Slashdot Mirror
Where To Find Opus On Sunday
Berkeley Breathed has a note up on his site: "Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.."
Is this Bizarro Slashdot? I don't know what this story is about. I'm guessing it's about a comic strip of which I've never heard?
(Searching...)
I've hit Wikipedia to learn that it's a comic strip about a penguin. Is this strip popular amongst nerds? Is the penguin related to Tux?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Oh my. Well, I guess I can see why the newspapers are nervous after the Danish cartoon thing with Muhammad a while back. Still, the Danes seem to have more backbone than the American newspapers, especially since Muhammad isn't depicted or even mentioned in the strip.
Holland?
You can't take the sky from me.
from Berkeley or the papers, what is there to discuss except conspiracy theories and baseless accusations.
I guess it's still news... even if it's a little under cooked.
Anyone have any facts. Not Fox news or Bill O'Riley brand facts but real information?
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
OH Nooooooooooooooo.... oh wait a minute, what the hell are Opus strips?!
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I assume you don't read newspapers much (niether do I), but it's one of the few national newspaper comic strips (and, according to Wikipedia, made by a pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist). It looks like the most recent strip has been censored for political reasons (which should be obvious from it's content).
The terrorists have won. I guess I'd better start praising Allah and learning how to beat my wife.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Or Mary-Kay Commandos and their pink uzis.
Geeks should spend more time reading the funny papers. But then, I did say paper didn't I...
Opus is an orphaned penguin who ends up living in a house with a lot of other misfits and weird people. He was one of the stars of "Bloom County", Berkeley Breathed's amazing cartoon strip which ran from 1980 to 1989.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Salon's sight doesn't work without allowing cookies to be set. Sorry I won't be coming back.
-anon
http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2007/08/26/opus/i ndex.html
The second "censored" strip is dated next Sunday, so I guess it isn't available yet.
The shareholder is always right.
I, for one, don't welcome our Islamic overlords.
Please mod parent "over-rated" to hide it and mod this correct version up, if you wish.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
should this news article be moderated as troll bait?
Are the operators of Salon still living in the -ing 90's when that kind of crap was still okay?
I don't know, I can understand the reason, and I can summarize it like this: Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
How is this news? If anything, it's the sumbitter trying to make a big deal over a newspaper declining to run a tasteless comic.
If the same newspapers refused to run a comic strip that made fun of Jews, would slashdot also post the mirror on the front page? Is there some sort of implcit or subconscious bigotry at work?
So after screwing around at Salon.com:
Today's strip is here. And all strips here.
He's the beloved author of "Programming with Ack!" and "Configuring and using thpbbt on Unix systems". Learn your roots man.
...than praising God and molesting your children?
What the hell is that going to do for my Sunday hangover? I think I'll stick with aspirin, but thanks for thinking of me.
What?
Are you sure about that? I don't think I'd trust some of the more fundamental Christians not to do it.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Yeah yeah, commercial sitcom, we are above that. Sure but in that show plenty of jokes are made about jews. No problem. Other entertainment makes fun of religion as well, and apart from a few protests and boycots it just goes by. Life of Brain made fun of jesus, how many people were killed in the following riots?
In "the west" in modern times we have more or less come to an understanding that it is NOT okay to inflict your believes upon everyone else. It is also acceptable to be made fun off, even if you do not like it because freedom of speech is more important then your hurt feelings. Because sooner or later everything is going to hurt someone.
And suddenly the west finds itself with a group that seeks to go back to the dark ages. I am NOT talking about islam here, I am talking about religous fundementalists who once again seek to enforce their worldview upon everyone else, through force if need be. These fundies exist among ALL religions right now, jews in Israel voicing opions that would make hitler blush, christian fundies seeking to censor all media, india got its share of religious extremist and offcourse there is a sub-group of muslims seeking to make sharia the law worldwide.
Yet something really dangerous is occuring. The jews are far too small a group to be noticed, the christians are too corrupt, the hindoes barely matter in the western world but the muslims, now they seem to have gained a lot of control.
For instance, holland does not like the pope (catholic), not even the dutch catholic do. Any attempt by the pope to say that holland should do this or that is just laughed off. Yet if muslims speak, well, then the dutch quake in their boots. How come the catholic religous leader is safe to ignore but muslim religous leaders are not?
Offcourse there are differences, the pope doesn't even control his own country Italy much (see gay marriage and abortion laws), while entire countries are controlled by Islam. It is safe to make fun of a old guy in a silly dress, not so safe of the leaders who control your oil supply.
Your question is wether it would have been the same if this comic made fun of jews (why this religion and not say christianity, the majority religon in the US), then tell me this. When was the last time such a comic was banned? A movie? A play? A book? A song?
Judge the banned material on its own merits, then ask yourselve if the same reaction would have occured has another religion een involved.
You can either have freedom of speech or you can try to appease one group with long toes. But be aware, the first time you do that, another group will take notice, and will want to be protected as well. If you had your way, pretty soon you would no longer be able to publish anything anyone disapproved off.
