Reaction? Certainly. Calculated? Probably.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 5, 2006 6:33:02 PM | 101

Monolycus' link to the australian fishwrap where silly politicians, allegedly to the left of the current govt, are still framing the debate purely in terms of free speech, reminds me that the NZ prime minister has been running around like a chook with her head cut off for the last week.

The line has been that both fishwraps which chose to print a couple of representative 'samples' of these obscenities were part of the Fairfax group, an Australian owned media conglomerate. One of the TV channels which showed them is Canadian owned, but her real sticking point is that the state owned TVNZ also showed them obliquely (ie someone reading them), but nevertheless we could read them too.

TVNZ and the government are at war at the moment, so both are sabotaging each other as much as possible. In a recent international event that TVNZ had some exclusive access to, the NZ govt. tried to steer the source to the foreign owned, private TV station rather than use TVNZ!

I'm not sure that many in the middle east will be able to conceive of a state owned TV channel that deliberately does the opposite of what it knows the govt will like.

Anyway people still have to eat and many will have noticed that while the Danes have been considered fair game in Syria and Lebanon, the French haven't been.

If it wasn't for the fact that ordinary kiwis will bear the brunt of a trade boycott; in particular the Muslim slaughtermen that prepare the halal meat, little would give me greater pleasure than to see the mealy-mouthed suits who are pretending to care about Muslim sensibilities, have their wallets lightened.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 5, 2006 8:41:47 PM | 102

sorry to enter so tardively & tentatively into the fray - but i am in complete agreement with b

in essence & in substance the 'danish' cartoons & their reproduction are no different from those anti semitic cartoons that appeared in nazi tracts & their journal of filth - der sturmer

these catoons are a stupid but calculated insult at the people of that book - - islam -

i am no friend of fundamentalists but again in happy mutual infantilism we have bothe perpetrator & victim do their crude dance of death before us

& this crude dance of death will become the war with iran - of that war - there can be no question that the empire is stupid enough to enter & generalise the war - covering the sands of ancient arab & persian lands with blood - but it will also be their blood

if the little fellers playing their videowargames in washington think they know war - then they will find a new meaning when 10 divisions of the irananian armies carve in the bodypolitic of america another completely catastrophic configuration

there is no humour in these cartoons - nor any joy in defiling the thought sacred & interior of others - it is the same foxcnnbbc pornography that implies enlightenment, reasonableness & objectivity when it is in fact the contrary - the bloody contrary

& what a terrible irony that the victims of der sturmer are the leaders in the charge against islam

in this catastrophe that we call modern life victim & perpetrator become one ugly unit

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 5, 2006 8:41:55 PM | 103

& on a paranthetic but i thin important point - i think your instincts b - both politcal & human & i thank you for the rapidity of your response to what is not an accidental provocation but a furthering of the divide between cultures at a time when arab blood fills the earth

& jr - i am so tired of what passes for reasonableness - can you not get it through your thick head that what the isralis are doing follow exactly the forms both abstract & concrete of the race hatred of the nazis. raul hilberg could not be any clearer on this point

israel as a nation is orchestrating such mindless terro against the palestinian people that any degredation in the relation between the west & the middle east risk fatalities both abstract & concrete

i am so fucking tired of the tedious insults against the arab & persina people at a time when our cultures are killing them, hourly. i am tired of all people being painted with the same brush.

it is never stated - the deep & forever debt we have to these people - their civilisation is the mother of our own

whatever comes out of this white house & out of the mouths of consecutive israeli govts does a disservice to their people & will finally lead to those same people partaking in a bloodbath so cherished by the christian fundamentalist of american culture

do you not understand - that i do see different bodies when i see a sharon or a bush or our iranian friend or tyrant after tyrant who owe their very existence & legitimacy to the policies of a psychotic american administration that has turned our lives into hell

eben a sympathiser of the israeli govt would not have to look to far to see the resemblance in the defiling of islamic culture & faith - with the destruction of shtetly culture in the ancient pale by the exterminatory policies of an enjoined west who deeply wanted the programmed of the national socialists to work

you know when i see that danish cartoonist i am reminded of the ukranian farmer wielding his axe at yet another jewish head at babi yar

humanity as a whole must adress the genocidal impulse & do away with the pest that try to legitimise & normalise it

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 5, 2006 9:11:33 PM | 104

Jeez we're gonna end up arguing how many blasphemies can be fitted on the head of a pin at this rate.

