Double Standards for Cartoons

[gHari 0]

Does anyone really believe that if India did not have a strong military we would not be seeing thousands of jihadists pouring into India daily, murdering, raping, pillaging, desecrating temples and holy places? And all this would be supported and even encouraged by too many Islamic 'clerics' - the same ones that are upset by a cartoon. And the silent 'peaceful' Islam remainder will take pride in these jihadist exploits just as they have in their history's conquering of the Indian infidels forever in the past.

 

Now they expect me to be upset for them about a cartoon? Live by the sword, die by the pen.

[Pankaja_Dasa 1]

 

I haven't met many that think it was Not Okay. They maybe many but they are mosly Muslims who don't practice thier religion anyway [is that ironic or what?].

 

I heard they hate the western ways or drinking, clubs etc. But here in my city, many Muslims goto Nightclubs etc. These are the ones who think it's bad what they are doing, go figure that out.. because I can't.

 

Maybe it's the 'leaders fault' if the cleris say it is okay, then young minds can be brainwashed. Besides that I heard Muslims are from a Vedic point of view not even 5th class in Varna system [no idea]. So they not very intelligent even then most people. It's so weird it is like thier own religion is killing them. Maybe it's time for another incarnation. Dunno how anybodies going to stop it. You know how many Muslims countries there are? A muslims asked me? I dunno I said. 45!! /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[Kulapavana 0]

Danish paper cancels plans to republish cartoons about Israel

By Asaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondent

The Danish newspaper that created a storm in the Arab world by publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed has canceled plans to reprint several cartoons dealing with Israel, a senior editor told Haaretz yesterday.

 

"We wanted to show that we make fun of everyone, not only Muslims," said Pierre Collignon of Jyllands-Posten. "But for fear of being misunderstood, we canceled the plan at the last moment."

 

One cartoon that was to be published on Sunday depicted a Star of David, to which a bomb with a burning fuse had been attached. This cartoon, which has been published in the newspaper in the past, was drawn by the same artist who drew the cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a "ticking bomb" on his head.

 

"We wanted to show that even the Jews, with all the historic sensitivity, accepted satire aimed at their sacred symbols without staging angry demonstrations."

 

Meanwhile, a Jyllands-Posten's editor said on CNN yesterday that he would cooperate with the Iranian daily Hamshahri, which announced a competition of cartoons on the Holocaust. However, the newspaper hastened to issue a denial.

 

Editor-in-chief Carsten Juste said the editor had been misunderstood. "On no account would we publish Holocaust caricatures together with the Iranian daily," he said.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/680913.html

[Bhakta Don Muntean 0]

 

Hari Bolo!

[krsna 3]

[image]http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3944/990/1600/moderate_muslim.gif [/image]

 

/images/graemlins/cool.gif /images/graemlins/blush.gif /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

 

[image]http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3944/990/1600/moderate_muslim.gif [/image]

[krsna 3]

 

 

By Clarence Fernandez

 

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Muslim protests across the world condemning cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad are driven by fears Islam is under attack, and by the fact that it is easier to protest than to battle tough social issues, moderate Muslims say.

 

From disputes over wearing headscarves to desecration of the Koran, many Muslims worry over what they see as onslaughts of the West, but rooting out poverty in some Muslim countries is a more vital task than condemning the cartoons, analysts say.

 

"Why would you want to be violent about a cartoon?" said political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, who felt an apology or editorial resignation would be sufficient restitution by a Danish newspaper that flouted Islam's ban on pictures of its prophets.

 

"Why don't you be violent and protest about your own governments, Muslim governments who have not provided basic sanitary facilities and housing?" the Malaysian analyst asked.

 

"These are far more important issues to Muslim communities around the world than some stupid cartoons. Cartoons are cartoons, period."

 

The Muslim world is riven by economic disparities.

 

The largest grouping of Muslim countries, the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference, includes among its members wealthy nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran that are home to most of the world's oil reserves. But people in nearly half the OIC countries live on less than $2 a day.

