Forbidden Swedish cartoon

A Swedish right-wing paper had its website shut down today, because it was going to publish a drawing, sent in by a reader, of Mohammed. This is the drawing (not a joke):

The text says: "Islamic self-censorship"

Pope: Cartoons are actually quite funny!

.. But not if they show Mohammed ..

The Pope has, as most would have expected, condemned (I have been hearing that word so many times lately, that I am not sure it is a word anymore) the Mohammed cartoons and that he will have none of that in the future. None!

Danish weapon of choice

No Danish allowed

Will Google censor the cartoons?

Google Images has a large collection of images from all over the Internet and their spiders has of course also picked up the Mohammed drawings.

Can we expect a demand from the fundamentalists to filter these offending images out? Google is actually currently being censored; if you search for racism related material on the German and French version of Google you will end up with different results than the same search queries would produce on the American version of the search engine.

Link: Google censoring web content

US PBS TV station cancels show on roots of islamic terrorism

Following last-minute cries of protest from Muslim leaders last week, a Public Broadcasting Service affiliate in Dallas canceled the premiere of a documentary on the roots of Islamic terrorism.

Cartoon crisis spillover effect?

link: forward.com

Freedom for Egyptians: Support the grassrots

From the blog Freedom for Egyptians:

I call upon all readers of my blog who have relations with the international press to bring the battle for the Egyptian Judges club into being instead of putting those fanatic Muslims under the spot light. They do not deserve. These cartoons exposed where every nation and country is standing. Fanatic Muslims are standing at the grounds of hatred against freedoms.

I would like international press to hightlight their work an get in touch of Justices Ahmed Mekky, Hesham Bastawesy, Zakaria Abdel Aziz, Mahmoud Al Khoudery…they are 5000 Egyptian judges.

Related Judges Club Posts
Growing tension between the Egyptian regime and the Judges....
Honorable Egyptian Judges:TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR SUPERVISING ELECTIONS
Egyptian Rigged Elections into International Investigation
Referendum of May 25: Great Forgery Day
I Wish You a Future
ELEVEN ELECTORAL CRIMES WORST OF ALL ATTACKING COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Greenland prints Mohammed drawings too

Mohammed cartoons open to interpretation

In Canadian CTV you will find the following phrase:

One of the cartoons depicts the Prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a burning fuse. In another, a Soviet star and crescent moon are superimposed over his face.

How can he be so sure that carricature is Mohammed anyway? And if it is Mohammed, is it then THE Mohammed?

Link: CTV.ca

Remember Theo van Gogh?

He was a film director, who was murdered by religious fundamentalists a while ago.

Yesterday I saw a report from Holland on television - a film crew wandering the streets to get someone to speak a few words on the film he made. Positive or negative - just a few words.

Everyone said "no comment" or just went on without saying anything. One even said the magic words "not on camera"... I was surprised and I think publishing the cartoons was the only right thing to do. The terrorists obtained their goals by the murder; people must be too afraid to talk about us and to be critical of our religion. We need this discussion badly in Europe.

Perhaps they should have killed Rushdie too and this whole cartoon crisis could have been avoided - just as some fundamentalist peace-lover explained yesterday.

Mufti Tajuddin - Moslems should express their protest against the cartoons in the Danish newspaper in a civilized way

Perhaps Dawn of the Dead isn't coming true after all. Can we see more of this please?

Website publish picture of cartoon artist

On http://www.no4denmark.org/ someone has published a picture of one of the cartoon artists. Also a picture of the editor of the Norwegian magazine "Magasinet" can be found there. I don't read arabic, so I cannot say what the text says, but I don't have any hopes that the text accompanying the pictures speak of inviting those people on a cup of coffee if you bump into them on the streets of Denmark or Norway.

In Norway an imam has declared war on Denmark because of the 12 cartoons and the Danish embassy in Indonesia was stormed this morning by demonstrants.

