Collateral Damage
From the Brussels Journal:
Tonight the BBC admitted that it has misinformed the international community by telling the world that one of the Danish Muhammad cartoons was a depiction of a pigsnouted Muhammad. The BBC website says:
Twelve cartoons were originally published by Jyllands-Posten. None showed the Prophet with the face of a pig. Yet such a portrayal has circulated in the Middle East (The BBC was caught out and for a time showed film of this in Gaza without realizing it was not one of the 12).
This picture, a fuzzy grey photocopy, can now be traced back (suspicion having been confirmed by an admission) to a delegation of Danish Muslim leaders who went to the Middle East in November to publicise the cartoons. The visit was organised by Abu Laban, a leading Muslim figure in Denmark.
Comments
What was that about limits proposed on free speech arising out of a duty not to inflame the Muslim street? Under what category of inflammation does attributing a pig-snouted depiction of Mohammed to the Jyllands-Posten cartoons fall, when that cartoon was never published by the newspaper, and as anyone from the BBC might have known by simply obtaining a copy of the cartoons? The blogs have been known this for a long time and more's the shame.
The BBC site adds the offending picture was taken from a "pig-squealing" competition.
(Update: A reader has e-mailed to say that the original of the "pig" picture was from a "pig-squealing" competition held in France every summer. Some character dressed up like a pig. See the link to the neandernews.com site on the right for the details.
Ekstra Bladet has also published a letter taken by the delegation on its mission. This gives the delegation's account of how the cartoons originated and what the reaction to them was. But it also mentions other pictures, which it said were "much more offending." These presumably included the "pig" picture, whose origin is now known.)
Western diplomats appear to have missed this entirely and seem to have made no attempt to counter some of the arguments in the pamphlet or to distinguish between the various portrayals.
This is going to rank right up there with the fake Koran-flushing story which got people killed in Afghanistan. No one has a right to expect perfection from the media. Like intelligence agencies, which they resemble in some respects, the media sometimes gets things wrong. But I'd argue that some publications have a dangerous tendency to believe stories like "right-wing Danish publication portrays Mohammed as pig" because they want to believe it. This phenomenon is called bias and bias is dangerous not because it predisposes one to a wrong set of opinions but to the wrong set of facts.
Ironically, if the BBC had published the cartoons it would inevitably have discovered that the pig picture was not part of the Jyllands-Posten cartoon set. But instead of presenting the dry facts it substituted hearsay and for days the world was inflamed over a set of images described only at second-hand; wrongly described at that and imagining the worst about what were actually a very mild set of drawings. This violent debate occurred precisely because organizations like the BBC, whose job it was to present the facts, failed signally in their duty. Instead they went through the mummery of piously refusing the show the images "out of respect for Islam" when in fact they were actually, though perhaps unintentionally, contributing to the obscurantism surrounding the whole affair. That is the kindest interpretation I can put on the matter.
posted by wretchardthecat at 2/07/2006 06:48:00 PM
86 Comments:
It's a sad day for freedom...
I hate to say it Wretched, but the BBC is heavily influenced by Islamic personnel. It's not stretch to the imagination to surmise they may have been a willing accomplice in this affair. Shades of the CBS fake but accurate fraud?
The BBC is complicit in the destructuction of the Danish, Norwegian and Austrian embassies.
Oh, sorry. I was thinking like them for a minute....I think I'm OK now.
The BBC is never liable because they are always and forever 'well meaning'.
The truth is that they are accountable to nobody. They became too dangerous for any British government to confront in the 1940's, and have been a law unto themselves ever since.
What is really shameful is that the twelve cartoons have been available to anyone with an internet connection. The BBC had to be pretty blithe about the whole thing to get it wrong.
The reluctance by media outlets to republish the cartoons throughout the west has enabled this blithe state of ignorance. Publish and be damned, I say. You're damned either way.
Millions of good people have dreamt of and looked forward longingly to the Return of Christ, and now that He's come, His followers choose to honor Him by NOT publishing pictures of Him, and NOT allowing Him to be depicted in film or art.
And they courteously discuss this position, rather than scream, whine, decapitate or demonstrate!
After all, He WAS the Glory of God...
ledger writes: I hate to say it Wretched, but the BBC is heavily influenced by Islamic personnel. It's not stretch to the imagination to surmise they may have been a willing accomplice in this affair. Shades of the CBS fake but accurate fraud?
BBC site guilty of 'cringeing'
By Hugh Davies
The BBC said last night that it would review a religious website after being accused by a former head of the corporation of an "evident cultural cringe" in a section on Islam.
Will Wyatt, the chief executive for three years until 1999, examined the site on religion and ethics and found that it was "written as fact" that Mohammed met an angel.
The site states: "One night in 610 he was meditating in a cave on the mountain when he was visited by the angel Jibreel who ordered him to 'recite'... words which he came to understand were words of God."
