Cartoon Power: Danish newspaper and cartoons of Muhammad

[Arcadia]

maybe too much law in some religions... I don´t know.
interesting arguments. One of them, the "someone are pulling the strings" was heard by me thousands of times. It was used in my country for explaining almost everything. It seems a good argument at first sight but it´s never enough. Maybe is more healthy to consider and try to understand some facts as emergents of a multi-caused-something-wider-trama.

[whimsicaldeb]

I posted this in Acadia's thread in General discussions ... I'm copying it to here as well; adding my 2 cents worth.

It's worth knowing the history behind this event:

The first time the cartoons were published was September 05; and it didn't cause that much fuss; but then it was republished again with the intention to inflame in January 06 -- and it's been successful.

I've been following this too ...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... ceCode=RSS

and I got a chance to hear in person this interview/exchange between
Ahmed Younis and Stephan Richter http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion ... 02-02.html

Where Richter was saying how they printed these pictures because they wanted to inflame the muslims and Younis concurs by essentially saying it's not so much that they are trying to stop free speech (for that is support in the muslim community) but that they want it present fairly and as it really is - which is hate mongering.

And as for protecting free speech, and how that applies to this situation, I really like the example the Richter used in the interview...

Quote:

And, in Europe, for example, they report cases in France last fall where Jesus was depicted naked, with his -- with a naked erect member with a condom on, and the court in France -- there are lots of Catholics who were incensed by this --they took it to the court, and the court said, look, this is absolutely distasteful; we can understand that lots of people don't enjoy this, would have preferred not to have this published but, and this was the newspaper Liberation, but as a matter of separation of church and state, freedom of speech, all of our traditions established over the last 200 years, we have to put the freedom of expression over anything else.

In the end they both agreed that yes, the cartoons are insulting ... but not to fall for the hate mongering; and to take this to a higher level, and each group needs to continue to work towards that goal while simultaneously working out and address their own extremes within their own communities.

Sound advice … I’m not sure how many are actually listening. But on our local (Channel 7) news last night; there was a Muslim woman who was saying the same thing, and addressing the need for calm heads within the California Muslim communities.

Let's hope they prevail.[/quote]

I just want to say one more thing ...

Black people, in this country, were made the butt of white peoples, cruel "jokes" and suppression for many a year before it all became too much and came to head in 1964 with the race riots. And many a bigot said they were just being funny, and can’t they take a joke and yada, yada, yada … but everyone knows the KKK is cruel group – and everything they do is designed to ‘inflame.’

The moral of all this ...

You can only push people around for so long before they finally have enough and strike back. In addition … “when you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.’ – Bob Dylan; “Like A Rolling Stone” – is true.


Keep treating people like they’re nothing; keep making sure they get ‘nothing’ ~ including respect … and it’ll come back and bite you in the ass every time. Like trying to keep a ball held down under water – when it final gets loose – it comes out like a rocket, slamming into anything in its path.

Don’t give in to their twisted desire for continuous inflammation… don’t let them twist your reason, your hearts.

[firsty]

this isnt as simple as race vs race. it's islam who has made this about islam. we forget that half of the christian population in palestine was displaced when israel became a jewish state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Christian). the nationstates in the middle east have established themselves as islamic states, so ANY political disagreement with any islamic nationstate can be construed, if one wishes, as anti-islam. that loads the dice a great deal. if we have a disagreement with a south american nation, it's political. if we have a similar disagreement with a middle eastern nation, it's suddenly religious.

this goes to the significance of the separation of church and state. it's not just for internal freedoms. but any time a state is associated too closely with religion, bad BAD things happen. God forgives, but religions? fuggedaboutit. so now sanctions against iraq are considered to be christian crusades against islam.

the democratic ideals that built america were based on philosophies of government. democracy is advanced, the human tendency is towards freedom. people can talk all they want about the cultural divide, but the fact is, western culture progressed towards freedom of expression, separation of church and state, democracy. it's obviously not perfect and often we take steps back, but that doesnt mean that western states are simply different from religious nations, it means that western states are more advanced.

and it's a shame, too, because western culture is what originally destroyed middle eastern culture, which was much more advanced at the time and, yes, that was a religious conflict. but that was a thousand fucking years ago. if i get into an argument with a black guy, it's not right for him to use that as a tipping point on top of centuries of white oppression to push him over the edge and burn my fucking house down.

[Arcadia]

" if i get into an argument with a black guy, it's not right for him to use that as a tipping point on top of centuries of white oppression to push him over the edge and burn my fucking house down"

He has no right , but it can happen anyway. Maybe the notions of factor disposicional y factor actual are in this logic. Maybe history is not only past.

[firsty]

well, of course it can happen. anything can happen. i can stab my boss in the eye for looking at me funny.

[stilltrucking]

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"

I do not know exactly what I did to offend pelerine so much but to this day group minds scare the shit out of me.

