College Republicans! The concept kinda makes your teeth itch doesn't it?
On KCAL 9 news on tues nite, feb 28, 2006 there was a report about the College Republicans hosting a 'panel discussion' on the Muslim cartoons and free speech.
The breeding grounds of future Jack Abramoffs and Karl Roves, they are praticing their deadly sophistry in San Diego and ..guess what, they were protested by Muslims, and a big shouting match ensued.
There are three articles in the San Diego Union
here and
here and
here
The hatefulness of it just makes me want to bite someone and chew vigorously.
And speaking of hateful
here's an article about the ass hat editor of the Danish paper, and his college republican fervor.
Flemming Rose commissioned the cartoons and has clear ties to the neocons behind the war on terror. He's a "follower of
Daniel Pipes, a neocon idealogue who says the only path to middle east peace will come through total Israeli military victory." This is a very interesting article on the cartoon problem. A link at the bottom
"Mohommed Cartoons-Recruiting Europe For Bush's War On Iran" Other links look really interesting....
The specious claim that this is free speech is not
tolerable, yet that's the argument the college reepers will try to have with you. Here's a quote from an article about a UN sponsored conference :
"Bishop Tutu noted that freedom of expression also came with some obligations.
"Imagine if the subject had been the Holocaust and it had been treated in a way that the Jews had deemed offensive and the reaction of the Danish government and international community had been as it is now," he said.
He lamented the negative stereotyping of Muslims and wondered why North Ireland's Protestants and Catholics, the Oklahoma City bombers or even the Nazis had never been labeled "Christian terrorists."
That buttmunch Flemming Rose wouldn't print a cartoon of a jewish man because it "would be racist".
Nobody complained about the evil situation where the dominant culture prints hurtful, aggressive diatribes against the underdogs, it's still freedom of speech. So, then my fevered brain thought, what about some Christian bashing, that'd be ok, right...like the
pisschrist, that'd be ok at the panel discussion right? See it
here, and read a short screed
here called "Danish boycott,Christ, and Freedom".
And then my mind carried me to the dominant culture, Christ, and Islam nexus, and I found a good hard left piece called
The Abu-Ghraib Photos And The Anti-Muslim "Free-Speech " Fraud
A quote:
No one can seriously pretend that the horrors captured in the thousands of images known to exist represent the work of a few `rotten apples.' What took place at Abu Ghraib was instituted, in defiance of international law, at the highest levels of the Pentagon and the Bush administration.
The "chain of command" leading from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld through Gen. Geoffrey Miller, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and others has been well traced out. Torture, to extract intelligence, was official policy. To date, no high official has been punished; nine low-ranking military reservists have been sentenced to terms ranging from discharge from the army to imprisonment. And there is no reason to believe that the cruel and perverse practices have been discontinued.
The Abu Ghraib images bring home, again, what has inspired outrage among the Arab and Muslim masses around the world. Contrary to the incomprehension of confused or outright malicious elements over the response to the publication of the Danish cartoons, this popular fury is not irrational, nor is it, in the words of the vicious and stupid editors of Rupert Murdoch's Australian, a "hysterical over-reaction."
The racist cartoons were merely the final indignity. For historic and cultural reasons the cartoons became the focal point for all the grievances felt by hundreds of millions over the violence and exploitation perpetrated by the great powers--for the sake of oil, rubber, diamonds and the greater profits of the global corporate giants--against the populations of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. This imperialist criminality has reached a crescendo under the Bush administration.
The finale for me was when the live reporter in San Diego filmed an under-the-Klieg-lights exchange of shouting points with an articulate muslim student, giving it right back to an older white man, possibly Lee Kaplan of the co-sponsoring United American Committee.
After that spat, I had an OMFG moment when the reporter said "It has been widely reported that Saudi Arabia has been sponsoring these protests to take attention away from their own internal political problems". Noooooooo not againnnnnn ahhhhh!
I'm gonna call them and ask if that segment is online somewhere, I couldn't find it, dialup vs sleep, zzzzzzz
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There are optimists and great thinkers in the Muslim world, such as Reza Aslan who just spoke near here, the tape of which is playing on the local access station.
His observation that bin Laden is Islam's Martin Luther reformist made my brain heat up.
His book
"No God but God is very good.
In conclusion:
The lessons of Dr King, Ghandi and Bishop Tutu may not be enough to turn this around, but I'm always hopeful.
This looks like a continuing widespread attempt to provoke Muslims into a reaction so as to isolate and provoke them into actions that will, over time, convince the sheeple that they are just fringe and dangerous and need to be suppressed...now in San Diego, watch for it at a college republican panel discussion group near you. Reserve your seats early. The 424 seat room was near full.