The insanity over the cartoon drawings of the prophet Muhammad, originally published in a Danish newspaper, show no sign of abating though god-only-knows how many words have been so far spent debating the issue. A few points to make my viewpoint clear:
To say, as has been repeated ad nauseum since this controversy began, that freedom of speech is not the freedom to offend or insult is completely, totally and maddeningly wrong. It gets things, in fact, completely backwards. Freedom of speech does not exist without the freedom to insult and offend. It seems almost too obvious to have to point out, but to tolerate only those opinions and expressions that you agree with is to make the right to freedom of speech completely meaningless. There is, and there should not be, any right to not be offended in a democratic country. Yes, there are restrictions on the right to free speech in many free countries (in my own, Canada, it is "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"), but hardly can this case be an example of a justifiable restriction. Holocaust denial and blatant anti-Semitism are the most common examples of limitations on free speech, but the difference between those cases and the publication of these cartoons should be obvious enough even though I am admitedly not even completely comfortable with those justifications. In the case of anti-Semitic (meaning, of course, anti-Jewish, though somewhat of a misnomer since Arabs are as semitic as Jews) or other rascist material, the offence is not directed at the beliefs of someone, but rather at their unchangeable identity.
It must be remembered that for Hitler and the Nazis (and those who continue to propagate views similar to theirs to this day), "Jewishness" had nothing to do with believing in Judaism, but was a racial signifier that could not be escaped by simply converting to Christianity. To even have a sole jewish grandparent meant one was "tainted" and was considered enough justification to end up in the gas chambers, though this managed to be avoided by many of those with mixed ancestry. To be a Muslim, however, is not an unchangeable identity (even though according to the Koran, and many Muslims today, the punishment for apostasy from Islam is death), but a religious set of beliefs that deserves no special respect as compared to any other set of beliefs. To back down in the face of the violent intimidation that has so far been propagated is to give up on this such important right.
Here is Charles Krauthammer's take with which I couldn't agree more:
As much of the Islamic world erupts in a studied frenzy over the Danish Muhammad cartoons, there are voices of reason being heard on both sides. Some Islamic leaders and organizations, while endorsing the demonstrators' sense of grievance and sharing their outrage, speak out against using violence as a vehicle of expression. Their Western counterparts -- intellectuals, including most of the major newspapers in the United States -- are similarly balanced: While, of course, endorsing the principle of free expression, they criticize the Danish newspaper for abusing that right by publishing offensive cartoons, and they declare themselves opposed, in the name of religious sensitivity, to doing the same.
God save us from the voices of reason.
What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity.
Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?
...
There is a "sensitivity" argument for not having published the cartoons in the first place, back in September when they first appeared in that Danish newspaper. But it is not September. It is February. The cartoons have been published, and the newspaper, the publishers and Denmark itself have come under savage attack. After multiple arsons, devastating boycotts, and threats to cut off hands and heads, the issue is no longer news value, i.e., whether a newspaper needs to publish them to inform the audience about what is going on. The issue now is solidarity.
The mob is trying to dictate to Western newspapers, indeed Western governments, what is a legitimate subject for discussion and caricature. The cartoons do not begin to approach the artistic level of Salman Rushdie's prose, but that's not the point. The point is who decides what can be said and what can be drawn within the precincts of what we quaintly think of as the free world.
The mob has turned this into a test case for freedom of speech in the West. The German, French and Italian newspapers that republished these cartoons did so not to inform but to defy -- to declare that they will not be intimidated by the mob.
Read the whole thing at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020901434.html
Monday, February 13, 2006
Thursday, February 09, 2006
And they expect us to believe them?
So what must surely be some of the dumbest words to ever come out of an Attorney General of the United-States were in fact uttered this last Monday. The present holder of that position, Alberto Gonzales, was testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Commitee concerning the Bush Administration's use of the NSA (National Secutriy Agency) domestically to spy on Americans electronic communication without a warrant. This despite the explicit criminalizing of such activity by a 1978 law, entitled the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, that established a secret court to review, and give warrants for, any such activity. FISA, as it is commonly known, was enacted in response to revelations of judicially unchecked government wiretapping of citizens during the Nixon Administration. The rules by which authorities could get a warrant for a wiretap were made easier in the PATRIOT Act passed after 9/11, but any electronic surveillance still required approval by the court.
Though the Bush Administration has repeatedly endorsed the changes made to FISA since 2001 and never challenged the law's constitutionality till they were caught breaking it, it now claims that they are not legally required to even follow the law because of the "War on Terror" going on - Bush's inherent executive authority supposedly overriding Congressional statute. This is a completely specious argument as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the philosophy behind the U.S. Constitution should know; this being, the division of powers between the three branches of government - Executive, Judicial and Legislative. For any of these branches to claim exclusive authority concerning the rights of American citizens is obviously unconstitutional.
