Please show me the other places that do such things on a regular basis?

I know its common in -SOME- middle eastern countries, generally the ones with Islamic governments, but its by no means common in all of them. Nor do I see it happening much elsewhere.

I do however see Prison Populations that often like to go on riots, to kill and hang and burn people in protest.

The Middle east is unstable not in the way you mean its unstable. Kings and rulers of Middle Eastern countries last Years longer than any western government, and normally nothing happens that the government does not allow or suggest happens. Though it is true that politics -between- nations are unstable.

Generally if there is a riot, it is because the State funded media, as well as clerics tell the people that this is something that should be rioted over, and then thier families get a nice little check in the mail for thier loyalty to the state.

Sorry for the delayed response... I wasn't following the thread very closely.

I just mean I think sometimes America particularly (and Australia follows like the lapdog it is) blows the 'terrorism' theory out of proportion. These days, any bad thing that happens to Us is linked to terrorism or fears of terrorism, while we happily go about invading another country and enforcing our beliefs on them with the threat of violence. But that's liberation.

It's like the 'red under the bed' propaganda, suddenly They're all out to get us, anywhere, anytime. And isn't it convenient that the constant threat of "terrorism" and attack boosts the popularity of those leaders and governments that are viewed as unmerciful and strong wartime leaders.



If the West hadn't been targetting Islamists and Islam nations for so long, maybe this wouldn't have erupted in such a ridiculous manner. Unfortunately, even given the history of religious difference... nothing excuses this stupid and utterly disgusting reaction to freaking cartoons.

People trashed Japanese cars in China last fall (and there are nearly no imported Japanese cars there since they all assembled in China - it didn't matter in the least), following a publication of a history textbook in Japan that attempted to deny the Empire's war crimes against China and Korea. Pretty much the same happened in Republic of Korea in response.

Anti-globalists had a habbit of trashing entire cities in Europe not so long ago.

But those don't strictly apply in the particular example you gave of Egypt. You'd need to go back in time and visit pre-Nazi Germany, the US during the Civil War and prior to the War for Independence, and anywhere where affairs were in a flux, tensions ran high, and government wasn't fully in control or was mistrusted.



There are two cases here and they are completely separate. One is that of the ferry, another is that of the caricatures. The former isn't really interesting - it just coincided with the second one and blew way out of proportion. The latter is very interesting. It itself can be broken into two more cases: the one of "latent" and one of "official" protest.

"Official" protest happens in those of Arab countries that have already voted for the new Islamic philosophy, essentially the one of Hamas and Al-Qaeda, on open and perfectly democratic elections.

"Latent" protest occurs in those countries that haven't voted yet, but in light of these recent events will most likely vote the same way if given the chance.

In the "official" case, what is most interesting is how did a country like Iran, which everyone saw as slowly moving towards the West and its values, being weary of fundamentalist rule, suddenly elect the guy it had elected. Or why Palestine did essentially the same thing. And the more general question of: what the hell is going on and how do we deal with it?

However, instead of seeking answers to that question we are replying with caricatures in the press that are absolutely guaranteed to send the situation flying on a tangent, and start (pardon the imagery) collectively foaming at the mouth at how nasty the Arabs are.

Which brings up the main question: so what are we planning to do? Start a war? Because that's where this whole thing is rolling. At this level of "cultural dialogue" we are basically cutting ourselves off from any peaceful resolutions to the billion and one problem that concern primarily us, not the Arabs, in the Middle East. We are cutting ourselves off right now and even more so - during the next election that is going to happen there sooner or later. We can actually consider ourselves effectively cut off already. Which could be fine if it wasn't for the fact that we don't have any resolutions except for the peaceful ones.



If there is a riot it can be for any one of a whole range of reasons. The only reason that doesn't apply is that someone started the riot out of pure malevolence. If a government incites a riot then it does so because it can win from it politically, because otherwise it is going to do its best to supress the riot. Analyzing each particular riot, with the purpose of finding out who started it and why, is pointless. What matters is that the riots started in many places at once and have the potential to root the radical ideology even deeper in the Middle East.

Who is to blame? In this particular case - European media.

I need to look up the blog, however, in this case.. the culprit is apparently the Umans from Denmark. They took a picture of a frechman dressed up as a pig at a pig squeeling contest, made a bad xerox, and spread the imags around the arab nations as if it was a political cartoon.

