Eyal Zusman (30, back from anonymity) and Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, have followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally they came up with the right answer to all this insanity - and so they announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves!(HT Mika, commenting at Belmont Club where you will find a seriously cracker-jack debate on how the west can win the information war with radical Islam.
“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”
The contest has been announced today on the www.boomka.org website, and the initiators accept submissions of cartoons, caricatures and short comic strips from people all over the world. The deadline is Sunday March 5, and the best works will be displayed in an Exhibition in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
LOL
Bored of Mo'toons yet? Well, since it seems the trickster Jews are again kicking sand in the faces of honest antisemites, just wait until the Muslim brothers get going and start matching blows in this latest game of those Zionist Media Zebras (ZMZ: what's black and white and red all over?):
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16 comments:
They say it is a sign of strength when people can laugh at themselves.
Terrye,
It's certainly a sign of democracy. Which is why it will work in Israel and won't work in an Islamic country. Nor will the "information battle" mentioned at BC be more than an excercise in futility.
When the "religion" used by despots and tyrants to exercise control from the tiniest village to the capital is mocked, the tyrant orders the mob into the street. Will the tyrant then allow the introduction of propaganda aimed at subverting his rule? Can anyone believe that the deaths now occuring throughout the Islamic tyrannies due to a "cartoon war" impinge upon the conscience of the despots who ordered the mobs into the streets?
The concept that "the pen is mightier than the sword" is rarely bruited about in territory where the sword is wielded by the despots executioner.
The total lack of imagination exhibited by those who believe that tyranny can be swayed by the proper "message" being sent is breath taking in its naivete. Who will disseminate this "message" in land under a tyrants rule? If the "message" is broadcast and heard, who will gather under the everwatchful mullahs eye to talk and plan? The mullah serves at the pleasure of the sheik and the sheik serves at the pleasure of the ruler - and when sheik or mullah step out of line or do not perform their function as ordered, they are replaced. With prejudice. The muslims understand terror and its strength very well. How could they not, having lived with it since birth.
The Israeli cartoonists are mocking ignorant westerners as much or more as they are mocking the mad mullahs. Having taken the appropriate measure by targetting and killing Hamas leadership (with excellent results) they can afford to indulge themselves in a bit of irony - before they start killing Hamas leadership in earnest.
Rick, I think you are right that this contest is more likely to mock ignorant westerners than the denizens of much of the Muslim world. Tyrannies of the ME variety tend to be rather stable for the reasons you mention. It's likely they will only be destoyed by outside force.
Their weak link however is their economic dependency. Seriously blockade them and the people begin to starve in weeks. This creates an opening for western governments, once the west is truly committed to a fight (this is where our war is focussed, at the moment), to apply pressure to make the tyrants compromise in various areas.
In any case, broadcasting messages may not have any immediate effect for the reasons you note. But over the long term, who's to say what impact it could have, loosening minds for future campaigns? Tyranny is never completely monolithic; it comes in degrees; Turkey is not Syria, etc.
How do we really know the outcome of actions we make in a very complex system? I don't see the discussion at BC as so much naive (though some are) as an instance of people struggling in good faith to brainstorm alternatives to forcibly occupying and colonizing a big chunk of the world for several decades (I'm ticked off enough that I feel i have to waste my time reading the ugly Koran, learning about Islam; imagine our children having to devote their lives to transforming the desert), or by mass extermination which would destroy much that is good in the west, along with the evil it targets.
True,
When I reread Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Law" I am struck by his assessment of Islam and the rulers who have used it. He recognized the character, both of the belief system and of the petty tyrants involved some 250 years ago. Nothing has changed in the ME since that time. The Ottomans ruled then through the use of the janissaries as an instrument of terror and control, Kemal Ataturk substituted a conscript army that still does the same thing today. In fact, the control of Turkey by the army is slipping badly precisely because the janissary model has not been followed closely enough. Conscripts are allowed to carry clan and tribal allegiances into the army - precisely what the use of janissaries avoided.
We do not need to occupy more of the ME than we currently do. We do need to decapitate the leadership of Iran and select the appropriate replacement. And we do need to recognize that the typical Middle Eastener is quite used to life on their knees. They have centuries of practice in responding to rule and very, very little practice in governance. If we are serious about exporting democracy then we had better be serious about leaving sufficient force in Iraq to shoot the first dozen or so "one man, one vote, one time" leaders who will arise.
The Ottomans provided the answer to effective governance of all of the ME. Reading Locke and JS Mill to their subjects wasn't part of it.
Seriously blockade them and the people begin to starve in weeks.
Right.
