Click on over to here to read a great analysis on this mess.
Year: 2010
Cartoons, sharia law, South Africa
From Diana West’s site with thanks:
Zapiro is a South African cartoonist, who drew the above riff on Muslim protests of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Zapiro’s cartoon may be in flagrant violation of sharia (Islamic law), but South Africa is not under Islamic law. Or is it?
From Saturday’s Mail & Guardian in Johannesburg:
A Zapiro cartoon published in the Mail & Guardian has angered Muslims countrywide and the SA Muslim Judicial Council on Saturday called on its followers to express their condemnation and disapproval of it.
“The Muslim community takes this opportunity to express the deep hurt it feels at the caricaturing of the Prophet Muhammad in the M&G,” the council’s website said.
“The Muslim leadership appeals to all Muslims to express their condemnation and disapproval … Muslims in South Africa have struggled and sacrificed …It is therefore extremely disappointing …” blah, blah,
The Council of Muslim Theologians on Thursday evening tried to stop this newspaper from publishing the cartoon.
An interdict was not granted, but on Friday morning M&G editor-in-chief Nic Dawes and other staff were fielding a flood of angry callers, and even death threats hit the newspaper’s office.
“You’ve got to watch your back” and “This will cost him his life” were some of the remarks made.
The cartoon followed the furore surrounding the Facebook page, “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”, which was sparked by threats by a radical Muslim group against the creators of US TV series South Park for depicting the prophet in a bear suit. …
When Dawes first saw the cartoon he said he thought it “a gentle and irreverent poke” at the hysteria that had greeted the Facebook page. This week Pakistan ordered all internet service providers to block Facebook, as well as YouTube for carrying “un-Islamic content”.
Dawes recounted how he received a call from an attorney from the council at about 8.30pm on Thursday night — after the distribution process of the paper had begun. “He asked for an undertaking that we would stop distribution of the paper and remove the cartoon.”
Dawes pointed out that this was impossible, and that in any event the M&G would not do so.
By 11.30pm the newspaper’s advocate had been pulled out of a dinner party and Dawes, along with the paper’s investigation unit, found himself in the South Gauteng High Court ready to defend the M&G‘s right to freedom of speech. Continue Reading →
Fox News on Ground Zero mosque
Ground Zero mosque unbecoming
By Zuhdi Jasser, The New York Post
Way too close: The proposed Cordoba House, a $100 million, 13-story Islamic cultural center and mosque, would replace the inset building two blocks away from Ground Zero.
In the 1960s, my parents left their despotic motherland of Syria for the promise of genuine liberty and religious freedom in America. In the decades since, we have led the construction of a number of mosques in the towns where we lived.
Some went up without challenge from the local community, but others met with palpable local discontent. In those cases, the law and the natural American affinity for religious freedom eventually paved the way to the ribbon cutting.
These were all humble mosques, funded locally by our congregations. It’s plain the planned “Ground Zero mosque” is something very different. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, his wife, Daisy Khan, and an investor intend to build “Cordoba House,” an ostentatious $100 million, 13-story Muslim community center including a gym, a swimming pool, a performance-arts facility and a mosque.
Robert Spencer on the NYC Mosque near Ground Zero
I have refrained from saying anything about this mosque as I have a lot of questions I want answered before I weigh in on this issue. For example, how long has the property been available? What other offers where made on it? Why is two blocks from the former WTC sacred and if so, how many blocks around an attack site is sacred? Frankly its that attitude that is costing us the win. Its been 9 years now since 911 and there is still no new building in one of NYC’ most important and expensive areas. Had 2 newer better higher buildings been built right away, it would have been a giant middle finger to Islam and a testament to the American people. As it is, each day that goes by with no new building and a constant sense of the sacred and a victim mentality, the Muslims win. They take our stuff down, it stays down.
Yes I understand the symbolism of a Mosque arguably near the attack site, but frankly it might, not saying it is, but might be a stretch. Of course I am opposed to the building of any mosques given what takes place in them. They are a beach head or a toe hold disguised as religion. However the arguments against this one raise more questions than they answer. Why is it a Mosque can build a 13 story building in an area that has to cost a fortune, and why not a commercial venture, which strikes me as more likely.