I had muslim friends in the past, but being the technical guy I am, I never discuss religion or politics, so I never asked them about their prophet or how they felt about him - and I don't plan to do this in the future either, since discussions revolving these matters never change anyones mind anyway - people just drift apart a bit more. The political or religious beliefs of a friend doesn't really matter to me - I am not going converse or hang out with their prophet or their political leader anyway, so it is the person that matters. Should be obvious to anyone.

I am completely baffled by the violent reaction to these cartoons. I could tell you, that I was personally offended by the cartoons, but that wouldn't be true. Deeply in my heart I wasn't offended, simply because I am not a muslim. Did I then feel sympathetic with the muslim community in Denmark? No, not initially and there wasn't any good reason to be sympathetic. Why should I? Carricatures are a natural part of the western media and culture and why should the muslims be spared. The loooong debate following the publications from october to december however did make me realize how sacred the prophet is to a muslim and how hurt they were by what they felt was a constant battering of muslims. It made me think and my personal gain from this was a better understanding of the muslim culture, but I am still not offended or outraged by the cartoons. The result of the cartoons was that I was slowly building a sympathy towards them and their viewpoints. Not on a religious level or on a political level, but more on a human level - the images of "Allahu Akbar" beheadings and angry mobs slowly faded in my mind.

Then it went international and we saw the flagburning and the flagtrampling and the deaththreats and so on. A boycott is a great way to let someone know you don't agree with them, but no - they had to go radical.

The carricature showing Mohammed (PBUH) has never been a more true. He is now showing his darkest face and muslims raging through the streets have delivered proof of this.

One could argue that if you don't want a war, then don't draw cartoons of him (would anyone have believed that such a sentence would make any sence just a week ago). Well, to me the pictures have prooven their point and I am glad they are out. I am very happy we had a sexual revolution in Denmark, that we can drink alcohol, that gays are left alone in the streets, that girls can show their breasts on the beach, that my wife can commit adultry without being stoned to death (cross fingers ;) ), that I can tell my friends our primeminister is an idiot without being jailed and we could go on and on. No religious nut should be given the power to change this just because it is written in some old book. I don't care if this religious nut is christian or catholic - I just wan't to live my short life on this planet as I please and in such a way that I can live with myself too, so don't bother me - this fight over personal freedom was fought a long time ago in Europe and it shouldn't be necessary to repeat it.

Another thing I am noticing here in Denmark, which is so strange it makes a UFO hovering over my house seem like a childrens puppet theater, is that the socalled political left wing and their sympathies lies with the muslim right wing and the political right wing lies with the muslim left wing. I haven't really got any idea who should have their sympathy where, but the lines are so clearly drawn out that it's almost weird. Could it become more bizarre?

Chock: German government won't apologize

"Why should the government apologize for an act of press freedom?" Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble asked in an interview with daily Die Welt, one of several German papers that reprinted cartoons. "If the government interferes with that, then that's the first step to restrict the freedom of the press."

via: UPI

Support Jyllands Posten petition

Support Jyllands-Posten. They need all the support they can get.

They ignited the controversial cartoon discussion and have been through quite a beating - all this without any support up until now from any other media around Europe. Let them know that there are people who has been behind them all the time and that you appreciate their effort and their courage.

Sign here

Jylland-Posten beats human-animal hybrids

On Technorati, Jyllands-Posten is currently the most popular search term.

Who would have thought that just a week ago.

PHP fatwa?

I would like to draw attention to the fact, that the PHP programming language was originally written by the Danish programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. The two Israeli programmers Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans took over the project in 1997 and formed the base of PHP3.

Shouldn't someone enlighten our "critical" friends at www.no4denmark.com, who implemented their site in PHP, about this fact? I would like to have done this personally, but my arabic knowledge is rather limited, so explaining which PHP functions were implemented after PHP3 and thus not a violation of the boycott would be a bit difficult for me.

As I see it, they should have several good reasons to boycott PHP, but perhaps this is just a selective boycott. Danish Faxe beer (who delivers alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer to the middle east) wouldn't know there was a boycott if they didn't watch the news and read the papers - their sales are not affected at all.. Very strange indeed..