I just made one of my increasingly infrequent forays over to Kos to discover misdirection; (talking about other cartoons which I have never heard being discussed in the West or by Muslims at any time in this arguement.)

the misdirection also contains the blame the victim meme that the sleazy racist 'culture editor' of the Jyllands-Posten has been pushing from the day he made the stupid decision to publish the 'cartoons'.

Even worse at Kos is the sight of infidels telling the world whether or not muslims have a right to consider the publication of an image of Mohammed a blasphemy. And attempt to usurp Moslem theologians role is made when we are told that these cartoons are images not idolatry.

Whether or not there is any truth to that is for islam to decide, and not up to infidels.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 5, 2006 9:19:35 PM | 105

debs

i know i am crde as anyone in my anti imperialism & slothrop is correct to warn me against an impicit racist character to my absolute hatred ofthe culture of the empire

but i think in the end it is the crudity of the supposed debates of those who speak so often of freedom of liberty but hate it when people of colour want to make it concrete

since infancy - tho my family was without faith - my obsession with the jewish question - was the result of knowing that as a humanity we committed 1 2 3 many vietnams because we had not understtod why ensatgruppen took people into forests & blew ther brains apart, why soime engineer in frankfurt made gas chambers possible, why so called nationalist in the east took a particular delight in being judenfrei

but to witness in the late 20th century & the 21st israelis become themselves a genocidal culture & that is what they are & have become - not only towards the palestinians but to the arab nation - is for me of the deepst possible sadness

to see the warsaw ghetto uprising being played out by palestinians, or iraquis, or lebanese - is a horrific irony

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 5, 2006 9:45:41 PM | 106

@giap we can get through this, though like you, I sometimes despair that we will.

This cartoon debate is a classic example of the tendency of even 'enlightened whitefellas' to only allow other people the dubious 'privilege of victimhood' on their terms.

Whenever I commit the error of travelling to developing nations 'tourist destinations' it seems to me that the problem is getting worse not better.

Not long before I returned to NZ I took a bunch of young sportsmen up to a tournament in South East Asia. My mob who came from a town which is comprised of a large and diverse bunch of cultures and everyone has a story, were fine, particularly since the team was pretty diverse and included members whose antecedants came from the country we were visiting.

But players from other parts of Australia as well as the rest of the developed world were probably worse behaved than the young people who used to visit SE Asia when I was a kid and the towns hadn't become 'tourist developments'.

The real eye-opener was some of the other kids from the developed world whose families originated from nations not unlike the one we were visiting.

Institutional or structural racism can have a really corrosive effect on people from marginalised cultures.

'Assimilation' or 'absorbtion' only seems to come about by the minority culture adopting the mores of the dominant culture. The dominant culture frequently makes no effort at all to make this a two way process. And yes that is one hell of an obvious truth, but still, seeing it acted out by young people most of whom lack the maturity to have any insight into their behaviour really brings it home.

Any unique objectives that particular cultures/religions/philosophies may have had becomes buried by the one supreme goal, common amongst people who strive for excellence in their endeavours and successful sportspeople can typify that mindset.

The supreme goal? The one goal that seems to be universally appreciated in the over-developed world, the pursuit of material wealth.

Although you don't have to travel further than the local mall to witness people treating those unfortunate enough to have to earn their daily bread assisting others, as sub-humans, behaving that way in a foreign culture has always puzzled me.

Why travel, if not to engage with people as you travel? Instead of treating every opportunity for interaction with a person in a foreign culture as a gift, to be enjoyed and remembered, it seems many prefer to use it as a power trip to lighten the load in their own dreary existences by kicking someone lower in 'the foodchain'.