Where did the money come from to build this thing?
In any Case, Robert Spencer is an expert on Islam and Koran/sharia law, and should not be ignored in terms of his opinions on this. So here it is:
I’m all for a Jewish joke but…
**** UPDATE **** A commenter below explains that this was some anonymous person out there who did a voice over on scenes from Drawn Together, and not the actual movie or show at all. I am much relieved if this is the case. Please read the comment below this post.
**** update ****
comment is wrong, clips authentic
This seems to be more of a political statement along with a grotesque misrepresentation of history.
The show claims to be ‘Drawn Together’ but I thought I had every episode of that and never saw anything like this. I suspect it’s from a Movie from the show.
In the show, they take shots at Jews being cheap and all the usual stereotypes and frankly, I have no problem if the stuff is funny. They take shots at everything in Drawn Together. But this is politics and venom through thin, inaccurate analogy.
drawn together movie israel 2 from Person on Vimeo.
drawn together movie israel 1 from Person on Vimeo.
David G. Littman: 25 years at the UN Human Rights bodies. A retrospective:
This is some compelling watching. David G. Littman himself speaks on some of his impressions in new interviews on his eperiences in the UN Human Rights Council and other UN bodies, and the extraordinary degree of obfuscation and other tactics used by the various members of the UN to avoid any discussion of actual human rights.
This is some compelling watching. There is more interviews on this with Mr. Littman to come, but this is the second in his retrospective on the UN.
Enjoy
Untitled from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.
Allen West in Florida
Starts well, gets better and better.
John Robson on ‘Human Rights Commissions’
An Ethics Train Wreck, Indeed
As any reader of Vlad knows, May 20th was the first annual Everybody Draw Mohamed Day, and with it, many debates as to the ethics and rational of drawing a 14th century war lord when it pisses off so many morons.
Below, is the text of a debate between Gates of Vienna’s own Baron Bodissey, and an appointed ‘ethicist’ for the other side. The side that says we should not do things that offend other people and I have no idea where that is supposed to end. I guess none of us say anything.
Turns out, the ethicist had a rather unique set of ethics. I think they will be well detailed below:
Eeyore for Vlad:
The recent debate I took part in at Public Square has taken an interesting twist. Not only was my final post in the series refused for publication, but as various readers have discovered, my opponent, Jack Marshall, is not entirely what he seems to be. In addition to his deficiencies in logical reasoning, certain of Mr. Marshall’s credentials as a lawyer and an academic appear to be less than were stated in his CV.
I apologize to our readers for allowing myself to be snookered into such a shabby event. However, in my defense, I had only a couple of hours to prepare before beginning the debate — not enough time to do a thorough investigation of my opponent.
Dymphna will have more to say on the credentials issue later.
After submitting my final response for review, I posted it here, expecting that it would appear shortly at Public Square. However, instead of my post, an additional response by Mr. Marshall, “Ten Steps to An Ethics Train Wreck”, appeared two minutes before the noon deadline.
I’m not going to address what he says in his post — it’s similar to what went before, and y’all can read it for yourselves if you’re so inclined. I’m more interested in the fact that my final post was denied publication.
I wrote to the site’s owner to find out what happened, and he responded with this email:
Baron,
I can’t publish your last post as-is because I interpret most if it as a dig at PublicSquare.net itself. Attacking your opponent is one thing; going after the host of the debate is quite another. If you do not intend it that way, please edit your post accordingly and I’ll be happy to post it.
My reply:
My post contains valid criticisms of your site, which are relevant to our recently-completed “debate”.
To bill the process as a “debate” and to describe Jack Marshall as a “professional ethicist” is misleading at best. Mr. Marshall would be more accurately described as “an attorney who describes himself as an ethicist.”
To allow this type of discourse to proceed unhindered is, of course, your prerogative as the site’s administrator. In my opinion, however, to describe the process as a “debate” is a misrepresentation.
My criticisms were valid and to the point, and were clearly, reasonably, and civilly stated. If you choose to deny them a public airing on your forum, I obviously have no recourse.