The site, seemingly written by a devout Muslim, stated without reservation that Mohammed was "generally accepted as the true, final prophet of God".
Mr Wyatt, an atheist, said that he had no axe to grind, and was struck by how much more different - "and accurate" - the BBC's description of Christianity was, where the birth of Jesus was mentioned as being "believed by Christians" and that Jesus "claimed" that he spoke with the authority of God.
A BBC spokesman said: "We will have a look at the wording on the site."
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk
via LGF
BBC News is the English service of Aljazeera. There's an incestuous relationship between these organizations: both staffed with the same operatives, both openly flouting the same pro Jihadi bias.
I don’t think it’s subversion so much as a relativist view of the world where facts and truth can get in the way of their objectives and are thus seen as unhelpful.
We have been teaching this crap for 40 years, we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
"But I'd argue that some publications have a dangerous tendency to believe stories like "right-wing Danish publication portrays Mohammed as pig" because they want to believe it. This phenomenon is called bias and bias is dangerous not because it predisposes one to a wrong set of opinions but to the wrong set of facts."
Slightly OT, but a perfect example of this is Helen Thomas' questions at White House press briefings. It doesn't matter what answer/facts the poor press secretary gives in response. Her mindset is leftist moonbat, and the facts in her world include "the truth" that conservatives are lying spawn of satan, the worst of the election-stealing law breaking worst, and they must be removed from power by just about any means necessary to save the republic from turning into an abortion limiting, church-going, self-reliant, troop-supporting, individual liberty guaranteeing, freedom-protecting entity full of overbreeding, unfit for enlightment neandertals.
Her arrogant and obnoxious superiority complex is repugnant to the point I have to restrain myself from spitting on the tv screen whenever her dishevelled mug pops up.
I feel the same way about most of the mainstream media, especially the BBC.
Media has found its purpose in bringing down supposed oppressive regimes like Nixon’s during Watergate. I recall reading Daniel Ellsberg’s memoirs. I had long believed Ellsberg was a traitorous son of a b*tch, so I looked forward to his autobiographical explanation as to why he did what he did. Although I learned to respect Ellsberg at one level, retired Marine Lieutenant who carried a Swiss K submachine gun while ‘researching’ the conflict, he never was very vocal about the war until the exact second it became Nixon’s war. Suddenly, he became an activist who would sell his country out to the New York Times. He was a traitor and a partisan hack. We lost the War on Terror the moment that man walked.
Now every hack of that era sees that the only noble purpose in life is to bring down the U.S. government. It is no coincidence that this is the very purpose of the Islamists.
The Western Media has found its purpose in creating conspiracies. The Middle Eastern citizen has found its purpose in life in consuming them.
Nobody is immune from the bias problem. When 12 of the West Virginia miners were reported "found alive", I believed it (though I didn't post it) because I wanted it to be true. However if I thought lives would be at stake in repeating a story I'd generally be more careful. So I can understand how bias works but in this case it is a little hard to excuse.
EURSOC asks: Has the BBC converted to Islam?
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the BBC notes that "Jesus Christ believed and taught that he was Son of God", that "Jesus claimed that he spoke with the authority of God " and that accounts of His resurrection were "put about by his believers."
Nowhere does the BBC use the tradition honorific capitalisation of pronouns referring to Christ, as we did above. The broadcaster uses plain old "his" and "he" rather than stuffy, god-bothering "His" and "He." Why indulge the idiosyncrasies of a few religious nuts?
Why indeed - until you click on the BBC's Islam page.
This time, the BBC doesn't talk about Mohammed, or even The Prophet Mohammad, as numerous UK media outlets have taken to calling the founder of Islam since the Cartoon War began. The BBC gives him his full title: Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Indeed, every time the Prophet is mentioned in the BBC's supposedly neutral text, his name is followed with the abbreviation "(pbuh)" - as if, as Wyatt notes, "the corporation itself were Muslim."
There's no "Muslims believe" or "it was reported" in this section. Instead, the Beeb claims that "Allah is eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent... Allah has always existed and will always exist" and so on. Doubtless true, and it continues into the BBC's Life of Muhammad section too, where angelic visitations and the people's realisation that "God had chosen him as his messenger " are reported as fact.
Why these double standards? If the BBC is to indulge religions, should it not indulge all religions equally? Or if the corporation claims to have an objective and historical approach to religions, why not apply the same scepticism it applies to Christianity to Islam?
Or is Wyatt right - and the BBC has converted to Islam?
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www.eursoc.com
Every time I watch the BBC I observe some further instance of a BBC presenter displaying egregious anti-US or Anti-Western Bias.
They do occasionally get in an occasional bit of actual responsible reporting, but that seems to be more frequently the exception that proves the rule.
