
Where’s Bill Maher when we need him?
Wow–I was thinking of that famous statement of his while reading
something earlier in the thread, and here you have mentioned it.
GMTA?
Anyway, in perspective, I think more people can agree with him now,
but, as any comedian knows, timing is everything.
That’s right, GMTA and so do ours! And, I agreed with him at the time. My dad wasn’t happy about that.
Okay, I googled it and the only direct reference to GMTA and Bill is something that work blocks.
Could somebody paraphrase to catch up this television exile?
Great Minds Think Alike.
Ah, somehow I thought it was deeper than that like that speech that Rhorho alluded to. Thanks, consider me enlightened.
If it were deep then I wouldn’t have got it.
You’re welcome.
I wouldn’t have gotten it either.
I agreed with Bill Maher at the time, too, but most nerves were still raw then. No matter what anyone says, his statement lived up to the show’s name.
Maher got in trouble for calling the terrorists courageous for having the balls to fly planes into buildings instead of firing bombs from far away or something like that. It caused quite a stir. He even APOLOGIZED IIRC.
Ah, that I can see as controversial but he had a point.
In Irish Roadworker’s Clothing?
Well, that too. But also “if I remember correctly.”
But this time it was in Irish roadworker’s clothing. Good call.
My recollection (which might be flawed) says that Bill Maher challenged Bush’s assertion that 9/11 was a ‘cowardly attack’. Bill said that flying jet planes into a building is not the action of your garden variety coward. He should have gotten away with it because a) it’s true and 2) contradicting Bush is usually a good move. Unfortunately that was a period when Bush was popular so he was forced to backpedal.
“Unfortunately that was a period when Bush was popular so he was forced to backpedal.”
This is also why some very good Democrats voted in favor of some very bad legislation around that time.
They voted to extend Govt power. Doesn’t matter how many dead, how much horror, your average politico will ALWAYS extend his powers, and then never rescind them… Which way did Kunchnich vote? He’s the closest thing to an honest politico you have, and I’d not let him look after my god kids, nor buy a used car, from him…
It’s weird thinking back that there WAS a time when Bush was very popular. Fear can do that to a nation. We were all so nuts back then we were even convinced that Bush handled the situation well.
Which, naturally, is a load of crap.
I still love all the people saying that Bush made us safe because there hasn’t been a terrorist attack since…
What do you mean “we”? Those who were not convinced that Bush wasn’t handling the situation well were a minority, but there were quite a few of us.
Bush did once have a favorability rating in the 70’s but that left about 30% of us who were more afraid of him than the terrorists. It always made me laff when one of his many mistakes came to light and suddenly the alert level would go from yellow to orange.
That’s very good. You got a jump on some of us who were younger and more naive.
I was with you in that minority. Dripping, oozing patriotism is a dreadful monster. The PATRIOT Act is aptly named.
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I think the main reason people freaked the hell out is that the term “courageous” has positive connotations. As far as the basic definition of courage, though, he had a point.
the reason that people freaked out is that people are, for the most part, too stupid to wipe their own arse with any great efficiency…
Suicide, that’s the word.
Throw it and run like heck buddy!
or idiocy. if he was courageous and smart he would just do it again… elsewhere.
I think someone is mistaking stupidity and courage again. It’s alright, though. Those two words are becoming synonymous. At least, here in the States they are.
That is most certainly not the definition of “courage.”
It’s closer to the definition of suicide.
Someone has suicide on the brain, methinks.
WE can but hope the idea is embraced…
Or maybe ‘natural selection’ if he hasn’t had kids yet…
Debate of courage v stupidity aside, why do *some* of these protesters seem to think that breaking things and assaulting police will help the world?
Ghandi did it without throwing rocks, why can’t they?
Because Ghandi actually *had* courage.
Slow down, Ghandi, you’re killin’ ‘em.
Because they don’t *really* care that much about helping the world. Their main goal is to make an anti-authority statement so that they can feel morally superior. Thus, all of the bragging about how “courageous” they are. If what they do ends up helping the world, that’s just a secondary benefit.
and you’re so certain ov this how exactly? you know what’s going on in people’s minds, and that they’ve weighed out cost/benefit and decided it’s worth the chance ov getting beaten to death by some jackbooted thug for the chance ov a few seconds on television and the warm glow ov moral superiority?
I read a TV-quote this morning, taken from the German media. Roughly translated:
Anti-Nato-Demo in Straßbourg. Demonstrant: “The Nato is only a warmonger!” – Journalist: “What is ‘NATO’ the abbreviation for?” – Demonstrant: “Meh, don’t ask me, I’m trashed…”
If you want to get in serious trouble, test the fact knowledge of demonstrants about the cause they are protesting for
Struth! Rachel Maddow’s show last night featured interviews with Tea Party people. To be overly kind, let’s just say that the fact set demonstrated by the participants was sub-par.
