but they are chary of showing even a picture of the cartoons in a newspaper.
At Harry’s Place a commenter notes that BBC television news
showed the cover and inside pages of France Soir newspaper (where various cartoons of Mohammed are reproduced) but did so in a ludicrous, semi-blacked out style thereby preventing viewers seeing what the fuss is about. Treating satirical cartoons as if they were pornography is disgraceful. The BBC (rightly) wouldn’t hesitate to show clips from Jerry Springer: the Opera – indeed they broadcast the whole thing. Tonight BBC News demonstrated cowardly, one-eyed pandering to an aggressive lobby group.
The BBC are showing their true colours here. They have never been keen on free speech (remember a fondness for the Soviet Union, an infatuation with Cuba and now a cleaving to Islam).
The BBC is an Authoritarian Socialist Institution, who expected them to come out in defence of free speech?
Come on, an organisation funded by threats and intimidation is hardly likely to be a champion of free speech now is it.
They’re a disgrace and should be called what they are: “Terrorist enablers”. I despise the Beeb – this cartoon story has been the final straw!
For your information: the boss of France Soir has just been sacked by the paper’s owner who also made the usual apologies to the “Muslim Community”!
It is a very good thing that no British Media Outlet has published these cartoons. Currently there is a Bill going through Parliament called the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill which is a Labour favour to Muslims…………….
Publishing these cartoons would be a perfect way to get this Bill passed into law with a big majority
Sometimes I wonder if people actually consider what is going on around them
For your information: the boss of France Soir has just been sacked by the paper’s owner who also made the usual apologies to the “Muslim Community”!
Gordon | 02.02.06 – 8:08 am | #
Yes He is EGYPTIAN
Egyptian millionaire Rami Lakah.
Lakah is already the owner of Lafayette press, which has concluded a deal to publish a French version of the American magazine Newsweek
France-Soir’s new owner is a colourful businessman and former member of parliament who left Egypt with huge debts and a trail of controversy. His Lakah Group expanded into tourism and energy in Egypt’s economic boom, but in 2001 the share price crashed 99 percent, almost sinking the Cairo stock exchang
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3873323.stm
What were the specific amendments?
The first defeat, by 288 votes to 278, was aimed at ensuring the new laws would not affect the current racial hatred laws. The second vote, which the government lost by 283 votes to 282, said the law should only criminalise “threatening” behaviour, not things which were just “abusive and insulting”. It also means people can only be prosecuted if they intend to stir up hatred – not if they are merely “reckless”.
How was Tony Blair defeated?
With a majority more than double the 26 rebels the government theoretically should not have lost. But it seems the whips just underestimated the scale of the rebellion, so agreed to let at least 15 Scottish Labour MPs apparently be away from Westminster campaigning in a by-election. Ministers suffered two defeats – one of them by only one vote: that was the one the prime minister himself missed.
Rick – the cartoons were mentioned in the debate on the Bill. The Pub Philosopher thinks that the prospect of people being prosecuted for publishing them may have helped contribute to the government’s defeat.
Still no sign of the BBC publishing the cartoons?
Much more of this and we might have to start accusing the Beeb of double standards. Remember this, anyone?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4217009.stm
As Europe stuns its population and prints these cartoons I expect the BBC are producing another two hundred “Muslims in Europe: In Depth” happy-clappy articles.
Every paper and news outlet should print them or be held in contempt as accessories to the curbing of free speech by fanatics. This united front would stick two fingers up to these ‘professionally affronted’ whinging maniacs and suggest that the West does have some backbone after all.
Oh, and while we are at it let’s have some honesty in newspaper headlines. When a baying mob burns the Danish flag or calls for “Death to Denmark”, it isn’t “anger” it is pure, bigoted hatred.
NEWSFLASH : Palestinian gunmen have surrounded the EU office in Gaza and demanded its closure
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L024756590.htm
Great, close the office, take away the money, leave them to fight themselves.
