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Thread: World War III could be started by a cartoon

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    World War III could be started by a cartoon

    In the future, when we look back in time, our history books may say that WWIII started with a damn cartoon. I also like how we got dragged into this, & the US was not even involved with the cartoons, I say the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, NY Post & Daily News, Newsday, hell even the Village Voice should publish the cartoons on the front page, since they are pissed off at us anyway...



    Iran Blames U.S., Europe in Cartoon Crisis By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer
    Sun Feb 12, 1:24 AM ET



    Iran's hard-line president on Saturday accused the United States and Europe of being "hostages of Zionism" and said they should pay a heavy price for the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have triggered worldwide protests.

    Denmark — where the drawings were first published four months ago — warned Danes to leave Indonesia, saying they faced a "significant and imminent danger" from an extremist group and announced it had withdrawn embassy staff from Jakarta, Iran and Syria.

    Yemen announced that three chief editors of privately owned Yemeni papers will stand trial for printing the Danish cartoons and their publishing licenses suspended. They Information Ministry officials said the editors are charged with offending the prophet of Islam and violating religions.

    Earlier this month, two Jordanian editors were put on trial for reprinting the Danish caricatures of Muhammad.

    Saudi Arabia's top cleric said in a Friday sermon that those responsible for the drawings should be put on trial and punished.

    Muslims in several European and Asian countries, meanwhile, kept up their protests, with thousands taking to the streets in London's biggest demonstration over the issue so far.

    Last week, demonstrators in tightly controlled Iran attacked the Danish, French and Austrian embassies with stones and firebombs and hit the British mission with rocks.

    Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is at odds with much of the international community over Iran's disputed nuclear program, launched an anti-Israeli campaign last fall when he said the Holocaust was a "myth" and that Israeli should be "wiped off the map."

    In a speech marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution Saturday, Ahmadinejad linked his public rage with Israel and the cartoons satirizing Islam's most revered figure.

    "Now in the West insulting the prophet is allowed, but questioning the Holocaust is considered a crime," he said. "We ask, why do you insult the prophet? The response is that it is a matter of freedom, while in fact they (who insult the founder of Islam) are hostages of the Zionists. And the people of the U.S. and Europe should pay a heavy price for becoming hostages to Zionists."

    The drawings — including one that depicts the prophet with a turban shaped like a bomb with a burning fuse — were first published in September and recently reprinted in other European publications that said it was an issue of freedom of speech.

    Islam widely holds that representations of the prophet are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.

    Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim country, has seized on the caricatures as a means of rallying its people behind a government that is increasingly under fire from the West over its nuclear program.

    Shiite Muslims do not ban representations of the prophet and some in Iran's provincial towns and villages even carry drawings said to be of Muhammad. But Tehran said the newspaper caricatures were insulting to all Muslims.

    Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said on behalf of the European Union that Ahmadinejad's remarks should not be silently accepted.

    "These remarks stand in complete contradiction to the efforts of numerous political and religious leaders who after the events of the past few days are campaigning for a dialogue between cultures that is marked by mutual respect," Plassnik said.

    Plassnik was referring to appeals for calm made in recent days by Arab governments, Muslim clerics and newspaper columnists who fear the sometimes deadly violence has only increased anti-Islamic sentiment in the West.

    Norway's ambassador to Saudi Arabia apologized on Saturday for the "offense" caused when a Norwegian newspaper published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

    Denmark, which has been stunned by the wave of protests over the caricatures that first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September, urged its citizens on Saturday to leave Indonesia as soon as possible, saying they were facing "a significant and imminent danger" from an unnamed extremist group.

    The warning came hours after the ministry said it withdrew Danish staff from Indonesia, Iran and Syria.

    The Danish ambassador to Lebanon left last week after the embassy building in Beirut was burned by protesters.

    Jyllands-Posten has apologized for offending Muslims but stood by its decision to print the drawings, citing freedom of speech.

    The newspaper's culture editor, Flemming Rose, who was in charge of the drawings, went on indefinite leave Thursday, but many Muslims said that would do little to quell the uproar.

    The paper has denied that Rose was ordered to go.

