RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... [3x]
Table of Contents: RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... Joe Lockard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... Florian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... sascha brossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:42:52 -0700 From: Joe Lockard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... I write this from Poona, in India; last Friday there were huge protests on the streets here about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in faraway Denmark and unfortunately innocent Europeans filming were subjected to anger and taken into shelter though the protests were otherwise non-violent. Its unfortunate that the persona of the Western Artist should seek to defend the publication of such cartoons in the name of Freedom of Expression but fail to see through the political agendas behind such cultural production. The attempt to blatantly provoke and naturalise the representation of Others in our media to secure an electoral backlash for the calculated ends has become a formula for success; sadly in Europe today ? in Denmark, the Netherlands - this is precisely what sanctioned European political parties and politicised Islamist agents are intent on delivering to their electorates. In a postcolonial networked world, the cultural Kristallnachts can be anywhere. But this is not the mid 20th century. So why defend this matter in the name of freedom of speech? For those of us who BELIEVE we have the (or the luxury of) freedom of expression, enjoy the belief! but bear in mind that there will be those who are paying the price for this. Just like all the other inexhaustible pillars of Modernity - like infinite availability of energy, and so forth - everything has material and political limits and nothing is inexhaustible or universal. [...] Siraj Izhar [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Siraj, Any advocate of not publishing cartoons of Mohammed should consider that the demand here is essentially for a free pass on lampooning or satire of any nature. This position demands that critics of Islam or any other religion should respect 'cultural sensitivity' and refrain from visualized critique of religious figures or practices. Polite deportment in a place of worship or compliance with another household's expectations is a matter of good manners and respect for neighbors. A grant of immunity to religion from negative representation on grounds of sensitivity is quite another and quite impossible, since the very concept of critique here lies in discomfiting the certainties and practices of religious faith. An affirmation of a right to blaspheme -- that is to say, a right to express a different or counter-opinion towards sanctified 'verities' -- is at the heart of the Enlightenment. It appears in texts such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 'Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar', which recognizes that both Moslems and Jews have a right to their own non-Christian 'heresies'. There is no cause to surrender this Enlightenment-born and hard-established tradition for some fairly blas=E9 Danish cartoons. All religions are subject to critique, and it seems predictable that the faithful will deem satirical representation as blasphemy, racism, or whatever might stick. Poor taste has the same legal protection as good taste. Which is good and which is poor are not legal questions. The very notion of 'taste' implies that there will be that material adjudged in 'poor' taste alongside that elevated to the status of 'good' taste. Those standards change as a culture itself changes, and in a multicultural society there will be many tastes, often in conflict. In a multicultural society it becomes even more important to emphasize the legal status and social value of free expression irrespective of 'cultural sensitivity', given that these societies need to express their internal conficts openly in order to resolve them. That strong strains of xenophobia and racism flow through contemporary Europe is unquestionable. Public education is far more effective response than censorship, even if a slower means of social prophylaxis. Joe Lockard - --- Joe Lockard Assistant Professor 209 Durham Languages and Literatures Bldg. English Department POB 870302 Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 Tel: (480) 727-6096 Fax: (480) 965-3451 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.asu.edu/english/who/lockard.htm Antislavery Literature Project http://antislavery.eserver.org/ -- Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:57:09 +0100 From: Florian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllan
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not [5x]
Table of Contents: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not [7x] "porculus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: nettime-l-digest V1 #1700 "Jody Berland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not [7x] "Ayhan Aytes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... Ryan Griffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Aras Ozgun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:48:59 +0100 From: "porculus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not [7x] > a. not funny; and > b. extremely poorly drawn. but you all know free speech was always gotten in fight & in blur period & motives for most of time saying huge bullshit, as the king is an ass, my boss is a fuckard & my mother the greatest bitch the world ever done & not as the legend say..as 'my name is fritz kurtz, i born in 1215, the earth turn around the sun, i claim it but i would never be in a dictionnary & what disgust me is to know it's another one would be in dictionnary at my place..cause he retracted this fucking coward' baaah these drawing are just ordinary & dayly cartoon product, no more good no more bad & saying this is really an offense to all truckdrivers of my familly & i want you all under fatwa of kick in the ass & belgium muhla entartement threat.. 