Saturday, February 25, 2006
MANCHESTER ERUPTS
Call the police! Begin an inquiry! A cartoon has appeared, and the BBC is rocked:
Extremists have been blamed after a cartoon featuring the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban was put up in a housing office in Oldham.
Extremists? Plural? It took more than one of these “extremists” to stick a cartoon on a noticeboard or wherever? How big was it?
The cartoon, which has sparked protests from Muslims worldwide since it was published in a Danish newspaper last year, appeared at First Choice Homes.
Managers acted quickly to remove it and have begun an inquiry.
Again with the plural. Exactly how many managers were involved? Were their actions approved by the First Choice Homes Cartoon Review Committee, and the Oldham Noticeboard Squad?
First Choice Homes - which runs the town’s council housing - said the matter had been reported to police.
Well, of course. Something like this, who knows where it could lead? Next the extremists will be subjecting offices to Andy Capp or Bristow.
Steve Yorke, its Director of Management and Operations, said many staff had been offended by the cartoon.
If only the Cartoon Review Committee had acted with greater speed. It’s awful that so many staff witnessed the cartoon before sufficient managers were rounded up to do something about it, but I guess it’s always best to proceed cautiously when dealing with ... a cartoon.
Greater Manchester Police said they were treating the incident “extremely seriously” and were worried the incident could affect “community cohesion”.
It’s a wonder the streets aren’t already awash with blood. I mean, a cartoon and all.
(Via Deo)
MICHELLE ALARMED
The Age’s Michelle Grattan is still struggling to cope with Australian treasurer Peter Costello’s views on Muslim non-integration:
Assuming the multiculturalism speech gave an insight into the “true” Costello, it’s more than a little alarming.
Costello responds:
Today Mr Costello expressed surprise anyone would find his comments controversial or provocative.
“Is it provocative to say that citizens should be loyal to Australia, that they should abide by the rule of law, that they should respect the rights and liberties of others?” Mr Costello said on ABC television.
“Is that now provocative in Australia? Gee, things have got pretty bad if that’s provocative.”
It’s chiefly provocative to jumpy Fairfax and ABC types who’d prefer that these issues never be raised. Labor premiers Alan Carpenter and Morris Iemma support Costello; so do 74% of SMH readers.
DARREN MCGAVIN
Darren McGavin—Carl Kolchak in the wonderful Nightstalker TV series—has died at 83, according to a fan site apparently authorised by the actor.
UPDATE. Kolchak is gone, but the hat lives on.
UPDATE II. Damian Penny salutes Don Knotts, who has died at 81.
EVERYTHING IS BAD
So, you like the bottled water, huh? Well, thanks for killing the planet, you landfill-clogging, petrochemical-burning, guzzle-mad Gaia haters!
WHO SAY THAT?
The Financial Times reports:
European countries are paying the price for their “miscalculations” on Islam, which have come back to haunt them in the crisis over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, according to ...
a) Australian Prime Minister John Howard?
b) British Conservative leader David Cameron?
c) Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt?
Before you hit that link, here’s further comment from our mystery pundit:
“There is no formula for co-existence between Islam and Europe. All idyllic, unrealistic visions of laissez-faire permissiveness are no good ... Islam in the west is a real political problem.”
The UK, in particular, has made a “serious error” in “encouraging and accepting” multiculturalism. “The London bombings last year were a brutal wake-up call,” he claims.
WAR-LUSTING LEFTIES
“Is it just me,” asks Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson, “or are some in the progressive blogosphere hyping the possibility of a full-scale civil war in Iraq just a little too eagerly?”
SUPPORT YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD TROLL
Oh, delight! Miranda Divide has recently returned to comments here, and she’s in cracking form!
Any guesses as to where Miranda might vanish in between comments jags? The manic and infrequent quality of her outbursts suggests a flipside of agonised, non-communicative depressive episodes. Let’s hope this post—recognition, Miranda!—cheers her up.
FINE LINE REPEATEDLY CROSSED
Since a new reporting system was introduced last year, the UN has investigated—wait for it—295 complaints of sexual abuse against its amusingly-named peacekeeping forces. Further cases are expected:
It could take several more years to reform the system fully, says Jordan’s UN envoy who last year urged changes.
In 2005 the UN admitted that allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN staff had more than doubled—but, as enlightened and sensitive UN officials pointed out, there is often a fine line between forced and willing sex.
LICENCED TO KILL, BUT NOT TO DRIVE
Daniel Craig, the metrosexual James Bond who is scared of guns and gets beaten up by stuntmen, doesn’t know how to drive a manual car:
Filmmakers had transported Bond’s original Aston Martin DB5 to the Bahamas to shoot new movie ‘Casino Royale’.