Please, do the same in Brussels.
if you think the Murdoch press will publish the cartoons, think again:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1665621,00.html
Yes He is EGYPTIAN
Egyptian millionaire Rami Lakah.
Hang on, don’t you guys like him because he’s a coptic Christian?
I seem to recal yesterday he was held up as a champion of free-speech in these comments because of his “religion”, now his “nationality” is being used to tarnish him (at least that’s how I see it).
Lakah AFAIK holds dual French-Egyptian nationality, in fact.
the story about who has been sacked at France-Soir is rather confusing – it is NOT the Editor-in-Chief who has been dismissed, but someone more junior. Not sure what the job title in French is or what his exact responsibilities were.
i wouldnt use his nationality to “tarnish” him. but it doesnt take a genius to figure out that he might have relatives back home in Egypt – relatives who are Coptic Christians.
you know… maybe “leant on” a bit from the mad mullah brigade?
How much longer can we put up with the BBC masquerading as ‘British’? It aims to be all things to all the people of whom it approves – but that certainly doesn’t include ordinary British (particularly English) people for whom (at best) it seems to have only a benign contempt.
It will grovel to muslims, most of of whom are very recent immigrants to this country, but sneer at christians who have defined and built the culture that the world regards as British.
bernard – have a look at this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4600404.stm
the thing you have to ask yourself is
a) there is no mention that Iran is *not* a free society, so its obvious that most people will speak in favour of the mullahs (on pain of death probably)
b) in light of that, then why build a page like that, that just spouts iranian propaganda
c) no equivalent page giving the views of Israeli Jews – which is kind of important,considering that they are numero uno target number 1 for any iranian nuke.
so, you have to wonder why the bbc takes the side of the enemy. and lets face it , the iranian mullahs ARE our enemy.
Yes He is EGYPTIAN
Egyptian millionaire Rami Lakah.
Hang on, don’t you guys like him because he’s a coptic Christian?
I seem to recal yesterday he was held up as a champion of free-speech in these comments because of his “religion”, now his “nationality” is being used to tarnish him (at least that’s how I see it).
FFS | 02.02.06 – 10:39 am | #
I don’t know what religion he has – Boutros-Boutros Ghali was a Copt also – I did not like him particularly.
The fact is that Egypt is not a pleasant place for Copts as we have commented in the past – maybe he doesn’t want to light any fires there. The Managing Editor was fired I heard – he is above the Editor and represents the Owner.
Rick – you’re right. I had wrongly assumed it was a more junior person who had been fired.
Appears that the bloke who was sacked (who is Belgian, FWIW) was “PDG” – “Président Directeur Général”; “Managing Director” would probably be a better translation: i.e. his role was presumably more managerial than editorial. (His background is as a banker – so this surely is the case: and in fact he directly replaced Lakah in this role).
He’d only been appointed to the position in Sept of last year, apparently on the understanding that he would form a “crisis management bureau” to run the paper. (As I think I’ve said here before, the paper is currenlty under a 6-month period of bankrupcy protection that expires at the end of April)
None of this goes to justify the dismissal – but the point is I don’t think this is a straightforward case of bowing in to censorship: it’s a newspaper in crisis, probably on its last legs. Sacking someone who has only been in post for 4 and a half months presumably would fall in some kind of probabtionary period, too.
Just wanted to say that TF1news (a French TV station) didn’t have anything on the Cartoons or their oublication in “France soir” last night, I dont know if the other channells where equally quiet.
If they where, I wonder why?
oublication = publication
But damn it i like oublication- oublier in French is to forget…
The BBC has this to say about Islam;
>>”Islamic tradition bans depictions of the Prophet or Allah.”
pounce -> why are they saying that, when there’s over 1000 years of Ottoman Empire art, depicting Mohammed?
the vast majority of my post didn’t come out in the wash.
I posted a couple of links in there from the BBC and from the religious policeman blog site. Where he publishes a load of pictures of Mohhamed from Islams past.