Yet Gonzales was on Capitol Hill to defend what is completely undefensible and is undoubtedly, in my mind, and impeachable offence. The following remark was the stupidest thing he said, but the everything was said was shameful for someone who is supposed to be the USA's highest law enforcement official. His slavish obediance is in sharp contrast to the actions of Elliot Richardson who as Attorney General in 1973 was ordered by Nixon to fire Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor appointed by Richardson who was investigating the 1972 Watergate burglary. Richardson resigned rather than obey orders that went against his understanding of law and justice, and his promise to Congress to not interfere with Cox's investigation. This kind of courage is sadly in short supply in Washington D.C. today, but must be found if Bush's abuses of power are to be stopped and the USA's democracy to be preserved.
Key Gonzales quote (via Crooks and Liars): President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.
The mind staggers at the stupidity...
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/06.html#a7043
Though the Bush Administration has repeatedly endorsed the changes made to FISA since 2001 and never challenged the law's constitutionality till they were caught breaking it, it now claims that they are not legally required to even follow the law because of the "War on Terror" going on - Bush's inherent executive authority supposedly overriding Congressional statute. This is a completely specious argument as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the philosophy behind the U.S. Constitution should know; this being, the division of powers between the three branches of government - Executive, Judicial and Legislative. For any of these branches to claim exclusive authority concerning the rights of American citizens is obviously unconstitutional.
Yet Gonzales was on Capitol Hill to defend what is completely undefensible and is undoubtedly, in my mind, and impeachable offence. The following remark was the stupidest thing he said, but the everything was said was shameful for someone who is supposed to be the USA's highest law enforcement official. His slavish obediance is in sharp contrast to the actions of Elliot Richardson who as Attorney General in 1973 was ordered by Nixon to fire Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor appointed by Richardson who was investigating the 1972 Watergate burglary. Richardson resigned rather than obey orders that went against his understanding of law and justice, and his promise to Congress to not interfere with Cox's investigation. This kind of courage is sadly in short supply in Washington D.C. today, but must be found if Bush's abuses of power are to be stopped and the USA's democracy to be preserved.
Key Gonzales quote (via Crooks and Liars): President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.
The mind staggers at the stupidity...
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/06.html#a7043
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
The perniciousness of paranoia
The tendency of so many to view the problems of the world in all their complexity as the evil machinations of a "them" in sharp contrast to an eminently virtuous "us" itself explains a great deal of what is now wrong in the world today. For the Nazis it was the Aryans vs the Jews; for communists, the Proletariat vs the Bourgeoisies; for David Icke and his eco-fascists (google his name if you're at all curious), humans vs shape-shifting part-human, part-lizard are instead the dichotomy. In the Islamic world of today, a similar tendency has become increasingly evident and in an article I just read today, though it was originally posted back in 2004, Nick Cohen describes this sad situation very well.
EVER SINCE 11 September 2001 reasonable people in liberal democracies have concluded that their enemies must at some level be reasonable, too. Surely such hatred must have been provoked by the west. Surely the solution must be for western governments to stop being provocative. Their rational opponents would then have no reason to commit homicidal attacks, and we would be safe. Unfortunately the belief in a rational motive is an illusion. To sustain the rationalist fallacy, you must ignore vast amounts of evidence. In the Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and Algeria, millions have died in Islamist wars and massacres that make Srebrenica and the World Trade Center appear paltry affairs. Islamist movements dedicated to persecuting Muslims who believe in the separation of church and state or the emancipation of women are not rational on any terms but their own. This seems a simple point to make. If you pay al-Qaeda and its imitators the compliment of reading what their leaders say, you find a cosmic dream of an Islamic empire dominating the world.
But the point is rarely taken, in part because Afghanistan and the Sudan are faraway countries of which we know little. How many people, for instance, have heard of the slaughter of the “heretical” Shia Muslims in central Afghanistan by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, let alone asked themselves what foul ideology drove them to do it? Yet there is a link closer to home which ties Islamism to the mass irrationalist movements of the west. You can hear it like a faint drumbeat, a background noise behind the bombings and the propaganda that alerts the listener to Europe’s baleful history. On 9 March, to take the most recent example, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a restaurant in Istanbul. If their victims had been British, American or Jewish, right-thinking people would have said that the overthrow of the Taliban or the invasion of Iraq or the humiliation of the Palestinians was the “root cause” of the murders. As it was, the dead were members of a party of diners from a Masonic lodge, and the story died as quickly as they did.
