[Vision2020] Cartoons

[Phil Nisbet]

Andreas

First, it was good meeting you at the picnic.

Beyond that, lets work within the facts.

Osama Bin Ladin does not have a kidney disease.  The rumors and other such 
that made that claim were false.  He is alive and in good health someplace 
on the Pakistani-Afghani border.

Radical Islam is already taking your press freedom away.  Did you read the 
articles over the last few days in which any of the writers, cartoonists and 
editors who made the judgment call to put out what were in essence pretty 
tame political cartoon, the very subject of these postings, have all been 
fired from their jobs.  So you can have a cartoon of Jesus, Moses, Buddha or 
Vishnu that calls into question practices of the people of those faiths, but 
under no circumstances may you speak, write or draw things that question 
Islam.  If you do, this gives Islamic crowds in any city world wide the 
rights to burn down a building, kidnap and take hostages, murder the writer, 
speaker or artist and then receive an apology for the outrageous behavior of 
the press.

The same press that feels no compunction about crosses in urine, swastikas 
on Rabbis and a host of other things aimed at drawing outrage from the 
effected communities, is making a monster point of shouting, "Hey we would 
never do a cartoon like that in America".  Osama did not need to be here to 
get that particular gag order now did he?

The fact that all it takes is a fatwa from one of the radical Islamic 
clerics to set mobs loose in the streets and that they feel perfectly free 
to take anything, a book, a painting, a cartoon, a poem or a play and use it 
as the basis for burning down Embassy buildings, beating foreign nationals, 
or assassinating film directors and authors has to be frightening to anybody 
who worries about a free press.  This is not just a slight chilling of press 
freedom rights; it’s a flat out Antarctic winter storm.  Moslem clerics are 
in effect telling us what we can and can not publish according to their 
particular religious doctrines and stating that if we cross a line that they 
deem is portrayal of Islam or their Prophet in a bad light, they can and 
will declare open season on both our selves and on the press of our 
countries.

And it’s not just the Danes who are getting hammered here.  They kidnapped 
Germans in Nablus.  They burned down Norwegian property in Syria.  They beat 
random European aid workers in Gaza.  Over 12 cartoons.

Add a playwright murdered in England for a play calling practices toward 
women in Islam into question.  Add a director in the Netherlands murdered 
for questioning their religion’s actions.  Add riots about a play in 
Northern England against honor killings.  Add the continuing death threat 
against a Nobel Prize winning author.

Not one American News channel would so much as show the offending cartoons.  
Why?  They all mumbled about them being offensive, but the reality is that 
they were all scared to death that if they showed them, their reporters 
lives in the Middle East would not be worth warm spit.  So, yes, they have 
our press freedom in their hip packet.

Funny old world, now ain't it just.

Phil Nisbet



>From: Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com>
>To: Pat Kraut <pkraut at moscow.com>
>CC: vision2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Cartoons
>Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 00:22:06 -0800
>
>On 2/4/06, Pat Kraut <pkraut at moscow.com> wrote:
> >
> > I understand religion I just enjoy living in a country where we have 
>free
> > press among other things. And I am not going to sit idly by while they 
>try
> > to take it away from us. It is going to be interesting to see what 
>Europe
> > does with this.
>
>Pat --
>
>How are they "trying to take it away from us"? In what sense do
>Muslims in foreign countries have the capacity to take our free press
>away from us? You've got a tendency to treat Osama bin Landen as
>though he's landing transport ships in New York, not dying of kidney
>failure in a hole in Afghanistan. The fundamentalist protest against
>political cartoons in Denmark is pathetic -- and only dangerous to the
>people in Danish embassies in Muslim countries.
>
>-- ACS
>
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