That might suit you, afterall you call Opus, about as harmless a comic as you can get, tasteless. What next, censor garfield for walking around without pants?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Indeed. We Christians and Jews have blown up how many Muslims to date? A million just in Iraq, right? Just in these past few years?
Muslims have blown up what? Maybe a thousand?
Seriously.... Opus / Outland is one of THE classics of American comics over the last 25 years, with some of the most biting satire (political and other) you'll find. Personally I'd rate is as the best US comic ever. But then I'm from a country where most people actually read comics (Norway - with 4.5 million people, our comic magazines regularly have larger circulations than most US ones could ever hope for, and even some newspaper strips like Ernie have their own monthly magazines)
Someone pleeeaasssseeee mod this up.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
The comic is never funny or interesting, and takes up a whole third of a page. The art isn't even any good.
"Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic."
Does the phrase "Lord's Resistance Army" not ring a bell?
Western publishers are self-censoring anything remotely offensive to Muslims. This is just evidence that threats, intimidation and terrorism work. Americans will go to any lengths to "fight terrorism" by invading countries basically uninvolved in terror, but given the chance to simply stand up and say: "we won't be intimidated by threats" the press folds like a three legged card table. Grow a pair!
It's a great way to dehumanise your opponents.
They're not like us, not human, they're infidels. They're not human, they're Jews. They're not human they're muslims/heretics/atheists. It makes mass murder much easier if you don't have to think of the people you're butchering as ordinary people, you can think of them as sub-human, animals to be slaughtered.
It's a pretty standard propaganda technique. It's been used for thousands of years. What saddens me is that it's still successful.
Deleted
Well, yes.
Well, there's this direct precedent of people being murdered over a barely offensive cartoon to Muslims. As far as I know, that's never happened with the loony fundamentalist Christians (who sort of seem to seek getting made fun of, let's them fit themselves into this "victim" frame).
Direct link to the cartoon.
A cartoon that criticizes women's attempts to act superior and also discusses Islamic religious practices is too complicated for most newspapers.
Of course, banning it gives it publicity, too.
Anyone who thinks that the U.S. media back down from anything offensive to Moslems has clearly never listened to talk radio or read conservative political commentators. These folks would have a great deal of dead air and missing prose if they couldn't offend Moslems in ever more creative ways (suggesting nuking Mecca is a popular one, for example...)
But meanwhile, I completely agree with much of the previous commentary: this strip is making fun on two individuals, and is not remotely comparable to the Danish cartoons. Most Moslems would find it funny and the rest, well, some people don't find anything funny. And the stereotyping is mild compared to what the strip has done, for example, with New Age hippies, Leisure Suit Larry lounge lizards, penguins, and so forth.
[Usually not relevant but despite the Slashdot moniker, I'm neither Arab nor Moslem, though I've lived for a while in the Middle East. I just happen to like the theories of the dude I've stolen the name from and he's like, sort of dead...]
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
The *only* reason that sort of thing doesn't happen (anymore) in Christian countries is that religion has been marginalized as a force in people's lives and most western governments are secular. Right now the Islamic world is about where the Christian world was in the 14th century on a social maturity level, there isn't any cure for that but time.
'nuff said.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
> Just because you have the freedom to offend, does not obligate
> you to exercise that freedom frivolously.
I find headscarves offensive; just because Muslims are free to wear the hijab does not obligate them to exercise that freedom. Right?
Anyone remember the South Park episode "Cartoon Wars", where the show was making fun of the western reaction, and itself was censored? The irony for me was that they had an episode maybe a year or two before that where Mohammed was clearly shown as one of the super heroes in the "Super Best Friends" episode. There hadn't been a blip back then. What's even funnier is that if you watch South Park reruns, the "Cartoon Wars" episode still has the controversial scene censored, but the "Super Best Friends" has been shown since with no alterations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park
The Cartoon Wars episode was played uncensored in the UK, and the world failed to end - go figure.
The Digital Sorceress
You will not be able to see salon's site unless you agree to accept cookies. There may be other hazards to seeing that site that you are not told about and will not be told about. The site tersely demands utter and complete unlimited access to your computer. This was not given, so the site is off limits. We have accordingly set our firewalls to exclude all access to not only this site but also its tenants that hitched a ride on its page. Also one has to watch for hostile javascripts on this page that may on the 'authorized' page invade your privacy and/or security. Another thing to watch out for is hostile 'flash' applications that may download with the page and install spyware/malware on your machine and/or others on your network. Not known is the potential viral payload(s) on this site or its tenant/client frame sites. This is a sorry end to what was once a nice if a little offbeat site that was willing to report 'non-preferred' news.
Here ya go. It looks like, depending on your neck of the woods, editors won't run it because it either has a tasteless sex joke, or because it might offend Muslims.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
The Danish cartoons was deliberate trolling based on the religious taboo of depicting Mohammad. It succeeded beyond expectation.
This strip is not really about Islam, but about two individuals one of whom is "religion shopping". The description of Islam in the cartoon is vague enough not to offend any Muslims.