 

MODERATE VOICES DROWNED OUT

 

Tens of thousands of Muslims have protested over the drawings in violence that has killed at least 11 people this year.

 

Denmark withdrew ambassadors and embassy staff from Iran and Indonesia last week after they received threats over the cartoons, and Pakistan's Islamist parties have called a protest strike nation-wide on March 3.

 

But mainly Muslim Malaysia, which has banned the cartoons and suspended the licence of a newspaper that printed them last week, has warned that angry voices were drowning out the tolerant tones of moderate Muslims and Westerners.

 

"As a result, the silent majority looks on as the extremist and intolerant minority takes over and turns the civilisational dialogue between Islam and the West into an angry and ugly shouting match," Malaysian news agency Bernama quoted Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak as saying at the weekend.

 

Iran, which is locked in a nuclear stand-off with the West, says it has snapped trade ties with Denmark, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused European countries of being Israeli puppets for publishing the cartoons.

 

Militants in Iraq have called for killing Danes and a boycott of Danish goods over the cartoons, one of which shows the Prophet Mohammad wearing a turban resembling a bomb with a burning fuse.

 

Unfair stereotypes help to fuel the anger of Muslim communities, said an analyst in Thailand, where Muslims and security forces are locked in a bloody conflict in the south.

 

"After 9/11, Islam has been blamed for all sorts of problems," said Jaran Maluleem, a Muslim political scientist at Thammasat University in Bangkok.

 

Yet several Asian Muslims could look beyond the rage over the cartoons to condemn the violence.

 

DRAWING LINES

 

In Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, airline pilot Kashan Dodhy said: "Obviously this is something extremely wrong, and to protest against it is our right. But that doesn't mean people should resort to violence -- Islam is a peace-loving religion."

 

In neighbouring India, where Muslims make up 130 million of a predominantly Hindu population of more than a billion, a foreign policy analyst said the violence in Lebanon and Syria, where embassies have been burnt, could not be condoned.

 

Mohammad Hamid Ansari, a former Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said he also deplored the cartoons. "I am all for satire and a bit of fun but in any society lines should be drawn."

 

But fixing just where those lines fall can be a problem.

 

"We have proof of how this insulting action towards the Prophet and the Holy Koran keeps going on and on," said Ismail Yusanto, a spokesman for the conservative Hizbut Tahrir group in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

 

"I think this is not a lack of knowledge, but it's something done on purpose."

 

(Additional reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan in Bangkok, Faisal Aziz in Islamabad, Ade Rina in Jakarta, and Kamil Zaheer in New Delhi)

 

 

Reuters

[Guest guest]

Politics is a honky-tonk entertainment without end - thanks to the Lord that he engages us in transcendental devotional service and thus live in Vaikuntha even while being here in this material world of kali-yuga!

 

Venezuela ready to receive Hamas visit 'with pleasure'

 

www.nonviolence.org

 

The Associated Press – February 13, 2006

 

Venezuela said Monday it would welcome leaders from the Hamas movement "with pleasure" if they visit the country as part of a South American tour following victory in Palestinian elections.

 

Asked if the Venezuelan government will receive the Islamic militant group, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters, "Of course we will. What is the problem?"

 

"If they come, with pleasure," Rangel said. "They've just won an election."

 

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have insisted they would not deal with a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority and threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in aid unless the group recognizes Israel and renounces violence.

 

Hamas, responsible for scores of deadly attacks against Israelis, has refused to renounce its calls for Israel's destruction or give up its weapons.

 

The United States and Europe consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

 

President Hugo Chavez, however, frequently criticizes what he calls U.S. imperialist dominance in world affairs, and has often expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

 

The leftist leader has said his government will be one of the first to recognize an independent Palestinian state.

 

Rangel said earlier this month that Hamas was expected to visit Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela as part of a regional tour to celebrate its electoral victory. On Monday, he said he didn't know when Hamas would arrive because the visit was not yet confirmed.

 

Moscow offered to meet this month with Hamas leaders.