The idea of the tea party was really stupid… thus, what does one expect the people to get wrapped up in the idea to be?
The original one had a point to it. You’re exempt from the excise taxes we have to pay on this commodity? Oops, sorry about that. Hope you like it salty.
The only way this go-round would make sense is if the goofballs were protesting Wal-Mart or some other behemoth that was competing unfairly with local businesses thanks to government action. But no, these stupids are protesting a 4% bump in the marginal rate for people way above their station, while the protestors themselves all got a tax CUT.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeejuts.
That’s one of the French “black bloc” twits. They looted and burned stuff (private businesses as well as public offices), while hiding their identities. Not my definition of courage at all.
I think in that case, the word needed would be Brazen.
“. . .while hiding their identities.” Like those Boston Tea Party wimps who dressed like “Indians”?
Or the idiots who set the re-creation ship on fire…or the contractors who later accidentally burned down the museum…!?
(recent Boston history)
The joy of the human condition.
Yep. But it sure confuses the tourists! –we still have all of the other historical stuff, tons of that even. But they do want to see that silly boat!
Tell them it sank over 200 years ago due to interference by Cthulhu.
Hmm. I wonder how that sentence would sound with a strong “Bahstun” accent? This former Jersey girl doesn’t have one, but I’m snickering about the possibilities!
Could always do it in a Valley Girl accent and still use big words to scramble their brains…
Please do this and video it so we can all see the tourist reactions on YouTube. Please.
Well, iirc from my last trip to Boston, the actual site of the tea party has been filled in with land and is under a freeway, correct?
I can’t help but wonder if those who participated in ‘The Bawston Tee Parety’ we courageous or stupid. If that act had been committed in the birthplace of our nation, Virginia, they would have stolen the tea and sold it back to the British for a profit.
Interesting note: the Tea Party wasn’t a protest against high taxes, or a lack of representation, per se. It was more like the protests you see in the US against Wal-Mart.
There was an import tax on goods from overseas that applied to everyone equally. There were many colonists who had lucrative businesses importing items that couldn’t be produced domestically (like tea). The British East India Company, using the usual combination of bribery, influence peddling, and underhanded tricks, managed to get a law passed that exempted them from the tax. Suddenly, local, domestic businesses were at the mercy of a giant, world spanning corporation that was able to use not just economy of scale, but also government influence to squash local competition. Shortly thereafter, the Tea Party.
I wish those “Tea Bagging” right wing media types would actually implement a real Tea Party and send Americans out to dump all Wal-Mart’s product in the ocean!
Link: Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox find out how many teabagging references they can make in seven minutes.
Money quote from Ana Marie: “Who wouldn’t want to teabag John McCain?”
I’ll be in my bunk.
I lol’d.
Tea bagging has a couple of meanings…
1) miming rubbing your scrotum on someone’s forehead
2) sticking a hot (not warm) tea bag up somone’s arse, while you pin them down (obviously)
I thought it was dropping the scrotum in the mouth, at least for number 1. Number 2 is completely new to me. I always learn so much when you post…
I often learn a lot, too–and it often makes me wince!
You missed one – taking both of another person’s testicles in one’s mouth. The miming business is likely meant as a humiliating gesture invoking this meaning without getting one’s goolies bit.
I’m given to understand that this miming thing is a celebratory gesture after fragging a PvP opponent in certain MMOs.
they hide their identities because they are persecuted for their beliefs, the jews in Nazi germany who hid their identity are cowards by your standards too, eh?
Yay! Godwin! Tell us again how anarchists throwing bricks is just like genocide!
They aren’t persecuted for their beliefs, they are persecuted for criminal assaults, destroying of foreign property, arson and stuff like that. Or to counter with a analogy as sick as yours: By your standards wife-beaters and rapists are persecuted for their beliefs and are therefore victims just like the Jews in Nazi-Germany, eh?
GODWINS LAW ENVOKED!!
ALL INTELLIGENT ARGUMENTS ARE THEREFORE EXPENDED!
LET THE LULZ BEGIN
As it’s the weekend and DWN is not here… *ahem*
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Wang be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore Wang, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And Wang shall be no more; Wang, thou shalt die.
We were studying that the other week. (the poem, I mean) I like Donne. Seems a bit of a heidcase (Asking God to rape his soul, whit?) but does better poems than some of the contemporary crap we were studying a couple of years ago. (I’m sorry but I can’t respect a poet/dramatist who isn’t dead (Liz Lochhead, that means you))
did you like the Iron Giant? The Snowman?
Sorry, are you referring to the cartoon snowman? That’s the only one I can think of at the moment…
Indeed
Ted Hughes.
Ach… You were on about something else entirely… No, I’m not saying there are no good folk nowadays… Just that dead ones are better…
You got the joke… and like a lot of things, ‘better’ is relative.