Brought to you by Sharia Law. Let us bow our heads now...
damaged by dogma
Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic.
Muslims won't start murdering people because of a comic. They've been murdering people because a few muslims with a lot of money resent western influence in their business/political affairs, and a few Muslims with no money, jobs, hope, or anything else are willing to buy into their propaganda and blow themselves up.
paintball
I actually went back to Sunday to make sure it was the same one. Of course, we'll see about next week but you can't apply a blanket statement to all of them.
Course, I shouldn't be too surprised that Philly sez 'bring it'!
Because when you criticize the 'religion of peace' (TM), you risk getting blowed up by its followers.
More like the religion of violent hypocrites, if you ask me. Like those asshat Evangelicals.
And if the nut jobs get control of a country and start wars over crap like that, BOMB their asses into the 21st century.
What you are talking about is lowering the standards of civilization itself.
And that's worth fighting for.
Unless you think living under Taliban-like rule is acceptable. You know, things like blowing apart thousand-year-old shrines of other religions.
Because that's what you're apologizing for.
Because too damn many Muslims don't stop at taking offense to simple cartoons. They are the ones that stone gays by dumping entire dump truck loads of rocks on them. They are the ones that deprive women of the right to drive, to vote, or even have an education.
And even when they do take offense at cartoons, they do it by rioting, burning, and killing.
Why the flying fuck do you even begin to consider such behavior is anywhere in the same universe as acceptable, much less go as far as you do and actually ACCEPT that behavior?
If I hadn't already canceled by Washington Post subscription, I guaran-damn-tee you that this expression of dhimmitude would have been the last straw.
So you're saying that Muslims are a bunch of sensitive neurotic kids? Is that what you're saying!?
There is a striking difference between perceived Islam and perceived Christianity: With Christianity, they are perfectly willing to die for what they believe. With Islam, they are perfectly willing to kill for what they believe. Now, where the truths actually lie is somewhat irrelevant.
Newspapers deciding not to carry an article or comic is not censorship. Those are private businesses and they have the right to decide what does and what does not appear in their materials. Censorship would be if the government stepped in and said it couldn't be published. I know it's easy to want to use strong words to get your point across, but in this case, it is simply wrong.
Love sees no species.
There seems to be a view in America that something is only censorship if the government does it. This is nonsense. It's just that in America the constitution *prevents* the government from doing it. It's still censorship even if it's legal.
There are lots of different kinds of nut jobs, these are just some examples which will be familiar.
The punch line includes an element of irony. Steve's girlfriend will be submissive, and he likes that idea, until he realizes that he's also probably not going to get laid. It's a slapstick punch line to cap off what is really a more sophisticated sarcasm.
Of course, if you don't realize that this happens all the time, perhaps it's not so amusing. Stories of completely insipid "spiritual quests" like that of Lola Granola appear from time to time in the infotainment media. They always seem to be stories of weak minded people who must have a life philosophy handed to them on a platter, but somehow manage to reject one or two or three in a row before finding "the right one". The infotainment media inevitably dishes out these stories deadpan, like we're supposed to learn something from these people who clearly have demonstrated one overarching trait, which is a militant refusal to think critically.
Every time I see a story like this, I'm amazed that nobody ever points this out. Rational analysis, basic logic, and skepticism are not taught, and most people don't manage to acquire it on their own.
Here's the most recent example of a Lola Granola-style spiritual quest trumpeted as heroic in the media: Rejecting radical Islam -- one man's journey (Daveed Gartenstein-Ross ). Note the headline, then read the story. This dude didn't reject radical islam, he wandered aimlessly through major religions and dangerous philosophies, trying each on like a new shirt. Now he's apparently working for the FBI. I hope that this guy is closely and carefully supervised by somebody with stronger pro-democracy, free-thinking, free-living convictions. And for freedom's sake, don't give him a gun or access to any important secrets.
So, if you're aware that this stuff can happen in real life, the strip is really very amusing, subtle, and funny.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Wrong. Time in and of itself does *nothing*. There was no gradual erosion of religion from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, but rather a sudden interest in reason, humanism, and worldly living brought about by the rediscovery of classical philosophy (primarily Aristotle) through scholars like Aquinas. It's ideas that make the difference, not a matter of waiting out the clock. Sadly, in this day and age, I think that most of the Muslims with ideas capable of tempering ultra-orthodoxy are likely to find themselves in the West.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
This isn't about Islam, it's about the timidity of American newspapers. American newspapers exist mostly now to deliver advertisements to the people who still subscribe. And to provide a warm, old-fashioned 'newspaper reading experience' to their subscribers. They no longer are the primary news source or political support medium that they were 100-50 years ago. Most newspapers are owned by a handful of corporate chains who what the ad revenue flowing in from the local supermarkets and the columns filled with 'kittens stuck in trees' type of stories. The last thing that they want is biting social commentary in their comics sections.
... I don't understand this).
