Those Cartoons Again

by Liberty and Power

Go here to read what John Sugg has to say about those infernal cartoons. Recommended.

More Comments:

Tom G Palmer - 2/23/2006

According to Mr. Brady, Pipes's insistence that he had only one email contact and one brief interview on October 25 of 2004, after which he had no contact whatsoever, doesn't refute what Sugg wrote when he described Pipes and Rose as "close confederates". What *would* refute that claim? If that couldn't, nothing could.

Mr. Brady then insinuates, without stating, that Pipes is lying and moves on to suggest that Rose had "an ulterior motive," which he doesn't bother to spell out. What would that motive be, besides the one he has stated? And what would that have to do with Mr. Brady's recommendation of an article that is a farrago of error and misunderstanding?

Any fair reader will realize from this exchange (not to mention Mr. Brady's loathesome libel of Dr. Randy Kroszner of the University of Chicago: http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/21105.html) that Mr. Brady's standards of intellectual discourse are abysmally low. Mr. Brady has recommended an article that, were the claims in it true and coherent, would support the conclusions that Mr. Brady has reached; Mr. Brady concludes on that basis that the claims are worth recommending. But the fact that the claims are consistent with Mr. Brady's conclusions is no reason to think that they are true. For Mr. Brady, conclusions come first, followed by the recommendation of claims compatible with them as reliable reasons or evidence.

Mr. Brady's standards are on open display. An honest admission of error ("Gosh, I evidently didn't read that essay carefully; it seemed plausible at the time; I was in error," etc., etc.) would have indicated an allegiance to reason and truth. But neither that, nor a manly apology for his libel of Randy Kroszner, was forthcoming.

People can draw their own inferences about Mr. Brady's attitudes toward truth, reason, evidence, and intellectual honesty and courtesy from what he has written on this blog. Mr. Brady contrasts poorly with the high standards set by other contributors and significantly drags down the average level of discourse.

Mark Brady - 2/23/2006

Thank you , Mr. Hanneken, for the link to the Daniel Pipes comment, which I read with interest. I then reread what John Sugg had written. I'm not clear that Pipes' comment refutes what Sugg wrote. Also, even if Pipes is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about his relationship with Flemming Rose, its seems very plausible that Rose had an ulterior motive in publishing the cartoons.

Tom G Palmer - 2/22/2006

Quite interesting. I wonder if Mr. Brady will take the predictable tack and accuse Pipes of lying. Otherwise, he'd have to retract his endorsement of the one item he was, when pressed, willing to defend in Mr. Sugg's remarkably ignorant exercise in stupidity.

So, Mr. Brady. On what basis *did* you recommend this essay?

Russell Hanneken - 2/21/2006

Daniel Pipes addresses his (non-)relationship with Flemming Rose here: http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21384

Tom G Palmer - 2/19/2006

Mr. Brady's response is, to put it rather mildly, remarkably lame. The essay's discussion of the link came in the form of an assertion, offered without any form of documentation. That's not much to recommend. I, too, could assert that Mr. Brady is a "close confederate" of someone (anyone he's ever interviewed, for example). And? There's nothing there that would recommend the essay to an intelligent person.

Mr. Brady wisely disassociates himself from thne utter stupidity of the essay and tells us that his recommendation was offered on the basis of one claim, offered with no documentation or interesting insight, in an essay written by an uninformed, unintelligent, and uninteresting writer. Hey, thanks, Mr. Brady!

Mark Brady - 2/19/2006

Tom sure spent a lot of time discussing an article which, it seems, he regards as worthless.

I recommended John Sugg's article for, as much as anything, the background on Flemming Rose and his link to Daniel Pipes. When I link to an article it doesn’t follow that I endorse the entire contents. If I did, I would certainly say so.

Tom G Palmer - 2/19/2006

Mr. Brady is so impressed by an essay written by an uneducated and rather dim person that he has recommended it to the readers of Liberty & Power, thus causing them to waste their time.

For example, besides mistaking "misanthropic" for "misogynist," the author completely misunderstood the defense offered by Mr. Rose:
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Rose gave a rather misanthropic rejoinder to AP when asked about whether he would have published the cartoons in light of the subsequent protests. Rose said: "I do not regret having commissioned those cartoons and I think asking me that question is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt Friday night at the discotheque."

