Cartoon Mayhem Why Hasn’t It Happend Before?

Whose Country Is It Anyway?
What I find most annoying is not the fury of Muslim fanatics but the idea held by these people that offences against religion allowed by our people in our countries should be sanctioned by their people in their countries.
Just imagine if we all did the same? Not a single current Arab government would be standing, ether because they support practices Christians may find offensive, or because they are undemocratic (in which case Iraq might be the only exception).
Oh the days of the 17th century! Back then it took so long to get information across the world that people would ignore these issues outside their borders.
Maybe the embassy burning crowd thinks the mass media is a tool to impose the sanctioned activities of their religion on our people? Certainly without it they would never have known what was going on in the middle pages of a Danish newspaper.

Why Now?
But there is a gap between about now and the 17th century where information didn’t have to brave the sea to reach dessert people (dessert minded). So the big question with real intelligence (which I haven’t heard anything about in the media) “is why has this happened now?” The British National Party publishes its own paper “Voice of Freedom” and has being doing similar cartons for years, and anyway no doubt have most mainstream newspapers (go back a few decades).

So our recent “moral” crusade in Iraq and the “The Axis of Other People” springs to mind. But was our behaviour any worse towards the Arabs in the dying colonial days of the 50’s? Say the Suez-Sinai War?
i-cias.com... or the time when Britain last occupied Iraq in 1920-1925? www.globalpolicy.org...
We even used mustard gas (killing over 9000). In 1919 Winston Churchill who was then a young man serving as Secretary of State said: “"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using [it] against uncivilised tribes." maxspeak.org... (plenty of sources on the web). Fortunately it was never deployed against the Kurds by plane as Churchill had wanted but for technical and not moral reasons (we still fired it in shells). Yep there’s no doubting it our history is in the Middle East is pretty embarrassing. Even in the Iran Iraq war we sold weapons to both sides (it limited their power and helped the economy). www.democracynow.org.../06/09/1444258
And here’s a longer article…
www.zmag.org... (long article, do you’re Google “Iran Iraq war weapons-to-both-sides”.

The Point
But whatever our actions in the Middle East they have always been committed in the presence of a free press. Though the mass media is almost completely centrally owned today it was less so going back to colonial times or even before the 19990’s. With almost every politician or man of power being a newspaper reader our embarrassing history has to stem from a dispassionate attitude towards foreign governments culturally imbedded in our society. In fact a really thorough archive search of European newspapers would probably produce plenty of similar “offensive-cartoons” within last 2 years (let alone decade). So the question I put to you is why this cartoon mayhem now? What’s different? Is it really just our recent behaviour?


[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

Originally posted by Liberal1984
So the question I put to you is why this cartoon mayhem now? What’s different? Is it really just our recent behavior?


[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

The whole purpose of the cartoons was to get a reaction. The purpose was to offend. That's it. They artist said, "Look at what I'm going to do. I'm going to draw something that will upset you. What are you going to do when I'm done?"

I mean, you can't walk into a black neighborhood, wearing a KKK costume, trying to get a reaction, then cry "Free speech!" when things go sour. Well, technically you could, but you'd be a jerk.

[edit on 6-2-2006 by curme]

It did on a smaller scale...American cartoonist Doug Marlette received death threats for his cartoon.

I posted it here.

Originally posted by curme

Originally posted by Liberal1984
So the question I put to you is why this cartoon mayhem now? What’s different? Is it really just our recent behavior?


[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

The whole purpose of the cartoons was to get a reaction. The purpose was to offend. That's it. They artist said, "Look at what I'm going to do. I'm going to draw something that will upset you. What are you going to do when I'm done?"

I mean, you can't walk into a black neighborhood, wearing a KKK costume, trying to get a reaction, then cry "Free speech!" when things go sour. Well, technically you could, but you'd be a jerk.