As you can imagine, newspaper readership is falling. Decades of boring trivia has decimated the numbers of intelligent readers. Plus the endlessly dumbed down writing style which makes every article read as if it were written for middle-school audiences (USA education level for 12-14 year olds). Bland, stupid, boring, and late with the breaking news, newspapers tend to focus on serving the needs of 'the upside of the bell curve' where few Slashdaughters are to be found.
It's interesting to see that the local heavy advertisers are also developing web sites to showcase their newspaper ads so people with broadband can simply bookmark and download whatever ads that they used to watch in the newspapers. Plus Craig's List and eBay are removing the need for classified ads (along with the tendency of newspapers to put these ads up on their own websites
So basically newspapers are becoming the prime information source for those people who can't handle going on-line. And those people are fewer every year.
Again, banning these comics has nothing to do with concern over offending Islam. It has everything to do with ensuring that the newspaper product will be as boring, sanitized, and removed from controversy as humanly possible.
Maybe time isn't the sole ingredient of social progress, but it is an essential one - it takes generations for those too brain damaged by their religion to think clearly to die out enough for reasonable people to take over.
Here in the middle of the outhern bible belt, the Atlanta Journal Constitution did run Opus today.
Of course, Atlanta is no longer like the Old South at all. But there is still an element of the American Taliban here; I'm sure by the end of the week the Journal will feel like it has fallen on a fire ant nest.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Interesting, that's a Malaysian newspaper and Christians are a minority there. Next door in the Philippines, I've seen cigarette ads with Jesus and they're 90% Catholic. I'll try to get a picture when I'm there next week.
Actually, the most offensive thing I ever saw there was a shop with side by side posters on the wall, one of the blonde-haired blue-eyed Catholic Jesus next to Brittney Spears.
Offense is absolutely in the eye of the beholder.
E.B. White
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
First you mention honor suicides, which are just plain old suicides, not bombings that kill innocent people. Second you mention kamakaze pilots, which are just soldiers following orders during a world war, attacking military targets. We're talking about suicide bombers here, and the grandparent is quite right to point out that only the religious would strap a bomb to themselves (or the vehicle they are in), walk into a place potentially or quite specifically crowded with civilians, and blow themselves up.
You need to be crazy enough to believe in a god to be crazy enough to blow yourself up around civilians. Period.
Often attributed to Voltaire is the notion, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Self-censoring Opus shows us exactly how seriously the MSM takes that notion.
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd.
Religion is clearly not the sole cause of humankind's problems, but it clearly is one of several significant causes, while at the same time having no demonstrable benefit to society.
It's as absurd as those who decry the "intolerance" of the religious while themselves being intolerant of the religious.
I tolerate religion to the point that I will defend your right to worship, in the same way that I will defend the right of people to kill themselves with drugs and alcohol, to cheat on their wives, or to commit suicide. It is not the purpose of government to keep people from believing in, or doing, stupid things; giving government or companies the right to discriminate based on religion is simply bad public policy.
But that's all that religious tolerance means: to tolerate religion and not interfere with its exercise. It does not mean that I have to accept, or stop criticizing, religion or religious behavior. I consider many religions immoral, some of them downright evil, and, of course, I need to speak out against that, just like followers of those religions speak out against what they consider immoral behavior in others.
I hope we can reduce the practice of religion, just like we can reduce alcohol, drug addiction, HIV, spousal abuse, and illegitimacy, and I hope that, at the same time, we can remain tolerant of the people suffering from those afflictions.
There were more "offensive" things about muslims (and rednecks) in the first couple of minutes of the first episode of "Little Mosque on the Prairie" that this particular cartoon.
One unintentially hilarious thing that happened after the airing were the people expressing outrage at how non-muslims were depicted as dumb rednecks. Good stuff.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Seeing your stance on this, did you also run the follow-up cartoons of Anne Franke in bed w/ Hitler? After all, if you truly believe in free speech...
Well... I just read the strip on gocomics (actually I read it in thunderbird with help from isnoop.net's comic strip snagger http://isnoop.net/comics/ but that's not so important). So I'd say I had to do the least job so far (not having to find it otherwhere and missing it.) =)
For those harping on free speech issues, I'm curious if you would object to publication of the Anne Frank/Hitler Cartoon? (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/155865.php) Would you put it up on your website? Funny how it went unpublished in the US.
If you can't actually defend your side with facts, it's not valid. Ad insultium attacks are not a real defense. The AC fails it.
can be convinced of the value of the sacrafice for the greater good-...
did no atheist EVER throw himself on a hand-grenade?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
While you were asleep w/ your head up your own... The citizens of the US gave up control of our country to the businesses... The US hasn't been Of the People, for the People and by the People in ages... It's now of the Corporations, for the Corporations and by the Corporations. Haliburton, Diebold, the entire Insurance industry currently rapeing US homeowners... (Their excuse to FL home owners is "You shouldn't live there then.." OK, I'll move to Minnesota... http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_231080417.h tml ... Opps...) I could go on... Business is the government and the government is business. Time to wake up and smell the napalm.
I thought Bill wrote those...