It turns out, after some great work by bloggers, that the insulting "cartoon" is not infact the one everyone keeps saying it is, but is a fake cartoon that muslims from Denmark wished to show to the arab world to show how evil the west is...


But I suddenly remember now that Europe was happy to let Germany march all over Europe with the hopes that "maybe they will just stop" and I shouldn't be as surprised at Europe's laying down as I initially was.

I still can not believe that ANYONE save hate mongers would blame Europe for people rioting in the Middle East. So damn backwards...


Here is the Blog where you can find all the links, I know there other blogs out there that have the same info, but this is just one of them.
http://mannyishere.blogspot.com/2006/01/sb...inues-lies.html

As hate mongers go, here's a link from that blog post: Mohhamed. That's what it was posted as there also.

As for blaming Europe for riots in the Middle East... Who would you blame if, suppose, you were an American, and a European newspaper posted a caricature of your flag with your then current president defecating on it? That might be free speach also, but I clearly remember that it didn't take much to make Americans boycotte French products and launch a hate mongering campaign against that country, based almost solely on the perceived connection between homosexuality and cowardice, in 2001-2002. Once again, not a strictly applicable parallel, since France didn't technically publish anything even remotely offensive.

My main point here is that the rhetoric on the "pro-Dannish" side and the rhetoric on the "anti-Dannish" side have the exact same smell of hatred, racism, intolerance, shortsightedness, and self-righteousness. This all looks more and more like some evil plot to create the basis for some new sort of "operation" in the Middle East, since it is essentially Western media that are fueling this affair.

You clearly have lived a very sheltered life if you consider that "Hate mongering"

Do you know what they DO publish? There is no outrcy against the muslims for publishing evil evil cartoons, there is no cry for thier deaths.. There is only a cry for people to be allowed to speak and stand and not become CHANGE THE STANDARD of what is reportable... There is so much to say on this subject that I don't even know where to begin.

Can I go around killing and rioting now because people don't listen to my religious laws? Is that what I would have to do to stop anti semetic cartoons being published in Qatar, Egypt, Iran, UAE...

Lets all go riot whever someone publishes something insulting... yay!

Such stupidity, I can't handle it!


Are you AWARE of the terrible things that people do publish and NOBODY blinks an eye?

Thank God atleast one country is standing up for Free Speach these days. Russia is now displaying the cartoons in thier musuem. Its sad that Russia has to teach the world about the importance of freedom of expression.

After debating with my World History to the 16th century teacher on this subject, in class too as hes brought it up both days weve been in class, it seems that people are being idiots about this plain and simple. There are certain things you -do not do- in life, yet these things get down frequently. It looks more like the Danes, before anyone says anything I -am- Danish through family name and Norwegian through blood, were trying to get payback to the groups that created the Anti-Jewish cartoons.

Ill quote Allia on paying back something that you feel was a wrong, "It's childish."

Come on, these people are adults and they think its moraly correct to do this? Im not even 17 yet and I can see that this is wrong. No, its gone far enough there should be no more 'paybacks' so to speak as they make both your people look silly.

Now that my rants done on the silliness I'll say something that most people will say I'm an idealist and optmistic on: This has to stop, its not right to slander or attack anothers culture, beliefs, race and religions in any form. These cartoons should not be allowed to be published in any form, I dont personally like America but you dont see me drawing cartoons on how they are evil and power hungry do you? It's just childish and needs to stop.

Stop it at its source, dont allow the cartoons to go through.

True the cartoon is what broke the camels back so to speak, it’s the issue over free speech which is the big concern.

There are constant art works and cartoons which mock the catholic religion, they cause lots of anger but they are still made and published, Cartoons and art work mocking the Muslim religion are banned, this is a double standard plain and simple you can not support this state of affairs and also claim you support free speech, which was the main issue here wasn’t it?




I agree with you Daganev on the free speech part, but your example about Egypt is a very poor one for any argument.



An example of people who riot on a regular basis over petty bias religious and political differences? Well that’s just to easy im not even going to answer that.

Where do people even come up with such nonsense?

I do believe that the cartoons made in September were more of a reaction to the Danish film maker being killed in the streat because he made a factual movie about Islam and its origins.


Anyway.. Apparently destroying buildings isn't enough for these people... I guess we better stop talking about this before the muslims hack our forums!

