Iran to print Holocaust cartoon.

[Blackleaf]

Iran celebrates its "free speech" by printing a Holocaust cartoon -


Iranian paper to run Holocaust cartoons

Robert Tait inTehran, Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Owen Bowcott
Tuesday February 7, 2006
The Guardian


Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust.

The decision by the rightwing Hamshari daily to launch an international competition to find the most suitable caricatures came as demonstrators hurled firebombs and stones at the Danish embassy in Tehran and the Iranian government imposed a formal trade ban on Danish imports. Last night mobs were attempting to storm the Danish compound.

In London, the home secretary, Charles Clarke, branded the activities of Islamist protesters outside the Danish embassy last week as "unacceptable". He told MPs he was pleased the response to the publication of the Danish cartoons had "in general been respectful and restrained in the best traditions of British tolerance". But he added: "If the police conclude there have been breaches of the law and decide to take any action, we would, of course, support them."

Scotland Yard has set up a special squad to investigate the demonstrations and the placards on display which called for the death of those who "insult Islam". The inquiry will examine everything from video recordings made by officers to photographs published in newspapers.

One protester, who was photographed apparently dressed like a suicide bomber, apologised "wholeheartedly" yesterday. Omar Khayam, 22, appeared outside his house in Bedford accompanied by the chairman of his local mosque and his local MP. He said he had not intended to cause offence to the victims of the July 7 London bombings or their relatives but added that his protest remained valid because of the hurt caused to Muslims by the publication of the Danish cartoons.

"I felt the Danish newspaper had been provocative and controversial, deeply offensive and insensitive. But by me dressing the way I did, I did just that, exactly the same as the Danish newspaper, if not worse. My method of protest has offended many people, especially the families of the victims of the July bombings. This was not my intention."

Fresh protests raged across the Muslim world throughout the day, claiming four lives in Afghanistan and one in Somalia, but the involvement of the Iranian authorities added a further twist to the diplomatic tensions between western governments and Tehran.

Hamshari is owned by Tehran city council and its plan follows a string of anti-Zionist statements by Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in the second world war as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

Farid Mortazavi, the paper's graphics editor, said the cartoons would be published to test the argument of western newspapers which have cited freedom of expression in printing the prophet Muhammad images.

"The western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," Mr Mortazavi said.

There were attacks earlier in the day on the Austrian embassy in Tehran. Iran's trade with Denmark is worth around £160m a year.

In Afghanistan, police opened fire on 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the main US base in Bagram, north of Kabul, killing two and wounding five, said local chief Kabir Ahmed. No US soldiers were involved. Another two demonstrators died in the central town of Mehtarlam, after police fired live rounds into a crowd of demonstrators burning tyres and hurling rocks. A shot from within the crowd provoked the police into shooting, officials said.

An Austrian newspaper, Kleine Zeitung, became the latest European publication to print the controversial cartoons. The paper admitted several of its Muslim distributors had refused to sell the day's issue and said some had torn the offending caricatures out.

Several European countries, including Austria, have now warned citizens not to travel to the Middle East. The cartoons have been published in virtually every major country across Europe - except Britain. Ukrainian papers published the cartoons yesterday, joining Denmark, Norway, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland.

Speaking from Beirut, Omar Bakri Mohammad, the leader of the Islamist group al-Muhajiroun which is banned in Britain, called for those who "blasphemed" against the prophet to be executed.

"In Islam, God said, and the messenger Muhammad said, whoever insults a prophet, he must be punished and executed," he told BBC radio.

Political and religious leaders in Lebanon attempted to calm sectarian tensions a day after Islamic extremists torched the building housing the Danish embassy and rampaged through a Christian quarter of Beirut. Lebanon's interior minister, Hassan Sabei, who resigned on Sunday, blamed a hardcore of infiltrators.

The protests spread even further across the Muslim world. There were fresh disturbances in India, Indonesia, Palestine and Thailand. In Somalia, a 14-year-old boy died during clashes with police in the port city of Bosasso after protesters hurled stones at offices used by international aid agencies.


guardian.co.uk

 

[Finder]

Yeah thats great, follow a stupid act by doing something stupid. Now I really know this nation shouldn't have the bomb.

But whatever, they can print the cartoon, it's not like they don't already say the most ridiculous things already, it changes little.

 

[TenPenny]

Yup, we're going to have the whole world busy trying to offend and provoke each other as much as possible.

