|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Supporting Denmark: why we must, as free people
from the Jyllands-Posten website, translated from Danish
http://www.jp.dk/kultur/artikel:aid=3552772/
We are being pissed upon
by Per Nyholm
I think it was the long departed H.C. Hansen, one of last century's great Danish statesmen who once - while the communists were demonstrating in front of Christiansborg [Ed: the seat of parliament] - threw his gaze across the palace square and remarked: "I will not be pissed upon."
Then he did what was necessary.
I feel that currently my beloved country is being pissed upon rather too much. Denmark has not been neglecting its duties on the international stage. We have supported poor people with acts and advice, we have worked for peace, we have sent soldiers, policemen and experts to all the far flung corners of the world. We have democracy, a state of law and a welfare state. Not all is perfect, but we harbor no malice to our fellow man.
And yet Denmark is being pissed upon. The spokesman of the US State Department is pissing on Denmark, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs is pissing on Denmark, the President of Afghanistan is pissing on Denmark, the Goverment of Iraq is pissing on Denmark, other Moslem regimes are pissing on Denmark. In Gaza, where Danes for years have provided humanitarian relief, crazed Imams encourage people to cut off the hands and heads of the cartoonists who made the caricatures of Mohammed for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
Excuse my choice of words, but all this pissing is pissing me off.
What's happening? I am not so much referring to the threats against Danish citizens and Danish commerce. Nor are the burnt down Embassies what occupies my mind. I am thinking of a word that keeps popping up whenever the Mohammed cartoons are mentioned.
That word is BUT. A sneaky word. It's used to deny or relativize what one has just said.
How many times lately have we not heard people of power, The Formers of Opinion and other people say that of course we have freedom of speech, BUT.
They have said it, all of them, from Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General to our own Bendt Bendtsen [ed: Danish Politician]. Once we had to be sensitive of the easily hurt feeling of the Nazis, then came the communists, now it is the Islamists. The reason I say 'Islamists' is that I don't for a moment believe all the world's Moslems are pissing on us. I think we are dealing with thugs, fools and misled people. Those are the ones we have to deal with, and then the chickenshit politicians.
The cartoons are no longer something the Jyllands-Posten can control. They have already been manipulated and misrepresented to the point that few know what's going on and fewer know how to stop it. This affair is artifically kept buoyant in a sea of lies, suppressions of the truth, misconceptions, lunacy and hypocrisy, for which this newspaper bears no blame. The only thing the Jyllands-Posten did was that it with a pin-prick made a boil of nastiness explode. It would have happened sooner or later. That it happened more than four months following the publication of the cartoons, raises a question of its own.
Are we dealing with random events or with a staged clash of civilizations? One might hope for the former yet expect the latter.
That's why I say: Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech. There is no but.
Initially I was doubtful of the timeliness of publishing the cartoons. Later events have convinced me that it was both just and useful. That they are consistent with Danish law and Danish custom seem to me less important than this: that we now know that remote, primitive countries deem themselves justified in telling us what we can do. Unfortunately we also have to recognize that governments close to us agree with them in the name of expedience.
The just is in the offensive this newspaper has launched in the name of Freedom of Speech, the useful in our newly acquired knowledge. Welcome to a brave, new world, where even our Prime Minister - in spite of his laudable firmness - must gaze out upon a scorched political landscape. It's true, as is custom, his friend in Washington, George Bush, condemns the torching of our embassies, but his Department of State alludes to us being the guilty ones in this case. The suggestion that Danish troops might benefit the democratization is buried under the charred remains of our diplomatic representations in Beirut and Damascus.
Perhaps it's time we started mopping up this mess. Perhaps Editor-in-Chief Carsten Juste ought to remove his apology which has gone stale sitting so long on the front page of our internet edition and which does not seem to interest madmen. Perhaps our government ought to announce to Mona Omar Attia, the strange Ambassador of Egypt, that she is persona non grata.
Perhaps it ought to be announced to the ambassadors that have been called home to fictive consultations in the Middle East that they may spare themselves the cost of the return ticket.
To the degree it is possible, The Lying Imams ought probably to be expelled. And then we ought to make an effort for the Moslems who in a difficult situation have proven themselves to be true Citizens.
We, for our part, have no wish to be a burden for the arab governments. We will happily withdraw our soldiers, policemen and diplomats. If they think our money smells, we will stop our aid. Our trade must make do as well as it can. We promise to not bear a grudge and, in time, we will be glad to return, but we are through with the hypocrisy. We have better things to do than being pissed upon at our own expense.
Turn down our activity in the Middle East. This world holds other opportunities.
Knife-at-throat sensitivity
By Mark Steyn
Published February 6, 2006
I long ago lost count of the number of times I've switched on the TV and seen crazy guys jumping up and down in the street torching the Stars and Stripes and yelling "Death to the Great Satan." Or torching the Union Jack and yelling "Death to the Original If Now Somewhat Arthritic And Semi-Retired Satan." But I never thought I would see the excitable young lads jumping up and down in Jakarta, La
hore, Aden, Hebron, etc., etc., torching the flag of Denmark.
Denmark. Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza? Well, OK, that's easy: the nearest European Union Humanitarian Aid and Intifada-Funding Branch Office. But where do you get one in an obscure town on the Punjabi plain on a Thursday afternoon?
If I had a sudden yen to burn the Yemeni or Sudanese flag on my village green, I haven't a clue how I would get hold of one in this part of New Hampshire. Say what you like about the Islamic world, they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least in threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offense or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they would have.
Meanwhile, back in Copenhagen, the Danes are a little bewildered to find that this time plucky little Denmark caught the eye of the nutters. Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam.
The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags.
When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has sex with Judas, the New York Times and co rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is simple: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.
Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the homosexual sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian Conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in covering the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.
That means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice-president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.
Jyllands-Posten wasn't being offensive for the sake of it. The paper had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of "self-censorship" -- i.e., a climate in which there's no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it's better not to. That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.
One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity" the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers.
Thus, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw hailed Fleet Street's "sensitivity" in not reprinting the offending cartoons.
No doubt he's similarly impressed by the "sensitivity" of Anne Owers, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds it shows the cross of St. George, used by the Crusaders and thus offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he's impressed by the "sensitivity" of Burger King which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word "Allah" in Arabic script. I don't know which sura in the Koran says don't forget, folks, it's not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice-cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be "sensitive."
And doubtless the British Foreign Secretary also appreciates the "sensitivity" of the owner of France-Soir who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the "sensitivity" of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy "Shouf Shouf Habibi" because "I don't want a knife in my chest" -- which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose "right to dissent" all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they're just being "sensitive," too.
And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the "sensitivity" of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard. And maybe he even admires the "sensitivity" of the increasing numbers of Dutch people who dislike the pervasive fear and tension in certain parts of the Netherlands and so have emigrated to Canada and New Zealand.
Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, homosexual, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a "diverse" "tolerant" society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.
One day the British foreign secretary will wake up and discover that, in practice, there's very little difference between living under Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity and Sharia.
As a famously sensitive Dane once put it, "To be or not to be, that is the question."
|
|
|
 |
|
|