We have entered (I believe sometime about the first decade after World War II) The New Dark Age.
"But I'd argue that some publications have a dangerous tendency to believe stories like "right-wing Danish publication portrays Mohammed as pig" because they want to believe it."
---
So they do no due diligence.
When they want to believe something that will hurt GWB, our Military, and often Our Country, they will leave no stone unturned looking for facts, rumors, hearsay, annonymous sources, our country's enemys, and etc.
"If there are not some seriously loud voices raised by moderate Muslims, and soon, this will quickly gather sufficient momentum to become what we all should dread most, an all-out conflagration between Western civiliization and Islam."
Actually, from my perspective, an all-out conflagration is welcome from a certain viewpoint - they're already at war with Western civilization - at least at that point (conflagration), we might be comforted to find that we're finally onboard for the fight, rather than just dealing with Saddam, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, while otherwise fiddling away the need to deal with Iran before the price to do so skyrockets to horrific heights (nukes).
The Leftists in this country and elsewhere are so busy throwing marbles under GWBush's feet, because(supposedly, among other things) they deplore dead innocents in wartime, that there is a real chance that they may hamstring the administration suficiently to allow Iran to complete it's first fission device.
Then, as now, the situation will require military confrontation to resolve... only the circumstances facing us and the world will be so much more dreadful. Talk about dead innocents...
How many lives would have been saved had the great powers of the 1930s dealt decisively with Hitler when he "annexed" his first new German province?
We're standing at the edge of a golden opportunity... we (the Left in particular) are utter fools if we fail to take full advantage of it.
Britains media, including the most inflamatory right wing papers on the planet didn't publish the pictures because Britain is proud of its multiculturalism and wants to keep moderate muslims on board.
The govt and media are complicit in this.
Britain didn't burn like Fnace did because the people the media and the government are complicit in a respect for each others values.
The BBC are complicit in most of this.
How many lives would have been saved if Iran had been held to account in 1979, when the Fatwa was issued on Rushdie, when Stetham was murdered, on and on, and now there are those that still think further appeasement and apology is in order.
dave bones,
That's right. Just don't get them riled up and you'll be OK. The problem is that offense is often in the eye of the beholder. But if you can eliminate every possible source of affront then perhaps peace is still possible. But maybe the right word is sufferance. Not Britain's sufferance, but Islam's.
"..wants to keep moderate muslims on board.."
Why?
You think you're so smart, Mika, how do you know it doesn't stand for Putzs be Upon Him?
Doug,
I'm going to have your fingers chopped off for trying to upset my political constituency.
Letter to The Times:
Sir, As a practising criminal barrister I have been involved with the prosecution of many incidents of public disorder. In my experience the Metropolitan Police are not usually slow to intervene where the law has been broken; indeed the very suggestion that the Territorial Support Group are shy of making arrests is laughable.
Nonetheless, we have seen the spectacle of the police standing by while demonstrators outside the Danish Embassy — many clearly identifiable — were allowed to carry placards bearing slogans that obviously breached existing criminal law. The conclusion that one cannot help reaching from this and other incidents is that there is a reluctance among the police actually to tackle Muslim extremism.
Inevitably, the failure by the police to act will encourage the extremists in the belief that they can get away with breaching the criminal law. Before the World Trade Centre bombings the impression given by the police was that such extremism would be tolerated as long as the fruit was exported. We now know, since the London Tube bombings, that if it is allowed to flourish it will strike us just as much as those abroad.
The police can no longer claim ignorance of where jihadism is leading; they should enforce the law, rather than giving the extremists the clear impression that another set of rules applies to them.
- THOMAS WILKINS
There are bunch of sites which argue quite reasonably, that the Iranians or the Syrians -- somebody at least -- is orchestrating the cartoon campaign. I'll grant that there are parties trying to orchestrate it. Whether they can control it is open to debate. A lot of newspapers in the West have to defend their editorial independence, even from Islam, for business reasons. They've invested a lot in carving out a domain. Anybody knows that once a newspaper is bought the first thing the editors ask for is editorial independence. Control over content is the source of editorial power; once gone they have nothing.
For that reason even anti-American and completely leftist news agencies must have felt a shiver of fear at what the Islamists were trying to do. It was a naked power grab. Ironically, if the Islamists had succeeded the censorship would have differentially hit the majors in the way the Gomery gag order hit the Canadian press. It drove a tidal wave of traffic to sites like Captain's Quarters, which at once point was taking something like 60,000 hits per hour.
So while Islamists may have been trying to game the system I don't think it worked out as planned.
It shows how far removed Washington is from free sources of information that they don't hire someone to keep up with the blogs so that they could be more proactive with the truth about things like the fake Pigs Head Toon.
Heil Mohammed! Seig Heil! Seig Heil!
Heil Mohammed! Seig Heil! Seig Heil!