In November 2003, 32 people were killed and more than 400 injured when the British consulate in Istanbul and the (British) HSBC bank were attacked. Every right-thinking person agreed that the suicidal assaults were a punishment for the war on Iraq, and no one dwelt on the oddity of the statement given by the caller who claimed responsibility on behalf of a Turkish Islamist group and al-Qaeda. “We will continue to attack Masonic targets,” he said. “The Muslims are not alone.”
Type “Masons” and “Islam” into Google and you get about 14,000 hits. The Masons, you learn, hide subliminal messages in The Simpsons as well as the music of the Eagles, Michael Jackson and Madonna, the better to brainwash the world. (Should you be inclined to play “Hotel California” backwards, you will hear “yeah Satan”, apparently.) Abu Hamza, who extolled the glories of martyrdom from the Finsbury Park mosque in London, told the Independent: “I am not saying every American government figure knew about [11 September 2001]. But there are a few people [in the US government] who want to trigger a third world war. They are sponsored by the business lobby. Most of them are Freemasons, and they have loyalty to the Zionists.”
...
To British eyes this is all howling mad. Every now and again, journalists receive unprovable accusations that the Masons have tied up a plum job or fixed a planning decision, but on the whole British Freemasonry has become a Pythonesque joke - “the mafia of the mediocre”, as a character in Our Friends in the North exclaimed. Men who roll up their trouser legs and exchange silly handshakes are many things, but a conspiracy for world domination they are not. That tyrants and religious fanatics see them as such is revealing. It shows that the paranoias of fascist Europe have spread to many of the third world’s reactionary movements.
...
The rest can be found at http://www.nickcohen.net/?p=71
EVER SINCE 11 September 2001 reasonable people in liberal democracies have concluded that their enemies must at some level be reasonable, too. Surely such hatred must have been provoked by the west. Surely the solution must be for western governments to stop being provocative. Their rational opponents would then have no reason to commit homicidal attacks, and we would be safe. Unfortunately the belief in a rational motive is an illusion. To sustain the rationalist fallacy, you must ignore vast amounts of evidence. In the Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and Algeria, millions have died in Islamist wars and massacres that make Srebrenica and the World Trade Center appear paltry affairs. Islamist movements dedicated to persecuting Muslims who believe in the separation of church and state or the emancipation of women are not rational on any terms but their own. This seems a simple point to make. If you pay al-Qaeda and its imitators the compliment of reading what their leaders say, you find a cosmic dream of an Islamic empire dominating the world.
But the point is rarely taken, in part because Afghanistan and the Sudan are faraway countries of which we know little. How many people, for instance, have heard of the slaughter of the “heretical” Shia Muslims in central Afghanistan by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, let alone asked themselves what foul ideology drove them to do it? Yet there is a link closer to home which ties Islamism to the mass irrationalist movements of the west. You can hear it like a faint drumbeat, a background noise behind the bombings and the propaganda that alerts the listener to Europe’s baleful history. On 9 March, to take the most recent example, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a restaurant in Istanbul. If their victims had been British, American or Jewish, right-thinking people would have said that the overthrow of the Taliban or the invasion of Iraq or the humiliation of the Palestinians was the “root cause” of the murders. As it was, the dead were members of a party of diners from a Masonic lodge, and the story died as quickly as they did.
In November 2003, 32 people were killed and more than 400 injured when the British consulate in Istanbul and the (British) HSBC bank were attacked. Every right-thinking person agreed that the suicidal assaults were a punishment for the war on Iraq, and no one dwelt on the oddity of the statement given by the caller who claimed responsibility on behalf of a Turkish Islamist group and al-Qaeda. “We will continue to attack Masonic targets,” he said. “The Muslims are not alone.”
Type “Masons” and “Islam” into Google and you get about 14,000 hits. The Masons, you learn, hide subliminal messages in The Simpsons as well as the music of the Eagles, Michael Jackson and Madonna, the better to brainwash the world. (Should you be inclined to play “Hotel California” backwards, you will hear “yeah Satan”, apparently.) Abu Hamza, who extolled the glories of martyrdom from the Finsbury Park mosque in London, told the Independent: “I am not saying every American government figure knew about [11 September 2001]. But there are a few people [in the US government] who want to trigger a third world war. They are sponsored by the business lobby. Most of them are Freemasons, and they have loyalty to the Zionists.”
...
To British eyes this is all howling mad. Every now and again, journalists receive unprovable accusations that the Masons have tied up a plum job or fixed a planning decision, but on the whole British Freemasonry has become a Pythonesque joke - “the mafia of the mediocre”, as a character in Our Friends in the North exclaimed. Men who roll up their trouser legs and exchange silly handshakes are many things, but a conspiracy for world domination they are not. That tyrants and religious fanatics see them as such is revealing. It shows that the paranoias of fascist Europe have spread to many of the third world’s reactionary movements.