And so the cycle of victim to perpetrator continues.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 5, 2006 11:47:18 PM | 107

Whether or not there is any truth to that is for islam to decide, and not up to infidels.

but i think in the end it is the crudity of the supposed debates of those who speak so often of freedom of liberty but hate it when people of colour want to make it concrete

This cartoon debate is a classic example of the tendency of even 'enlightened whitefellas' to only allow other people the dubious 'privilege of victimhood' on their terms.

--well, I'm glad that the revealed truth has finally settled the issue so that there is no need to consider any other perception. sure makes life easier for all crude infidel whiteys.

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 6, 2006 3:05:29 AM | 108

@annie:

Ah, I think I see what's wrong here: we have been talking at cross purposes. When I'm talking about people making death threats, I'm not talking about Muslim leaders who are pointing out that these cartoons are stupid and likely to make relations between Islam and Europe worse. (They're quite right about that, but equally they aren't saying anything that anyone with a brain couldn't see without their help.) That isn't making a death threat. I'm referring to the URL (which was not linked but merely posted) above, http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/747. (See, particularly, the second paragraph, where it talks about Hizbollah and/or Nazem al-Masbah.) Now, does that help?

P.S. Of course I'm a freak; I read Moon of Alabama. It's the non-freaks that you have to watch out for.

P.P.S. Do you have any idea how hard it is to avoid using pronouns in English? I spent a disproportionate amount of time rereading that post to eliminate them, and then when I reread it a moment ago, I still see some.

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Feb 6, 2006 3:45:17 AM | 109

@fauxreal Is there a particular reason why you took 3 quotes by two different people out of context and splahed this pastiche up as a single unattributed quotation?

Perhaps you were just endeavoring to prove the point that Giap and I had been trying to make in our own clumsy fashion.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 6, 2006 5:30:39 AM | 110

@DID
Thanks for replying about waterbirth - I was missing all that NZ history. This is not a theoretical issue for me, and I get what you're saying (similar debates in my state, albeit different history), but if all goes well, midwives and water birth are probably in the near future here. Nothing doctrinaire, just trying to get the best possible results for a very personal process.

---wrenching mind back into the discussion. My main concerns are two: that this debate will be used to put state force under more or less direct Christian fundamentalist control; and that the other 'upside' for our political religionists is to make it more and more acceptable (demanded even) to demonize all kinds of Ay-rabs.

I assume that the attacks on the embassies are more political (what we call fundamentalist) than theological, and that the people organizing the attacks see the cartoons as an opportunity to unite a fragmented and marginalized Islamic world. Likewise for our political religionists here, they would like to unite the enemy the better to expropriate them indiscriminately. And, of course, once a population starts new kinds of indiscriminate expropriation in foreign countries, it will set about doing the same to its own poor and marginalized in short order.

So, if we are determined to do something more than enlighten our individual selves, and if we are stuck between two opposing political strategies - what else is there besides a boycott of the provocateurs? So who are the provocateurs. And who bankrolls them?

As far as I can tell from reading here, at EuroTrib (and dKos), it is Jyllends-Posten that chose to run back to the old colonialist imagery such as the impossibly blind 'wise men' of Islam and the women we need to rescue from them. So, if we are serious about some international fellowship (and, by the way, I am not convinced that there is any other method of enlightenment than the Theravada/personal one. It's how evolution works on physical levels. Why not on mental ones too?) then perhaps boycotting the advertisers who pay for this neo-colonialist crap might be the only way to say it like we mean it.

I imagine our cousins in the Cradle of Civilization will understand if we cannot dissuade our governments from propaganda and psyops just by asking nicely. Likewise they may understand if we suspect their political religionists. But what will they understand if we keep paying the salaries of the most prominent corporations that are openly herding us into a world of pogroms and blood feuds?

They might conclude correctly that we are saying to whatever gods we fear: "Am I my brothers keeper?" Any news on who advertises mosty heavily in Jyllends-Posten?