But the star confessed he didn’t have a license to drive the manual car, which Sean Connery drove when he played the dashing spy.
The 39-year-old reportedly said: “Er… I don’t do gears.”
He’s also frightened of boats.
RAMSEY REVISES
The SMH’s Alan Ramsey blamed the Labor party following Mark Latham’s 2005 resignation:
It was a public execution, not a resignation ... Labor did to Latham what in a more primitive age was done to heretics. It burnt him at the stake, in front of us all, to the applause of a mostly accommodating media and those interests, internal and institutional, that Latham’s confronting leadership style had so offended.
Also blamed for Latham’s resignation were state Labor leaders, Latham’s pancreas, various “low-lifes”, etc. A year on, Ramsey offers a different, more concise version of events:
Latham went mad and bolted ...
HISTORY REPEATS
The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire killed 146 New York City garment workers, many of them young women. A locked door, preventing escape, was widely blamed for the high toll.
In Bangladesh, ninety-five years later:
A garment factory fire has again claimed the lives of scores of women in an outbreak of fire ... According to reports, the fire originating from the blast of a boiler raced through the entire four-story building which housed a factory of KTS, a composite textile mill, Thursday evening. About 250 factory employees, mostly underprivileged women, were on duty in the evening shift.
Casualty figures keep rising and latest reports mention 85 deaths and a few hundred injured. The figures may rise further which will go to make the incident one of the worst industrial tragedies in the country’s history ... As in most previous incidents of garment factory fire, the workers could not run to safety because the gate was locked.
Friday, February 24, 2006
COLUMNIST MOVES UP
Pamela Bone, formerly one of the sane voices at The Age, is now writing for a more respectable publication.
ATTITUDES CHANGING
Frances Marcus, a 74-year-old Holocaust survivor, reviews Israel’s version of The Producers:
The biggest fun on earth. You couldn’t have put this on twenty or even ten years ago. And now to see this Hitler dancing and not feel offended. Attitudes to Germany have changed totally.
Both sides have grown up. And with this whole business of the [Prophet Muhammad] cartoons—isn’t this just the biggest, super-mega cartoon, this show?
The show would probably be banned in Indonesia under forthcoming legislation:
The same groups staging violent demonstrations against the West over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad are targeting pornography in their battle to transform Indonesia into a strict Islamic nation. And they are winning: parliament is set to introduce a sweeping anti-pornography law.
Expected to be passed by June, the law imposes a rigid social template; couples who kiss in public will face up to five years’ jail, as would anyone flaunting a “sensual body part” - including their navel - and tight clothing will be outlawed.
Hit the link to see an image (totally work-safe) that may send an Indonesian artist to prison. I’d say Indonesian politicians deserve to be satirised over this, but I’m still working out relative power levels and so on.
ATTACK ONLY THE SAFE TARGETS
British cartoonists reflect on their courage and decency:
When the political cartoonist Martin Rowson draws President Bush with blood on his hands, he gets hundreds of angry and obscene e-mails. But he doesn’t mind, he said, because “the purpose of satire is to attack people more powerful than you are.”
Still, Rowson said, he would not have drawn the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that were published by a Danish newspaper and led to often violent protests around the world. Rowson said the cartoons insulted a minority group—“poor and powerless Muslims in Denmark.”
If the purpose of satire is to attack people more powerful than you are, attack the Prophet Muhammad! He’s way more powerful than George W. Bush. How dare you insult him! Interesting that Rowson, who works for a British paper, is so keen to avoid offending Muslims in Denmark.
Steve Bell, who, like Rowson, draws mainly for the Guardian newspaper ... [recently] drew an excited Bush having relations with a camel, which was supposed to symbolize Iraq.
But even as a believer in harsh political satire, Bell said, he would not have drawn the Danish cartoons, including one that featured Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. He defended the Danish newspaper’s right to publish the drawings, saying limitations on free speech should be “self-imposed.”
“The limits are one’s own integrity and one’s own beliefs,” he said. “Sometimes you want to offend. But you target the powerful, not the weak.”
The Prophet won’t be happy about all these infidels mocking his weakness. Hey, Prophet! You’re so lame that Brit cartoonists won’t draw you!
[Hunt ]Emerson also said he would not have published the Muhammad cartoons, partly because they were “not very good” and partly out of fear of violent reprisals. “As a cartoonist, I have quite a few views about it,” he said. “But as a human being, I’m not going to put me and my family in danger. So you might say they’re winning.”
Yes. Yes, you might say that.
ATTENTION FOREIGN TYPES
Online opinion is divided over a new Australian tourism promotion to be broadcast throughout the US, Asia, and Europe. Do take a look and rate the ad in comments.
(The babe, by the way, is Lara Bingle, from Cronulla.)
UPDATE. Andrew Bolt and ninme have their say.