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CI...2&src=site-marq


Edit: Just to clarify here... CNN, one of the T.V. News here in America "Refuses to show images of this cartoon, because it offends some people".... 20 seconds later they are showing images of anti-semetic cartoons dispicting religious Jews as the devil, and the cause of 9/11.

Why do people have no problem showing disturbing and insulting cartoons against Jews in public, but not Muslims? As one blogger said "They don't have to worry about Jews rioting, because they don't do that." Well, maybe we should.

Have you ever heard 'violence begets violence'?

There's no drama in changing that standard. It is done all the time. You can't say that you want to kill the Jews for what they did to Jesus, in any European country. Nor can you publish cartoons of 9-year old girls getting raped. Well, you can of course, but know what the rest of the world will do to you for it? That's because some people are very sensitive about certain things, to the point of being prepared to fight you over them.

There's no outcry against the muslims publishing evil cartoons (note that you view them as evil) because no one really cares about what muslims publish. One of the key points in this issue is that all of a sudden things that are published in the Middle East matter! Matter because they can start crap like this, which hits right into the heart of Europe. The correct response is to register this signal and prepare to fight them on their own turf - in their newly emerging media. Demanding that they hold themselves to the same standards of tolerance, cultural respect, and maturity. Instead, what is proposed is to degrade the level of the Western press to even it out with the Middle Eastern one, of all things!



A museum is not a newspaper. Those are two completely different things. Museums exist solely to collect items of all sorts, including those of highly offensive and inflamatory nature.

And thanks to BBC World I found out today that all Danish agencies have been asked to vacate the territory of Chechnya by its government, and the federal Russian government hadn't squelled as much as an acknowledgement of the fact so far, I believe.

When the cartoons were published, several ambassies of arab countries in Denmark asked the first minister, president or autorithy in charge for a meeting to discurs them (same as if your country says something wich offends another country, so far everything is diplomatically treated as it should be).

They were ignored, and the prime minister just said that he wouldn't get in the middle of a row between publishers.

When complaints continued he said that any attack by muslims to freedom of speech would be severely punished, thus taking obviously sides.

I must remark that before all this was blow out of order by the extremists, they were actually just asking for an apology from the newspaper. An apology for insulting the central sacred symbols of their lives.

I must say, here when somebody does something that upsets quite a bit of people (I include doing bad on cristianism symbols in museums, or writing offensive books about all the evils the gay community is cause of) the government at least tries to intervene. A book by an Iman was censored because was plainly against women freedom, and said Iman was subjected to a jury. There weren't riots or any stuff like that. Same with another book about how gays were sick people that should be cured and stuff like that. The publisher apologized and removed it from public hands. Why? Because it was offensive to a big minority of the population.

Regarding religious cartoons, I think the problem wasn't depicting a muslim as a terrorist (wich would be depicting religious jews as the Devil) but drawing their Prophet (Drawing him is already an offense) as a terrorist. Sorry, but probably if the newspaper had depicted Jesus as a farmer playing with a sheep there would be quite a bit of trouble as well, just more civilized because we're occidentals, not poor in war middleeast countries with militaristic governments. Don't know enough on jewish religious symbols to find the right analogy.

Edit: I'll just leave this bit about Tiger Woods because I think its both Hillarious, and needs to be looked at seriously. But then I'm not going to engage in a coversation with biggots.

I liked it best when the Creator of the Church of Tiger Woods announced that he will not tolerate any image of Tiger Woods being depicted as losing.

http://www.tigerwoodsisgod.com/index.php

Afterall, words can describe it just fine!

I've moved all the posts that don't have to do with this topic into a new thread before the hijack derails the topic too much.

Suffice it to say, Muslim nations even -asking- western governemnts to control thier press is such an insult I'm amazed you even brought it up in defence.

As a note, a french newspaper/book or something like that published the cartoons, the Muslims took peacefull action against it and took it to court to get them banned.

The french high court threw the case out of court under the grounds of free speach and freedom of expression. The french media is free to print the cartoons as much as they wish now.

Also if CNN refuse to show the cartoons but allow anti sematic pictures to be shown, then they are showing themselfs to be a bias news channel which does not excercise freedom of expression or free speach. If you want to ban offensive religious pictures you either ban them all or non at all.




I disagree, to some scale yes many people would be annoyed about a picture of Jesus in a bad light, but there has been thousands of pictures and sculptures shown in many magazines showing Jesus or god as a fool or an idiot or in some sort of evil light, non of these pictures resulted in many governments condoning full scale rioting and the assault on a foreign embassy building, the Muslim reaction was out of proportion.