That, of course, makes the assumption that women are responsible for being raped. It’s just as fallacious as assuming the Muslim world should passively accept an intentional provocation, one that gratuitously attacked one of the religion’s strictest prohibitions.
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In fact, Mr. Rose was denying that women who wear short skirts are responsible for being raped, but the author whom Mr. Brady recommends to readers of Liberty & Power was too dim to understand that.

One might also mention the author's rather condensed version of European-Islamic relations (much of it irrelevant, in any case, including the siege of Vienna of 1683, which was within those thousand years of western assault), as well as his assertion of equivalence between two political systems, one tolerant and one intolerant, since one that is today tolerant emerged from systems that were intolerant hundreds of years ago.

Much of value could be written about the case of the cartoons, but the essay Mr. Brady recommended is not among them. Mr. Brady is impressed by the disorganized thoughts of someone whose intelligence seems barely above room temperature.

Doug William Krieger - 2/19/2006

Europe's post-Christian conscience--what's left of it--is about to explode in righteous indignation as their precious liberties and compromising trade with the world of Islam is threaened at its core!

The West—specifically, the European West—stands aghast at Islam’s violent reaction to its comedic caricature of the Prophet and ponders: Shall we who enshrine our sacred rights to human expression suffer these cultural indignities and blatant intimidations designed to ultimately extinguish “our rights?” This is outrageous and morally repugnant to cower before a medieval culture that treats women, religious minorities and all things “civilized” with intolerance. Alas! Let us speak out in vehement solidarity against this “Scourge of Green” which seeks to smother some 500-years of Enlightenment!

Reaction to the West’s Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, and social revolutions which gave birth to Democracy-Capitalism, Socialism and even Communism—yea, to the “absolute profane” of SECULARISM, where the triumph of the individual and of the “rights of man” are worshipped with such unwavering adulation—have now collided with Islam’s sacred honor in a crescendo of religio-philosophical disparity that not only refuses to go away, but is exploited by both the Axis of Evil (Syria and Iran), as well as welcomed (by Bush and the Neo-con all-out war throng).

As implacable a foe as the New World’s citadel of American Christian fundamentalism is to Islam, even so, is the “Religion of Secular-Humanism” found in Western Europe as much, or more, an enemy to Islam. Indeed, the “righteous indignation” found throughout the Western European media in response to the desecration of her embassies and trade throughout the Islamic World, because of these cartoons, goes beyond a wakeup call for European secularism.

What could not be understood by the effete secularists of Western Europe—viz. the absolutism and moralisms of American rhetoric following 9/11 (“This crusade, this war on terrorism is gonna take awhile.” – “We're going to find those who -- those evil-doers, those barbaric people . . .” The White House, September, 2001), can certainly be understood by those same European secularists when couched in terms of Islamic fundamentalism designed to inflict maximum damage to their sacred freedoms. The Europeans have no intention of allowing Islamic radicalism to infringe upon their liberties—liberties for which they have so valiantly fought for (though beclouded from time to time) throughout the past 500 years!

What once was America’s War on Terror is fast becoming Europe’s War on Cultural Intolerance. It is one thing for Bush to announce democracy’s extension into the Middle East as an expression of Western ideals—freedom, liberty, tolerance, ad nausea, ad infinitum—as a guise to buttress cheap oil prices and to further addict the world to the petrol-DOLLAR . . . it is quite another thing for Europe to rally its indifference, mediocrity and effete cultural pride to assail the Islamic hoards who, like the barbarians vs. the Roman Empire, now threaten to bring Europe to its effeminate knees and end her much-vaunted openness and age of tolerance!

Islam, though it knows not, is awakening the Crusader Demons of yesteryear—the Knights Templar of the European media have arisen to confront the Prince of Persia who, as the new Saladin, leads the charge against the infidels and the hated Jew who occupies the Sacred Lands of Islam.