Posted by: citizen | Feb 6, 2006 12:22:20 PM | 111

VWYCI, it's not the use of pronouns per se, if you follow the NLP link you can grasp more easily intent to instruct. ie, in your 2:44 post re b. "you're saying" , then you proceed to translate his statement in a way that is not what he was saying in a way that clearly twisted the intention of his post. by using the 'you know, you say, as you know', one can use this effectively for both positive and negative purposes. interestingly, to illustrate my point " Does annie want to kill someone?" "annie's potential victim " " group to which annie belongs." "so annie can kill and use b's defence, if b's defense is allowed." (this is called a two for one, not only did i not claim anyone had authorithy or justification to kill, b never defended one's right to) you succeeded in accomplishing this w/out the use of pronouns! what i did was point out we were already killing (and our warnings were meaningless) and b questioned if we were in a position to 'judge the outrage and highlighted the hypocricy neither one of us defended this.

now, does that help?

this little back and forth is not working for me. if you have something more to say to me you can take it off line, it's a bore i don't want to use more bandwidth on. i won't be responding to you further on this thread

Posted by: annie | Feb 6, 2006 2:36:33 PM | 112

@annie:

Nobody is forcing you to reply. Or even to read my messages, if you disagree with them. But, equally, you can't tell me stop posting, either.

You keep subtly lumping groups together. "We were killing people" -- who's "we"? The U.S., presumably, and yet you can go whole hours in the U.S. without meeting someone who has killed somebody. Perhaps you mean "U.S. soldiers and government agents were killing people," with an implied "this was done with the complicity of the entire population of the country." And because "we were killing people," "we" are not in a position to judge outrage? Nonsense. I have killed nobody. Neither (I presume) have you. Have people been killed in our names, contrary to our wishes? Yes. Are we guilty for it? No. If Muslims in general are not guilty of the crimes of terrorists, then you and I are not guilty of the crimes of the "we" of the U.S., the west, or the Bush regime. Stop trying to hold their guilt for them. We (you and I and whoever else is reading this post) may be guilty of other things; we may be supremely guilty of the most terrible crimes that a sadistic criminal could imagine in a thousand years of planning; but we are not guilty of those specific crimes, and there is nothing to be gained -- no redress to be achieved, no catharsis to be had -- by pretending that we are.

Posted by: | Feb 6, 2006 8:20:32 PM | 113

From DiD:
Is there a particular reason why you took 3 quotes by two different people out of context and splahed this pastiche up as a single unattributed quotation?

I assumed ppl were reading the posts and understood where they came from...some find overwrought prose enjoyable.

but the main reason I did it was because I thought you might come through with just such a bitchy and wrong-headed reply.

I think I've finally learned my lesson now. Thank you.

adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 7, 2006 1:26:51 AM | 114

The EU’s executive office today warned Iran that attempts to boycott Danish goods or cancel trade contracts with European countries would lead to a further rupture in already cool relations.

Boycotting goods is perfectly legal....... ROTLMAO, so the EU will boycott Iranian oil....... yeah right!

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Feb 7, 2006 8:01:14 AM | 115

@fauxreal - adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.

Oh please no. Come back fauxreal. I for one do value your comments.

Posted by: b | Feb 7, 2006 1:07:47 PM | 116

me too faux,

Curious this cartoon thing, Cheny tonight on the news hour reiterated the line about "valuing the freedom of press" over and above the fray it has created. Which after yesterdays demonstrations all over the place and in Iraq where some 5k demonstrated in solidarity with Sadr. One should have expected, because of the anti-west(american/coalition/occupation) sentiments generated, that the publication has in effect givin the resistance and al Qaeda a renewed energy and focus. That the publication has givin the "enemy" the preverbial aid an comfort we are so often accused of through criticism. Odd that the administration would defend such a blatent (and racist) and unnecessary provication that has shown real on the ground unambiguous evidence of their position being compromised. While at the same time going ballistic and hysterical with anti-patriotic accusations about criticisms from the left, which have shown absolutely no corresponding evidence on the ground.

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 8, 2006 4:15:40 AM | 117

fauxreal, you have always been one of my (very very)favorite posters, i know i told you that long ago from whiskey bar days. it's still true.

better just to bitch slap back then slink away.