Im going to say it again, best quote I ever lernt in school



Freedom of expression and the freedom of speach is the main issue here, if we lose these we may as well go back to the dark ages.

How about this. In this country there is a writer who is notorious for extremely profane novels, that focus mainly on bowel movements, pedofilia, senseless bloodshed, and mockery of all sorts of moral and religious limits. He is published and you can buy his books in any store without any problems. Now the question is: would material from his books ever appear in a newspaper anywhere? The answer is clearly no. Never and under no circumstances. Why?

Because a newspaper is a source of news, read to learn facts and opinions about facts. It isn't a book or a movie, which are media for expressing your creativity and sharing it with others. What the newspapers in Europe did (and the French ones did it again today) had nothing to do with facts nor opinions. It was a senseless act of ignoring an extremely important cultural barrier, which act conveyed zero information to the readers beyond the clear message that the newspaper doesn't give a damn about what a certain share of its audience feels.

So I ask those who support those cartoons to imagine one thing that they would never want to see in a newspaper they might pick up in the morning. Not some marginal piece of toilet paper from ultra-right nazi sect - an actual newspaper that normal people -- including you -- read every day. Now imagine that you open that newspaper and see or read that very thing. If you are Jewish, imagine an article insinuating that there were never concentration camps and Holocaust is just a Sionist conspiracy. If you are gay or lesbian, imagine that you are being told that homosexuality is a disgusting sin and everyone who cares about the future of his/her children must immediately contact his elected representative and demand prison terms for homosexuals. And so on.

Now that you found the right image and turned it over in your head... slowly fold the paper back, put it on the table next to your cup of coffee, smile, and say outloud: "Oh, but that's free speech."

Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can say/write whatever you want and wherever you want without any consequences.

You are aware of the whole Danish film maker being killed in the streat for making a movie about Islam thing, Right?

Also, how can you say that a cartoon that sparked riots in 5 countries are not newsworthy?

Oh, and guess what... just last week there WAS an article in the paper that said there was no such thing as the Holocaust.. it got quite a large coverage at that. And Never in the article did it say that such a claim was wrong.

And lets not forget about the sickening pictures of people getting thier head chopped off. Thats in the paper and on T.V quite often these days....

Here is the link ....
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle....&archived=False

What does that have to do with this?



If your intention is to spark riots then by all means. However, that has a very specific name: provocation.



I wasn't talking about Holocaust being mentioned in a newspaper article. I was talking about an article that was clearly biased against you, as a member of a certain group. Not an article that simply states the facts about what is going to happen in a month in Tehran. There's a "And so on" at the end of that paragraph for a reason - I can't tell you what you should be infuriated about.



Those are facts, and facts are what newspapers are for.

Ok, you are clearly unaware as to why the political cartoons showed up in the first place, so let me try to explain what I've been told.

A danish film maker (van gouh) was killed by a muslim for creating a movie about Islam (nothing inflamitory from a western point of view, just its about Islam) Artist of all kinds in Denmark were SCARED TO DEATH, litterally, about doing any art or talking about anything related to Islam for fears they would be killed in the streat.

To stand up for free speach, and remove these fears, The Danish paper printed 12 cartoons made by various Danes about Mohammed. 2 of the pictures showed Mohammed as a great savior, most just were drawings of the Cesent and Star, two were political statements about Islam being a driving force behind quite a large amount of Terrorism.

Some months later, a Palestian Cleric who has been living in Denmark since 1993 took these pictures, as well as some fake cartoons that he created, and showed them around the arab world stating "These are the hardships that Muslims must endure in Europe" thus inciting riots all the way out here in Februrary.

and NOW people are refusing to print the cartoons... There are political cartoons insulting various segments of every population everyday in every single newspaper in the world. The purpose of the cartoons was to stand up and say "We are not afraid to have our opinion heard"

And I'm sorry that an article talking about the Legitamcy of the Holocaust seems to "forget to mention" that it did infact happen, and that these "inquiry" is a farce isn't EXACTLY the example you were giving.

Pictures of beheadings are a fact, and picutres of Mohommaed starting riots is a fact, why is ok to who one picture and not the other?

I don't think it worked quite as progressively as you are implying.. but here are the French standing up for Europe. I think you'll like this, daganev.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4695292.stm