So the islamic nazis work the same way as the old nazis - Surprise!
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
Heil Mohammed! Seig Heil!
Only now the BBC, unlike in 1939, is infiltrated and toothless.
Leads one to wonder what other institutions, venues, corporations and assets have been infiltrated by islamic nazis or their vanguards ?
For Freedom,
Interesting question you've posed there. The BBC, as tool of the British Government, was in fact complicit in the rise of Hitler. In the late 1930s both Winston Churchill and Lloyd George (who had been British PM during WWI) were banned from speaking on the BBC because they might upset Hitler. Candidates to the Cabinet were vetted for their acceptability to Herr Hitler. They did not want to rile him. Later, when Churchill was finally allowed to speak, the BBC sent someone to interview him. The BBC man happened to be Guy Burgess, later famous as one of the Soviet spies. George Orwell modeled the Ministry of Truth in 1984 on the BBC. If anything the BBC has improved since. One hopes.
But there are other interesting comparisons: for example, the Spanish Civil War and the cartoon crisis may be analogues. It was the Spanish Civil War which finally weakened the pacifist movement because Hitler finally struck at something the Communists cared enough about to fight for. The Spanish Civil war was the moment the socialists began to snap out of their dream. And it came about accidentally, partly because Stalin decided to fight Franco and partly from reports filtering back about what Nazis really were. It was the tipping point.
Maybe the cartoon crisis will be that moment -- or the start of that moment. Despite September 11 the liberals aren't yet convinced that the Islamists have come for them. Come especially for them. If Maureen Dowd thought clearly she would be scared out of her wits, scared for her life, and not of BushChimpHitler. For many liberals the WTC, the Pentagon and the Whitehouse were guilty symbols of the Man's power. So they weren't too upset, symbolically speaking, at their destruction. That's why the attack on Denmark's got them stumped. Liberal Denmark, small European nation, generous to Muslim countries, attacked. Why is it being attacked? So they construct lamer and lamer arguments to justify the BushChimpHitler fantasy. Maybe Jylands-Posten was a right wing plot. But now it turns out the Imams cooked up the really inflammatory images. It was a Reichstag Burning alright, but the liberals got the cast of characters completely wrong. One almost pities the liberals in their desperate twists to find some way to avoid recognizing the obvious. And none so blind as they who will not see.
The Churchill Centre has a long article about the period when the BBC, under John Reith, did everything it could to suppress negative stories about Adolph Hitler:
As the years passed, Reith continued to block Churchill’s access to the BBC whenever he could. ... Since admiration for Hitler was Reith’s blind spot, he was contemptuous of Churchill’s early rallying cry urging Britain to prepare itself to meet the coming assault by the Nazis on free countries. His diaries express his approval of Germany. He was positive the Nazis "would clean things up."
Reith, like many sophisticates of the time, were convinced that Hitler would become a moderate once he warmed to his office. Rather like Hamas is regarded today. After the Nazis smashed France and Britain was at the edge of defeat, Reith was unrelenting.
Reith’s rage at Churchill’s premiership bordered on apoplexy. "Heaven help us" was his verdict on learning that Churchill would also be Defence Minister. It was "awful" that Churchill would be empowered to have direct dealings with the chiefs of staff.
You have to use Brecht's parodies of aristocratic arrogance to characterize arrogance at this level.
And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
"That's why the attack on Denmark's got them stumped. Liberal Denmark, small European nation, generous to Muslim countries, attacked."
Au Contraire:
Not so small as you think, and if Bubba and Algore are right, Greenland will rise to farm again within the decade!
"Denmark is a beautiful country. And it's not as small as most people think.
In fact, with 2,220,000 square km, it's larger than Mexico and almost as big as India.
Of course, 98% of its territory is Greenland, but still..."
ht - "Sonia Belle"
The editorial staff of a small publication called the New York Press walked out after management refused to let the staff run the Danish cartoons in an issue dedicated to them.
Even at the height of the Inquisition, there was no power on earth that could require a Nihil obstat or Imprimatur from Scandinavia to Manhattan. There is one now, at least one which many newspapers implicitly recognize. As Will Durant said, "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
All that puffery about the fearlessness, nobility and integrity of the Press. Kinda disappointing.
If World War II was an online Real Time Strategy game
If World War Two had been an online Real Time Strategy game, the chat room traffic would have gone something like this.
*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0JO: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got **** to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
...it goes on, of course.
---
http://sonia-belle.blogspot.com/2006/02/if-world-war-ii-was-online-real-time.html
Wretchard,
There is another growing problem with another valuable News Source:
The old Belmont Club Site:
The comments are growing obese (1000 posts) thanks to spam.
Would hate to lose all those links.
If a backup is available would it be possible to republish at a new URL?
If not, can you turn off comment posting and still have them available?