That was the only reason the cartoons were reprinted anyway, just to provoke people. As long as everyone is happy to accept the predictable consequences of their actions, I see no harm in it.

 

[zoofer]

Point of no return
By Thomas Sowell
Feb 7, 2006

Looking back at the history of tragic times often reveals that many -- or most -- of the people of those times were often preoccupied with things that look trivial, or even pathetic, in view of the catastrophe looming over them. Will later generations looking back at our times see a similar blindness, and even frivolousness, in the face of mortal dangers?

Terrorists and terrorist governments are giving us almost daily evidence of their fanatical hatred and violent sadism, as the clock ticks away toward their gaining possession of nuclear weapons. They not only hold a harmless young woman hostage in Iraq, they parade her in tears on television, just as they have paraded not only the terrorizing, but even the beheading, of others on television.

Moreover, there is a large and gleeful audience in the Arab world for these gross brutalities, just as there was glee and cheering among the Palestinians when the televised destruction of the World Trade center was broadcast in the Middle East.

Yet what are we preoccupied with or outraged about? Whether the American government should intercept the phone calls of these cutthroats to people in the United States.

That question has been sanitized in the mainstream media by asking whether the government should be engaged in "domestic wiretapping," just as the terrorists themselves have been sanitized into "militants" or "insurgents."

The way the question is posed by many in the media and in politics, you would think our intelligence agencies were listening in on you talking on the phone to your aunt Mabel.

Be serious! There are more than a quarter of a billion people in the United States. Intelligence agencies have neither the manpower, the time, the money, nor the interest to listen in on you and your aunt Mabel.

Lawyers may differ on fine legal points about the Constitutional powers of the commander in chief during wartime versus the oversight powers of the courts. But, a Supreme Court Justice once pointed out that the Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.

The Constitution was meant for us to live under, not be paralyzed by, in the face of death.

When some honcho in the international terrorist network is captured in Afghanistan or Iraq, and the phone numbers in his computer are found by his American captors, it is only a matter of time before his capture becomes news broadcast around the world.

In the hour or two before that happens, his contacts within the United States may continue to use the phones they have been using. Listening in on their conversations during that brief window of opportunity can provide valuable information on enemies within our midst who are dedicated to our destruction.

Precious time can be wasted filing legalistic documents to get some judge's permission to tap the domestic terrorists' phones before CBS or CNN broadcasts the news of the captured terrorist leader overseas and the domestic terrorists stop using the phones that they had used before to talk with him.

With Iran advancing step by step toward nuclear weapons, while the Europeans wring their hands and the United Nations engages in leisurely discussion, this squeamishness about tapping terrorists' phone contacts in the United States is grotesque.

Has anyone been paying attention to the audacity of the terrorists? Some in the media seem mildly amused that Palestinian terrorists are threatening Denmark because of editorial cartoons that they found offensive.

Back in the 1930s, some people were amused by Hitler, whose ideas were indeed ridiculous, but by no means funny.

This was not the first threat against a Western country for exercising their freedom in a way that the Islamic fanatics did not like. Osama bin Laden threatened the United States on the eve of our 2004 elections, if we didn't vote the way he wanted.

When he has nuclear weapons, such threats cannot be ignored, when the choice is between knuckling under or seeing American cities blasted off the face of the earth.

That is the point of no return -- and we are drifting towards it, chattering away about legalisms and politics.

Thomas Sowell is the prolific author of books such as Black Rednecks and White Liberals and Applied Economics.

Link
The radical left in the Democratic party are working diligently to hasten the point of no return IMO. One wonders if they are more concerned about getting GW Bush rather than losing a couple of American cities?

 

[I think not]

Oh ya Iran testing freedom of speech, when they jail bus drivers for striking and hanging 18 year old homosexuals in front of a mob. GO ahead and print them, you won't see anyone burning your embassies.

 

[aeon]

Oh ya Iran testing freedom of speech, when they jail bus drivers for striking and hanging 18 year old homosexuals in front of a mob. GO ahead and print them, you won't see anyone burning your embassies.

No one has burned american embassies, when some people in texas crucified a young man, who was homosexual in 1998, remember that?? people was protesting at the church with anti-gay sign, like ""god hates fags"" ""aids cure fag"" , i couldnt believe what i was seeing, i though it was a report from the 1950.