'not funny', 'extremely poorly drawn', 'stupid', 'idiot', 'nasty' 'bad tasted'.. chance you have these words resounded for making just me to think of the beloved spitting image of my best friend..otherwise -- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:37:33 -0500 From: "Jody Berland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: nettime-l-digest V1 #1700 Let us take into account that the individuals, cultures and countries most likely to oppose any limits on freedom of speech are those culturea and countries who have something to gain from unlimited freedom of speech. As communication scholar Anthony Smith wrote in the 1980s (and I understand the present irony of this statement), only the United States could advocate a complete "free flow of information" without any concerns for its impact on democracy. By "free flow" he means transborder flow of cultural commodities, of course, not freedom of speech, whose blatant trampling in U.S. politics probably encourages people to defend free speech unconditionally and without regard for its more complicated repercussions elsewhere. In Canada, we have limited regulation of freedom of speech; we have legislation banning hate speech, and I'm glad we do. I wouldn't say that it has banned racism from our midst, but it has probably reduced physical violence and made it easier to isolate unredeemable racists. The legislation suggests that the freedom of individuals to vent toxic spleen might need to be balanced against the need of societies to learn tolerance and respect. In the last 20 years, advocates of unlimited free speech have invariably founded their argument on the distinction between symbolic and physical violence. This is a valid and interesting distinction, but it has little to do with the real practices of violence in the world. It seems to me deliberately dumbed down. I don't think that everyone who sees an ad for a hamburger condones factory farms, or that everyone who sees a photo of a naked woman condones rape, etc, but that simply means that we need a better understanding of how culture and images work. If we oppose racism, imperialism, violence, and warmongering, then I think we have to oppose racist, imperialist, totalizing acts of contempt against groups of people who are already the subjects of racist, imperialist, totalizing military and social violence. None of this is to justify any acts of physical violence that followed the publication of these cartoons. I don't agree with the publication of cartoons and I don't agree with social violence to protest them. (I don't think it is just the cartoons that are inspiring this protest, either.) All I'm saying is, they are part of one picture, part of one history of racism and imperialism, to be blunt. That history predates the publication of these cartoons and probably won't change significantly until people change the tired old arguments they use to discuss the issues. Jody Berland -- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:45:04 -0800 From: "Ayhan Aytes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not [7x] Isn't that a very liberal ca
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not [7x]
Table of Contents: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Florian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Lennaart van Oldenborgh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... John Hopkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Heiko Recktenwald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Jamil Brownson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Joe Lockard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr David Irving <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:41:39 +0100 From: Florian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepress" Am Freitag, 10. Februar 2006 um 11:12:51 Uhr (-0500) schrieb Andrew Bucksbarg: > There seems to be a problem with extremes in either direction here. > We tend to forget, in our examples of democracy, that the freedom > FROM something is just as important as the freedom TO something. The freedom "from" refers to not be coerced into acts. Since these caricatures appeared in a newspaper people were free to buy or not to buy, I fail to see how these caricatures were forced upon onto anyone. It would be a different case if they had been course material in schools, for example. > There are no clean divisions > between symbolic and physical action, otherwise burning a cross in > someone's yard or burning the flag are pointless acts. I certainly see it as anyone's freedom to burn whatever flag s/he likes (as long as they bought that flag themselves and burn it in their own yard). Burning in a cross in one's yard indeed oversteps this freedom. But those caricatures were not put up in the yards of muslim people. Most people who demonstrated against them hadn't even seen what they were demonstrating against, just like the militant Christian groups that rallied in front of movie theaters against Ingmar Bergman's "The Silence" in the 1960s or Martin Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ" in 1988. - -F - -- http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70 gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc -- Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:30:54 + From: Lennaart van Oldenborgh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepress" wow it took a while for this debate to surface here but it's good to finally hear a subjective Danish point of view from Louise Moana Kolff; I wholeheartedly agree with her statement that >So in the light of this political and public climate, the cartoons >have less to do with the freedom of press, and more to do with a continuation >of the role the press has been playing in general in hyping the issue of "the Muslim threat" and "the foreign invasion" to an all time high. and we all know - especially in the