    "He was not forced out," the paper's spokesman Tage Clausen told The Associated Press in Copenhagen. "He's on vacation, that's all."

    Saudi Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Seedes, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, called on Muslims to reject apologies for the "slanderous" caricatures.

    "Is there only freedom of expression when it involves insults to Muslims? he said in his sermon, which was published Saturday in the Al Riyad daily.

    Noisy but peaceful rallies also were held in Turkey, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland and elsewhere, although the Middle East was largely calm.

    Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the caricatures were damaging attempts to blend the Muslim faith with democracy.

    "It sends a conflicting message to the Muslim community: that in a democracy it is permissible to offend Islam," the U.S.-educated leader wrote in a commentary that appeared Saturday in the International Herald Tribune.
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    Senior Member Tom_Turner's Avatar
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    Re: World War III could be started by a cartoon

    Quote Originally Posted by Midnight Mike
    I also like how we got dragged into this, & the US was not even involved with the cartoons
    Well, thats probably what Iraq said when they got smashed on a 911 pretense.
    "Keep 'em Flying"

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    Moderator Matt Molnar's Avatar
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    World War III began on September 11th, 2001. This is simply another battle. Stuff like this is only beneficial to us though. The huge number of violent rioters are proving that the extremists are not only a small isolated group as the Islamic apologists claim. Hopefully this will be the wakeup call Europe needs.
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    Senior Member Hyder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GothamSpotter
    The huge number of violent rioters are proving that the extremists are not only a small isolated group as the Islamic apologists claim.
    Even with that number of violent rioters, (even though those individuals don't represent Islam) they still represent a small portion. Now in terms of peaceful protests (which of course are barely if not reported at all), there are just as many if not a ton more. Don't forget that the media... even the types of media that claim to be unbiased, will still show you what they want to show you.

    These people who are burning embacies, are just angry people who most likely don't have the first clue about the essence of Islam. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing that in the first place.

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    Moderator Matt Molnar's Avatar
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    This essay is an awesome first hand account by a westerner stuck in a cartoon riot in Beirut, from the February 20th issue of The New Republic.

    BEIRUT DIARIST
    Danegerous Liaison

    by Andrew Lee Butters
    Post date 02.08.06 | Issue date 02.20.06


    I've had close calls working in the Middle East (rocket attacks, roadside bombs, food poisoning), but nothing beyond the usual occupational hazards of an American journalist--until Sunday, when I was mistaken for a Dane.

    I had recently returned to Beirut from an assignment in northern Iraq and was thinking of spending the morning in my pajamas, when my friend Katherine, a reporter for a U.S. newspaper, calls. There's an angry demonstration forming a few blocks from your apartment, she says. They're heading for the Danish Embassy to protest the cartoon defamation of the Prophet. By now, everyone knows the story of how a Danish newspaper decided to make a point about free speech by running cartoon depictions of Mohammed. Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet blasphemous, and, true to form, reactionary elements in the Muslim world have responded in total caricature of themselves.

    Katherine picks me up, and we head down to the demonstration. By now, this should be a Beirut routine--get a few quotes from sexy girls waving Lebanese flags and be done in time for brunch at Patisserie Paul. But it soon becomes clear that much has changed in Lebanon since the so-called Cedar Revolution last spring, when the whole country seemed united in wanting peace and independence. "That sounds like shooting," says Katherine as we pass through a line of soldiers who tell us to go back, and, suddenly, there are burning cars, young men with beards and green bandannas throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, and riot police firing tear-gas grenades. I see a mullah in a turban and flapping gown waving his hands at the stone-throwing shebab, and I am reminded of Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice, helpless to stop the broomstick army that he has created.

    Neither of us knows where the Danish Embassy is actually located. But the rioters are just as clueless. Several thousands of them are moving up a tree-lined avenue into the heart of Achrafiyeh, a ritzy Christian neighborhood in East Beirut that is home to the offices of a few European countries too small to merit their own embassy compounds. The mob attacks anything that is vaguely Danish, which, since no one really knows much about Denmark, amounts to open season on luxury consumer-goods shops and the occasional church.