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/682345.html

 

 

[Bhakta Don Muntean 0]

So we can hope this issue just goes away now and everyone can realize that one indeed has freedom of speech however - it isn’t a license to speak anything we like - we do have many examples of this freedom being 'limited' - for example - 'uttering threats' is a crime - not an exercise of free speech. Our freedoms are not to be used to encroach on others…

[Kulapavana 0]

"So, let’s look at the guy who started this whole cartoon escapade. He’s Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper. In all of the Lexis-Nexis database of stories from the American media on the Mohammed cartoons, there is absolutely no mention of the fact that Rose is a close confederate of arch-Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. Indeed, there is almost no context at all about Rose’s newspaper. On a brief mention in the Washington Post gave a hint at a fact desperately needed to understand the situation. The Post described the affair as “a calculated insult … by a right-wing newspaper in a country where bigotry toward the minority Muslim population is a major, if frequently unacknowledged, problem.” "

 

from Lew Rockwell site

 

[Guest guest]

Lew Rockwell, is a libertarian political commentator in the United States. Rockwell was closely associated with his teacher and colleague Murray Rothbard until Rothbard's death in 1995, and like Rothbard in his later years his political ideology combines an anarcho-capitalist form of paleolibertarianism with cultural conservatism and the Austrian School of economics. Rockwell also espouses the political concepts of federalism, secession, and political decentralization.

 

---From wikipedia.org

[Guest guest]

The final word.

 

By Jonah Goldberg, NRO editor

March 7, . 6:00 p.m.

 

 

 

There's the old Murphy's Law, "Never argue with an idiot, people may not be able to tell the difference." But what exactly is the rule governing arguments with very smart and committed people so ideologically bound up, you'd need a truckload of Metamucil just to get them off a minor point? Frankly, I have no idea, so I'm just gonna wing it — which accounts for the unforgivable length of this article.

 

First, let me bring out-of-the-loop readers up to speed. Last week I wrote a column addressing several columns written about me or referencing me, on a site called LewRockwell.com, which bills itself as the "anti-state, anti-war, pro-market news site." LewRockwell.com features regular diatribes against National Review, neoconservatives, The Weekly Standard, William F. Buckley, and other icons of what most people consider mainstream conservatism in America.

 

The site also features regular screeds about how Abraham Lincoln was a murderous war criminal, how the American military is a hotbed of criminal imperialism and murderous warmongering, and why Southern secession not only was honorable and noble but how it still is a viable option.

 

So before I get started, let me offer an apology. In my article I referred to LewRockwell.com as a haven for "angry" and "cat-kicking" libertarians. That's not entirely fair — to libertarians. Most of the libertarians I know want nothing to do with LewRockwell.com (if they've heard of it at all). This is not the primary home for the sort of optimistic classical liberalism you might find at the Cato Institute or Reason magazine.

 

And while I still take issue with much that goes on at those places, it is unfair for me to imply that all libertarians fed up with conservatives or the Republican party or a bloated federal government would want to associate themselves with a forum that joyfully dances back and forth across the line separating anti-statism and anti-Americanism.

 

Of course, it's also unfair for me to say that everybody writing for LewRockwell.com or everybody reading it is a crank. That's simply not true. But you'll forgive me if I don't go diving for pearls in the manure.

 

"It's My Tone, Stupid"

Mr. Dieteman, who doesn't seem like a crank, wrote me a nice note explaining how he disagreed with my column. He wrote that he was "greatly disappointed in the abrasive tenor" of my article, and that he had "lost a degree of respect for National Review. Conservatives and libertarians disagree over the role of government, but there is no need for rancor."

 

This was actually a fairly common response from several LewRockwell.com readers as well. Many were shocked that I would be so "mean" or "disrespectful," so willing to "take cheap shots" and "avoid serious arguments." I'll get to the "serious arguments" in a bit. But as for the first part. I am tempted to borrow a line from Sgt. Hulka to Psycho in Stripes and simply say: Lighten up Rockwellites.