...
The rest can be found at http://www.nickcohen.net/?p=71
Monday, February 06, 2006
Worthy of a read
Not much to say today. My thoughts of late have been mostly focused on the insanity going on on account of the drawings of Muhammad that originally appeared in a Danish newspaper but have since been re-printed elsewhere. Apparently two people died in Afghanistan during anti-Denmark and Europe protests today and in the last two days the embassies of Denmark in Damascus and Beirut, as well as the Norwegian embassy in Damascus, have been burned in protest. All this over 12 cartoons. It boggles the mind. I don't agree with Noam Chomsky about much, but he did once say quite truthfully (to paraphrase) that you don't believe in freedom of speech if you don't tolerate things that you personally despise. What is it about the Muslim world today that can go to such extremes over so little is a question to wonder. Perhaps more thoughts later, but in the meantime here's a couple of exerpts and links to the entireties concerning this issue. First from one of my favourite writers, Mark Steyn.
Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam. The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.
Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.
Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.
Jyllands-Posten wasn't being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of "self-censorship" -- i.e., a climate in which there's no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it's better not to.
That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.
One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.
No doubt he's similarly impressed by the "sensitivity" of Anne Owers, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds that it shows the cross of St. George, which was used by the Crusaders and thus is offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he's impressed by the "sensitivity" of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word "Allah" in Arabic script. I don't know which sura in the Koran says don't forget, folks, it's not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be "sensitive."
And doubtless the British foreign secretary also appreciates the "sensitivity" of the owner of France-Soir, who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the "sensitivity" of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy ''Shouf Shouf Habibi!'' on the grounds that "I don't want a knife in my chest" -- which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose ''right to dissent'' all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they're just being "sensitive,'' too.
And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the "sensitivity" of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard. And maybe he even admires the "sensitivity" of the increasing numbers of Dutch people who dislike the pervasive fear and tension in certain parts of the Netherlands and so have emigrated to Canada and New Zealand.
Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a "diverse" "tolerant" society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.
Read it all at http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn05.html
Next is a much deserved "fisking" of this literary forms anti-patron saint; Robert Fisk's own recent column about this controversy. No surprise he thinks it's all the West's fault. Scott Burgess at The Daily Ablution disagrees and with him I couldn't agree more.
"So let's start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam."
An interesting hypothesis - one which, having stated, Mr. Fisk proceeds to immediately
disprove:
"For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote about the sea's 'long, withdrawing roar'. That's why we talk about 'the West versus Islam' rather than 'Christians versus Islam'- because there aren't an awful lot of Christians left in Europe."
So let me get this straight. "This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam" - the reason being that Europeans are secular and Muslims are not. "That's why we talk about 'the West versus Islam' rather than 'Christians versus Islam'". He's really not doing his point any favours here, is he?
In the next paragraph, Mr. Fisk sinks his dentures into the meaty flesh of Western hypocrisy. We, not the innocent Muslim faithful, are the wrongdoers in all of this:
"Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I happen to remember how, more than a decade ago, a film called The Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris, someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young man. I also happen to remember a US university which invited me to give a lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled 'September 11, 2001: ask who did it but, for God's sake, don't ask why'. When I arrived, I found that the university had deleted the phrase 'for God's sake' becuase 'we didn't want to offend certain sensibilities'. Ah-ha, so we have 'sensibilities' too.
"In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularlists when it comes to free speech - or cheap cartoons - we can worry about adherents to our own precious religion just as much."
Verily, the mind boggles. Is Mr. Fisk really equating the best examples of excessive Christian sensitivity that he can come up with - the action of a single nutcase over a decade ago, and the inconsequential censorship of a university jobsworth three years ago - with the threats, violence and worldwide "Days of Anger" we've been seeing over the last few days?
"We can worry ... just as much" about Christians? On a day when the streets are full of fanatics chanting "UK you must pray ... 7/7 on its way"? It's rare for words to fail me, but this is such a time.
[Continued]...
"For many Muslims, the 'Islamic' reaction to the affair is an embarrassment. There is good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some elements of reform introduced into their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue, no-one would have minded."
Once again, the obtuseness is simply breathtaking. Mr. Fisk is seriously stating that "no-one would have minded" if the cartoons had advanced the cause of reform-minded Muslims. It is, however, quite obvious that many Muslims would have minded - specifically, those who do not want to see reform debated or pushed forward. Those individuals would still have done all in their power to stir up fundamentalist anger, just as they're doing now. And guess what? They're the dangerous ones.
Continuing:
"This is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntingdon garbage about a 'clash of civilisations'. Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that's what happens when you topple dictators). In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of 'Palestine'. There's a message here, isn't there?"