[edit on 6-2-2006 by curme]

So are you making excuses for these primitive uncivilized acts now? Comparing this to walking in tha 'hood in a KKK mast to this is kinda dumb don't you think? Last time I checked Cartoonists don't burn crosses on lawns and form lynch mobs...

You want to know the Canadian Muslims reaction to this? Boycott. Thats it. No riots. No burning down of consulates, no Beatings just peaceful boycotts which I'm fine with.

[edit on 6-2-2006 by sardion2000]

its the 'holy men' stir up the muslims'

"allah say burn all those who look at cartoons of long time dead guy."

so they pick up their torches and pitchforks and they go for it

"now allah say bash infidels and kill police who try to stop you. When they shoot you its not cos you damage propety and people its cos you are muslim"

so it goes on

you ask ?Why Now?,

heres snips of paraphrase from nytimes.com....

Qatar's Chamber of Commerce has halted dealings with Danish &
Norwegian delegations- -and urged other Muslim states to follow suit.

In Dubai, rarely seen demonstrations are held openly,
In some, demonstrators were bussed in at no cost, by the Gov't

A UAE official states "You have no choice but to join the chorus.
Anyone who doesn't speak up will look as if they tacitly accept
the prophet to be insulted"

at another venue, several hundred Iranians attacked the Danish Embassy in Terhan, tossing firebombs & chanting "God is great" + "Death to Israel"
as police watched

at still another venue, a Lebanese Christian neighborhood, about 400
protestors had a counter-demonstration calling for unity among Lebanese Christians and Muslims...

the nytimes.com reporting included, Carlotta Gall, Craig S Smith, Abdul Waheed Wafa, Hassan Fallah, Sebnem Arsu, Somini Sengupta
wow, 6 writers/contributers !


Why at this particular time??? i donno, but there's somebody fanning the flames.

Finally somebody asking the right questions!

The issue into this whole controversy is not the violence of muslim extremist's reactions, but rather why this whole story is making the headlines everywhere and why the whole revolt has seemingly gotten out of control.

All of this just because of a cartoon? Riiiiiight! How many times zionist or anti-muslim propaganda was used in mainstream newspapers and the worst things the authors had were nothing more than death threats by mail?

My opinion: THIS IS WAR PROPAGANDA!

A propaganda aimed at destroying relations between Europe and muslim countries. To present to westerners the image of muslims as all being a bunch of religious fanatics psychopaths who want nothing less than destroying the West. A terrible war is coming within the next few weeks/months, a war between NATO and Iran, which could easily extend in an all-out world war, and this is the kind of racist propaganda that the elite needs in order to demonize muslims in the eyes of the common westerner and help justify this war in their minds. At the same time, the political elite in the arab world uses that to bolster people's resentment and use it to set things up for a war against the Western world.

I sense a trap. If it really is one, it's executed with very good timing. If things keep on going the way they are and if Danish and Norwish authorities do not make any formal apologies, a world war is just within a few weeks away, my friends...



[edit on 6/2/06 by Echtelion]

i found these new pic's on a duch site , if the nice pic's created sutch a noise , i wonder what these would do if printed in news lol

www.retecool.com...

Why now? because now is the right time, everything has a day and an hour.

Now is the right time.

Originally posted by curme

Originally posted by Liberal1984
So the question I put to you is why this cartoon mayhem now? What’s different? Is it really just our recent behavior?


[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

The whole purpose of the cartoons was to get a reaction. The purpose was to offend. That's it. They artist said, "Look at what I'm going to do. I'm going to draw something that will upset you. What are you going to do when I'm done?"

I mean, you can't walk into a black neighborhood, wearing a KKK costume, trying to get a reaction, then cry "Free speech!" when things go sour. Well, technically you could, but you'd be a jerk.

[edit on 6-2-2006 by curme]

Exactly right. They wanted a "rise" and they got one. Its that simple.

Where was the outrage when South Park did a show (couple of years back) Where Moses, Muhammed, Jesus and Buddha teamed up to fight David Blaine the Magician. That went way over the top! (Of course they made fun of all religions..)