Feardom of the Press

It's time for the West to stand up for their core values, first among them the freedom of the press. The cowardly response by both the media and government officials to the fabricated rage on the Muslim street ranges from dissapointing to infuriating.

An EU Foriegn Policy official had this to say, at an Islamic conference in Saudi Arabia:

“Unfortunately, people in the Muslim world feel that this is a new 9/11 against themselves. In Europe unfortunately Muslims have taken the place of Jews during World War II. There is a need for a UN legislation and clarification of existing conventions,” he said.

I don't think I can express how blindly moronic this type (or lack) of thinking is. Equating publishing cartoons with genocide and mass-muder?! Besides being wrong from a logical standpoint, you can't even make the claim that it is an effective policy. Do you think that you can calm down a mob by admitting to whatever lying accusations they are hurling at you. No. They don't want a confession (that's a different religion), they want blood. During the inquisition, you got tortured til you admitted your sin; but they didn't stop once you confessed, they used it as justification to pass judgement and kill you. So what do these idiots think they are doing?
And speaking of idiots providing propaganda, Al Gore has taken to America bashing, also in Saudi Arabia.

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications. Al Qaida doesn't want Saudi's to get to America?

Compared to Carter, Gore, and Kerry, President Clinton seems statesmanlike.

A great summary of the west's postition in caving to mob violence:

I am thinking of a word that keeps popping up whenever the Mohammed cartoonsa re mentioned.
That word is BUT. A sneaky word. It is used to deny or qualify what one has just said.
How many times lately have we not heard people of power, the Opinion Makers and others say that of course we have freedom of speech, BUT.
They have said it, all of them, from Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, to our own Bendt Bendtsen [a Danish Politician]. Once we had to be sensitive to the easily hurt feelings of the Nazis, then came the Communists, now it is the Islamists. The reason I say ‘Islamists’ is that I do not for a moment believe all the world’s Muslims are pissing on us. I think we are dealing with thugs, fools and misled people. Those are the ones we have to deal with, and then the chicken**** politicians.

In Canada, there is talk of using hate crime laws to punish papers that published the cartoons.

A good article on the press's history of standing up to mob violence. Quite a contrast to this:

[We won't publish the cartoons] out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. This is, frankly, our primary reason for not publishing any of the images in question. Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we couldnot in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year publishing history.

Cox and Forum
Another good cartoon.
A true Frenchman, in the tradition of the French Resistance.