After this we saw a democrates explaining, that they had a program to cure homosexuality, just like they cure alcoolism, like homosexuality is a disease, at first seriously, i though it was a joke, but it wasnt.

 

[I think not]

No one has burned american embassies, when some people in texas crucified a young man, who was homosexual in 1998, remember that?? people was protesting at the church with anti-gay sign, like ""god hates fags"" ""aids cure fag"" , i couldnt believe what i was seeing, i though it was a report from the 1950.

After this we saw a democrates explaining, that they had a program to cure homosexuality, just like they cure alcoolism, like homosexuality is a disease, at first seriously, i though it was a joke, but it wasnt.

Yes, I remember it, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

 

[Curiosity]

Aeon

I am not certain you care but the fact is AIDS was not documented (and even then not entitled "AIDS") until the early 80s. So if you were cast back into the 50's what exactly were you "viewing"?

As I write this American embassies are being targetted in many cities in Europe and the middle east. Google has information.

 

[tracy]

Wasn't that Wyoming?

 

[Curiosity]

Tracy

Matthew Shepard in Wyoming was one case - and that was in 1998 in Wyoming.... but there have been so many..... There probably were many in the south - especially Texas.

Not just killings - before Ryan White publicized his maltreatment by people for his virus because he received a tainted blood transfusion and was not homosexual.... people isolated him from having anything to do with their kids in school and at play.

 

[Jo Canadian]

You know, after hearing this on the radio I had to shake my head. I find it just a little hypocritical. Why? Well first the free speech which those in favor of printing the Mohammad cartoons, are being practiced by countries that actually have free speech. Iran however is quite well known for stifileing actual free speech within it's populace, and now they're advocating it? Sorry but I don't buy it. The celebration of free speech is just an excuse to Fight free speech by free speech by using it. Once this is all over do you think then Iran will suddenly have free speech?


There could have been several more constructive ways to deal with an insulting cartoon. But after watching things unfold in the last three weeks I'm not suprised by this recent dumb move.

 

[Doryman]

Yeah thats great, follow a stupid act by doing something stupid. Now I really know this nation shouldn't have the bomb.

But whatever, they can print the cartoon, it's not like they don't already say the most ridiculous things already, it changes little.

Whatever. Iran, Saudi-Arabia and the other Middle East Theocracies already run stories in their newspapers about how Jewish soldier kidnap Arab children and paint their walls with their blood, so I doubt a few cartoons will be that more devastating.

 

[I think not]

Yeah thats great, follow a stupid act by doing something stupid. Now I really know this nation shouldn't have the bomb.

But whatever, they can print the cartoon, it's not like they don't already say the most ridiculous things already, it changes little.

Whatever. Iran, Saudi-Arabia and the other Middle East Theocracies already run stories in their newspapers about how Jewish soldier kidnap Arab children and paint their walls with their blood, so I doubt a few cartoons will be that more devastating.

8O

 

[DasFX]

So what, it isn't like you can't find a tonne of Anti-Jewish propoganda in Arab media already.

This is what I don't get: Danish Christian makes an interesting cartoon of Muslim prophet, in turn Muslims mock Jewish Holocaust.

What's next, are the Jews going to make cartoons about the Buddhist or Hindus?

 

[aeon]

Yes, I remember it, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Easy, we cant tell anyone what to do, since we arent doing better.
I find easy from the west to criticize muslim around the world, it became irrelevent and withouth purpurse, iran arent angel with chocolate wings, no doubt about it.

One comic french man in france was making fun of zionist on tv air(all he did was criticizing israel policy), and went to jail for 2 weeks for doing so. It was all over american media, describing the guys as an anti-semite and so on, couple days after he got out, the comic french man, made a show, and some jews extremist went into the show and thretened everyone who was there, the show had to stop, and guess what?? no us media talked about it.


All i can say, is DOUBLE STANDARD all the time.

 

[Jo Canadian]

Re: RE: Iran to print Holocaust cartoon.

This is what I don't get: Danish Christian makes an interesting cartoon of Muslim prophet, in turn Muslims mock Jewish Holocaust.

What's next, are the Jews going to make cartoons about the Buddhist or Hindus?

:lol: Perhaps it would make more sense if the Jews then Mocked the Christians, after all logically the christians were the ones who started it. Then things would come full circle. Don't you just feel the Love??

 

[Curiosity]

Anyone heard from the Pope???

He's not going to want to be left out.