And now while we are at it, here are a couple more infidel programming languages:
C++ was created by Bjarne Stroustrup (who is Danish)
Borland Delphi, Turbo Pascal and Microsoft C# were at least partially designed by Anders Hejlsberg (also Danish)

You could also leave a friendly http://www.no4denmark.com note in their guestbook to inform them about their mistake. Just be friendly and don't talk about God or Mohammed.

The word 'bye' is eeeviil

It apparently says: "The word 'bye' has become something official for ending any call or meeting, but do we know it's meaning??!! It means... "May God protect the Holy Pope" "In The Protection of the Holy Pope", ex. we will be submitting our fate to one other than God! We have to be careful, this issue treads on our convictions."

This is almost painful!

via: And Far Away

Just one of those ordinary hot days in the Dubai Police General Headquarters

Have a look at the bombastic language used on the Dubai Police General Headquarters website.

They start out with "It was one of those ordinary hot days in July" and watch out for gems like "No stone was left unturned to hunt down the gang" or "When confronting the accused with the new evidences , they broke down and admitted the crime".

Whoa!.. Sounds like pulp fiction to me. Don't mess with those dudes - they will hunt you down like a dog.

Also don't miss out on the mysterious case of The strange button.

If you have masochistic tendencies, you should dig through the case archive or perhaps look into the case of the month.

Dubai Police also reports the following indecent incidents:

- A 23-year-old Filipina was jailed for wearing a revealing dress in public.
- A worker who saw a group of men swimming together was jailed for committing a lewd act in public.

(.. and what was that all about??!)

- A drunk was fined Dh1,500 for committing an indecent act at Jumeirah Beach Park claiming he was "seduced by the devil".

(.. happens to even the best of us!)

- A Saudi who was jailed for unruly behaviour and being drunk protested by stripping off at the police station.
- Two Australians and a UAE national were jailed for indecent behaviour on a public beach.

via: Secret Dubai Diary

Perils Before Swine

An old story from october 2005: Muslims win toy pigs ban.
Cox & Forkum: Perils Before Swine

Chief editor of french paper France Soir fired

Apperently the owner of the paper France Soir has fired the chief editor Jacques Lefranc.

It was the direct result of the Mohammed cartoons being reprinted, the owner Raymond Lakah proclaimed in his press release.

The arab world will probably be delighted by the fast reaction of the egyptian owner. Now, thats what I call crisis-management!

Will France Soir publish an unconditional apology or just apologize for offencing people? That should be interesting to watch..

Hizbullah: Do the oil thing again! Do the oil thing!

Hizbullah's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Europe and the world late Wednesday millions of Muslims would "escalate the situation if the humiliation of Prophet Mohammad was not dealt with decisively and strictly" by the appropriate countries.

"Who tells them that this freedom is absolute? OK, if someone decided to blow himself up himself somewhere in Norway or Denmark, then he is also free to do so."

Nasrallah also spoke of boycotting products as one of the steps to be taken. He added that despite the fact that there are over 50 Islamic countries in the world, "the level of dealing with the matter remains below what it should be," indirectly calling for the Islamic states that "possess the first three highest oil reserves"

From: Daily Star Lebanon

I received the "U R TOP CRIMINAL" email

U R TOP CRIMINAL

U R IGNORANT WHO IS MOHAMMED PEACE ON HIM

U  R THE BGGEST LOSSER

U LAUGH LITTLE  BUT WE WILL LAUGH ON U TOO MUCH

AT THE END I SWEAR WE WIN.

I wonder how Mr. T would have responded to an email like that?

Memo from Saudi Royal Press Secretary to His Majesty regarding cartoons

"As Your Majesty requested recently, in order to divert public attention from the regrettable demise of a small number of pilgrims in Makkah during the last Hajj, Saudi newspapers were instructed to revive the four-month-old story of cartoons about the Prophet (PBUH) in a Danish newspaper, and turn it into an attack on Denmark, together with a "spontaneous demand by the people" for a boycott of Danish goods."

Religious Policeman has the details.. Funny stuff..