I've basically hidden the comments on the old site until such time as some long term solution can be found. Thanks for the heads up.
"All that puffery about the fearlessness, nobility and integrity of the Press. Kinda disappointing. "
---
Making the rise of alternative sources all that much more critical.
...and getting the ear of Washington to tune into free Intel.
Today's WSJ OpinionJournal features an article by a Muslim author who presents historical evidence that displaying images of Mohammed is not prohibited by canonical Islam. The author lays responsibility for the Cartoon Crisis at the feet of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he describes as a political and not a religious organization.
That's all very well and good, and perhaps the author is academically on solid ground, but I am starting to react to these apologetic "good Islam-bad Islam" pieces with some visceral contempt for the author and his subject. The Muslim Brotherhood is indeed a political organization (if you accept mass murder as a political act), as are Hamas and Hezbullah, but should we just ignore the underlying identity relationship that makes these groups possible?
I think we've had about enough of playing the turtle to the Islamic scorpion.
Peter Boston: The old "war with Islam" and "all of Islam" "response" does get old, doesn't it?
I recommend everyone read or listen to the audio at radioblogger.com of Medved, Prager, Carter and Hewitt:
Joe Carter: Yeah, I'm surprised by how many people just assume that we're actually at war with Islam,...
Medved
People say all the time well Islam, it's just one of the great monotheistic religions like Christianity, like Judaism. It's not. It's different. This kind of reaction would never occur, has never occurred in the last several hundred years when people have insulted, sometimes gratuitously, Christianity or Judaism.
...
...but the whole idea that you have some right, that it is somehow appropriate to, and will actually cause glory for your religion for you to be attacking Embassies and killing people and burning flags and rioting over some cartoons that you will never see, except they were put in your world by provocateurs, cartoons from Northern Europe. That is a unique perspective with Islam, and shows that it has really become for many, many Muslims, unfortunately, a death cult, not a religion of life.
Prager
The West believes that human beings are free to insult other people. And if we didn't believe that, we would not have what is called democracy.
Hence, you do not have any Islamic democracy.
There are, I think, sixty or so countries that have Islamic Muslim majorities, according to Freedom House. Only one is a democracy. Excuse me, only one is rated free. That's the way they rate them. It's Mali, as it happens.
I have nothing to say about Islam. I have a lot to say about the state of Muslim civilization today.
Irshad Manji, a lesbian Muslim in Canada, writes nothing mocking about Islam, and travels everywhere on Earth with a personal bodyguard, because of the death threats from Muslims. You don't need cartoons to be targeted for death.
Hewitt (dumbest comment of the day - except almost EVERYTHING Joe Carter had to say)
"we're radicalizing Islam."
Joe Carter
That's very disturbing that people actually believe that this is...that we're at war with Islam, because the Muslim extremists that are making it this way.
Prager
You know who the most radicalized Muslims in the world are? The ones living in the West, who see the West at its best. So they are radicalized by everything that we do, apparently.
HH: That's an interesting...Joe Carter?
JC: I don't think the cartoonists radicalized the Muslims.
I think our support of them in our showing that we're siding with them rather than the offended is what's radicalized them.
Oh yah, right on, dOOd!
HH: Now that's...that's a fine response. I don't disagree with that. But that's not calling all of Islam on the carpet for the acts of the radicals, Dennis, is it?
DP: Nobody has called all of Islam on the carpet for anything.
HH: You may not have, but...
DP: The greatest disgrace to Islam is not the cartoons in a Danish paper. It's the great number of Muslims who murder in the name of Allah.
Nothin from Nothin Leaves Nothin...
She said this before,
Here she goes again!
Ms. Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, did not dispute that argument. But, pointing to the Democratic strategy in defeating Mr. Bush's Social Security proposal last year, she said there was no rush.
"People said, 'You can't beat something with nothing,' " she said, arguing that the Democrats had in fact accomplished precisely that this year.
"I feel very confident about where we are."
(Nowhere Land)
Missed Opportunities
Don Cox,
The BBC is thoroughly infiltrated with hostile foreign agents. The same people that worked for the BBC work for Aljazeera. The BBC might be independent of the British government, but it is not independent of government. Its editorial bias is that of Aljazeera. British tax payers are forced to pay for this tool of foreign subversion. Why should that be?
Wretchard,
Your comments about the Spanish Civil War intrigued me.
I had a teacher at Yale, where I majored in Molecular Biology and Biophysics, named Clement Markert. He was famous for having discovered LDH allozymes (then called "isozymes").
He was an old time radical. As a sophomore in college, he had gone to Spain to fight the fascists, and in his last years he was honored by being made, along with other survivors of the so-called Abraham Lincoln Brigade, an honorary citizen of Spain.
http://archives.thedaily.washington.edu/1996/112596/vets112596.html
I was Clement's good friend till he died, just a few months before 9/11. As with so many others, the events of 9/11 utterly changed me and my political outlook; I have always wondered what Clement Markert would have thought.