 

"I Excommunicate Thee"

It is impossible to exaggerate the degree to which these people take themselves too seriously. They accuse me of pomposity, but I swear I can't even climb the pedestal they put themselves on. The problem is that by taking themselves too seriously they wind up taking me too seriously.

 

There's simply no other way to explain the endless torrent of overwrought, mutually contradictory self-parody going on over there.

 

For example, Daniel McCarthy writes a piece calling me "The Excommunicator." Writing about a speech I gave at C-PAC to a Young America's Foundation luncheon, he paints me as slyly trying to pollute the minds of these naïve and insufficiently conservative young'ns. Summarizing the intent of my brainwashing he says, "Pre-Enlightenment values are not welcome in Jonah Goldberg's conservative movement. Or to put it more accurately — pre-Enlightenment values are not welcome in the conservative movement at all if Jonah Goldberg gets his way."

 

Dear God, it's Munich all over again, Goldberg must be stopped! (Oh, wait. That might be a bad analogy; Do Rockwellites believe fighting WWII was justified? It's not clear).

 

This is what I was getting at. These guys aren't even reliably libertarian. For the record, libertarianism is supposed to reject pre-Enlightenment values much more than conservatism does. Indeed, this embarrassing squabble largely stems from an argument — and general agreement — with Messrs. Kantor and Dieteman over the fact that Friedrich Hayek would not call himself a conservative because he thought the label was too accommodating to pre-Enlightenment conservative values.

 

In the course of a week, I've gone from being a scoundrel for trying to claim the pre-eminent twentieth-century critic of pre-Enlightenment values as a conservative, to being a scoundrel for attempting to purge such values from the conservative movement. Still, it's given me an excuse to buy those "The Excommunicator" business cards I've always wanted.

 

But yes, for the record, if I were cracking the whip on the movement there would be a significant bias against many if not most pre-Enlightenment values — and not just racism, but also the rejection of science, capitalism, universal humanity, and Truth, etc. Mr. McCarthy conveniently leaves out the fact that it was specifically these attributes of pre-Enlightenment thinking that I was denouncing at C-PAC. It would be nice to know which of them he'd like to keep in the movement.

 

By the way, I was also explicitly not making an anti-religious argument. I pointed out that so many Enlightenment thinkers were committed to understanding God's will and God's universe. I bring this up because I don't trust these guys not to turn me into some atheistic-secular bigot.

 

So there's this guy Bob Murphy (who actually takes pride of ownership in the "technique" of beginning sentences "So there's this…"). He clearly thinks a great deal of himself. And, if Mr. Rockwell is true to his word that he doesn't like my column because it has become "transmogrified into self-important serio-pomposo items," then he should bar this no-talent ass-clown from writing for his own site ever again.

 

To be honest, I think his assault on me is so dumb — especially in light of McCarthy et al.'s whining about how mean my "tone" was — that I cannot imagine even wasting the time to mock it. He spends the first stretch making fun of me because I wear glasses and because my outdated picture shows me in a goatee. He then suggests I was lucky that he had to wait a full 24 hours before responding to my "idiot attack." Because "I knew if I wrote it right after reading your attack for the very first time, I would have scared even Lew Rockwell." [Emphasis in original.]

 

I don't know what to say, except maybe his response could have used a few more minutes in the oven. See for yourself.

 

As for Mr. Dieteman, I was probably unfair when I portrayed him as an hysteric (like Mr. Murphy). He seems quite the opposite: earnest and serious to a fault. That said, the profound offense taken by several other LR writers and even more of its readers, is bizarre.

 

I try to avoid "they started it arguments" but let us note for the record that what got my attention was a column entitled, "Stop Being a Schmuck, Jonah." Also, the fact that LewRockwell.com writers are fond of calling mainstream conservatives "socialists,warmongers,imperialists," etc. — amidst fevered screeds about CIA plots and neo-secessionist outbursts — didn't exactly make me feel like I was throwing the first stone.