I don't know, I can understand the reason, and I can summarize it like this: Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic.
Do you really think Islamic extremists would stop killing people if no one published inflammatory cartoons?
Maybe the editors were concerned about offending nudists or the Amish?
I see all this angst about how the Post didn't publish the comic, but it's right here on their website (you might have to register with the Post to see this, which would probably involve cookies, in case you care).
You don't think they'd censor the same thing if it was about the Christian Right, or about Jews? Any way you slice this, it's a pretty direct attack on someone's culture. That, and it just wasn't funny. ::shrug::
If the newspapers don't publish it, then some people cry OMG CENSORSHIP. If they do publish it, then someone somewhere out there will be offended and cry OMG RACISM. It doesn't matter in the end though... since either way will draw more publicity and more people will probably read the comic than would have seen it in the first place anyways.
Do you really think that many people have read it?
I've only read Shame, but I'm pretty sure that I missed out on a very large quantity of cultural references and perhaps a large part of the satire. From what a friend told me, 'The Satanic Verses' is somewhat inaccessible if you don't have a familiarity with Islam and India/Pakistan. I'm not sure I'd understand any references to Khomeini, either.
No,he's the kind that turns out normal like the rest of us.
If he did turn out as you describe, most of us would be dead precisely because there are so many like him.
You can't stop picking on that kid, can you?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
If this bothers you, please write to "opinions@washingtonpost.com" and let them know.
All this time I thought everything past our borders was an artillery range.
"Christians aren't going to start murdering innocents if you make fun of them in a comic."
Hmmm... Granted, this wasn't about a comic strip, but John Lennon was killed for song lyrics that upset the radical christian community. His killer was a former student at a wealthy christian college in my area.
So, I call bullshit on that notion.
Berkeley Breathed sure has shown more courage than Wiley Miller. While Non Sequitur has ripped on the Christian religion often, he's never once touched the truly horrible aspects of Islam. Anyone that finds that more than a bit hypocritical is free to point this out to him at: wileyink@earthlink.net .
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
INSIGHT vs SELF DELUSION
A committed leftist recounts the shock and dismay he felt after 9/11, which eventually led him to question his world view. The piece is at The Guardian, and titled "The Day Reality Hit Home". Here is an excerpt:
A midlife crisis did indeed ensue after 9/11. In truth it had been brewing for some time. It wasn't my midlife crisis, however, but that of Western culture at large. No matter what other aims may have motivated this singular act of terrorism, it was beyond question that it was planned as a symbolic, as well as a lethal, attack on 'the West', whether the target was militarism (the Pentagon), capitalism (the WTC), or cosmopolitanism (the heterogeneity of the victims). The problem was many in the West were not sure that it was worthy of defence. For some time in the post-Soviet era, as America established its position as the sole superpower, a West-based movement had been growing that rejected the spread of free-market capitalism and the Western values that underpinned the global market. Known as anti-globalisation, it drew attention to the poverty and deprivation that was such a common feature of life in the Third World. But it also posed some stark existential questions about the Western way of life. 'What was the point?' the anti-globalisers seemed to be asking, all we do is buy stuff, turn everywhere into a market, and force McDonald's and Starbucks down other people's throats. Our culture is nothing but consumption. As the anti-globalist writer Naomi Klein argued a few weeks after 11 September: 'Part of the disorientation many Americans now face has to do with the inflated and oversimplified place consumerism plays in the American narrative. To buy is to be. To buy is to love. To buy is to vote.'
Drinking in the devastation, numbed and intoxicated by the scale of what had taken place, I struggled, like everyone else, to make sense of it all. And in my case, as with many people from the liberal-left side of the political spectrum, that job was made more difficult by the fact that the United States was the victim. From where I came from, the United States was always the culprit. There was Vietnam, Chile and the dreadful support for repressive and often debauched regimes right across Latin America, Africa and Asia. I was a veteran of CND anti-cruise missile marches in the 1980s. I had gone to Nicaragua to defend the Sandinista cause against American imperialism. America was the bad guy, right? America was always the bad guy.
Clearly some basic moral calculations needed to be performed. Which vision of the world represented more closely my own liberal outlook? The cosmopolitan city of New York, a multi-racial city of opportunity, a town where anyone on earth could arrive and thrive, exuberant, cultured, diverse, a place I had visited and loved for its liberty and energy and excitement? Or the people who attacked it, those arid minds who wanted to remove women from sight, kill homosexuals, banish music, destroy art, the demolishers of the Bamiyan Buddhas who aimed to terrorise everyone they could into submission to the will of their vengeful God? It was, as they say, a no-brainer, or should have been.
But was there not also an obligation to ask if this heinous crime was more complex than it first appeared? That was the progressive instinct: don't be fooled by the mass media, which we all knew was a propaganda industry, look behind the scenes, examine the bigger picture, think about the context, study history. And so if you wanted to consider yourself a member of the thinking classes, it was not enough to recoil in horror, you also had to take into account America's own score sheet in matters of cold blood. 'It's terrible,' was the often heard formulation, 'but....' Did I think there was a but? And if there was a but, could it be any kind of justification for what had taken place? And if it wasn't a justification, what was the point of the
Here's facts for you.
