Many bloodsucking insects

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

(d) Case in point: No one has done it yet, but say if a film came out about the Rape of Nanking, where the story portrayed the Chinese victims as the bad guys and the Japanese Invaders as innocent bystanders, I'm sorry to say we would probably be forced to write a disclaimer at least pointing out that such a film does not reflect the opinions in any way of IMFDB or it's members.

I think the most obvious example of a film from the other end of the political spectrum that needed a disclaimer would be The Birth of a Nation, since, as with Redacted, real people were killed because of it.

To be honest, this guy is a troll, plain and simple. He's made less than 100 edits in two years with his last one before this in March (and a grand total of three edits during the whole of 2010). If you want to know his angle on this, here he tells us he's an Iraqi. And with this:

I am a liberal left-winger, but find the term Hippie insulting as I am a hard-working, well-educated individual who will probably end up earning and contributing to society more than most conservative extremists out there

...We find out he's yet to find out what the outside of a university looks like. I'd guess from the general attitude we have a modern Film Studies student, ladies and gentlemen, which also brings in the attitude that all movies are propaganda of one stripe of another (a concept so patently stupid I didn't feel like explaining why it was wrong to him).

Let's have fun with quotes!

if this place becomes politicised and more like an informal NRA-type forum, it will lose all credibility

He's talking about a disclaimer undermining us as a source which has been where it is for two years and longer than he has been registered, so I guess we must have lost all credibility ages ago anyway. So, no point changing it now.

Well the portrayal of US soldiers as all being the 'Good Guys' is personally insulting to me who have had friends blown up by crazed psychopaths for simply being in what they designate as the wrong place in their own country

As MPM said, no, it's not the same at all. Nobody has ever murdered Germans because of Saving Private Ryan or Vietnamese because of We Were Soldiers or aliens because of Independence Day or robots because of Transformers. The Patriot, much as I personally find a particular scene in it obnoxious (the church-burning never happened in the War of Independence, Das Reich Panzer Division did it in occupied France, so the movie is charmingly accusing the Redcoats of an atrocity carried out by the Waffen SS), hasn't resulted in any English being lynched in the states.

Now if, as above, we had The Birth of a Nation (or Triumph of the Will, The Eternal Jew (the 1940 one), or whatever) up here with no disclaimer, he might be in a position to claim bias. But there's otherwise no equivalency, and I only suggested he might be allowed a disclaimer because I was tired and not really thinking straight. Movies like Redacted are propaganda by design (another such example would be The Trial of Billy Jack, which seriously suggested Washington ordered My Lai and showed a National Guardsman being ordered to open fire on an unarmed kid during a campus riot by a superior holding his sidearm to the guy's head) and should be treated as such, and it's ridiculous to go onto an American-run site and expect any signs of American-ness to be carefully hidden so as not to offend him with their horrible patriotism.

I would much rather put the lives of 10 US soldiers at risk from (well deserved) revenge attacks...

Ah, so he's one of those pro-lynching liberals I keep hearing about. Charming. This is the thing; he's trying not to say it, but you can tell from his words that he wants the disclaimer down because he believes any positive word about the US military is a lie and all American soldiers really are bloodthirsty psychotics. This backs that up:

It just proves this wiki is run by ignorant red-neck gun-lovers who lack the open-mindedness and moderateness to question the actions of their service members

...Since in his view, anyone who is "moderate" and "open minded" will apparently agree with him that the US military is evil. Like all extremists, he honestly can't comprehend how anyone could have any view but his own, so anyone who disagrees with him is either a liar or too stupid to see the truth (hence his constantly insulting the intelligence of the people he's replying to). He's tried to backpedal on that by saying he only meant that if we banned him, but he said that if anyone felt he was wrong to remove the disclaimer or banned him then it would prove we were redneck etc etc.

Now, with that right there, there's this:

Ok, I take back the term 'Redneck'

This is his idea of an apology; like a little kid, he apologises for using the word, but not for the sentiment behind it. He doesn't apologise for saying we're ignorant. He doesn't apologise for saying we're closed-minded extremists. He clearly, as I said, judged each and every member of this site as a hairy sister-fucking troglodyte before he even started this exchange, and his words show he isn't the slightest bit sorry for thinking we're rednecks, just for the fact that he actually said so. From just his last reply:

I think it is your credibility that has flown out the window

cease your groundless and uncalled-for insults

I am trying to have an educated discussion, not childish name-calling

just calling me different names like some school-age kid

frivilous and ignorant

you're projecting your own prejudice, ignorance and dillusions

prejudice in your own mentality

maybe suggestive of your own selective memory and bad reading skills

Yeah, this kiddie isn't talking down to us like because he's decided he's better than us, no siree. He's clearly convinced himself that we have to justify ourselves to him, apparently unaware that he's nobody on this wiki and has barely contributed a thing, certainly not enough to justify his absurdly smug attitude.