What an ironic twist that Europe could find philosophical kinship, rivaling religious zeal, with America’s Christian fundamentalists who support the War on Terror—a war that most Europeans despise with unmitigated distain. But now—that which they feared the most has come upon them: Now we see what the Americans are fighting (sort of)! The Europeans find themselves—grant it, from a most unlikely position—allied with Bush’s War on Terror because Terror in another form has wafted upon their secular shores.

Could it be that the enemy of my enemy really is my friend? Well, if that enemy continues to assail what you deem incontrovertible rights each time you seek to assert them, then in all likelihood, the “enemy across the pond” will slowly become your friend—since Bush’s enemy is already the enemy of what’s becoming your enemy!

Meanwhile, the Saudis et al can recall and even shut down their embassies and renounce all trade from these blasphemous European capitals which cannot control their unbridled presses—all in the name of Allah! But, according to the Chief Imam of Mecca, the Danes are beyond repentance—suffer their dastardly deed to be met with trial and final judgment (no doubt some form of Islamic fatwa that damns the Danes to the perpetual fires of hell—here on earth and elsewhere).

The Danes—who clearly express overall European sentiment—will not cave to Islam’s disgrace, to wit:

“The jab at the Danish government and public was in reaction to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's decision not to intervene in the affair, on the grounds of freedom of expression. An opinion poll also showed that 79 per cent of Danes thought Rasmussen should not issue an apology, and 62 per cent said the newspaper should not apologize.” (Al Aram, Issue 780)

The greater the reaction wrought by Islam—especially from the isolated likes of Syria and Iran or the disenfranchised of Fatah amongst of Palestinians—the more the Knights Templar broadcast their outrage throughout the capitals of European enlightenment. Sure, the ever-effluent progressive types who adhere to the religion of cultural progressivism plead their case for immediate and future tolerance—let us acquiesce to the demands of the religiously intolerant to unite in fighting against Bush’s unjustified War on Terror—but is anyone in Europe now listening? I don’t surmise such is the case.

Yet, as the subways of Europe are blasted to smithereens; as thousands of cars in France and elsewhere in Europe are torched by Moslem malcontents; and as Europeans brace themselves for the unending CONFLICT OF CIVILIZATION in their own backyard—war is now being waged upon their sacred cows of liberty, fraternity, and equality—all fence sitting with the Americans and their War on Terror appears doomed. . . awful thought: My enemy is my friend!

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL!

The world awaits the secularists of European Enlightenment and the Crusaders of American Christian fundamentalism to embrace—at last, reason for martial bliss has been discovered. Imagine “harmony and perfect love” between the absurdities of nihilism, permissiveness, licentiousness, agnosticism, atheism, and secular humanism AND the righteous indignations of militarism, economic globalism, and the Church’s religious apostasy in America (led, in the main, by the politicization of the Evangelical and Catholic Churches) . . . caught walking hand in hand down the aisle of matrimonial concupiscence; indeed, what an oxymoronic witness have we here? And yet—the vows commence!

Oh, and think not that Condi Rice’s remarks relative to blaming Iran and Syria for permitting such violent reaction to Europe’s comedic desecrations went unnoticed and unappreciated by the Europeans. Also note with whom her chiding remarks were made: Israel’s Foreign Minister. Both (and, again, think not the Moslem world did not notice these TWO WOMEN) condemned Iran and Syria for exploiting their people in allowing them to attack the embassies of Western European nations; and in capitals throughout the Islamic world to decry as blasphemy the complicities of press and state in European society. What better way to express the West’s indignation to the complicity of both Iran and Syria than to have two women—one a Jewess and the other a Black American—renounce Islam’s outrage!!!

“But yes, there are governments that have also used this opportunity to incite violence. I don't have any doubt that given the control of the Syrian Government in Syria, given the control of the Iranian Government, which, by the way, hasn't even hidden its hand in this, that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it. All responsible people ought to say that there is no excuse for violence. We all need to respect each other's religions. We need to respect freedom of the press.” (Feb. 7, 2006, Transcript of Remarks by US Condoleezza Rice, Israeli FM Tzipi Livni at Press Conference, Palestine Media Center)

Listen, neither I nor anyone else around these parts, needs to enflame the passions of Islam relative to these goings on. To think that the Bush Administration somehow orchestrated this whole business by planting these cartoons and their publication and announcements before the Islamic world borders on intellectual insanity—the Bushies may be clever, but the Left is utterly insane to countenance such conspiracy. On the other hand—nothing like an unintended positive consequence from a rather bizarre set of circumstances that can be totally manipulated for effect by those who despise the Axis of Evil.