Bullshit. You have no facts. Produce a list of papers which have cut the strip and then you can begin to think around the word, "Fact". Produce non-isolated examples of the kind of liberal bias you are accusing of in those papers, and then you can begin to sell your point.
Since you can't do any of this, what we really have here is a typical example of Right Wing emotionalism. (The operative emotions being Fear and Hate, which the typical Right-Wing Bush supporter allows to direct his Judgment and Rationality.)
Newspapers are a collection of ideas folded together into a sheaf of reading material. The Typical Right-Wing brain is naturally going to sift out things to get angry about, regardless of how balanced the reporting might be, which in a typical newspaper today, is totally not balanced at all. I see propaganda wherever I look, and think that the so-called "Liberal Media" is an utter and complete sham designed to support the Military Industrial Complex. But I hail from the Left of Left. Can you tell?.
That's not a conscious choice on my part, by the way. It's a result.
It's the result of how I choose to live:
I choose to live with my emotions under control; to not let fear rule my thoughts and actions. --To seek rationality over knee-jerk emotionalism. --It's not that I have anything against emotions. I love emotions! They guide us and make us human. But there's two ways to be human. You can let emotions show you how to let compassion be your guide, or you can let emotions lead you through fear. Fear is easy. Fear is basic, reptillian brain stuff. It's the default setting. The one which evolution has been moving away from for a ba-zillion years.
If the media were truly 'Liberal', we would know a great deal more than we do through it. We wouldn't be at war, for starters. (Since the Bush admin keeps on repeating straight-faced, shameless lies in the psychopath's knowledge that doing so will make people believe them even with gobs of contrary evidence sitting right out in the open, one should also keep on repeating the Truth. . .
"There were no WMD's in Iraq. The Bush team LIED, saying that Saddam could launch an attack in 45 minutes. (Remember that?) They even delivered the age-old sales line, 'The Troops will be home in ten weeks.'" And people fell for it! They actually fell for it again! --And now hundreds of thousands of regular people are dead while a small group of people has made millions. You want to talk facts? THOSE are facts. You cannot dispute them unless you are insane. We do not have a Liberal media. Pulling Opus was either fear related, (editors believing their own lies and not wanting the frightful hand of Islam to blow up their offices. (Groan.) --Or it was a manipulation designed to spark outrage in people like you and play on everybody else's fears. But whatever the case, I can assure you that it had absolutely nothing to do with compassion.
As it is, we must spend enormous effort cross referencing stories and digging and back-checking just to scrape out truth from the mountain of misleading crud served up every day. I know several guys who work in journalism. Each one of them is a true liberal in the political sense, and they report (privately) the same thing. To quote one of them (as best I can from memory):
"If you speak out against the party line on anything, then you don't work. There is no truth in journalism. We're all whores or robots. This is a disgusting, juvenile, toxic industry where the only successful people in it are incredibly ignorant, back-stabbing and greedy, with no care whatsoever about truth."
-FL
It looks to me like he grew up in... didn't say any faith, except "liberal", which could count, I guess.
He then tried radical Islam, then Christianity.
So that's two, at most three. Hardly "wandering aimlessly... trying each on like a new shirt."
I'd actually have a bit more respect for him if he'd at least considered a few more -- then he'd be making an informed decision, at least as much as you can about religion. As it is, I'm betting he was raised Christian, tried Islam, then defaulted back to Christianity when Islam didn't work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It is important to notice that the sharp criticism of the way women act in the U.S. is probably a bigger reason that some newspapers banned the cartoon than concern about Islamic practices.
In the U.S., women spend most of the money, because they do the shopping.
Just trying to pull back from all the tangents that've been posed all around this. If the editor of a paper doesn't want to publish something - then so what, it's his paper.
If you don't like what's in the paper, then just don't buy it.
In the UK we have our famed tabloid The Sun (this would be the national paper with the highest circulation). The Sun features "Page 3" - basically you open any issue and on the third page there's a topless woman. That's it, no news content, no social critique - just a picture.
The fact that the Washington Post does not run a similar feature, is not because it's illegal (actually, it might be in the land of the free, but that's not the point I'm trying to make). My point is that within a nanosecond of the idea coming up at the editorial meeting, somebody might point out that it would not be conherent with the editoral policy of the paper - or would 'anger' more of their readers than they'd 'make happy' (which is pretty much the point of the editorial policy).
The cartoon is available, just somebody doesn't want to publish it in their paper.
Infidel!!!
Welcome to 21st Century Journalism in America, where integrity is found only on Comedy Central and in the funny papers.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I just read them in glorious Islamic Extremist girlfriend of Steve Dallas color at brunch.
Nice head coverings.
Want fascism? Move to America or Saudi Arabia - free of charge.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nobody is claiming that. Religion is one huge cause of problems. There will still be other causes but we would be better off with fewer problems, yes?