    In Syria, religious rabble-rousers have also attacked Danish symbols--but with no real political or economic consequences. (Danish imports to the region seem to consist mainly of shortbread cookies and butter.) Lebanon, however, is a country that, not long ago, fought a 15-year civil war, and such events are refracted darkly through a sectarian lens. So, when the television shows a mob burning the Swiss flag, Lebanese Christians don't think, "Look, those idiots don't know the difference between Switzerland and Denmark!" Instead, they see a Muslim mob burning the cross.

    The police do little to stop the rampage, and, as the government dithers, we wonder how long it will be before Christian militias take up arms and patrol their neighborhoods. In the meantime, Katherine and I wade into the stream of angry young men. This is not as insane as it sounds. Even in a mob, there is often room to work, especially along the fringes occupied by the more civilized sort of rioter. Still, I'm nervous enough that I don't even bother taking out my notebook. Katherine does the interviewing, and I keep watch. Suddenly, the crowd panics and there's a stampede. We climb the stairs of the nearest building, a brown stone office tower, but, in the process of getting out of the way, we've exposed ourselves--two blue-eyed Westerners of visibly northern European descent (I'm even a goddamn summer blond)--to full view of the mob, which begins pelting us with stones from across the traffic divider. A group of good Samaritans hustles us inside the building and out of harm's way. We take cover behind a bank of elevators in the empty, mildly ransacked lobby. Katherine points to the battered signs that list the building's tenants, and one is clearly visible: Royal Danish Embassy Office. "Butters, we're in the Danish Embassy," she says. I reply, in effect, "Dude, we need to get out of here."

    Back outside, we head straight for the nearest mullah to ask for protection and an escort out of the demonstration. But, by this time, Katherine and I have become such a spectacle that a knot forms around us, and not everyone has gotten the memo about Islam being a religion of peace. We can't move. One of the middle-aged Samaritans who had taken us inside the building returns. "Why didn't you stay inside?" he asks. "Because that's the Danish Embassy!" I reply. At that moment, our friend Ghaith appears out of nowhere. "I'm an Iraqi journalist," he shouts in Arabic as he pushes his way toward us. "Iraqi" is the magic word, and the crowd backs off as if in the presence of Zarqawi himself.

    Katherine and I squeeze free and flee back down the avenue, turning away from the riot at the nearest cross street, which happens to lead in the direction of Ghaith's home. His British fiancée, Wendy, has been holding down the fort. "Not a good day to be blonde in Beirut," she says, and she makes us spaghetti carbonara with pork bacon and Danish butter. We turn on the television, and there's the office building in which we had hidden, only now it's no longer abandoned; it's getting the full fatwa treatment. The mob is throwing files out of broken windows, prying stones from the façade with crowbars, and setting the offices on fire. I can't help but think: Whoops! Did we tip off the mob? Is that our fault? Would they have ignored the building but for us?

    Katherine begins filing her story, but, since I don't have anything to show for the day, I return home to work on an assignment I owe Men's Journal, a one-page guide to Lebanon for adventure travelers. What the hell am I going to write? Great food, stylish women, and rampaging mobs of young Muslim men burning cars: Yes, Beirut is once again the Paris of the Middle East!

    Andrew Lee Butters is a writer based in Beirut.
    Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem.
    All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control.
    I trust you are not in too much distress. —Captain Eric Moody, British Airways Flight 9

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    Senior Member cancidas's Avatar
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    let's see this friggin cartoon already!!
    it is mathematically impossible for either hummingbirds, or helicopters to fly. fortunately, neither are aware of this.

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    Member Max10803's Avatar
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    Thats a great essay, Gotham thanks for posting that! It reminds me of a less violent incedent involving a mob I was involved in.

    So here's the story, back when I lived in India and I was much younger, my family and I, who are white, went to a rural area of India for an adventure. While the rest of my family is dark haired, my brother is bleach blonde (very curious). As many of you may have noticed, not many Asians are blonde, in fact you could probably count the number of blonde indians on one hand...Anyways, my brother walked down a dusty street through the village and was immediately mobbed by young indian girls in uniforms who had gotten out of class. They all squabbled to touch his hair and soon much of it was ripped out and my brother ran as fast as he could to a safe place in an enclave of trees.

    good times....
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