Why yes, there is. The message is that the Muslim world is turning increasingly to theocracy, with all of its strictures on speech and action, medieval punishments and the like. Meanwhile, as Mr. Fisk himself points out, free Europe has become increasingly secular (except for the burgeoning Muslim communities in its midst). As all but the willfully blind can now see, this is precisely the clash that Mr. Fisk denies so stubbornly, and so ineffectually.
And why is the Ummah turning to theocracy to the extent that it is? Come on, you know the answer to that - as always, it's our fault:
"[The message is] That American policies - 'regime change' in the Middle East - are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes we imposed on them."
Remind me - which "corrupt regime" did we impose on Iraq? On Palestine? Have we "imposed" Mubarak, or the Iranian government just prior to this new clerical one?
The whole thing can be found at http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2006/02/fisk_in_a_barre.html
Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam. The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.
Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.
Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.
Jyllands-Posten wasn't being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of "self-censorship" -- i.e., a climate in which there's no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it's better not to.
That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.
One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.
No doubt he's similarly impressed by the "sensitivity" of Anne Owers, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds that it shows the cross of St. George, which was used by the Crusaders and thus is offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he's impressed by the "sensitivity" of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word "Allah" in Arabic script. I don't know which sura in the Koran says don't forget, folks, it's not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be "sensitive."
And doubtless the British foreign secretary also appreciates the "sensitivity" of the owner of France-Soir, who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the "sensitivity" of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy ''Shouf Shouf Habibi!'' on the grounds that "I don't want a knife in my chest" -- which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose ''right to dissent'' all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they're just being "sensitive,'' too.
And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the "sensitivity" of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard. And maybe he even admires the "sensitivity" of the increasing numbers of Dutch people who dislike the pervasive fear and tension in certain parts of the Netherlands and so have emigrated to Canada and New Zealand.
Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a "diverse" "tolerant" society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.
Read it all at http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn05.html
Next is a much deserved "fisking" of this literary forms anti-patron saint; Robert Fisk's own recent column about this controversy. No surprise he thinks it's all the West's fault. Scott Burgess at The Daily Ablution disagrees and with him I couldn't agree more.
"So let's start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam."
An interesting hypothesis - one which, having stated, Mr. Fisk proceeds to immediately
disprove:
"For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote about the sea's 'long, withdrawing roar'. That's why we talk about 'the West versus Islam' rather than 'Christians versus Islam'- because there aren't an awful lot of Christians left in Europe."
So let me get this straight. "This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam" - the reason being that Europeans are secular and Muslims are not. "That's why we talk about 'the West versus Islam' rather than 'Christians versus Islam'". He's really not doing his point any favours here, is he?
In the next paragraph, Mr. Fisk sinks his dentures into the meaty flesh of Western hypocrisy. We, not the innocent Muslim faithful, are the wrongdoers in all of this:
"Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I happen to remember how, more than a decade ago, a film called The Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris, someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young man. I also happen to remember a US university which invited me to give a lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled 'September 11, 2001: ask who did it but, for God's sake, don't ask why'. When I arrived, I found that the university had deleted the phrase 'for God's sake' becuase 'we didn't want to offend certain sensibilities'. Ah-ha, so we have 'sensibilities' too.
"In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularlists when it comes to free speech - or cheap cartoons - we can worry about adherents to our own precious religion just as much."
Verily, the mind boggles. Is Mr. Fisk really equating the best examples of excessive Christian sensitivity that he can come up with - the action of a single nutcase over a decade ago, and the inconsequential censorship of a university jobsworth three years ago - with the threats, violence and worldwide "Days of Anger" we've been seeing over the last few days?
"We can worry ... just as much" about Christians? On a day when the streets are full of fanatics chanting "UK you must pray ... 7/7 on its way"? It's rare for words to fail me, but this is such a time.
[Continued]...
"For many Muslims, the 'Islamic' reaction to the affair is an embarrassment. There is good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some elements of reform introduced into their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue, no-one would have minded."
Once again, the obtuseness is simply breathtaking. Mr. Fisk is seriously stating that "no-one would have minded" if the cartoons had advanced the cause of reform-minded Muslims. It is, however, quite obvious that many Muslims would have minded - specifically, those who do not want to see reform debated or pushed forward. Those individuals would still have done all in their power to stir up fundamentalist anger, just as they're doing now. And guess what? They're the dangerous ones.
Continuing:
"This is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntingdon garbage about a 'clash of civilisations'. Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that's what happens when you topple dictators). In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of 'Palestine'. There's a message here, isn't there?"