Jamie Irons
EVERYONE YOU'RE MISSING A MAJOR POINT!!!
"That's why the attack on Denmark's got them stumped. Liberal Denmark, small European nation, generous to Muslim countries, attacked."
More than generous those companies that are now being BOYCOTTED by the Arabs are the VERY SAME Companies that AGREED TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL in order to SELL to the arabs....
The Palestinians are ransacking the UN international observer force in hebron yesterday, forcing 60 UN personal to escape to the ROOF, (then to the zionist entity that they hate so much)
No my friends, the chickens have come home to roost, if you sleep with dogs you get fleas, if you boycott israel trying to please 12th century madmen, your next on the list...
best medicine? ALL advanced medicines should be sold at 10 times fair market value to ANY opec member
Well, I don't have any big-brained answers. I am however getting awfully tired of Isalm being at war with me and me not being allowed to do anything about it.
Actually, I do have an answer. How about every time these Muslim yahoos start screeching about "Death To America" (or anybody else) we kill them?
I vote to encourage the Izzies to burn 'Palestine' down to bedrock as a first step.
I'm tired of messing with them, I have children to protect. Just kill them until the rest of them settle down.
Ed talking hoarse made some interesting observations:
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I searched the BBC's site today for 'Muhammad', and something struck me. Every single return referred to him as "the Prophet Muhammad". Really, I didn't know the Beeb were so religious. To call Muhammad 'the Prophet' is a tacit endorsement of Islam's claims. It is analogous to the pious term 'the Lord Jesus Christ', which you will not find the BBC using (In case anyone thinks this is just to distinguish that Mohammad from all the others, I would point out that Jesus is a first-name too in countries like Spain; an interesting quirk for a post-Islamic state).
Now I have no problem with secularism, as long as it's even-handed- but in the BBC's case, quite obviously it isn't. The BBC might respond that the West is far less religious, so it's an appropriate distinction in their address. That's not a good response though. In the UK, for example, 70 percent or so regard themselves as CoE, so that the difference can be better seen in terms of tolerance. Many people I've known who've termed themselves Christians have enjoyed Monty Python's Life of Brian, for instance.
Now, I would have no problem with the BBC saying that it wasn't their business to enforce western tolerance as a lodestone for its coverage, taking a moralistic liberal tone as a standard from which to judge all events, but that's exactly what they do on many issues that concern certain groups and countries- it's one of the staple inspirations for this blog. They often fly in the face, for example, of US sensitivities, and Israeli sensitivities, and white people's sensitivities, and western conservative sensibilities etc etc. One could point out that the majority of Africans are Christians, and often passionate ones, but this somehow doesn't seem to weigh in the BBC's balance.
Well, one could respond that there are dominant sensitivities in need of challenging (ha ha- western conservativsm 'dominant'!), but really, in Iran Muslim sensibilities are thoroughly dominant, and in Saudi, and in Indonesia, and in these countries such sensibilities are often enforced through great injustices- the banning of christianity, the imprisonment of converts, and so on. And the BBC styles itself as a world broadcaster, spends taxpayer's money in this cause (yes, the licence fee was recently designated 'a tax'), and therefore has a responsibility, at least, to be 'world impartial'.
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http://edtalkinghoarse.blogspot.com
don cox said: "As they should be. Whether you agree with the BBC's policies or not, it is important that it should be independent of the Government. It is not a State Radio/TV Station."
Spoken like a true socialist bureaucrat.
I agree that it should be independant of the government but IT'S NOT! It's another government funded, publically sponsered organization that's filled with self righteous indignation about being beholden to anybody. At the same time feels it can spew its vitriol about anybody that doesn't fit their model.
Spare me!
Don Cox,
Whether you agree with the BBC's policies or not, it is important that it should be independent of the Government. It is not a State Radio/TV Station.
Hmmmm. Not a State entity, you say? According to the annual report of the BBC their revinues for last year were £3.8 billion (that's £3.8 thousand million for British readers) and of those only about 800 million came from commercial activities. The rest came from user fees (collected from all owners of TVs in the UK) and from government grants. In modern western societies accountability is generally tied to funding so it is difficult to say that the Beeb is not a creature of the British government. To be sure, it is not always linked to the ruling party or the current administration, but it is very much associated with-, and tied to the faction which oversees its support.
1939:
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!
2006:
Ein Ummah, Ein Welt, Ein Islam!
Heil Mohammed! Seig Heil! Seig Heil!
Heil Mohammed! Seig Heil! Seig Heil!
Immanuel Goldstein,
"The Arabic word for God is Allah"
Is that true?