Ritzaus and Jyllands Posten receives yet another bomb threat

A peaceloving and forgiving friend of the Danes thought it was time for the good people at Jyllands Posten and Ritzaus to go take a break and smoke a cigarette or two out on the street, so he or she called in yet another bomb threat.

German paper: We are sorry!

And in other news (almost) totally unrelated to the outrageous Danish cartoons:

Unintentionally the German paper 'Landeszeitung Lüneburg' ran a commercial for the large German gas company E.ON on the same page as an article describing the annihilation of Gypsies during WW II in the KZ-camp Auschwitz. One would think that this is offensive enough, but the tagline, which in large letters said "E.ON takes care of tommorows gas today", made it even worse.

The paper has apologized and everybody has agreed it would probably be better to just let this matter rest and move on.

Screenshot here.

Kurdish blogger supports Denmarks standpoint on democracy and free speech

Denmark needs all the support it can get and Rastî has the following to say:

"Kurdistan must stand with Denmark. Kurdistan must do this because Denmark has stood with Kurdistan over the attempts by Turkey to silence Roj TV. Kurdistan must also do this because, for far too long, Kurdistan has been the victim of censorship and every Kurd knows this. Finally, Kurdistan must stand with Denmark because one day, Kurdistan hopes to become a democracy."

Propaganda in the middle east

False: 50% of Denmarks produce is exported to Saudi Arabia. I.e. we are the new muslim overlords of the Danish people and we can do whatever we please to them.
True: Under 3% is exported to Saudi Arabia, so I guess you will have to find another small country to pick on.

---

False: 30.000 Danish jobs will be affected immediately by a boycot.
True: In fact most products are produced on site and we all know what that means, don't we. The worst case scenario is loss of 11000 (in Denmark) jobs, which would then include spillover effect into other industries and years of boycotting.

---

False: A boycott would work because Denmarks economy relies mainly on agricultural and livestock production.
True: Well, we do actually produce a lot of pork, but I suppose you already boycotted that 1400 years ago.

---

False: Apology was coerced after internal pressure because the European Union felt the boycott.
True: *Sigh* .. Pressure for sure, but it wasn't internal. Jyllands-Posten felt a pressure because Danish citizen were threatened on their life and they didn't want to be responsible for any deaths due to a cartoon in a news paper.

---

Hello Feldman..

Clinton outraged over Danish anti-semitism

When he visited Denmark back in 1997, he should have said something. We can change too, you know!

Just a sarcastic remark and a *wink*, *wink* would have been enough and we would have done something about it, but instead he has been carrying it around with him all this time.

Clinton speech transcript

Clinton has also been awarded the prestigious assclown award due to this issue.

Jesus and Mo

Funny stuff

Where did all those cartoons suddenly come from. They are popping up everywhere! ..

PR research: Islamism

It is about time that certain people would grow up and accept that they are living in the 21st century. Europe already had an inquisition and obviously it didn't work out.

Don't boycott and burn flags - talk to us!

I am proud to be European

All of Europe (or at least papers in many countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Spain and Iceland) showed courage today and printed the Mohammed cartoons.

Mohammed was a wise guy (no phun intended - sorry in advance)..

.. He understood the power of subtile critisism through art ..

Danish imam, who is responsible for cartoon crisis delivers different message to Danish people and Al-Jazeera

To the Danish news television TV2, "Danish" imam Abu Laban (I would like to note that in Danish "Laban" is something you would call a little child when he/she has been naughty. i.e. "You little laban", which would translate to something like "You little rascal".) says that he would try make the arabic world stop the boycott.

To Al Jazeera, the message was that he was proud of every muslim who decided to protect their prophet by boycotting Danish products and that it was their duty to do so.

Talk about having two tongues..

Danish breweries face "mysterious" problem in cartoon boycott

It seems that at least the Danish brewery Faxe is not affected at all by the boycott and nobody really knows why. Did someone forget to put them on the official people-we-dont-like-list?