Why yes, there is. The message is that the Muslim world is turning increasingly to theocracy, with all of its strictures on speech and action, medieval punishments and the like. Meanwhile, as Mr. Fisk himself points out, free Europe has become increasingly secular (except for the burgeoning Muslim communities in its midst). As all but the willfully blind can now see, this is precisely the clash that Mr. Fisk denies so stubbornly, and so ineffectually.
And why is the Ummah turning to theocracy to the extent that it is? Come on, you know the answer to that - as always, it's our fault:
"[The message is] That American policies - 'regime change' in the Middle East - are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes we imposed on them."
Remind me - which "corrupt regime" did we impose on Iraq? On Palestine? Have we "imposed" Mubarak, or the Iranian government just prior to this new clerical one?
The whole thing can be found at http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2006/02/fisk_in_a_barre.html
Sunday, February 05, 2006
So about that election...
I've been feeling quite uninspired of late to write anything and for those who might have been cheking in here every so often - surely having given up waiting for me to post something undoubtedly - I'm sorry for this lack of literary output. It comes in waves and so when the sea is calm the idea of forcing myself to write something for the sake of writing has little appeal for me. Hopefully this will soon change.
I should have written more about the recent Canadian election during and in its immediate aftermath, but whatever my opinions were seemed to have been more eloquently put by others. So it is with a commentary I just had the fortune to find online by the inimicable Rex Murphy concerning a certain American's intrusion into the Canadian electoral debate. I expressed the same opinion to various friends, but he says it so damn well that I'll defer to him (thanks to Google News for bypassing the Globe & Mail's subscriber wall):
Well, it was a narrow escape. But we did it. Canadians have preserved their liberties and independence against the always rapacious American beast.
We knew there were powerful elements in the United States that wanted us to kowtow and genuflect to a simplistic worldview, that knuckle-dragging Good-versus-Evil script they have been remorselessly propagandizing all over the world since 9/11.
They have been trying to drag Canada into this simpleton's game for years, mauling truth and banishing nuance with a continuous stream of invective posing as reason, and caricature passing itself off as accuracy.
It's a difficult thing to resist the mighty United States at any time, and especially difficult in all the dust and storm of a national election. But we did it.
It was a close-run thing. But on Monday night, Canada fought back and won. On Jan. 20, just three days before our vote, Michael Moore, entrepreneur, fabulist, philosophe, issued a broadside to the citizens of this country warning us sternly, and with the imperious irony of which he is so fully a master, against the perils of electing a Stephen Harper government:
Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest? Is that how you want millions of us down here to see you from now on? The next notch on the cowboy belt?
I was worried at first that the subtlety of the pitch might obscure its wonderful impertinence — worried that the charm of Mr. Moore's address might distract Canadians from the consideration that an American millionaire celebrity pitchman was interfering in, and attempting to influence, the Canadian vote.
I was worried, too, that this one-man shock-and-awe “documentarian” might be leading a charge, that the other bright bulbs of international busybodyism were massed behind his formidable massed behind. Was Sean Penn on the way to monitor the vote in Etobicoke? Was he planning one of his patented fact-finding junkets like the visits that brought such comfort and peace to the citizens of Baghdad? I could see the headlines: Penn in Halifax. Visits Bar. Reads Construction-Site Posters. Warns Harper is Christian. Says “God Bless Canada.”
Well, that didn't happen. We're were spared the fast-food internationalism of Mr. Penn, and that probably meant we were spared assorted sermons from Alex Baldwin, Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken and that whole posse of celebrity dilettantes who see the whole world as an audience for their inch-deep, paint-by-numbers, cause-a-day homilies. Maybe they were off somewhere saving a seal.
Or, what is much more likely, maybe he concluded there was really no need for the secondary battalions. We, the respectful, bland and polite citizens of a country that is really only a farm team for the U.S. entertainment industry — hello Céline, Jim, Dan and Avril — would naturally be flattered into sheer insensibility that the portentous Mr. Moore even knew we were having an election. He has a taste for insolence, referring to Stephen Harper, who has more brain than Michael Moore has girth, as someone “who should be running for governor of Utah,“ and whose election would “reduce Canada to a cheap download of Bush & Co.”
One size fits all — that's our Mikey. Because he thinks he has a problem with George Bush, that must be the script for the rest of the world. This is the very essence of imperialism. To believe that your story is everyone else's. To believe that your political drama is the template for every other political drama in the whole wide world. Michael Moore could go to Fogo Island, Nfld., for the municipal elections and find them a perfect parable of the Halliburton super-conspiracy. He'd see Dick Cheney's influence in the selection of the town clerk.