DOOM’S DAY SCENARIO & THE STUPIDITY OF THE AMERICAN LEFT!

A foregone geopolitical conclusion can be achieved once the dots are connected—and what dots might they be? March 28, 2006—the date of Israeli elections and the simultaneous attempt by Iran to dump the US Dollar as the world’s singular exchange for oil. Saddam tried to do that back in 2000 and America invaded.

Now, the Totalitarian of Teheran (President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), who not only denies the Jewish Holocaust, but counters the West’s desecration of the Prophet’s image by establishing his own international cartoon competition to poke fun at that same genocide, alienates the Islamic forces arrayed against their Western foes. This is the same “caricature” who today pronounced the Holocaust a “fairy tale.”

“‘We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago (i.e., Israel) and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them,” Ahmadinejad said in a ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. ‘Do the removal of Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations,’ the ultra-conservative president said. He once again called the Holocaust a ‘fairy tale’ and said Europeans have become hostages of ‘Zionists’ in Israel....” (Jihad Watch, Feb. 11, 2006).

Is it any wonder that some of the most vociferous outbursts against the Danish cartoons and against the embassies of Europe have come from Iran and Syria—who jolly well know that America and her Coalition of the Willing or Unwilling are about to pounce upon them with a furious assault that will make “Shock and Awe” look like Little Bo Peep—speaking of fairy tales.

If you think for one moment that the “merchants of the Earth” have any intention of allowing such an assault upon the almighty dollar—then, you have bought my latest offer of Floridian swampland and exchanged it for acreage somewhere near Katrina’s worst landfall in Louisiana!

Then there’s the insipid American Left who—though blindly well-intentioned—takes squirt-gun in hand against this raging forest fire and spurts out:

“It now falls upon people of conscience to create and organize a mass movement of nationwide non-violent resistance – in the spirit of Dr. (Martin Luther) King and Mohandas K. Gandhi – that will stop the war (in Iran this March) before it starts. At the rate the White House rhetoric is beginning to boil, this movement must start now and swing into full action by the early days of March (2006). The only way to stop another senseless and unnecessary war is with a mass movement rooted in a moral strategy that brings people together. This movement must also earn the sympathy and trust of those who are undecided about the necessity of another Middle East war . . . without a moral and unifying strategy that spells out specific non-violent tactics to achieve our goal, the power elite and the corporate media will ignore or marginalize our efforts. Remember the moral claims for justice and the appeals to America’s founding ideals during the civil rights movement, and you’ll understand the type of strategy we need today.” (Mike Kress, The Urgency of Now: Stopping the War on Iran, Feb. 11, 2006, Information Clearing House . . . “News you Won’t Find on CNN” – and I can see why---my profundity).

Mike, just as you were about to launch Operation Peashooter, a marriage made in hell just came off, and it’s all over but the shoutin’. Let me disabuse you and the marginalized American Left—let alone the conflicted European Left—there’s this huge Green Monster that’s coming at you and another one painted red, white and blue. Both could care less about Messrs. King and Gandhi. You and the defiance of the Chinese man who stood before the tank in Tiananmen Square have a great deal in common—neither has a sense of size!

Instead, Iran’s WMD (which might be years in the making, who cares?) is IMMINENT (especially, since the dollar’s being threatened) and, now that Europe’s prissy little game of “Can’t we all just get along” with the Moslems is de facto over. . . look out: Israel and America, with a neutralized European community outraged over the Islamic threats to their precious liberties, are about to neutralize both Syria and Iran, and flush their Middle East lackeys (Al Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Brotherhood, etc.) down the geo-political toilet—notwithstanding all the protests, impressive Islamic parades, and vitriolic comments made by their enlightened leadership with or without Al Jazeera, to the contrary!