This creates an opening for western governments,
Wrong. Starvation would cause serious anger directed toward Western governments. And people.
Think about it for a minute. The message we're giving them is: you will fight against your own government and its vicious thugs, or WE WILL STARVE YOU! This is not a message that induces cooperation and warm-fuzzy feelings.
If an external power were to starve me so that I would turn on Bush, I would personally lead an invasion into their country.
Rick, much of what you say sounds right; i only question your logic in respect to the stability of any enlightened tyranny we might substitute for hte present regimes. Any such western-supported leadership will attract a lot of resentment and they will inevitably attempt to focus this back on the west, or on regional enemies, unless and until a lot of people in the region are convinced by propaganda, or whatever, that America is basically good. It may be that your decapitation policy is inevitable in the short term; but long-term we have to hope there is some way for these people to join relatively peacefully in the global economic and political order. So the idea of an information war that goes on for generations does not seem simply pie in the sky, but a necessary article of faith in the truth and further potential of western ideas.
MHA,
yes, i think you are right that starvation would not be a very wise or morally defensible strategy in most circumstances. I think it would only be taken seriously in the context of a large-scale war already long under way, and it would be part of a divide and conquer strategy to support moderate regional allies.
Anyway, you might personally lead an invasion against an outsider denying basic reciprocity and get somewhere; in the ME, they will likely always be limited to exporting terrorism given western dominance in conventional war, unless of course they are allowed to develop better missiles. And this is the problem with Rick's solution of enlightened despotism. How could the US ever trust their puppets to completely control terrorist outlets that will be so readily encouraged as a valve for internal tensions and psychopaths?
The desire for freedom, as other men know and display it, implicit in your idea of a patriot fighting the western blockade, is inevitably learned and imitated by some of trhe people living under the thumb of tyranny. Freedom is a desire whose practice in many shapes and forms can't be hidden from others; and it is a mistake to forget that greater freedom is always first enjoyed by the more ruthless, the Saddams, bin Ladens, etc. The ME will conitnually produce such men until every man can be more of a king in his own castle. Or, maybe we can wait for the oil to run out and hope it goes back to total primitivism there, forgotten in isolation...
unless and until a lot of people in the region are convinced by propaganda, or whatever, that America is basically good.
Well, considering that after 230+ years of trying, most Canadians are convinced that we are basically bad, how likely is that?
i don't think most Canadians are convinced that Americans are basically bad. Most Canadians will bitch about one or another thing American, but in the greater scheme of things i think it is a minority - overrepresented in universities and media - who seriously think there is something evil about America. Canadians can't get enough of American culture. There is obviously much to admire in it. If we really hated America, surely we wouldn't be so schizoid to consume your culture all day long, as we tend to do.
Canadians have a weak sense of their own nationhood, because they are basically the product of isolated regions on the margins of an empire who came together in a marriage of convenience without a great crisis to give their compact certain meaning. They are forced to compare their lack with American confidence and its raison d'etre, and they make more of the contrast than is justified because we are very similar peoples in many ways. So it's the narcissism of small differences, on the one hand. And on the other it's less an investment in dislike of Americans as it is a silly (intellectually lazy) sense of superiority vis a vis the US government and its foreign policies. Canadians strike an imperious, worldly tone, because they haven't yet figured out that empires and tranzi values are inferior to a certain form of nationalism and an internationalism based on a strong regard for nations.
Anti-Americanism is ultimately an irrational intellectual disease, not unlike antisemitism. As such, don't expect it to ever go away completely, in any country including the US. But also, have some faith that the irrational hatred can be revealed for what it is, and anti-Americanism can be made as unfashionable among the learned as anti-semitism was until recently. However many crazies at the gates, we can't give up hope in the truth, my American friend.
p.s. We are living in very crazy years; this can't go on forever.
It will go on until the primary understanding that Islam is simply incompatible with democracy as it is understood in the west is admitted. Islam must be dealt with in Islamic terms using Islamic methods. It is not going to be pretty but we will not be able to disengage and let it rot in peace until we do.
Rick, i have no hesitancy in admitting that Islam is incompatible with our idea of democracy. However, i also think our idea of democracy is probably incompatible with faithlessness as our own postmodernity suggests.