Is Allah the Arab equivalent for the Hebrew Hellohim? (Get it? Hell or Him)
Note: The word Elohim is a plural formed from the singular feminine A-l-h, Eloh. In Hebrew, 'im usually denotes the plural masculine, but here it is added to a feminine name, turning it masculine plural!
Here in Seattle the daily papers and weekly alternate press - it is constant dogpile on Bush, the military, conservatives. And now a refusal to print the cartoons. The refusal to print the cartoons is an assumption that Muslims living in Seattle are radical and will react with riots and terror. But how do our press lords know of this reaction beforehand? They are so busy protecting local Muslims - and themselves from what goes on in the world that we operate in as void.
Also there is a kind of patronising "our Muslims" aspect to this shielding the community from the cartoons.
As it is, the daily papers are running stories from the wire services which gives it a quaint far-off quality - the funny-little-people-doing-inexplicable -things angle. Pathetic and blind Seattle. As if they can't wait for it to die down so they can go back to Bush bashing
Das (at 8:39 a.m.)
What you write applies a fortiori to our situation here in the Bay Area.
But isn't there always a price to be paid for shielding oneself from reality?
When I was a resident in psychiatry at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute, I had a psychoanalytic instructor who said, "Reality sucks...But it's the only game in town."
Jamie Irons
Increasingly, the term "multicultural" can be accurately used to mean "having no brains." In that sense, the BBC is thoroughly multicultural.
Perhaps the time has come to immanentize the eschaton (been waiting to actually use that in a sentence). Freedom of the press is pretty meaningless when the authors have to go into hiding to practice it. Freedom of religion is pretty meaningless when a particular religion determines that it has an absolute right to kill or enslave anybody that doesn't buy into it.
I'm not buying any of it anymore. Islam is an ugly, pernicious, totalitarian ideology that as presently contituted has no place in the civilized world. If anybody wants to apologize, rationalize or soften the ugliness be my guest. I'll have none of it. Change it, confine it, or destroy it.
The cartoons are themselves a legitimate news story. For the free press folks who yell and scream that the "public has a right to know" the locations of CIA interrogation centers but does not have the right to see (and form their own opinion about) the cartoons that are being used as a justification for murder and mayhem - a pox on their hypocritical selves.
peterboston:
Well said and I heartily agree.
It should be evident to anyone who has been paying attention that the behavior of the Muslim community doesn't square with a "great religion".
Either said religion has been hijacked and needs to be mended from within or, if it is practiced as intended by its founders, there is something fundamentally wrong with it - it is false.
I thinks anyone studying the Koran would quickly realize that it's author was a earthly political leader who posed as a holy man. In short he is the prototype "false prophet" many had warned about.
I beleive Mohammed's adherants are acting, and have acted throughout their time on earth, largely just as he prescibed and, indeed, as he acted.
prescribed
This is going to fizzle out because of the general unwillingness of the press to publish the cartoons, and to accurately portray the protests/riots that are resulting.
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That is their most powerful weapon, ex-helo, pretend it's not happening, ie censorship.
The left has been practicing that in this country since before I was born.
Now the MSM and the Democrat party are one, and the Media are a worldwide conspiracy.
Pork said,
"best medicine?
ALL advanced medicines should be sold at 10 times fair market value to ANY opec member"
---
Better yet:
Porkies Special Blend for the OPEC Piggies.
Since only the Rich Pigs get the Bennies,
None Would Dare Call it Genocide.
Jamie Irons,
The fates of the International Brigade volunteers in the Spanish Civil War has been a storied and tragic one. Many of the most hard core sought safety in Russia, nearly all to die in the purges. The luckier ones stayed in the West. Orwell, for example, returned to England to work for the BBC and go on to his novels. In fiction their fates were no less diverse. The most famous fictional Spanish Civil War veteran is of course, Rick Blaine. We will never know if he met Ilsa again. The second most famous is Robert Jordan. We know what happened to him. We can only hope Maria went on to "see Barcelona for the both of them".
I would like to use my Stupid Question quota for the week:
Has anyone heard anyone BUT Islamic Whack Jobs comment on the religious aspects of the Cartoon Crisis?
Over at opinionjournal.com Amir Taheri has an article today saying that this is all nuts - there is not an Islamic prohibition against either depicitions of the Prophet or religious-themed humor.
If is this the case why do we not hear all sorts of Muslims, from venerated clerics to Joe, the guy who owns the corner hotdog stand, speaking up and saying "Don't listen to those idiots who are upset about those cartoons. I can assure you that we mainstream Muslims don't. They have less than no credibility with us."
Of course, this is a common problem with Islam. And why is that? Fear? The MSM?
Immanuel,
One thing for sure, Elohim is NOT the plural of El, but rather the plural of Eloah. And both Eloha and Elah sound as feminine, to my Hebrew ear -- Eloha sounding much like Elona or Ellana.
It's interesting that in Matthew 27:46, El, a masculine singular, is used.