I think most poets are a little unstable mentally.
You rarely hear about happy, normal poets… They’re always depressed/suicidal/alcoholic/insane/hopelessly unfortunate/morbid/constantly miserable…
And frequently clinically or sub-clinically afflicted with bipolar disorder… Tends to go with creativity, unfortunately.
Is that why the Rabbie Burns 2-quid has some scrawled handwriting on it instead of a picture? Because his rueful visage would be bad for consumer confidence maybe?
Burns was happy quite a lot -despite the poverty- because he wrote about
women half the time…
As to the 2 quid… Ah di ken…
Don’t forget, some don’t forget or forgive he was a revenue man…
“The Deil’s awa wi th’ Excise man” and whatnot… Still skint tho. He was living off £7 quid a year while he had the farm was he not?
£7 a year wasn’t bad, and he was still working for London.
On his return to Ayrshire on 18 February 1788, he resumed his relationship with Jean Armour and took a lease on the farm of Ellisland near Dumfries on 18 March (settling there on 11 June) but trained as an exciseman should farming continue to prove unsuccessful. He was appointed duties in Customs and Excise in 1789 and eventually gave up the farm in 1791.
Damn! You out-wiki d me! The 7 quid was in Scots pounds tho, I think, and he had a family to support… Early on, as a ploughman he was getting a fiver a year and so had to sell his poems in the first place…
I think he was fairly poor, at least some of the time… Biographies of him seem to go; money, women, poems, money, poems, women, money, women, poems, money, death…
A man should be greater than some of his parts… The fact he was regarded as lower standing than a pimp for selling out as an excise man hasn’t been forgotten by some…
Shame really… Someone has to do the jobs no one likes…
Interestingly, something can be simultaneously courageous, stupid, pointless, and dickish.
I think this is one of those things.
FALCON PAUNCH! with brick.
Paunch?
Courage is going out and protesting in the name of equality and a stateless, classless, truly democratic society (anarchism or communism whatever you want to call it); even though you know you are going to get the shit beaten out of you.
There can be more courage found in hooligan attacks and suicide bombings than in throwing bricks at police-men with the whole media just waiting for the police to make the slightest mistake. You can’t even get hustled without the public screaming “POLICE BRUTALITY!”, while no one will care when you throw bottles and rocks. Talk about courage.
“You can’t even get hustled without the public screaming “POLICE BRUTALITY!”, while no one will care when you throw bottles and rocks. Talk about courage.”
You must not live in the USA. I’ve watched police beating teenage girls in full view of TV cameras, and no one said a darn thing about it. Of course, this was during the reign of Bush the First, so maybe things are different now.
Yes, thanks to YouTube and mobile phone videos, footage of actual police brutality has a totally different impact now. I just want to mention the Robert Dziekański Taser incident in Canada 2007, where the RCMP ultimately failed to suppress the truth. That is a desirable development, now the public has the possibility to record and spread the facts even against the interests of powerful institutions. However, it is something *totally* different to abuse this privilege by endangering police-men and then portraying their reactions as violent and unprovoked.
Anyone who throws bricks at people deserves to be hit by a brick himself. I’m not calling to make “an eye for an eye” the official judicial practice, but I don’t have any compassion towards people who experience this. And in this case the guy is totally not in danger to be hit by bricks. A coward he is, nothing more. This caption could just as well show an adult beating up a group of children and comment it with “Courage: Choose fighting even when they outnumber you ten to one!” I would laugh if it were meant ironically, but unfortunately it isn’t in this case…
This caption could just as well show an adult beating up a group of children and comment it with “Courage: Choose fighting even when they outnumber you ten to one!”
From my babysitting days, I can verify that a child-to-adult ratio of 3:1 is enough to constitute courage, and that’s only if the adult has access to Baby Einstein and/or Barney DVDs.
In the UK they’re introducing something called ‘kettling’, which I can see is going to make the summer, if it’s warm, an interesting time…
I heard folks on BBC radio describing kettling yesterday–sounds inhumane to me. They were also talking about a new rule whereas the police could force you to erase any recording or photo image which they deemed worth erasing–said rule approved under the aegis of anti-terrorism?
Pretty much… The Terrorism Act 2007… interestingly, looking at the way the powers are been applied, it seems to be aptly named… Some of us still remeber Blair Peach having a weighted rubber hose applied to his head…Eroding rights on how long you can be detained without charge, or access to legal counsel is making us more like the former colony day by day.
I boxed up my camera and stuck it in the attic. I used to take architectural
studies. I’m not doing it in the UK any more, lest Plod decided to feel my collar, and while seeing the law interpreted, I’d hate to be the one upon whom the legal precedent is set…
Ouch. Right up there with our ‘Patriot act’ applications of tapping EVERYONE’s telephone records and calls. Sad world.