Logic. Check it out.
what we really have here is a typical example of Right Wing emotionalism. (The operative emotions being Fear and Hate, which the typical Right-Wing Bush supporter allows to direct his Judgment and Rationality.)
:-/
The Typical Right-Wing brain is naturally going to sift out things to get angry about, regardless of how balanced the reporting might be, which in a typical newspaper today, is totally not balanced at all. I see propaganda wherever I look, and think that the so-called "Liberal Media" is an utter and complete sham designed to support the Military Industrial Complex
Oh, as for this:
We do not have a Liberal media.
You're WRONG
Go back to where ye came from.
Yes, and mind that that place is little more than another mouthpiece for Malkin that attempts to be lighter than the "fanatics of Semitism" site (where you're likely to see them offended by Islam enough to wall themselves in).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
How dare you strip credit from William T. Cat - who personally spit up the hairballs those titles were first written on!!!
Perhaps for some reason I'm unique in being able to read it on the Washington Post?
p u/
http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/wpo
I will point out I first looked at it quite early Sunday morning, so it could be that my browser cached it and won't let it go. But it seems to be there to me.
I just checked with a different browser, and indeed it is there. Can someone who can't see it at the Washington Post tell me what shows up instead? I'm a little puzzled by why the finger is being pointed at them.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Can't believe it's currently only modded at "1"
Hyperic Community Manager
And those 8 words are: "Fuck you if you can't take a joke."
I'm not exactly sure why the Post Syndicate spiked this strip. If it was about Islam, it was very gentle stuff. The joke was more about the Lola Granola character's interpretation of a religion she just picked up the day before, than it was about the religion itself. And in the strip from last Sunday, Opus mocked Jerry Falwell. Did any of his followers threaten to murder Mr. Breathed?
No-one of any belief has the right not to be offended. I'm sorry if an opinion offends radical Islamists. Let them explain why it is offensive so that we can all learn something. Our society is strong enough to handle the likes of Piss Christ by Maplethorpe. If a segment of Islamic society is so fragile that we must spike a cartoon which gently mocks them (lest they get angry and commit acts of terror) then we are no longer living in a Western Society.
The Washington Post Syndicate ought to be ashamed of itself. This is Cowardice.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
StarTribune published it in Minneapolis, even put it on the front page of the comics below dilbert! woot!
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Islam is a religion followed by a billion or so people.
There's not just a "moderate crowd buried under all that hate", but it's by far the huge majority.
There are plenty of whacko Christian fundamentalists out there as well, and some of them are in office. Let's not lose perspective just because Fox News (and the rest) are propaganda organs which show us only that which makes a small group of white psychopaths very rich.
-FL
As much as us Irish-Americans would like to pretend that the IRA were a noble cause and always did the right thing, that is far from the truth. I'm sure american muslims feel the same way about the taliban im sure.
I agree with your comments. --Indeed, I don't give money to pan handlers for several of the reasons you outline, (except for those odd times when I break the rule based on my own assessment. No one rule can define every eventuality).
The point, as you say, is to use the thinking muscle to make choices. Emotions are a type of internal guide, and they are very important. But the rest of the brain should never be turned off. --And fear should always be questioned and analyzed as it usually results from some part of the self which needs work.
-FL
Here, let me highlight it for you, so you don't have to read the whole thing:
Cite me something out of the Qur'An that excuses any of what you just said. Or cite me something out of the Gospels that justifies the Crusades.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The hell I am. The very limited data you point to is interesting, but cannot be used at all to make such a point as you seem to be trying to make. There were some very big publishing companies not represented on that list, and I noticed that several of the ones which were listed were just name holders; mostly owned by larger conglomerates which went un-examined. And even then, 94% of the campaign contributions represented were given up by individuals working in those companies. Well, shucks! I thought I was pretty clear in my post that I knew several journalists, all liberal-minded, who attest to having almost zero control over the content they work to provide. The company owners are the ones who dictate direction, not the employees. And who owns publishing?
Well, I did a quick check and it seems, just as a general for-instance, that nearly all the books published in America come, when you climb the ownership chain high enough, from one Bertelsmann, a German company which survived WWII when other publishers foundered, and they did so by working arm in arm with the Nazi party, agreeing to publish only party-approved crud. Carrying this ethic in mind, Bertelsmann flourished and is today one of the most powerful publishing firms on the planet. They also happen to be a family business with no public shareholders, so they get to do exactly as they please. Indeed, (according Wikipedia) the Bertelsmann Foundation which directs the publishing empire, is a non-profit organization and political think tank set up by the founding families. Hmm. Non-proft. Think tank? Old money? Now when you put all of that together. . .
This isn't conspiracy fluff. It's how it really is. A conservative political think-tank is in control of the books in the bookstore. So don't give me, "Liberal Media".