Their sales are apparently the same as before the crisis began. Makes one wonder if the Saudi royal family has somehow developed a taste for Danish beer and perhaps prefer New Zealand butter over Danish main stream Lurpak butter.

Status of other Danish breweries is unknown.

Butter crisis in Saudi Arabia

The boycott of Danish Arla, means that Saudi Arabia will be faced by shortage of butter within a week. Butter is used as an everyday household item in Saudi Arabia.

Arla has (or had) 65% of the market.

Now would be a good time to start a diet if you are from Saudi Arabia, I guess.

Hush hush! Danish goverment tells press to shut up!

Circulating SMS says:

خبر عاجل: الله أكبر! الله أكبر, هذا الصباح وجدت جثة الرسام الذي إستهزأ برسولنا الكريم محروقة قرب مبنى الصحيفة و الحكومة الدينماركية تتكتم على الخبر, إنشر

" Breaking news: God is great, God is great, this morning the cartoonist's body was found burned near the daily's headquarters. The government of Denmark is remaining hush hush about the news, please forward."

Well.. If you are an open minded person (religious or not) you will probably immediately bang your forehead into your keyboard and wonder what sick mind could come up with an SMS like that. There are 2 obvious errors in the text and some people may even find 4-5 errors. And there is no right answer, by the way..

Cartoon crisis alliance now also includes "Die Welt" in Germany

The German paper "Die Welt" has now also printed 5 of the famous Mohammed cartoons.

Danke Deutschland!

"France Soir" has also printed them today.

Merci France!

I have been living in both countries for several years and I love the people of both countries equally much. Go Toulouse FC and go MSV Duisburg.

PBUH?

While reading a couple of articles in arabic news media, I was wondering about this "PBUH" thing, which always follows, when writing "Mohammed".

I didn't try out any arabic version of Word, but does it automatically insert PBUH, when one writes "Prophet Mohammed" or "Mohammed"? Given the latest insight into the methods of arabic regimes that I have gained during the last couple of days, I believe Microsoft must have been pressured into creating such a feature.

If there is in fact no such feature, they should create one. I kind of feel sorry for those journalists, who has to type those extra 6 characters (with paranthesis), which also leaves me wondering what the punishment for forgetting PBUH could be?

Buy Danish

buy danish

Buy Danish

buy danish

Preemptive anti-boycott

French paper "France Soir" publishes Mohammed cartoons.

buy french

French newspaper reprints Mohammed cartoons

The French newspaper 'France Soir' has reprinted the Mohammed cartoons.

Will we see a boycott of French riviera casinos by the Saudi royal family?

Way to go, France!!

Hamas victory stirs Palestinian humour

A couple of jokes circulating via SMS around Palestinians in the West Bank.

"Hamas stopped all suicide bomber operations ahead of the election, because they needed every vote they could get,"

"Get your Hamas headscarf now at a discount, because you will have to get it sooner or later."

via: Yahoo

I pity the fool, who don't buy Danish!

buy danish

String 'em up

Sura 2:193 says: "And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers."


Our "friends" in the middle east has put together this excellent anti-Danish list. Use it to buy Danish - of course some of the products being boycotted are not Danish, so if someone could please enlighten them to make sure that the fight is fair and square without any innocent bystanders being hurt.

buy danish

Denmark beats iPod on Technorati

Top Searches This Hour
.
.
6. Denmark
7. Ipod

buy danish

Imams living in Denmark deliberately feeding lies to Arabic news media

Today on an Arabic news channel, the imam Raed Hlayhel could be heard saying, that every day pictures and articles are printed, which are much much worse than the ones printed in september.

Furtermore he said, that the Editor in Chief on Jyllands Posten had told him personally that the cartoons were an attempt to provoke.

This is simply a lie. There is nothing more to be said about that! ...

There is clearly a group of people (of which 95% doesn't speak any Danish) within the Danish society, who has been using the cartoon crisis to pursue a hidden agenda and promote themselves and possibly build a religious stronghold of some sort to be able to affect the political process in the Danish society. While doing so they are causing great harm to the Danish people and the companies, who fought hard in the middle east to establish themselves.

