Sunday, February 19, 2006

Muslim Cartoons and the Upcoming Iran War

I've been struggling to understand the Muslim Cartoon issue, and reading articles and commentary as fast as they come out. Last week I stumbled across this piece in Counterpunch by John Sugg, the editor of Creative Loafing. He notes (highlights are mine)

So, let’s look at the guy who started this whole cartoon escapade. He’s Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper. In all of the Lexis-Nexis database of stories from the American media on the Mohammed cartoons, there is absolutely no mention of the fact that Rose is a close confederate of arch-Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. Indeed, there is almost no context at all about Rose’s newspaper. On a brief mention in the Washington Post gave a hint at a fact desperately needed to understand the situation. The Post described the affair as “a calculated insult … by a right-wing newspaper in a country where bigotry toward the minority Muslim population is a major, if frequently unacknowledged, problem.”';


Suggs goes to explain:

How bad is Pipes? He wants the utter military obliteration of the Palestinians; indeed, from the Muslim world, his racism is about as blatant as that of the Holocaust denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pipes’ frequent outbursts of racism -- designed to toss gasoline on the neo-cons’ lust for a wholesale conflict of cultures -- earned him a Bush nomination to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think tank. Rose came to America to commune with Pipes in 2004, and it was after that meeting the cartoon gambit materialized.

Sure. It is just a coincidence that as the US government is preparing for war on Iran, a massive global event occurs that fills westerners with disgust for Muslims takes place, over cartoons that had been published in a minor Danish newspaper six months before. Flemming Rose's interview with Pipes is online at Pipes' website.

These events are orchestrated. For a reason. This is more than a discussion about censorship or liberalism or the Islamic world and intolerance.

UPDATE: WaPo has Flemming Rose's justification for printing the cartoons.

4 comments:

STOP_George said...

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The "coalition of the willing" seem to be actively participating, too.

'T-shirt' minister quits over anti-Italy protests

And, oh yeah! Let's not forget about the new Abu Ghraib pics. Isn't it interesting how Salon.com has managed to get its hands on the complete set of photos and video that BushCo. didn't want you to see?

I believe we are witnessing a "quickening" of sorts.
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Darin said...

I don't mean to take this way off topic, but do you really need to have the lead-in's and lead-out's like that, stop_george? One might think you have a problem with wanting to be the center of attention or something like that.

STOP_George said...

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Darin:

I'm sorry it bothers you.

It's my style that developed when I wanted to "bookmark" where I left my comment in long threads. I do it with all of my posts now.

I could have been far more distracting if I wanted to draw attention to myself.
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MJ Klein said...

oh, i thought that everyone who lives outside of the US got it. the domestic American public has ceased to think and has gone to sleep. the US is preparing another illegal war and they are using the "2 minutes hate" technique in order to get away with it. once again, its about nothing except oil. why should any red-blooded American pay high prices for gasoline when the US can simply invade a soverign nation and steal it?

as i have said before - i can't go back.