Posted by: annie | Feb 8, 2006 4:34:59 AM | 118

p.s. faux, the only reason i didn't say that earlier was because i made an ass out of myself already on this thread and said i wasn't commenting here again. but your comment went thru my heart like an arrow when i read it earlier today, i just didn't have the courage until now to respond.

Posted by: annie | Feb 8, 2006 4:39:17 AM | 119

rotten in denmark

Daniel Pipes – the controversial anti-Arabist appointed by George W. Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace – and authored an entirely uncritical profile of Pipes, originally published in Jyllands-Posten and translated here.

Pipes is the founder of Campus Watch, an organization devoted to stamping out any and all academic treatments of Middle Eastern affairs that don't conform to his narrow strictures, which might be mildly described as fanatically hostile to Islam, Arabs, and anyone who opposes his extreme Israeli nationalism. Campus Watch is engaged in compiling blacklists of professors who refuse to spout the pro-Israel party line, and actively encourages students to spy on their teachers and report miscreants.

None of this is mentioned in the profile authored by Rose: instead, we are given a long disquisition on his subject's view of "militant Islam" as a threat supposedly on a par with communism and fascism – again, uncritically, in spite of the lack of proportion evinced by such an extravagant claim, to say nothing of the lack of evidence marshaled by Pipes.

Posted by: annie | Feb 8, 2006 4:47:28 AM | 120

oops,that was supposed to be in blockquotes

Posted by: annie | Feb 8, 2006 4:53:15 AM | 121

Pipes is a nuts. Anyone that claims that Islamic world was just fine and rosy between 622 and 1200 is a complete idiot with NO historical knowledge - and anyone who claims that Islamic world was just a backwards of inbred idiots between 1200 and 1800 is just as idiotic. Then of course this idiot conflates fascism and communism as the same bad thing...
That Danish paper quite looks like a rightist tool. Then again, most European papers have barely any notion of who is a nutcase or not in the US and you'd find some centrist clueless ones taking the AEI or Heritage Foundation's words at face value, and publishing comments of their goons as if they were legitimate and decent analysis.

Concerning Fauxreal, I suppose too many here overlook women's highly legitimate sensitivity to the fact that the brainwashed idiots demonstrating, asking for censorship when not for the cartoonists' heads would be just too glad to demonstrate because Western women not wearing headscarves is just as big an insult to them as the cartoons.
As I said before, my position here, and the position of many in the left and many progressives, isn't only a free speech issue, it's an issue of freedom as a whole, we're not fighting just for stupid borderline caricatures, but because sooner or later the fucked fundies will ask for more, not only for idolatric bans on pictures - yes, it IS a kind of idolatry to forbid the representation of someone which clearly isn't for worship -, but for bans on a far wider range of criticism, sooner or later fucked fundies will ask to ban Darwin because it offends their religion, and fucked fundies, if they have been appeased, will ask to ban abortions because it deeply offends their beliefes, and eventually these dimwits will just openly ask for women to wear headscarves or to be forbidden to work, and go back to the kitchen.
I think there are a few women here around that are both pissed off and frightened that people would gladly bow to the demands of complete nutcases, because if this goes on, what will we do when "offended religious people" will come on with other demands?

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Feb 8, 2006 5:18:53 AM | 122

@ b, anna missed, and annie. I think fauxreal is a little overwhelmed by schoolwork just now. She'll be back.

Posted by: beq | Feb 8, 2006 7:04:30 AM | 123

Hi...
i want to discuss about the cartoons of Muhammad (saw),
according to me this is ignorance of jallends posten and its
editor fleeming.because they published the cartoons without
any information.Muhammad (saw) is the prophet of peace,
and he give us the same message of Allah which other prophet
gave us.I advise to those whose pblished the cartoons that they
study about islam and Muhammad (Saw), in this way they will come to
know what is reallity...
thank you so much

Posted by: ALI RAFI | Dec 12, 2006 4:45:24 PM | 124