 

Frank Meyer & Dieteman v. Kantor

As for the substance of what I wrote in that column, I don't retract a thing. Though I do owe an explanation on the bit about Frank Meyer's conversion, which was poorly phrased. As both the founder of fusionism and a libertarian, Meyer believed you could believe in a transcendent universal morality and advocate the maximization of human freedom. Not surprisingly, his chief critics were Catholic social conservatives. When Meyer had his deathbed conversion to Catholicism, some took it at as an explicit reversal of positions. By no means do I believe that religion and libertarianism are at loggerheads.

 

Anyway, Mr. Dieteman asserted in his piece that it was "very strange" for me to place Hayek's The Road to Serfdom at the core of the modern conservative canon — as if he'd never heard this argument before. I explained how there was nothing strange about my assertion, and I have nothing to add, except that it was Dieteman's tone regarding how "very strange" it was for me to make the suggestion that annoyed me so.

 

As for Mr. Kantor, well, his entire article seemed designed solely to justify using the word "schmuck." That aside, his only real accusation was that I don't know much about von Mises and that in and of itself is schmuck-worthy.

 

But not only do I admit this, he wouldn't know it if I hadn't said so. Various Rockwellites call me arrogant, but here I thought I was being humble. To date, I can't really figure out what Kantor's original complaint was. Maybe I just can't cut my way through the gratuitous, prison-philosopher ten-dollar verbiage. But in his clarification yesterday, Mr. Kantor said it wasn't my professed ignorance of von Mises that ticked him off. Rather, "I would simply prefer that he not caricature libertarians as a gaggle of loopy devolutionists" who "logically criticize Hayek for his un-libertarian positions."

 

Okay, the wheel turns again. So Mr. Dieteman seems to be saying that Hayek's not a conservative and belongs firmly in the libertarian pantheon (even though he concedes that Hayek lent theoretical support to the concept of the welfare state). And Mr. Kantor is simply concerned that I not malign Hayek's libertarian critics as zealots; they're just being "logical." So, now I'm wrong for saying that Hayek can be associated with conservatism and I'm also wrong for suggesting that it's anything but rational for libertarians to have serious problems with Hayek.

 

In other words the libertarians should be free to beat up on Hayek but the conservatives are wrong to embrace him with open arms. This seems to me the kind of talk you hear from a husband who beats his wife but doesn't want anybody else to have her. Maybe now readers can understand why I say that most people don't care about these arguments.

 

The Ghetto

Getting past these guys, there's another interesting theme in the e-mail pudding (as well as posts over at FreeRepublic.com, with which I have no quarrel). It's been suggested that National Review or National Review Online or simply myself, are just "scared" of LewRockwell.com's growing influence, hence my dismissive tone.

 

Now I know that my word doesn't travel too far in these circles, but I swear to anyone who cares to believe me that this is pure fantasy. I mean literally, it's not even a little bit true. Lewrockwell.com may have legions of brilliant readers, it may be of unsurpassed influence with millions of people, I don't know — but I surely doubt it. Nonetheless, I can assure you its presence simply isn't strongly felt by pretty much anybody I know — and that includes numerous card-carrying, professional libertarians.

 

You could read National Review Online or National Review for months or years without finding a single reference to LewRockwell.com (indeed, a Nexis search reveals that it's only been mentioned 12 times by any publication ever). But, at LewRockwell.com you can't swing an effigy of Bill Buckley without hitting some hissy fit about some article at National Review or National Review Online. That's fine with us, but they shouldn't be deluded that the attention is reciprocated. Because it's not. I'm not saying I'll never write about Lewrockwell.com again — and the libertarians are always fair game — but this is not a rivalry, it's simply a silly mess I've stepped in.

 

Which gets to the heart of my original argument. The tendency of libertarians generally and the Rockwellites specifically, is to get so hung up on ideological hair-splitting and irrelevant and often lunatic sectarian squabbles that they let the world continue creeping in a direction they don't like. Then, they have the unmitigated chutzpah to scream at conservatives and Republicans for not doing enough to stop the creep. This purist approach to politics is quite simply juvenile. Nobody cares in what direction you want the wagon to go if you won't get out of it and help push.