Tweetin' birds and poppin' posies
Back in Bambiland out here! As sappy as it sounds, it's heartening to me to see stuff growing up out of the ground, and blooming. It's almost warm enough to scrub the moss that is literally growing on my little old white '95 Honda Civic. Since I don't have a hybrid, I've been making a concerted effort not to drive much. Oh, we are SO very earnest out here in Seattle. If we could use tofu-fueled vehicles, we would.
Am still pondering the Great International Cartoon Calamity; while it's true that other religious fringe elements haven't rioted and torched embassies over perceived insults, we do have right to lifers here in the US who have mobbed women's healthcare clinics, burned clinics, and murdered medical personnel who have provided abortions. So we can't sit over here on our collective fat asses and tut-tut over the Islamic fanatics. Our own homegrown ones are burgeoning, and would probably behave in the same way if they achieved a critical mass. Another part of this fracas involves the press. We should have freedom of expression, but when that freedom takes the form of spreading hate, it should be addressed. The UK has laws in place for that, but then, in our current political situation, I hesitate to suggest this current Congress get to work on any here. They're too involved with our fanatics.
In other words, everyone needs to use some tact and firm judgement in dealing with fanatics, since they appear incapable of it. If they perform criminal acts, they need to pay the consequences. But there were better ways to make the statement that Danish paper wanted to other than flinging crap in their local Muslim fringe's face. Yes, in a way, they asked for it, or were too arrogant and/or dense to realize what the results might be. We're living in touchy times, and we cannot afford to regress into primitive attitudes.
And you can see, now both sides are engaging in overgrown childishness by creating even more insults and threats. Playground bullies vs. other playground bullies, only with weapons.
Am still pondering the Great International Cartoon Calamity; while it's true that other religious fringe elements haven't rioted and torched embassies over perceived insults, we do have right to lifers here in the US who have mobbed women's healthcare clinics, burned clinics, and murdered medical personnel who have provided abortions. So we can't sit over here on our collective fat asses and tut-tut over the Islamic fanatics. Our own homegrown ones are burgeoning, and would probably behave in the same way if they achieved a critical mass. Another part of this fracas involves the press. We should have freedom of expression, but when that freedom takes the form of spreading hate, it should be addressed. The UK has laws in place for that, but then, in our current political situation, I hesitate to suggest this current Congress get to work on any here. They're too involved with our fanatics.
In other words, everyone needs to use some tact and firm judgement in dealing with fanatics, since they appear incapable of it. If they perform criminal acts, they need to pay the consequences. But there were better ways to make the statement that Danish paper wanted to other than flinging crap in their local Muslim fringe's face. Yes, in a way, they asked for it, or were too arrogant and/or dense to realize what the results might be. We're living in touchy times, and we cannot afford to regress into primitive attitudes.
And you can see, now both sides are engaging in overgrown childishness by creating even more insults and threats. Playground bullies vs. other playground bullies, only with weapons.
posted by isabelita at 12:34 PM
5 Comments:
It's interesting now to read that there are accusations that the Danish Imams inflamed this themselves by ADDING THREE CARTOONS to the original 12 which, if you've seen them, are pretty mild (and bad too, I might add). A story out there that these three add-ons were brought by the Danish Imams to a meeting of clerics in the Middle East in early Jan. and spread from there, which would certainly help explain the timing of this since the original 12 were published back in Sept. The three add-ons show Mohammed as a pig, the second shows him being fucked by a dog and the 3rd shows him as a pedophile. So it may not be the Danish newspaper cartoons at all that are doing this.
Oh, the quality of the cartoons sucks, but that doesn't seem to matter.
There's still the bit about Saudi Arabia whuppin' this whole thing up in order to distract Muslims from their shitty safety record at the annual hajj. Or the other bit about this playing into Bush&Co.'s plans...
And the bit about how we're going to go down without a shot because of oil to be traded in euros...
Dang, neil. My head's spinning. How shall it all end?
Governments are not shy to insert their own propaganda to further their own agenda, now are they. What? Are they taking lessons from the W, Rove and Co?
Never misunderestimate the damage a small group of fundamentalists can do to an otherwise perfectly good country.
Yeah, I read about that 'Haj Coverup' accusation too. LIke Spike said, taking lessons from the Bushies...
And this morning I read yet another addition to this cartoon horror: A young Danish Muslim activist evidently collected many nasty caricatures he said were from right wing extremists and sent to him and his colleagues; he gave copies of all these to several religious leaders, not all of them Muslim, and supposedly things went on from there.
This news piece was in The Seattle Post Intelligencer, taken from the Toronto Globe and Mail, if you haven't seen it.
Yeah, strange scent from that stuff, kathy. Reminds me of my youth, when our Girl Scout troop went to a potato chip factory on a field trip...
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