[stilltrucking]

Thinking about Z post

Martin Niemoller's famous quotation:



Quote:
There is a more than pedantic point to insisting that the Niemoeller quotation be truthfully used, if at all. Through the texts corrupted to promote special interests, literally millions of school children and also adults are being taught lies about the Holocaust. The damage is not as serious, perhaps, as the steady infiltration of "Holocaust revision" (i.e., denial). But it does help to create an atmosphere of playing fast and loose with the facts through intellectually dishonest and self-serving manipulation of the text.
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/niem.htm

Man that quotation is popping up all over the place. I just saw one that said “First they came for the cartoonists”

[firsty]

there are few pens that are actually mightier than the sword and pel's is one of them. i dont think she was a product of groupspeak on litkicks.

jews were murdered in the holocaust. one product of the islamic outrage at showing muhammed with a bomb on his head is that now they are going to publish a whole bunch of freedom of speech pictures about the holocaust.

making fun of someone who blows himself up for a religious cause is different than making fun of people who were summarily murdered for their backgrounds.

i guess the danish response might be to publish funny pictures of 6-yr-old palestinian children shot in the head by israeli guards. or maybe showing mass graves of kurds?

it's all freedom of expression. i'm not saying that the guy who drew the picture of mr bombhead isnt a twit, i'm saying that it doesnt justify the response of actual harm being caused.

in the end, God or Allah will say to the cartoonist (assuming Allah was right): you're a dick. go to hell. He'll also say to the people who blasphemed his religion by killing in the name of it: fuck you. you're going to hell, too.

my ancestors were irish and hungarian. both victims of slaughters. everybody's got a reason for something.

if you ask a different person every time, you'll get another justification.

we sit in funeral masses while the priest decides that sometimes there is no answer for us losing someone. but if you ask the right person, there was a reason. there was a fundamentalist reason for new orleans drowning. there was a christian reason for the tsanami. there was a jewish reason for the egyptian ferry sinking. there was an islamic reason for sharon's stroke.

everybody's got an excuse.

[stilltrucking]

I edited some irrelevant off topic stuff out of this post I hope it reads betterh

I am curious as microbe about why this is an issue all of a sudden. The international situation is always desperate

[firsty]

i hear ya, i just dont get the connection. i hope you dont feel you have to convince me of the fact of the holocaust, or pel either.

[stilltrucking]

I guess I was thinking about what it matters, I don't get it either. sorry to confuse you, I thought pelerine was jamelah for a while, . The Rodney King riots were called an infatada. a uprising. WD has a point. Palestine gets a bad press, Israel calls it self defense, sometimes it seems like tit for tat out of a macabre Laurel and Hardy movie. I wish Eisenhower would make a cameo appearance like he did in 1956 when he told israel, france and germany to fucking back on out of Egypt.

[firsty]

i hear ya. i think wd had a point, too.

nobody is innocent. certainly not apartheid israel, certainly not capitalist imperialism US, certainly not selfish religious extremists, certainly not the military industrial complex.

i think lightnin rod hit the nail on the head. wars are fought for profound reasons not understood by focusing on a single symbolic tipping point.

for the purposes of this discussion, i think this cartoon mayhem exposes a certain problem with middle eastern society in general.

[firsty]

(pel is very much NOT jamelah)

[e_dog]

firsty wrote:

"and i dont think that they are uncivilized because of their religion. i think they are uncivilized because of their society. "

and by 'they' apparently he meant they the violent muslim protesters and by 'we' he means we the good clean Westerners.

but i think its more like this: they are uncivilized because of our society.

that is, the christian-capitalist world created and empowered islamic jihad as a direct (bi)product of centuries of crusades and cold war.

(tho, i prefer not to speak in the inane terms of 'us' and 'them' unless one means by 'us' sane, basically moral people worldwide and by 'them' one means the set consisting of both the Bin Laden faction of terrorism and the Bush faction of terrorism, in which case it could be said that they are uncivilized because of their society, namely capitalist-militaristic society.)

[firsty]

wrong, wrong and wrong.

first, i'm right here. you can talk to me using second person personal pronouns.

second, i pretty much explained precisely what i meant when i said "they." if it's unclear, i meant the protesters.

third, yes, uncivilized compared to "us," altho i wasnt using "us," as you did, to make a point, or something, i said, "western".

the degree of civilization is relative. we as a global society are more civilized than the cavemen. western society is, i think, as i pointed out in an earlier post, more civilized than middle eastern society. i think my reasons were democracy, separation of church and state, freedom of expression.

instead of trying to force my argument into ethnocentric boxes, could you explain why i shouldnt consider middle eastern islamic states to be less civilized than western states?

or simply, does it end with it being the fault of the western world that the middle east is the way it is? western nations suppressed philosophy, democracy, freedom? that can be your argument, if you want it to be. i guess i'm giving you another chance at that one, tho.