Netherlands - that this isn't applicable in Denmark alone. surely if these if these publications are prosecutable (and that's a big *if*) it should not be under some outdated blasphemy law but rather under some anti-racism or anti-hate speech act. but if they may not be prosecutable then at least they are despicable and the muslim protests in denmark (though not necessarily elsewhere) deserve our solidarity. Lennaart - -- - - Lennaart van Oldenborgh 26 Oxford Road London N4 3EY tel +44 (0)7768 610016 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:13:45 -0700 From: John Hopkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... on the issue of 'rights' -- Simone Weil suggested that people who are driven to demand everything from the society they live in by a 'bill of human rights' would instead be better grounded morally to consider and act upon their 'human obligations' towards their fellow humans... and also a side note to ponder -- that it was at the Ecumenical conclave in Nicaea in the 7th century when the Christian religion definitively broke from the traditions of the middle east -- when the iconoclasts were defeated by those in the Church who wanted to allow representations of Christ and the saints into the Church ideology. Previous to that time, Christianity largely followed a ban similar to Muslim -- against any form of re-presentation of the Spirit or flesh of God.It is hard to imagine t
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... [4x]
Table of Contents: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr "porculus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr sascha brossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Louise Moana Kolff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepr Andrew Bucksbarg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:34:03 +0100 From: "porculus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepress" > "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of > thought > which they seldom use." > > - 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard it's main bout freedom of drawing here...or is it possible duchampian 'non ocular art' would be just the historical worn out iconoclasty revival & the prevalence of verb.. for instance hombre if i describe one of my prefered cabu's poster done when jp2 came in france. jp2 is handcuffed beetwen 2 cops & beneath you could read 'a big opium-for-the-people-dealer has been caught at roissy airport' you could believe all is done. no, you miss the sketch itself, the main i couldnt reportwith words..& btw i bet the legendary sad kierkegaard would laugh in seeing it, but it's just my opinion, & yes there is some impudence to puppetise -& specialy for a laugh- the dead ones -- Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:45:10 +0100 From: sascha brossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not "freedom of thepress" On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 02:27:51PM -0800, Ayhan Aytes wrote: > No I mean the violence in its literal sense, in this case through > cultural means of political oppression of minorities. We should > remember that Muslims in Denmark are minorities. sorry, but i fail to see how the muslims in denmark are deprived of their rights as minorities, as i don't see any reason for any religion or other belief systems to be protected from *any* kind of criticism. what about the beliefs of atheists and agnostics who are also minorities? shouldn't they be equally protected? it might for example hurt my deepest religious feelings if people pray aloud to any god, carry out religious ceremonies in the open and such. consequently i ask e.g. the states of iran, saudi arabia, syria, and others to immediately stop that incredible blasphemy. they have absolutely no right to trample upon my religious truths in any way. and if they don't i might quite well issue a decree that their imams are to be shot by any true non-believer and every successful execution of those heretics will be rewarded by 100 pounds of gold. get it? your whole argumentation is absolutely selective with blind spots everywhere else. in other words: plain rhethorics. NB, how about the minorities in countries in the middle east who would be also worth protecting by the same principles? i have not yet heard anybody who claimed a special right for e.g. muslims to not have their belief mocked by e.g. caricature to claim the same for e.g. jews, americans, and other minorities in whatever publications from the middle east. now how about double standards? > The Atheist response to Christian majority culture can be supported > when they use the Jesus cartoons to stand against this oppression. But > when the majority uses the same method against Muslim minority it > becomes a totalitarian tool to oppress Muslim minority. bullshit. this is about the freedom of anybody to say what he likes versus anybody who - naturally - does not like it. with everybody being free to return anything *with the same means*. not with lawyers, not with policeman's truncheons, not with sniper bullets, not with any other means of that kind. > Yes. Denmark has a law providing for fines and up to four months in > jail for anyone who "publicly offends or insults a religion that is > recognized in the country." a shameful atavism of danish jurisdiction. it should be abolished ASAP. > If you want to capture the true meanings of things always mind the > subject. sorry, but i don't know anything about a "true meaning of things". i would rather prefer to leave such truths to the far too large hordes of religious nuts on this planet, may their gods be called whatever you like or even missing. those people have caused more casualities throughout the course of history than every lethal desease. may they rot in any hell they can come up with - if there is one. best, sascha - -- :: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ::. :: .. :... . . . . . . . :: www.brsma.de :: ..: .:. . :.. ..: . . . . . . :: im [EMAIL PRO