I will, however, publicize this fact at our blog, and include our correspondence (with your name omitted, of course). Our blog has a wide readership, and posts of interest often go viral. So who knows? This may well increase your traffic at Public Square.
I shall also suggest to our regular readers that they visit Bloggerheads and avail themselves of the opportunity to comment on some of the posts in question, if they are so inclined.
Respectfully,
Baron Bodissey
Gates of Vienna
He wrote me one final email:
– – – – – – – – –
Baron,
I’ll go over all of the posts again to see if there’s anything I should have edited differently, but you cannot expect me to post content on my own site that would dissuade others from participating in similar exchanges in the future. What you do on your own site is, of course, your own business.
Thank you for your participating and best wishes.
So that’s it, folks. I’ve been shut out for voicing honest, civil, and valid criticism of the site that hosted the “debate”.
If you decide to avail yourself of the privilege of commenting over there, please play by Gates of Vienna’s rules. We don’t want anyone’s muddy boots tracking up the pristine carpet covering the Common Ground at Public Square.
The posts at Public Square: #1 (Baron), #2 (Marshall), #3 (Baron), #4 (Marshall), #5 (Baron), #6 (Marshall), and #8 (Marshall)
My four posts here at Gates of Vienna (including the unpublished one): #1, #3, #5, and #7
Keep an eye on this space for some of the lesser known career details about the lawyer, scholar, and ethicist Jack Marshall. Dymphna is working on it.
Note: I corrected two typos (a single orthographic metathesis and a repeated word) and a mistakenly used word (“Blogbusters” for “Bloggerheads”) in my email response to the site’s owner. Otherwise the email exchange reproduced above is verbatim.
“One is Not an Ethicist Because One Says So”
The Baron has already presented the facts of this debacle , that is, the purported “debate” between him and a self-appointed ethicist named Jack Marshall on the merits of “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day”.
Speeding around the learning curve can be dangerous. Not having much time, we failed to practice due diligence in checking out the Baron’s opponent. As a result, Gates of Vienna ended up stuck in one mess of a tar baby — one that was put in our path by a website named Public Square. However, we could have gone around that mess instead of jumping in. Our bad, but then that’s the nature of tar babies: they look so darn attractive.
But as soon as I saw the first paragraph by this fellow, Jack Marshall, I knew things wouldn’t go well:
My name is Jack Marshall, and I’m a professional ethicist, which means that I think about, write and teach how we determine what is right and wrong for a living. I apply ethical analysis to everything under the sun on my own blog…
Leaving aside the condescension in this blurb, look at the sentence construction, specifically,
“I think about…etc…how we determine what is right and wrong for a living”…
So how does this fellow determine what is right and wrong about a living? Obviously, he doesn’t. What he had attempted to say, however syntactically garbled, was that he made a living by teaching, writing, etc., about ethics.
This syntactical confusion was a bright red flag, a warning that the Baron’s opponent in this debate wasn’t a clear thinker.
He is worse than that. The judgment of his peers on Mr. Marshall finds him wanting ethically. That is, he presents himself as having credentials and experience he doesn’t possess.
But let me start at the beginning, when Mr. Marshall was fisked three ways to Sunday for his humorless attack on another lawyer.
– – – – – – – – –
It seems that Eric Turkewitz, an attorney practicing in New York, had played an April’s Fool joke on the New York Times by claiming that he’d been appointed to serve as the official White House law blogger. On April 2nd, he gleefully retold the story:
Creator of ‘everyone draw Mohamed day’ interviewed.
Clearly the death threats got to her. What a shame. No matter though, I still think the rest of us can make this work every year. For freedom of speech, for freedom from irrational and violent religious authority, for freedom from arbitrary and never ending-increasing limits to our speech, thoughts and artistic expression, may Everyone draw Mohamed day become a global free world phenomenon. Maybe in the future, with floats, parades, gay people, women in skimpy clothing, pork stands every 100 feet and a clear statement of, “we have our own values. You are not obliged to participate. But you may not impose yours on us.
Eeyore for Vlad and a H/T to the good Baron for this video:
Please feel free to comment on what the Muslims at the end of this clip say. The logic is so poor and insulting that really this could be a lot of fun.