Ban him. He clearly has no desire to work with anyone else on this site, so let's let him take his awesome brain somewhere us fumbling apemen won't bother it.

[funkychinaman]

Can we just explain our objections in the intro, including the two deaths that this film has directly contributed to? I'd be happy to whip one up.

[MoviePropMaster2008]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

Can we just explain our objections in the intro, including the two deaths that this film has directly contributed to? I'd be happy to whip one up.

Don't change anything until others have had a chance to think about the matter. And it's not only 2 deaths. It's much more. But I don't think we need to start chronicling all the death and mayhem 'inspired' by the film since some of that is 'arguable' and we don't need to go down that road either.

[MT2008]

(1.) This Tec-9 dude is wrong (IMO), but I would appreciate it if you guys would stop using his behavior as an excuse to bash university students and academics. In case you've all forgotten, I am a graduate student, and I'm not a leftist. Also, if Tec-9 thinks his education automatically makes his opinions superior to ours, he'll have to argue his way past me first (and while I don't know for sure, I can almost assure you that the university where I'm doing my M.A. is ranked considerably above his own).

(2.) It is one thing to use the forum for debates (provided they don't degenerate into personal attacks and name-calling, which used to happen with BurtReynoldsMustache), but the site itself is for gun IDs only. The discussion pages should only be used for this purpose, not debating politics. I really wish you guys had just told Tec-9 to shut up and take it to the forum, and deleted his comments, instead of participating.

(3.) While I have zero respect for Tec-9's politics or his opinion of U.S. soldiers, I do think that it is somewhat unnecessary to have a disclaimer on the "Redacted" page. IMFDB exists to document guns in films/TV/video games only; the inclusion of anti-gun or anti-military media on the site should not be mistaken for anything other than completion purposes (as opposed to our political leanings). We can add this (or some equivalent universal disclaimer) in an appropriate heading on the Rules, Standards, and Principles page, but anyone who thinks that our page for "Redacted" indicates our support for Brian De Palma's politics needs their head examined anyway (IMO). Isn't it fairly intuitive that someone who would contribute to a site such as IMFDB would lean to the right on the political spectrum, and therefore find "Redacted" to be abhorrent?

[MT2008]

Oh, and Evil Tim, I appreciate your refutation of Tec-9's comments, but you do realize you're preaching to the choir, right?

[MoviePropMaster2008]

Originally Posted by MT2008

Oh, and Evil Tim, I appreciate your refutation of Tec-9's comments, but you do realize you're preaching to the choir, right?

Tim's post was actually brilliant. Tec-9's debating style is akin to much of the liberal left I have to deal with. I suppose my mind is not well tuned to "deflect and divert" tactics. I prefer honesty and straight talk and their intellectual dishonesty is astounding at times. I could not have designed a better refutation, and using his own quotes actually helped clarify my own thoughts on the matter. I always ended up more FLUSTERED than not, to I really had trouble engineering an appropriate response that fully outlined his hypocrisy.

On the point of disclaimers, I actually DISAGREE with you. I knew you never thought it necessary, but I feel VERY STRONGLY about it. I understand your point about pure neutrality on the site. But then, an 'academic' would think this way LOL. (just kidding, but you SHOULD know that a lot of academics see everything PURELY as an intellectual exercise, devoid of real world consequences, which is why many people get frustrated with them. There are tons of PhDs who have no clue how the real world works). And i know you understand other peoples' strong feelings otherwise on this one issue.

Okay, here is a digression. This dude, POI, Burt Reynolds Mustache. They create an interesting phenomenon in that they 'push' the envelope but never really far enough to merit banning them when they start. It's like it is an 'intellectual exercise' to see how much prodding it takes to make other members of IMFDB snap. It's like a kid poking you with a stick, gently over and over again.

My view is that we don't need people who feel pleasure in prodding others with provocative postings. But that's just an opinion. But I'm getting the same POI vibe here, albeit his world view is far more offensive to me (the quote alone of supporting the deaths of American troops for "much deserved" revenge by Muslims) crossed a line in my mind.

