DANES MARCH FOR PEACE AND LOVE: And a Muslim leader is interviewed. Gateway Pundit has a roundup.
Archive for 2006
February 5, 2006
THE SOUTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT: Covering for North Korea? When North Korea falls, I predict we’ll discover that an astonishing number of people in the South were on the take, or being blackmailed.
EVAN COYNE MALONEY: “Increasingly, Hollywood is making films that Hollywood wants to consume, not necessarily what the rest of America does. Hollywood needs to decide whether it wants to be a political party or whether it wants to entertain. They can continue to entertain themselves, but then they will continue to lose audience. There are simply too many other options vying for the attention of the people that Hollywood shuns.” Read the whole thing.
CHINA LEAPS FORWARD on nuclear power. My TCS Daily column will look at this.
SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS on blogger ethics from Matt Stoller, in response to Daniel Glover.
UPDATE: More from Joe Gandelman. And read this post by Steve Clemons, too.
A DOUBLE STANDARD ON PROTESTS in Britain?
Once again, the message is that if you blow things up, or even look as if you might, we’ll be nice to you. And once again, I note that this is a very unwise message to send.
I should note, by the way, that last night I spent some time reading an advance copy of Claire Berlinski’s new book, Menace in Europe : Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too. It looks very good, and I hope it finds a wide readership. The timing is certainly right.
UPDATE: Berlinski emails from Istanbul:
Evidently there were “hundreds of demonstrators” at the Danish consulate here today. (I missed it; I was happily oblivious until I read the news.) Now, “hundreds of protestors” never congregate in Istanbul without government sanction. There is no such thing as freedom of assembly here; if you’re out protesting, it’s because the government authorized it, period. So Denmark and Turkey are going to be part of one big happy EU family? Sure thing. Tell that to the Danish diplomats cowering in their consulate in Istanbul and nervously reviewing the fire escape plans.
Oh, and someone shot a Catholic priest in Ankara today, too. Not clear yet whether it was related.
That said, “hundreds of protestors” isn’t that much in a city of 10 million, and when I went out today everyone seemed to be their normal friendly selves, including the Islamist grocers down the street, who have never been anything but pleasant to me. So don’t be put off if you’re thinking of visiting, Istanbul is still great, and very safe. (Almost certainly safer than London: I have no doubt that if the protestors get too frisky here, the government will mow them down like dogs.)
Jim Geraghty, also in Istanbul, has a report, too. “The Syrian reaction is intolerable. But the Turkish reaction is honorable. I hope the world can see the difference.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Berlinski — perhaps my most devoted reader in Istanbul today — sends this followup in response to Jim’s post:
Jim Geraghty is absolutely right, everyone should have the right to protest peacefully if they so wish. If you’ve got your panties in a wad over some cartoons, by all means, you should be perfectly free to say so. My point is that people here don’t enjoy the freedom to protest–just ask the mothers of Kurds who have disappeared in Turkish prisons–so when they do, unimpeded, it has a certain significance. He’s right, there’s a world of difference between the Turkish reaction and the Syrian reaction. But Syria’s not applying for EU membership.
Indeed.
MORE: Michael Totten reports on Islamist violence in Beirut and observes: “I strongly suggest the civilized people of Lebanon, Muslim and Christian alike, stage a counter-demonstration downtown where flags are not burned and where buildings are not set on fire.”
MORE STILL: Iraqpundit:
Anyway, since when did stupid, tasteless cartoons start stirring such passions among the Muslims? Arabic language newspapers and magazines regularly run cartoons that offend all sorts of communities. It would be easier to respect all this rage if these angry people applied the same standards all around.
You know, in 2002, 15 Saudi schoolgirls burned to death when Saudi religious police wouldn’t let them escape their building because they were not in hijab.
Waiting for my fellow Muslims to react to that kind of criminality with the same impassioned outrage they save for offensive newspaper cartoons has been rather like waiting for a desert-blown Godot. Our community leaders, as always, fail us.
Indeed.