Then take a look at who owns the rest of the media. --The other giants which control the TV you watch and the newspapers you read. It's almost entirely owned by old and very conservative money. So who gives a hoot how many shackled libby would-be journalists are making campaign contributions to a corrupt democratic party? It doesn't mean a thing when they have no say in how Israel is represented or how the press releases from the Pentagon are published word for word, etc. And don't forget the good ol' secret services. They openly admit to having had agents directing the media fifty years ago, and there is conjecture that they are doing it again today. Ooops. It's not conjecture. With AT&T's relationship with the government's clandestine organizations having been outed, we'd be insane not to suspect all the same activities with regard to above-the-law agencies sitting on the press. I think we'd be nuts not to think that the US spies never actually left after WWII. Heck, with the red menace and all. . .
And even if you discount all of this, a quick afternoon looking at what the U.S. media says and how when compare it to the reality of the situation, anybody who cares to can quickly see that we have anything but a "Liberal media".
-FL
The shareholder is always right.
http://movies.about.com/od/moviesinproduction/a/op us093004.htm
This was from 2004. Maybe this is the final media push before the movie announcement so that it goes the way of the Simpsons.
An animated comedy starring the popular Opus the Penguin from Berke Breathed's "Bloom County" comic strip.
Director: Berkeley Breathed
Writer(s): Berkeley Breathed
Cast: Not Available
Release Date: December 19, 2008
Official Site: Not Available
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Genre: Animation, Comedy
Rating: Not Available
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
A major Christian protest where someone is carrying a sign saying "Behead those who Insult Christianity" and maybe we've got something to start talking about.
Right now the public face of Islam is that of violent jihad. Until that is changed then we have things like a cartoon being refused because it happens to mention Islam and jihad. Have you read the strip in question?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294779,00.html
Hugs and kisses!!!!
Well. . .
Actually, the only way you could possibly think that is if you spend too much time absorbing the signal from those American news agencies, which as a hard rule offer only a small sliver of truth and plenty of falsehoods.
First of all, every muslim I know is very much opposed to violence. These are not mythical people. They are moms and dads and students and decent working people. I wanted to know what was really going on, and so I made an effort to find my own information. Go visit your local mosque and meet the people there and ask questions. You may be surprised to learn that they are people like any other with the same human drives and emotions, etc. The moderate Muslim is hardly mythical. I don't think their religion is any better than Christianity. It's just as limiting as any other, but as a group, the people who worship under Islam really aren't the depraved lunatics they are made out to be. Further, there is indeed outcry from many sectors of the Islamic religion which is opposed to violence. You just never hear them because it simply isn't reported by the American media. But it's certainly there if you go looking.
Secondly. . , there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many of the bombings attributed to Islamic fundamentalists are indeed orchestrated and funded and encouraged by the various secret services from opposing nations who have a lot to gain from seeding fear into the world. It's a fascinating, albeit sad subject, which again, I looked into because I wanted to know what was really going on. Whenever a big social change comes about and the government starts instructing people, I like to find out what their game is. There always seems to be a game. I don't like to be manipulated or to play the shmuck, so I need to collect my own data and do my own thinking. Thus, if you want to understand the world, it is imperative that one researches beyond the state propaganda organs. The London bombings are an excellent example; the official story is riddled with holes and corruption. The Israeli government also, (and in particular) has a large stake in maintaining a negative world view on Islam. --Land grabs and power and manifest destiny and all that. It's called a 'False Flag' maneuver when one country self inflicts damage to blame upon another so that the populace will agree to further military spending, reduced freedoms and all the various fascist systems which are so seductive to governments. (It's SO much easier to run a country and feather your nest when everybody is too frightened to argue with you.)
Often people, upon hearing this, will knee-jerk with the cry of, "Conspiracy!" and stop listening. That in itself is fascinating. I ask people why they have such a strong reaction to the word and ask them to look inside and ask where the original knee-jerk stems from. Nearly always, the initial replies will be will be surface, rationalist stuff, but with enough time and numerous examples, the flaws are exposed. (False knowledge always contains flaws, otherwise it wouldn't be false. It's easy enough to deconstruct falsehoods because they come with their own inbuilt self-destruct buttons.) Once people are willing to look beneath their own defense systems and find out how those systems were installed and who worked to put them there, it becomes much easier to see through the fog and to recognize when one is being manipulated and used.
-FL
Oh, come now. Unplug for a minute.
I did a quick (like five minute) scope around and found a ton of stuff. Here's a sampling. .
Ha ha. That gave me a good laugh.
But seriously, when I post that way, I do it deliberately. After posting a couple thousand comments on Slashdot, I've found that it's fun to play with the medium provided in order to explore new ways to deliver thoughts. I'm sorry it irritated you, but I actually quite like the format. I think it's neat how it allows for a natural semantic rather than strictly logical flow from subject to content, and I think it's cool when others do the same. Still, perhaps it's not such a bad idea to repeat the first line just to keep everybody happy. Though, I find it sounds like a hiccup. Whatever. Your comments have been noted, and I will continue to explore in the ways I find interesting.
Cheers!
-FL
My thought while reading the comic strip, "A girl who isn't trying to be like every other airhead in the U.S.? I'd date her! "