One important point: Other than pissing off a lot of members, this guy's contribution to this site consists purely of correcting our grammar, misspellings and some formatting changes. No information re guns. No Information re movies, tvs, anime, Videogames. He just walks in an restructures our sentences so that they flow more smoothly (sometimes the changes are irrelevant since the original wording was just fine). Nothing heinous here, but something I just noticed.

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

On the point of disclaimers, I actually DISAGREE with you. I knew you never thought it necessary, but I feel VERY STRONGLY about it. I understand your point about pure neutrality on the site.

In all honesty, I don't feel strongly (not enough to really protest, anyway). But my opinion is that the disclaimer is unnecessary. I think the issue is legitimate even if the same cannot be said about Tec-9's world view.

As for the new disclaimer that was posted by Funkychinaman: If there is going to be a new disclaimer at all, I prefer the older one to this new one. This one is even less neutral than the previous.

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

But then, an 'academic' would think this way LOL. (just kidding, but you SHOULD know that a lot of academics see everything PURELY as an intellectual exercise, devoid of real world consequences, which is why many people get frustrated with them. There are tons of PhDs who have no clue how the real world works). And i know you understand other peoples' strong feelings otherwise on this one issue.

First of all, not sure about "academics" in general (that is a very broad term), but in my field, Political Science, I'd say that those "intellectual exercises" are how we come up with ways to explain state/non-state entities' behavior so that policymakers can make the appropriate decisions. For instance, the theory of "democratic peace" underlies the tendency of American policymakers to promote democratization abroad, and also makes a convenient argument against moron leftists who see moral equivalence between democracies and dictatorships.

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

Though I like your post, DOOM or violent videogames did not inspire the Columbine shootings. Bullying did.

Minor digression, bullying didn't cause Columbine, either. Read this (yes, it's Slate, but they're right this time).

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

Don't change anything until others have had a chance to think about the matter. And it's not only 2 deaths. It's much more. But I don't think we need to start chronicling all the death and mayhem 'inspired' by the film since some of that is 'arguable' and we don't need to go down that road either.

Well, I can't change anything, since the page is still locked.

For your consideration:

"'Redacted' is a 2007 film that is fictionalized account of the Mahmudiyah killings that occurred during the Iraq War, by writer and director Brian De Palma. The film was met with mixed reviews and extremely poor box office sales, with a total worldwide gross of less than a million dollars.

This film has been criticized for it's depiction of American servicemen, with a some going as far as accusing writer/director Brian De Palma and producer Mark Cuban of treason. Some have also criticized the film for not showing any repercussions of the crimes themselves, as the perpetrators of the actual Mahmudiyah killings received harsh sentences, ranging from 27 months for obstruction of justice to life imprisonment without possibly of parole for the ringleader. There was also the fear that the movie could incite violence towards Americans. These fears were realized in March of 2010 when two American airmen were killed and two others wounded in an attack allegedly perpetrated by a Islamic extremist who had watched a clip from this film on Youtube.

The following guns were used in the film Redacted"

[predator20]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

Well, I can't change anything, since the page is still locked.

For your consideration:

"'Redacted' is a 2007 film that is fictionalized account of the Mahmudiyah killings that occurred during the Iraq War, by writer and director Brian De Palma. The film was met with mixed reviews and extremely poor box office sales, with a total worldwide gross of less than a million dollars.

This film has been criticized for it's depiction of American servicemen, with a some going as far as accusing writer/director Brian De Palma and producer Mark Cuban of treason. Some have also criticized the film for not showing any repercussions of the crimes themselves, as the perpetrators of the actual Mahmudiyah killings received harsh sentences, ranging from 27 months for obstruction of justice to life imprisonment without possibly of parole for the ringleader. There was also the fear that the movie could incite violence towards Americans. These fears were realized in March of 2010 when two American airmen were killed and two others wounded in an attack allegedly perpetrated by a Islamic extremist who had watched a clip from this film on Youtube.

The following guns were used in the film Redacted"

Sounds good to me. Let's see what the others think.

[Markit]

Originally Posted by predator20

Sounds good to me. Let's see what the others think.

I would disagree with the disclaimer because it sounds unnecessarily partisan - besides the issue that MPM2008 pointed out that it is difficult to claim that the movie directly inspired the terrorist attack when it is probably one of several triggers (which is equivalent to saying DOOM inspired the Columbine shootings), it also begs the question for casual imfdb visitors of why the movie is even posted if it is so clearly offensive to the sensibilities of the mods. I feel that the current disclaimer was sufficient to convey why the page was posted (for reference purposes), whereas this disclaimer just seems vindictive.