Ego turns the world into one big mirror, and nothing looks back at the celebrity narcissus but the vacant monomaniac staring in. News flash, Mr. Moore: Our election wasn't about Dick Cheney. Or George Bush. Paul Martin (thank God) isn't Bill Clinton. Stephen Harper doesn't own a decoder ring sent him by Karl Rove. Considering the success you've had in stopping George Bush in the country where he actually runs — and on last report he is in his second term — do you really think you should be sparing the time and the shavings of your wit to offer advice to others?
George Bush got three million votes more than John Kerry in the last U.S. presidential election. Karl Rove is on bended knee every day in thanks for the contribution Fahrenheit 9/11 made to that surplus. If you can't win your own elections, Michael, what made you think you had anything to say about ours?
Other than that, I'm glad you called. But we defied you. Stephen Harper is prime minister, and I suppose that tells you all you need to know, which is: Canadians don't care what you think you think.
I know this will annoy all my friends on the Left, but I am indeed glad that the Conservatives won. For me it came down to my belief that the Liberals had to lose; they'd be in power too long and it had obviously corrupted them far past the point to anymore deserve the trust of Canadians. Though I am a supporter of same-sex marriage (and some other policies usually thought of as leftist), that's not what this election was about. Rather, the absolute importance in a democratic system for there to be at least two competing parties with a realistic chance of forming the government. Ever since the Progressive Conservative's 1993 blowout, through over 12 years of Liberal party rule (mostly having a majority in Parliament), that has not been the case. Nothing, in my opinion, was more important in this election than helping to restore this so necessary balance. And in the year and a half or so that Paul Martin has been Prime Minister, he has shown indecision instead of decisiveness, desperation instead of leadership and dishonesty instead of directness. All of these negatives were only made more obvious in the pressure of the campaign as the Liberal's scare tactics (being the entirety of their message) - vote for us because Stephen Harper's scary! - were found wanting. The Liberal Party has for years now been almost devoid of any passion other than holding onto power at all cost. A few years on the opposition benches should give them time and space to do some much needed thinking as to what exactly they stand for instead of madly careening from Left to Right saying whatever they think will offer the best political advantage as Paul Martin has shown himself wont to do.
Same-sex marriage is here to stay. Harper has commited to allowing a free vote if the issue is debated by Parliament and those who would like to preserve the "traditional" definition of marriage don't have the votes to make that happen; let alone use the Not-Withstanding clause of the Charter. As for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, another reason given to not vote Conservative, the Liberal's hypocrisy knows no bounds in criticizing the Bush Administration for not going along with it and the Conservatives for not wanting to go along with it when they themselves have so far done little to reduce carbon dioxide emmisions. Even though the USA hasn't signed onto the deal they've done a better job than Canada has in reducing CO2 emmisions since the Liberal's have been in power.
The Canadian political scene just got a whole lot more interesting anyways. The question is now whether Harper will follow in the footsteps on John Diefenbaker - turning a minority into a massive majority in a year - or Joe Clark - losing a minority in nine months to a resurgent Pierre Trudeau. We can only wait and see...
I should have written more about the recent Canadian election during and in its immediate aftermath, but whatever my opinions were seemed to have been more eloquently put by others. So it is with a commentary I just had the fortune to find online by the inimicable Rex Murphy concerning a certain American's intrusion into the Canadian electoral debate. I expressed the same opinion to various friends, but he says it so damn well that I'll defer to him (thanks to Google News for bypassing the Globe & Mail's subscriber wall):
Well, it was a narrow escape. But we did it. Canadians have preserved their liberties and independence against the always rapacious American beast.
We knew there were powerful elements in the United States that wanted us to kowtow and genuflect to a simplistic worldview, that knuckle-dragging Good-versus-Evil script they have been remorselessly propagandizing all over the world since 9/11.
They have been trying to drag Canada into this simpleton's game for years, mauling truth and banishing nuance with a continuous stream of invective posing as reason, and caricature passing itself off as accuracy.
It's a difficult thing to resist the mighty United States at any time, and especially difficult in all the dust and storm of a national election. But we did it.
It was a close-run thing. But on Monday night, Canada fought back and won. On Jan. 20, just three days before our vote, Michael Moore, entrepreneur, fabulist, philosophe, issued a broadside to the citizens of this country warning us sternly, and with the imperious irony of which he is so fully a master, against the perils of electing a Stephen Harper government:
Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest? Is that how you want millions of us down here to see you from now on? The next notch on the cowboy belt?
I was worried at first that the subtlety of the pitch might obscure its wonderful impertinence — worried that the charm of Mr. Moore's address might distract Canadians from the consideration that an American millionaire celebrity pitchman was interfering in, and attempting to influence, the Canadian vote.