Yes, a tragic comedy of errors is afoot—the insanity of the aforesaid is so surreal that it defies both secular and religious attempts at extrapolation. The more one tries to handle matters with diplomatic sobriety—the worse things become. The more you analyze the complexity of this Gordian Knot of secular-religio frustration, the more you are at a loss to separate the maze of rope with which the world seems hell-bent on hanging itself!

Long ago—although this pugnacious pimple occasionally pops up in cultural wars and the like (especially in America)—the West decided that war between the Two Swords (the State and the Church) was inevitable and a sort of acceptance to this tension became a part of Western Culture. The Church plays politics up to a point—and then backs off—somehow it sort of works (at least we’re led to believe such is the case). But Islam’s world is not the world of the West. For Europeans to think otherwise . . . well, that thinking is coming to a radical conclusion whether they wish to admit it or not!

I leave you in thoughtful mystery and ultimate comfort to contemplate a Europe well prepared to give authority to another:

“And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name . . . the ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast. These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful” (Revelation 13:1; 17:12-14).

See me @ www.the-tribulation-network.com

Mark Brady - 2/16/2006

In the light of your remarks, I reread John Sugg's essay. I still think it's worth reading, which is more than the two assertions that you criticize. That said, I don't think your criticisms stand up as well as you suggest they do.

1. "Sugg resorts to name-calling: Pipes a 'racist' (showing that he is ignorant about Islam being a religion, not a race.)"

I'm sure Sugg is well aware that Islam is a religion and not a race. And, I suggest, he has good reason to assert that Pipes exemplifies what are called racist attitudes towards Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general.

2. When I read it originally I too thought his account of Western antagonism to Islam was deficient in that it made no mention of the Islamic conquests after the death of Mohammed. And, if I were Sugg, I would have recognized this important historical reality. However, it is certainly true that there have been "western, Christian crusaders", if not "for a thousand years", then for a good many years during the Crusades. And, in the twentieth century, it's certainly true that the Western powers have "colonized and despoiled their lands." It's true that "[m]any in America regard their oil as rightfully ours -- an underlying if not complete explanation for George Bush’s war of conquest." And there is no doubt that those Western powers have "carved up the Middle East, overthrown democracies (pre-Shah Iran, for example), and fostered despots to suit the West’s imperial whims."

Gary McGath - 2/15/2006

Another "I'm against violence, but they were PROVOKED" article. I'm not impressed.

Jason Pappas - 2/15/2006

Sugg gives us pure boiler-plate knee-jerk left-liberal tripe.

He associates Fleming Rose’s publication of the cartoons (critical of Islam’s founder) with Daniel Pipes, who believes that moderate Islam is the solution to fundamentalist Islam. Pipes has been under attack from those that see no hope in Islam. While I don’t share Pipes’ analysis or policy prescriptions, his description of Pipes is bizarre and has no relationship to the tenor and purpose of Pipes’ vast literature. Suggs resorts to name-calling: Pipes a “racist” (showing that he is ignorant about Islam being a religion, not a race.)

Of course, the author is completely ignorant of history: “The Muslim world has been under assault from western, Christian crusaders for a thousand years.” How about the siege of Vienna in 1683 by the Ottoman Turks? How about the capture of Constantinople (1453) and destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire? Indeed, it was 1000 years ago that the Eastern Church, under attack in Antioch, asked the Latin Church for help.

Do those of us from Orthodox background don’t count--being neither Western nor Muslim? I assume, according to Sugg, Muslims were right to subjugate Serbia, Greece, the Crimea, Sicily, and Spain. Let's face reality: Islam was imperialist from day one! The standard trope, Muslims were history’s victims, is too silly to warrant extensive exposition.

By the way, the cartoons are true in the sense that Mohammad was a violent man, indeed, a warrior who led several battles and prior to that he funded his cohorts by raiding the caravans heading to Mecca. Sugg evades the proverbial Elephant in the room because adherents of that religion are offended. But I can't be too hard on him ... so does just about everyone.

William Marina - 2/15/2006

That stuff was in CounterPunch and other places last week. Seems the Neocon Right got more than they bargained for trying to stir things up last Fall.
Perfect example of the dialectic, of action reaction. And the winners are, the extremists on both sides.