I am pretty sure, they are actually amazed themselves how big this has grown. A nobody imam with no friends coming to little Denmark suddenly succeeds in getting the entire muslim world population in uproar. What a victory it must have been.

Not even spit is worth wasting on these people.

buy danish

Piglet banned in UK stores?

October 2005

Novelty pig calendars and toys have been banned by bosses at Dudley Council in case Muslim staff are offended.

Muslims are forbidden from eating pork in the Koran and staff were asked to remove the items.

More

buy danish

Right vs. left cartoon crisis observations

The right and the left wing are of course exploiting the current cartoon crisis (found right next to the "Cuba crisis" in the great encyklopedia of the future).

What I observe so far, when reading news papers, is, that the left wing (i.e. The "let's talk about it and not kill each other"-people) seem to find sympathy for the muslim right wing (i.e. Hamas, human bombers etc.) and the right wing (i.e. the "let's drop a nuclear bomb"-people) seems to find sympathy for the muslim left wing (i.e. The "we are all children of the same God"-people).

Very strange indeed. Could this end up neutralizing the bizarro world effect we have seen so far?

I am really confused now..

Heard on the street in Saudi Arabia: "In (the West) it is considered freedom of speech if they insult Islam and Muslims,"

.. And Mohammed al-Shaibani, a columnist, wrote in Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily Monday. "But such freedom becomes racism and a breach of human rights and anti-Semitism if Arabs and Muslims criticize their religion and religious laws."

Where do they get this from? And which religious law does he want to bash? "Thou shalt not kill"? Well, go ahead..

All the time there are outcries to kill all sorts of people by muslims and now they freak out and go retarded just because of a cartoon row. Hell, they can create all the cartoons they want depicturing Jesus, Buddha or whatever they think would be insulting to a westerner. I somehow doubt that the people of Norway will rally in the streets and shout "Death to Saudi Arabia, may their heads explode".

This is truely strange.

Not so long ago..

... protests against the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ" from the religious community began before the film had even finished production. The studio was expecting a backlash due to the controversies revolving around any media treatment of Christ (see dramatic portrayals of Jesus Christ), but the protests accompanying Last Temptation were unprecedented. Major religious leaders in the United States blasted the film in fiery sermons, and condemned its subject matter as pornographic.

On 1988, October 22, a French catholic fundamentalist group launched molotov cocktails inside the Parisian saint Michel movie theater to protest against the film projection. This terrorist attack injured thirteen people, four of them where severely burned.

Source: Wikipedia

Denmark had no involment in the matter.

Danish people received gift from God

The Danish flag a gift from their God to the Danish armies fighting in Estonia in the 11th Century.

How nice of him. I would probably have asked for a really cool crest or something, but discussions over the design were probably out of the question.

Tuborg and Carlsberg beer is produced in Denmark, by the way, so the next time you need a beer have that in mind.

Almost every single newspaper down in Denmark

Probably due to recent popularity of the Danish people, everybody in the world wants to learn more about their wonderful little country. This has lead to servers being unavailable on most major Danish news paper websites.

Of course the Danish people don't really care, since they are having a blast discussing their new found friends on the multitude of right wing blogs appearing everywhere in the country.

Way to go, everyone..

Palestinians burn big banner of Danish prime minister

I try to imagine how this came to be.. A random day hanging around on the west bank. Israeli soldiers are patrolling the streets, the birds are singing and the sun has just come out from under a cloud. By the fountain on the town square, two young palestinians..

Hamzi: Hey, lets burn a picture of their queen.
Jalla: Yes, good idea. I happen to have a A2 color laser printer and extra shiny paper in my toolshed. We can use that to print the banner of their king.
Hamzi: I thought they had a queen and not a king.
Jalla: Who cares! They are all transexuals in Scandinavia.
Hamzi: Oh yeeah! Like that movie we saw at your bachel..
Jalla: Shut up!

What now?