I was worried, too, that this one-man shock-and-awe “documentarian” might be leading a charge, that the other bright bulbs of international busybodyism were massed behind his formidable massed behind. Was Sean Penn on the way to monitor the vote in Etobicoke? Was he planning one of his patented fact-finding junkets like the visits that brought such comfort and peace to the citizens of Baghdad? I could see the headlines: Penn in Halifax. Visits Bar. Reads Construction-Site Posters. Warns Harper is Christian. Says “God Bless Canada.”
Well, that didn't happen. We're were spared the fast-food internationalism of Mr. Penn, and that probably meant we were spared assorted sermons from Alex Baldwin, Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken and that whole posse of celebrity dilettantes who see the whole world as an audience for their inch-deep, paint-by-numbers, cause-a-day homilies. Maybe they were off somewhere saving a seal.
Or, what is much more likely, maybe he concluded there was really no need for the secondary battalions. We, the respectful, bland and polite citizens of a country that is really only a farm team for the U.S. entertainment industry — hello Céline, Jim, Dan and Avril — would naturally be flattered into sheer insensibility that the portentous Mr. Moore even knew we were having an election. He has a taste for insolence, referring to Stephen Harper, who has more brain than Michael Moore has girth, as someone “who should be running for governor of Utah,“ and whose election would “reduce Canada to a cheap download of Bush & Co.”
One size fits all — that's our Mikey. Because he thinks he has a problem with George Bush, that must be the script for the rest of the world. This is the very essence of imperialism. To believe that your story is everyone else's. To believe that your political drama is the template for every other political drama in the whole wide world. Michael Moore could go to Fogo Island, Nfld., for the municipal elections and find them a perfect parable of the Halliburton super-conspiracy. He'd see Dick Cheney's influence in the selection of the town clerk.
Ego turns the world into one big mirror, and nothing looks back at the celebrity narcissus but the vacant monomaniac staring in. News flash, Mr. Moore: Our election wasn't about Dick Cheney. Or George Bush. Paul Martin (thank God) isn't Bill Clinton. Stephen Harper doesn't own a decoder ring sent him by Karl Rove. Considering the success you've had in stopping George Bush in the country where he actually runs — and on last report he is in his second term — do you really think you should be sparing the time and the shavings of your wit to offer advice to others?
George Bush got three million votes more than John Kerry in the last U.S. presidential election. Karl Rove is on bended knee every day in thanks for the contribution Fahrenheit 9/11 made to that surplus. If you can't win your own elections, Michael, what made you think you had anything to say about ours?
Other than that, I'm glad you called. But we defied you. Stephen Harper is prime minister, and I suppose that tells you all you need to know, which is: Canadians don't care what you think you think.
I know this will annoy all my friends on the Left, but I am indeed glad that the Conservatives won. For me it came down to my belief that the Liberals had to lose; they'd be in power too long and it had obviously corrupted them far past the point to anymore deserve the trust of Canadians. Though I am a supporter of same-sex marriage (and some other policies usually thought of as leftist), that's not what this election was about. Rather, the absolute importance in a democratic system for there to be at least two competing parties with a realistic chance of forming the government. Ever since the Progressive Conservative's 1993 blowout, through over 12 years of Liberal party rule (mostly having a majority in Parliament), that has not been the case. Nothing, in my opinion, was more important in this election than helping to restore this so necessary balance. And in the year and a half or so that Paul Martin has been Prime Minister, he has shown indecision instead of decisiveness, desperation instead of leadership and dishonesty instead of directness. All of these negatives were only made more obvious in the pressure of the campaign as the Liberal's scare tactics (being the entirety of their message) - vote for us because Stephen Harper's scary! - were found wanting. The Liberal Party has for years now been almost devoid of any passion other than holding onto power at all cost. A few years on the opposition benches should give them time and space to do some much needed thinking as to what exactly they stand for instead of madly careening from Left to Right saying whatever they think will offer the best political advantage as Paul Martin has shown himself wont to do.
Same-sex marriage is here to stay. Harper has commited to allowing a free vote if the issue is debated by Parliament and those who would like to preserve the "traditional" definition of marriage don't have the votes to make that happen; let alone use the Not-Withstanding clause of the Charter. As for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, another reason given to not vote Conservative, the Liberal's hypocrisy knows no bounds in criticizing the Bush Administration for not going along with it and the Conservatives for not wanting to go along with it when they themselves have so far done little to reduce carbon dioxide emmisions. Even though the USA hasn't signed onto the deal they've done a better job than Canada has in reducing CO2 emmisions since the Liberal's have been in power.
The Canadian political scene just got a whole lot more interesting anyways. The question is now whether Harper will follow in the footsteps on John Diefenbaker - turning a minority into a massive majority in a year - or Joe Clark - losing a minority in nine months to a resurgent Pierre Trudeau. We can only wait and see...
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