AND YET MORE: Jim Geraghty sends a correction:
I’m in Ankara, not Istanbul, and the shooting of the priest was in Trabzon, not Ankara. As of 4 a.m. local time, the U.S. Embassy didn’t have any information on motive. The wires ( Link) are reporting the kid was shouting “God is great” as he ran from the shooting scene; if accurate, this would appear to be Islamist terrorism.
Dang.
THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE has a big Cartoon War roundup.
An interesting side-effect of the Danish cartoon affair might be the invasion of Syria by U.S. forces. As you can read in this CNN article, the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Damascus were burned down by angry mobs on Sunday.
Now, depending on the level of (passive) involvement by the Syrian regime, one could make the case this is an act of war. And since Norway and Denmark are both NATO members, Bush can invoke article V of the NATO charter that says an attack on one member state is an attack against all of them…
Presto! Legal casus belli… and no need to find further justifications in hidden WMD’s, terror sponsoring or the need for ‘regime change’. Just point the tanks in Baghdad to Damascus and start driving…
Jeez, he’s starting to sound as bellicose as Duncan Black!
YOU CAN NOW SUBSCRIBE to the Glenn and Helen show via Podcast Alley as well as via iTunes.
HERE’S A GALLERY CONTAINING IMAGES OF MOHAMMED throughout Islamic history. Apparently, portraying the Prophet isn’t quite as much a no-no as some have claimed.
MARK STEYN ON SENSITIVITY:
NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom “Will & Grace,” in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes — “Cruci-fixin’s.” On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of “respect” for the Muslim faith.
Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president’s home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.
Jyllands-Posten wasn’t being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point — or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of “self-censorship” — i.e., a climate in which there’s no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it’s better not to.
That’s the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Charles Johnson notes a CNN double standard.
ANOTHER DAY, another embassy torched.
ATRIOS FOR SECRETARY OF STATE:
Certainly an Iran-with-nukes could blow the hell out of a city or two, but an Iran that did such a thing would pretty much cease to exist. It isn’t mutually assured destruction, it’s you fuck with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!
Perhaps we could put this in a demarche?
JUST SAY NO TO MULLAHS: Tim Blair is refusing to follow orders.
February 4, 2006
Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan on the war, Roger Stern and Lynne Kiesling on oil supplies and energy policy, and warblogger Michael Yon on his experiences in Iraq, and his difficulties with the U.S. Army — all in the latest podcast.
Once again, we got syndicated columnist, author, and blogger Austin Bay together with author and StrategyPage.com publisher Jim Dunnigan and let them talk (with just a few questions from us) about what’s going on in the world. The discussion covers Iran, the Cartoon War in Europe, the difficulties in intervening in Darfur, and more.
Also, Roger Stern, from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins (and author of this paper on geopolitics and oil pricing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) talks with Lynn Kiesling, Director of the Center for Applied Energy Research, and blogger, about oil pricing and U.S. policy — will there be pressure for higher petroleum taxes, and is that better than pushing particular technologies like hybrids or ethanol?
Finally, warblogger Michael Yon talks about his experiences in Iraq, a famous photo, and his difficulties with the U.S. Army’s legal team — difficulties that were resolved once the blogosphere got involved. Apparently, a lot of people in the Pentagon read blogs.
Hope you like it! You can listen directly by clicking here; it’s also available via iTunes.
And, as always, the lovely and talented Insta-Wife wants your comments and suggestions.
And there’s a complete archive of podcasts here, too.
PERRY DEHAVILLAND wonders why Iran is threatening to put economic sanctions in place against itself.
JEFF GOLDSTEIN looks at Identity Politics, Free Speech, and the Future of Worldwide Liberalism.
UPDATE: Interesting email from reader Edward Tabakin, with an (unfortunate) “Army of Davids” angle. Well, as I say in the book, technology empowers bad people, as well as good ones. Click “read more” to read it.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Backlash?
EUGENE VOLOKH has more on The Boston Globe’s double standard regarding religiously-offensive speech.
Meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens argues in favor of mocking religion.