About four years ago, I tried to take a photo in the parking lot of the State Prison in Huntsville, Texas. I wasn’t near any fences, but a megaphone voice emanating from the tower instructed me to leave. The confrontational tone came as quite a shock, considering the innocent
nature of the photo.
I got back in my car, thought about it, and became angry. I got a shot, similar to the one I wanted, on the edge of the property. Someone in the tower was probably watching me through binoculars the whole time, but I wasn’t breaking any law, either.
Those people are used to having absolute say-so in their environs, and it was scary to see how easily they adapted to over-reaching their bounds. They had no real authority over me (considering that state property is not private property), but that didn’t keep them from exerting authority they didn’t have.
Your situation is worse, because, in your situation, the officers would have authority over your actions, so they wouldn’t feel the least bit inhibited in seeing that you had a really bad day, at the least. Hopefully the new law will be tested by journalists, and will be modified or eliminated soon.
For both of our countries, these days of excessive authority are frightening and inhibitory. It doesn’t feel like “The Land of the Free” over here, certainly. Nobody seems to be examining whether excessive restriction of innocent people is worth the price.
As far as people getting used to having absolute say-so in their environs, I have a phrase for you: The Stanford Prison Experiment. THank you, I’ll be here all week.
LOL! *tips the veal and tries the waiter*
Arguably they might very well not want people taking photos of the state prison because they don’t want you carefully researching and planning the best way to break somebody out. (not that YOU would, but they don’t know that.) I agree that there’s no reason to be nasty about it though.
With due respect, diss, there are times I really do wonder how you lived this long with that naive a world view.
Hell, Frou, Madam Status Quo Conservative got the Stanford Experiment, although she missed citing Milgram at Yale…
Authority has no bounds, until someone blows its sodding head off with a cry of ‘No more!’
“What Fester said,” and all very well and fine, otherwise. Still, this is “America.” I expected to be treated as a silly person, which is what I am. Instead, the guard chose to treat me like I was some sort of felon.
Perhaps I should bore you all with the nature of my photo…
*visible and audible yawn*
My gardening friend and I exchanged “roaming gnomes” by mail, literally. While my roaming gnome (“Wally Wallflower”) was seeing a bombing range and an ostrich farm in New Mexico, my friend’s roaming gnome (“Peaches”) was seeing the best (and worst) that Texas and Louisiana (specifically New Orleans) had to offer.
“Peaches” was supposed to be the innocent target of a “simple misunderstanding” when he happened upon the Texas judicial system. Can you imagine my surprise when he actually *was?*
Awww, that’s cute! When my cousin was in the second grade they did this FLat Stanley project (book about a boy who is smashed flat and sent through the mail to people) and when he sent us his Stanley we were supposed to take his picture and send it back to show where he’d been. We took his picture in the stocks at Colonial Williamsburg (we were living in VA at the time) and at the beach.
I have done something similar with other stuffed animals and the like for friends. We would film the “star” prior to a mission over Baghdad, maybe get a pic of two in the cockpit during the mission, then send it on its way. We always sent a note along describing the mission the “star’ participating in. More often than not, the mission would result in some dead tangos and we would want to keep the stuffed animal for good luck. But we had to let them go along on the journey.
Way cool!
Rhorho
Your innocent picture could be used to facilitate escape planning by the felons or their cohorts. With everything on the web these days, nothing can be left to chance. Restricting photos of a sensitive site is not encroaching on your freedoms. Other than a scary voice emanating from a loud speaker, did the jailers take any other actions against you? What part of the Constitution does it guarantee freedom from annoyance?
The Constitution doesn’t guarantee freedom from annoyance.
The first amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press
Photography is typically covered under freedom of the press.
Restrictions on photography are legally required to be posted in writing, or they are not legally enforceable.
‘Sensitive Site’ is usually used as a means to pressure those who aren’t aware of their rights into submit to violations thereof.
What was it Ben F said?
Sorry, but Ben F. said a lot of things. At what are you driving?
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Thanks. It certainly fits.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
or
But in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Jean Baptiste Le Roy (1789)
I disagree with the comment on the pic.
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
I think most of us do.
Uh… I thought that was called “stupidity.”
Ridiculous – throwing stones at police while knowing that nothing is gonna happen to you…
Depends… plastic bullets sting…
Plastic bullets aimed at the eye kill. Happened in a post-sports semi-riot in Boston a couple years ago. Tragic. College gal who was there for the post-event party died.
How do you know the bullets are plastic?
not courage…
he should use that brick to his face instead…
I think it’s called stupidity.
I’m all for courageous acts, but there’s a difference between stupid and courage. I respect a man more who picks his fights.
this is rostock-germany, 2008, meeting of the g8
no. its the december 2009 greek riots.