Selective enforcement of hate speech laws becomes more overt, less subtle in bias
Sweden. By Ted Ekeroth who is the brother of Kent Ekeroth, who occasionally speaks for the Swedish Democratic party, ‘SverigeDemokraterna’
The truth is liable to prosecution in Sweden
Posted on 2010-05-20 by Ted Ekeroth
Skånepartiets poster
This blog and ”Jihad in Malmö” as well as several newspapers reported that Skånepartiets party chairman Carl P Herslow is being charged with ”incitement to racial hatred” after he was on the town square in Malmö with a picture of Muhammad and 6-year-old Aisha.
The image stems from the generally accepted fact in Islam that Muhammad married a 6-year-old girl and raped her at 9-years old. The image, which can be seen here on the left, is therefore something that is described in the Islamic texts about Muhammad – the muslims primary role model. How this ”profet” lived is something that muslims strive to live by, as he is ”the perfect man” according to their beliefs.
That Mohammed sexually assaulted young children is therefore no secret (read the hadith on jihad in Malmö). Yet JK chooses to prosecute him for incitement to racial hatred (”hets mot folkgrupp”).
Put that in relation to what went down in the mosque at ”Medborgarplatsen” in Stockholm. The mosque sold anti-Semitic tapes in 2005 – Jews were compared to monkeys, pigs and diseases, and that the ”Final Solution” for Jews was a ”jihad” – holy war.
”O Allah, annihilate the Jews, O Allah, annihilate the Jews! O Allah curse them and expulsions them and let them whipped with suffering. O Allah, of heaven and earth! ”
Then Justice Chancellor at the time, Göran Lambertz, began a preliminary investigation on the incitement of hatred, but decided to close the case on the grounds that the ties were ”very critical of the Jews” but otherwise there was no violation of Swedish law.
So, in Sweden today, you can prosecute a man for telling an established truth that is openly described in Islamic texts, but to prosecute Muslims call for the murder of Jews is not hate speech according to the Chancellor.
The selling of audio tapes where you incite the mass murder of Jews is of course something different than publicly showing what Muhammed did. The first should be criminalized and the second shouldn’t. But instead Sweden acts just the opposite.
Why? The answer is simple. This time it’s the Muslims who feel ”wronged”. No threats of violence were expressed, no lies have been said – only a presentation of Muhammad’s life.
The truth is liable to prosecution in Sweden, 2010.
Iran: Jewish state could be ‘destroyed in a week’
This story and the previous one I found on the crucially important website, The Religion of Peace.
Security
Iran: Jewish state could be ‘destroyed in a week’
Tehran, 20 May (AKI) – If Israel attacked Iran it would be destroyed within a week, hardline Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, has said. He issued the warning in an address to an ultra-conservative conference in northern Iran.
“If the Zionist regime attacks Iran, the Zionists will have no longer than a week to live,” Israel’s YNetNews cited Mashaei as saying.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency quoted Mashaei as saying that the Islamic Republic would destroy Israel “in less than 10 days”.
Mashaei, a former vice-president of Iran and political ally of Ahmadinejad, added that any new sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme would only harm western countries.
A United States-prepared draft resolution against Iran was made public on Wednesday, prompting Tehran to accuse the West of inventing excuses to exert political pressure.
The new draft resolution calls on Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities or face further UN Security Council sanctions.
If ratified, the draft will ban countries from selling new categories of heavy weaponry to Iran.
Obama advisor refers to Jerusalem as “Al-Quds” but thats not the worst
We are so fucked:
A friend of mine pointed out that I neglected to say who this was and what the circumstances of this speech are.
Here is who from Israelmatzav
Here’s Obama anti-terrorism czar John Brennan speaking about the beauty of Islam. Listen carefully. At the 1:33 mark, while he’s speaking in Arabic, he refers to Jerusalem as ‘al-Quds’ (which gets translated as Jerusalem) and at the 2:39 mark, he refers to meeting people from the non-existent country of ‘Palestine.’ At the end, he refers to loving al-Quds/Jerusalem.
Still working on where and why.
Oklahoma storm. Hail hitting a pool.
Thats all this is. Hail, hitting a swimming pool. Compelling watching though. Enjoy!