Jesus cried, saying ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI? My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Further re the Beeb:
They consistently refer to the Muslim month of Ramadan as 'The Holy Month of Ramadan', rather than Ramadan. We all understand what Ramadan is and what goes on during that time, but not that many of us consider it 'Holy'.
I think it is a sort of elitist 'hint' that we should all get on board the multi-culti bandwagon.
Hogwash.
And I am a Compulsory Licence Fee Contributor, who just happens not to be a Muslim.
Immanuel Goldstein, 1:12 PM
Alahahaha
I thought I had heard it all.
The stuff posted here on the
BBC is far beyond what I had imagined.
Orwell has been spun.
And that's no pun.
Doug, 1:37 PM
Pun intended?
Allah is a Mohammedan Plant
Allah says to those living in Infidel Houses of Glass,
Judge Not!
The Sydney Riot of 1879 was one of the earliest riots at an international cricket match.
It occurred at the Association Ground, Moore Park, now known as the Sydney Cricket Ground.
The game was between a touring English team captained by Lord Harris and the New South Wales Cricket Association led by Dave Gregory.
The riot was sparked off by a controversial umpiring decision, when Australian star batsman Billy Murdoch was controversially given out by umpire George Coulthard.
It was alleged that betting men in the New South Wales pavilion encouraged Gregory to make a stand and disrupt the game.
The immediate aftermath of the riot saw the England team cancel the remaining games due to be played in Sydney.
The riot led to a breakdown of goodwill that threatened the immediate future of England-Australia cricket tours.
Ya, Ich bin ein Pineapple.
Alohahha is Yiddish for?
"Actually it's quite rare for Hebrew nouns to end with a voweled Heh altogether. "
---
Unless uttered by a Gentile Instapundit.
A Stand Up Pineapple?
In case no one heard it, NPR nailed a great interview again this morning, this time with Ahmed Abu Laban (some may remember when NPR nailed the president of Sony's BMG group, eliciting his infamous rootkit quote). Give it a listen at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5195798
Steve asked the big question: when the prophet is depicted as violent, do ya think it's a great idea to protest that by being violent?
Doug, 1:57 PM
See post @ 1:36 PM
"Steve asked the big question: when the prophet is depicted as violent, do ya think it's a great idea to protest that by being violent? "
---
That is indeed the
Deep Question to be asked re
the Cartoon Riots.
---
Thanks for the link.
Are Mohammedans Non Normies?
Voltimand:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9305/articles/martin.html
I've posted before, but it's so darned germane whenever the PC police start their semiotically violent riots. ;-)
Hate speech laws and similar organizational regulations have nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with controlling the Conversation. Words create beliefs and beliefs are the basis of political power.
In response to the Danish cartoon riots, the Boston Globe editorialized that “As with the current consensus against publishing racist or violence-inciting material, newspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance.”
The popular blogging law professor Eugene Volokh promptly went back through various prominent blasphemies against Christianity over the last few years and discovered—what a surprise!—that the Globe had somehow never managed to summon the least condemnation of the blasphemers in the name of that ultimate Enlightenment value, tolerance.
That’s not to say the Globe—which is really just a stand-in for an entire American mind-set—didn’t feel the need for tolerance back when Andres Serrano was pissing on Christ and the Brooklyn Museum was touting the Virgin Mary done in feces. But it always ran in the other direction: Those offended must learn they live in an enlightened world where they are required to swallow their hurt in the name of tolerating those with whom they disagree.
First Things
And here I thought the ultimate Enlightenment value was Truth.
Silly me.
I thought this exchange between Nixon and Mao was interesting (via Gaddis's Cold War):
Mao: "I like to deal with rightists. They say what they really think--not like the leftists, who say one thing and mean another."
Nixon agreed: "Those on the right can do what those on the left talk about."
Mika 1:36
How Dare You Ask?
(This is Hard Work)
"thought things may cause the creation of words"
---
And, of course, the reverse is true.
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What if Muhammed had Egg Planted on his Face?
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Lets not be too tough on the press and not forget It was George Bush, with his post-911 White House Ramadan party, who pronounced Islam, a peaceful religion hijacked by radicals. Let's be clear. If we are to bring reason to the forefront , we better start with Truth. There is no Episcopalian or Lutheran or Calvinist terror problem. Hassidic Jews and Baptists are not murdering innocents on commuter trains to further Bible studies. The Amish are not strapping on body bombs. There is an Islamic problem. A big one. Forget the polite equivalency argument. Islam has to be given incentives and penalties to deal with Islamic terrorism.
"When the Mullah says he is the Master Faith,
We'll jihad! jihad! right in the mullah's face"
(apologies to Spike Jones)
dear,
read about Colonel Alexander Rodgers of the 6th Cavalry & Mindanao haw to stop it ...
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