« Death threats over cartoons? | Main | Review Civ IV »
February 05, 2006
Barbarians and decisions
Why lead with the cartoon above? In the nearly a year that this blog has been around this is the hardest post I've had to make.
We are a technical blog, we do useful and (hopefully) interesting posts on technical, internet and blogging matters. We have advised you about cooling systems, disabling preview panes and finding out where your teenager has been surfing. The big news of the net right now is a series of cartoons and the BARBARIC reaction of some groups of people to them. For the blog of a business it is not a topic one is anxious to tackle but as it concerns internet speech to ignore it would be as cowardly as Google and Microsoft and others on China so here goes....
If we were a newspaper it would be easy I would simply publish the cartoons with a disclaimer, but that is not our business. It is also not my place to tell others what they should publish when it involves risking one's life. Other peoples lives are not mine to risk.
My gut says to print them in solidariy with the Danes, the problem is this: Would I normally run such cartoons if there was no threat? The answer to that question is no for reasons already stated.
Yet something has to be said when people act in a barbaric way and free expression on the net must be defended. The most ironic thing is the caption of one particular cartoon which to me doesn't seem the least bit offensive. The caption reads:
"Easy my friends, when it comes to the point it is only a drawing made by a non believing Dane."
There is also reason to believe that some of what has happened has been staged.
We have already linked to the cartoons in the past if you wish to see them, but our answer is to display a different cartoon the one at the start of our entry.
UPDATE: The Captain elaborates on the staging of the outrage.
UPDATE II: Bad link above fixed.
Posted by Peter at February 5, 2006 07:48 AM
Comments
Has everyone gone nuts !
Posted by: mynewsbot at February 5, 2006 09:27 AM
More cartoons available at this Danish blog site:
http://retecool.com/comments.php?id=13539_0_1_0_C
Here’s another American website making complete fun of Christians:
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/
(Notice, no one is threatening hostage taking over this one.)
Here's a couple bits of writing from our American founding fathers twoo hundred years ago- they had more sense:
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." - Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason, 1794-1795.)
And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
Posted by: Kevin Quail at February 6, 2006 01:08 AM