It appears that they don’t mind a picture of Mohhamed when it suits them.
Pounce
I beleive there was some links over at little green footballs of said images (Iranian propoganda and the ike). I cant say for sure as I just cant be dooing with the place.
I also recall that someone is either in the process of making or has mad a cartoon about mohamed, I must see if I can find the link.
It might be worth remembering that although pretty well everybody reading these posts will have viewed the cartoons on the net, the majority of the public will have little idea what the furore is about as no British publication has carried the pictures. As an informative act, would it be right to print off the cartoons and put them up for public display? Could this be construed as an act “likely to cause a breach of the peace” or any of the other “offences” that our PC police seem to delight in these days?
depends on where you distribute them. outside finsbury mosque – yes , you could get arrested.
outside a pub in the middle of hampshire – probably not.
The have your say on the bbc website is definitive. By an absolute majority, free speech has won. There are very few posters who disagree with the right to publish. The few who disagree also complain that they are not allowed to deny the holocaust. Well there we go bbc, the only people who agree with you also deny the holocaust, says a lot about the beeb !
Geoff,
Surely the fact that the BBC are going ahead with showing the cartoons, etc, proves that the BBC is not, in fact, in agreement with the holocaust deniers, and that it is scurrilous and defamatory to claim that they are? Everybody here knows the Beeb have their faults, and one of them is that they are, for various reasons, a slow-moving beast. It sounds as they though this might be a time to give them regard for what they are currently doing.
archduke,
“depends on where you distribute them. outside finsbury mosque – yes , you could get arrested.”
As I’m currently the other end of Stroud Green Road from Finbury Park mosque the temptation is considerable. They’d look good alongside the posters for the SWP and Respect that proliferate round here, as does stuff supporting the PKK (the Kurds with the Kalashnikovs) and flyers with Arabic writing and pictures of guys with headscarves and guns who could be advertising washing powder but probably aren’t.
Now I find that offensive but I don’t see anything being done about it.
It looks like al-Beeb have been stealth-editing again – Stephen Pollard’s blog:
http://www.stephenpollard.net/002449.html
– quotes the BBC report as saying “Denmark’s reputation as an easy-going, consensual nation has been severely tarnished in recent days. All the Danes can do now is hope the repeated apologies for the offence caused, by both the government and the newspaper, will end this unseemly row.”
– but the supplied link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4669210.stm
– does not include this passage.
simon -> thats probably because a fair number of blogs gave out like hell about that paragraph…
oh well. progess i suppose.
Venichka, the bbc have not shown the cartoons, and in another pice of stealth editing, the original question on have your say was ” do we agree that newspapers can show offensive cartoons ”
so by calling them offensive the beeb had already made their mind up, but didn’t allow us to make our minds up as they have never shown the cartoons.
on the have your say page, the pro-cartoon quotes are winning by a long margin.
i wonder if the bbc were taken aback by this support for the danes?
Strange, or perhaps not, that no-one has mentioned the virulently anti-Semitic cartoons that appear regularly in the Arab-languane press: cartoons depicting Jews as pigs, rats, nazis, for example.
If RoPers think those cartoons were offensive, they need to get a load of what people come up with when they are trying to be offensive:-
http://drawmohammed.com/
or indeed this
http://thestudyofrevenge.blogspot.com
The BBC is censoring Have Your Say. At first, I clicked on Read by Recommendation. They were unanimously for publication of the cartoons. The first one had been recommended by around 1100 people! The next one had been recommended by around 900. The site crashed a couple of times as obviously it was being swamped with people wanting to have their say.
When it went back up, suddenly there were no Recommendations. Mysteriously, they were back to their old format of saying “Here is a fair sample of the comments we have received.” Oddly, some of these comments, unlike the previous ones, thought that the publication of the cartoons had been shocking and unfair to Islam.
I think the BBC should have the word British removed from it by Parliament. It’s nauseating.