Today my kid comes home from school and hands me a drawing. An occurence that happens a couple of times every week, so that's nothing special. This drawing however must have been inspired by recent events, he must have seen on television. The picture was of some guy with a Danish flag in his hand. "Who is that?", I ask him.. "Thats Mohammed", he says..

I'm glad he can't write yet or else he would have probably be lynched by his fellow kindergarden colleagues. So it goes...

I am outraged and I demand and apology from you, Saudi Arabia!!!

How can it be, that a regime, which is so obsessed with comdemning affairs occuring in foreign states news media, can't even seem to protect the interests of its own minorities? I am outraged! Outraged, I tell you.. I will from now on, boycott all Saudi products such as.. Errhhmm.. Well, such as.. Oh, well.. In any case, note the quote below from prince Fullofa'ir.

Saudi Arabia forbids missionary work by any religion other than Islam. Officially all religions other than Islam are banned and churches are not allowed. Unofficially the government acknowledges that many of the foreign workers are Christian and on Aramco civilian compounds, foreign Christians are generally allowed to worship in private homes or even hold services at local schools provided that it is not spoken of in public. This is a degree of unofficial tolerance that is not given to Judaism, or Atheism.

In theory, the government can search the home of anyone and arrest or deport foreign workers for owning religious icons and symbols, i.e. a Bible, or rosary. Yet, this generally does not occur on the Aramco compounds and the most common policy for foreign Christians is similar to the United States Armed Forces policy for homosexuals (Don't Ask, Don't Tell). The government tolerates the presence of Christian workers as long as they remain discreet and in the closet. Christian religious services are generally permitted to occur on Aramco compounds, but public displays of non-Islamic religions symbols, even Christmas decorations, can get foreign workers into trouble.

"Freedom of religion does not exist," the U.S. State Department's 1997 Human Rights Report on Saudi Arabia states. "Islam is the official religion, and all citizens must be Muslims. The government prohibits the public practice of other religions." "It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles," Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz declared at the U.N. Third Millennium summit in New York City, New York on 6 September.

Foreigners must conform to local practices in public. Conservative dress is expected, especially for women who travel to rural areas. Shops and restaurants close five times a day for prayer, and public displays of foreign religious or political symbols are not tolerated. During Ramadan eating, drinking, or smoking in public during daylight hours is prohibited. [4] Foreign schools are often required to teach a yearly introductory segment on Islam.

Source: Wikipedia

Damn null pointers

The last days current affairs has left me wondering whether someone by accident opened the bizarro world portals once again. Perhaps it was that null-pointer check I left out way back in 1999 - I knew it would come back to haunt me some day. Let that be a lesson to you.

In Jordan, the parliament supposedly feels that the 12 evil cartoon artists should be punished for their drawings. Let me see.. Hmm..

Is it too late?

if (pBlackHole != null)
{
return;
}

The backed up world has been restored to the state it was in on friday. Let's see if the bugfix works.

Mohammed cartoons now also in a publication near you

Checz Republic:

http://ihned.cz/1-10070880-17722960-003000_d-50

http://aktualne.centrum.cz/zahranici/evropa/clanek.phtml?id=62779

Let us hope that some of the eastern European contries, who may still have vivid memories of their former oppresive overlords, can muster the guts publish the cartoons.

Bahrain: Queen should apologize

Goodbye Feldman..

Apparently they have a parlament of some sort in the state of Bahrain. They want the queen of Denmark and the government of Denmark to apologize - the paper being sorry is simply not enough.

Is it this just me or did I suddenly step into the alternate dimension known as bizarro world. I think I must have! Damn, I hate when that happens. Oh, well..

Hello Feldman..

Talk about cultural differences

Our Lady of Cultural Differences

And..

Today Palestinians took to the streets and poetically shouted things like "let the Danish monsters die" and "let their heads explode". While I do not actually condemn crazy talk like that, since there are actually a considerable amount of stupid Danish people (including myself), who should probably have their head exploded, I think it must actually be due to some kind of distorted reality caused by the bizarro world portals, which seem to be opening once again.