If much about Islam, to the extent it is a political ideology and not a faith in God, needs to be destroyed or allowed to rot, what can or will replace it? There is no way the people could live in the void created by the loss of communal forms of sacrificial ritual and (anti-Infidel) politics. They would become even more disorderly and murderous in such a void. Some kind of faith that accents the private, personal, relationship with God, something perhaps akin to contemporary Christian evangelicalism, must emerge instead (on the assumption that it is less likely that many Muslims can be converted holus bolus to westerners, to Christianity or atheism). Do you think an "evangelical Islam" - one that allegorizes the Koran for the needs of the private individual in need of finding his way in a free marketplace - could emerge on the ruins of the more literal interpreation of Jihad and church-state relations? Or is that a bridge too far? Of course it would require a radical paradigm shift, one that would have to start in protected cloisters before having any hope in the larger Islamic world.
True,
I don't believe that resolution of the current problem with Islam can be addressed using western precepts. To do so is to project values upon populations which (in aggregate) do not recognize them. Individual muslims may hold them but those same individuals will be marginalized should they attempt to proselytize.
There is no power in 'the people' - power resides with the tyrant and his holding power is proof that Allah smiles upon him because everything happens according to the will of Allah. It's a cute tautology - but it has functioned very well for quite a long time. Of course, the head that wears the crown can never get a good nights rest because if he is killed - well, that was the will of Allah, too. There is no "deeply held resentment" outside of clan and tribal loyalties.
Can Islam be reinterpreted to allow for peaceful coexistence? Sure - right after you kill enough of the ayatollahs, imams and mullahs to establish the fact that Allah doesn't smile upon their brand. Prove that Allah smiles upon your brand by killing the king and the pawns will nod, say "Inshallah" and get on with gathering dates.
The greatest weakness in our current strategy is that our "king" will be replaced in less than three years. The headchoppers know it and know that if a "weak" leader is elected, well, then it's back to business as usual. Except that next time they will have a nice nuke so the extortion business will have a better payoff.
Which is why Iran needs to be flattened in a manner which comports with Islam - it is the will of Allah that the ayatollahs and the the Iranian leadership be disabused of their errors.
Forget about western-style democracy for a moment. What do you think are the chances that in a place like Iraq, clan and tribal loyalties can be transcended in acceptance of some kind of new political order where there is a recognition of the three large communities - united in a constitutional order - none of whom can permanently dominate the other as long as the US remains in the region?
I'm not sure you are right that there is no deeply held resentment beyond the clan and tribe. There is some quantum of antisemitism, and anti-western sentiment. Could this serve to encourage a transcendence of tribal loyalties in some nascent form of Iraqi nationalism?
Success in Iraq will hinge on the makeup of the Iraqi armed forces. If advancement can be governed by merit rather than by 'birth' then there is a fair chance that the new constitution can be upheld. That's why sticking around for a minimum of ten years is a necessity - it's also why the former military had to be completely disbanded. If the military units are properly 'integrated' with plenty of non-coms and officers from the three sections serving in the same units from platoon to corps level then I believe that Iraq has the potential to take on a national rather than tribal identity.
I'm not at all sold on the resentment against westerner and Jew bit. Those are both relatively recent artifacts of propaganda campaigns based upon the Nazi model. That's not to say that life for a Jew in Iraq was ever a bed of roses for it was not. Nor was life for any kuffir. It's just to note that pogroms have a much more solid history in Europe than they do in the ME.
I am absolutely not saying that progress is impossible in the ME or that a secular form of government is beyond reason. I'm saying that there need to be very large piles of dead Wahabi and Shia clerics topped off by the sheiks and princes who support them created as a prelude to the emergence of such states.
Shahkmat - kill the kings - then begin again. You can't start a new game without clearing the board.
I see, just get them playing checkers from now on.
I'm sure you're right about the army. The thing about the antisemitism, etc., is not that it is deeply rooted but that it is what they grasp for when they need some way of symbolizing their resentment to a rather recent historical phenomenon: the globalizing free market which of course has no central figure/authority to demonize, so you demonize the Jew, as is traditional in countries longer versed in this game. It is less the jew as traditional infidel trader, as what the propagandists say the jew now controls - the global market, their lives - that is resented. And to the extent that they are now exposed to anti-globalization tranzi left resentments, the choice they face will either be to accept nationalism, the international order, and the forms of self-rule they allow as a counterbalance to global market forces; or, they can buy into the fantasy of some global Caliphate. If our ultimate war is against the latter, i think we have to do all to encourage national progress in the ME. A head-hunting let's go...
If Israel keeps its promise and continues to target Hamas leadership in response to rocket attacks we'll see if my theory pans out pretty quickly.
Hamas would be wise to extablish a clear line of succession - and very foolish to publish it. I imagine they will be down to drawing straws for the honor fairly quickly. Being "king" isn't much fun with the Israelis gunning for you.
The "entertaining" part is that Fatah will probably start firing rockets just to see which Hamas guy gets killed for it.
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