If I am right, the next scene should be something like Danish people "spontaneously" gathering in the streets, firing into the air with AK47's (or the Danish equivalent M75), while shouting death to Palestinians, Jews or all infidel atheist. Being a logical and peace loving people (to a certain degree), the Danes would probably only torture the agnostics until they were converted to the only true faith.

Someone close those portals, I am starting to feel the bizarro draft here. Will it get any worse?

Human nature

The problem with people in general is that they are imprinted religious or political beliefs (by parents, governments etc.) to make them controllable. The mob will always rule the world and the people with the right tools will always be the ones in power. Even seemingly intelligent people can get sucked into this maze of socalled values, that are worth protecting. It has nothing to do with intelligence - it is simple human nature - an anthropological tool designed by human evolution to make people organizable into groups and fight for a common cause. Thats the way it works and there is nothing we can do about it.

On a microscopic level, people are told, that those living across the railway tracks are animals, that will shoot you at any given time, and on a macroscopic level the muslims are bad people, who raise their children to become human bombs. Bush is bad, Gandhi is bad, the right-wing sucks, the left-wing should die and everybody pursues their own values, which will of course make the world a better place.

What the world is waiting for now is someone to come along with his toolbox. It has happened many times in the past and it probably will happen again. Maybe he is in your midst right now and he may not even know that he is the chosen one, but given the right moment and place he will probably blossom and be able to throw millions of people into their deaths by simply opening his mouth. Perhaps he is a disillusioned Afghan muslim freedom fighter, maybe European or perhaps even hindu.

Save yourself - go with the flow. They are the ones who get to rewrite history, participate in orgies and all kinds of funny stuff, so just save yourself. I know I will.

Art of cultural terrorism?

People in the middle east seem to have a thing about blowing things up.

Of course the now famous Mohammed drawings are peanuts compared to that. The western world seems to have lost its edge on the art cultural terrorism and it is getting hopelessly behind.

In fact most westerners didn't even know that cultural terrorism is an art. Once again the people, who brought algebra to Spain in the 9th century, are way ahead of them.

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Mohammed on Wikipedia

The dude to the left of Jesus in the background is Mohammed

From the South Park episode Super Best Friends.

Where was Clinton? Apparently he thinks he is too good to watch South Park, while reading an obscure Danish newspaper with 100.000 readers is of course perfectly natural. Oh, well..

And in other news:
Western media consult muslim world in dispute over which colors can be used in newspaper illustrations. According to the quaran, illustrations may only be black and white. It is expected that most western media will cave in and show no pictures or cartoons at all in fear of reprisals.

Ayatollah Khomeini proclaims

“…There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam.”

And in other news:
Hamas prepares to bomb Adobe headquarters.

Egypt: OIC, Arab League Want anti-Cartoon UN Resolution

Expert observers from major European and American newspapers expect that anti-nudity claims will be put forward. Wellknown cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, who both refuse to put on a proper piece of clothing to cover their legs and private parts, will be banned worldwide.

Most western countries (except Denmark, who is self sufficient with oil) are expected to cave in and 'aye' the sanctions.

Saudi Religious Police now also in a country near you

I, for one, welcome our new muslim overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

MCB

Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue

In 2002 Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

Whoa.. Talk about strict dresscode! As a minor footnote, it should probably be mentioned, that 15 schoolgirls died in the blaze.

BBC

Crown Prince bla bla speaks wise words at UN summit

"It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles," Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz declared at the U.N. Third Millennium summit in New York City, New York on 6 September.

Now, thinking about a set of specific cartoons, which were recently published, that doesn't really make any sense, does it?

More ...

Anti-Saudi protests flare in the western world over insulting cartoons

From the burning of its flag to a boycott of its oil, Saudi Arabia is feeling Christian outrage over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Jesus. Angered by the drawings, masked Danish gunmen briefly took over the Saudi Embassy office in Copenhagen on Monday.

Activists in Norway urged street demonstrations, while Sweden called for the offenders to be punished. A Danish company paid thousands of dollars for an ad thanking a business that snubbed Saudi products.

Heey.. Waaiit a second! Where did that story come from?