Yule Heibel's Post Studio © 2003-2014

Who do you know? On “expert” systems vs P2Ps…

I’ve had this weird suspicion creep up on me in the past few days. Ever since February 3rd, when I read the LA Times article, That song sounds familiar about Pandora, a six-year old internet radio website which I blogged about on Wednesday, I have been turning over in my head several related problems: of stress, of my sense of time (that it’s always running out), and of what looks like a collective crumbling of the ability to focus. The LA Times article brought up the fascinating issue of whether Pandora is really internet worthy in that whizz-bang peer-to-peer, wisdom-of-crowds sense, for Pandora relies not on peer recommendation, but on …expertise. Instead of using peers who “recommend” that if you like A, then you might like B, Pandora’s experts analyse music, isolate aspects of it, and offer the listener a number of choices based on those isolated aspects. When I tried it, I was offered several duds (to my ears), and I had to “guide” the program toward the tunes I liked better. Once the guiding process was on its way, the program did come up with songs I liked. I started with The The’s “This is the day” (old stuff, over 20 years) and (after some mis-starts) got Gay Dad (more recent), along with other, more recent new-to-me material I liked.

The Times on the other hand quoted an assistant professor of communications at BU, who worries that Pandora

“runs counter to the democratizing trend of the Internet.” Instead of using “collaborative filtering” software pioneered by Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes (“customers who bought this album also bought these albums”), Pandora “puts the power of the recommendation in the hands of an expert system,” McQuivey says. “Pandora will succeed only if its centralized system proves superior to the wisdom of the crowd.” [More…]

Aside from the notion that peer-to-peer systems or the wisdom-of-the-crowds is truly — or shall we say: inevitably — democratic, I find the implied idea that expert systems are somehow inherently undemocratic absolutely baffling, if not troubling.

I happened to like the sense of engagement I got from “guiding” Pandora, and it helped focus my attention. When its “experts” offered me song, I could inquire, “why did you suggest this,” particularly when I was offered a song I didn’t like. I could then gather my own attention as I was asked to give the thumbs up or down to the song I was offered. Although I was guided by the “expert suggestions,” I in turn was guiding Pandora through my choices.

In a peer-to-peer or wisdom-of-the-crowds universe, my attention is scattered, sometimes pleasurably, but often to the point of pain: there’s so much to keep up with, so many choices to confront and evaluate, and thanks, but no thanks, I really don’t want to be carried away by the supposed wisdom of the crowd. It takes me a long time to decide — to choose — that someone, anyone at all, is my peer, and having all those alleged, if friendly, peers telling me at every turn that I might like this or that, and that I really should try this and go with that ends up making me crazy stressed and nuts.

My suspicion, then, to get back to my point of departure, is that (1) the digitally distributed peer-to-peer universe is the perfect expression of our attention-deficit plagued age, and (2) the digitially distributed peer-to-peer universe contributes to further exacerbations of attention deficit, stress, to the continued sense of never having enough time. Further to that, my suspicion leads to a conclusion that some may call anti-social, but that to my (dialectical) mind is an epitome of social commitment: it’s fine to hang with the crowd for a while, but to get anything meaningful done, you better be prepared to leave your peers behind and become your own expert.

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

We average Canadians might bravely sing that “we stand on guard for thee,” O Canada, but it seems our (unarmed) border guards have contractual leave to flee for thee in case of approaching Americans:

SURREY, B.C. (CP) — Officers at the busy Peace Arch and Pacific Highway Canada-U.S. border crossings south of Vancouver walked off the job Friday over reports of an armed U.S. fugitive headed their way.
(…)
Paula Shore said the unarmed officers exercised their contractual right to refuse to work after their U.S. colleagues issued a warning to be on the lookout for an armed and dangerous person.

Under the border agents’ collective agreement, they have the right to walk away if they believe their safety was jeopardized.
(…)
It’s the third incident in a month when a Canadian border point closed as unarmed officers fled over the threat of armed Americans approaching. [emph.added]
(…)
Those incidents renewed demands from the officers’ union that they be given guns.

New Conservative Justice Minister Vic Toews said the party will stand behind its promise to give them guns.

The current policy calls for the unarmed border guards to allow anyone suspected of being armed and dangerous into Canada and then call police. [The Toronto Star, Feb.10/06 (register to view)]

See also the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

I’m no fan of guns, and Canada doesn’t need a Swiss- or US-style Second Amendment or anything, but aren’t these people our border guards? What might be their chief weapons against unwelcome intruders?

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our *four*…no… *Amongst* our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise…. I’ll come in again.

A “well-formed formula” (wff) video

David Weinberger has expanded his resumé with an acting gig in a great little 3-minute movie called Get Human (the video). This is for everyone who has climbed the walls while groping up (or down) a phone tree. Great film — very wickedly funny, too.

That part of the video with the phone tree options reminded me of a fiendish mathematical logics course the kids and I worked part of the way through a few years back. It was all about mastering the kind of convolutions offered by some especially non-human-userinterface-designed phone tree options: “if yes, press 1 and say no, if no press 2 and say yes,” except expressed in symbols.

Modus ponens, remember?:
1. If Statement A, then Statement B.
2. But Statement A.
3. Therefore, Statement B.

Looks like this:
1. [P –> Q]
2. P
3. Therefore, Q.

If you’re really stuck, use the contrapositive, which allows you to reverse the direction of the conditional (that’s the “if A, then B” formulation):
[P –> Q] and [[~Q] –> [~P]] are equivalent formulas: If P then Q, and If not-Q, then not-P. It’s a double negative, but it’s logical.

Well, logical as hell, maybe: the kind of logical used by automated systems, i.e., designed to drive us humans up a (phone) tree!

Note:
Definition of WFF (“well formed formula”) here. Woof-woof!

…if music be the food of love, play on…

There’s this tremendously theatrical 19th century painting called Pollice Verso (which means Thumbs Down), painted by Jean-Louis Gérôme in 1872:

The painting depicts a view seen from the arena floor, where a triumphant gladiator, standing astride his fallen victim, looks up into the crowd to receive the message that will decide the stricken man’s fate. From their front-row box next to the Emperor’s party, the Vestal Virgins enthusiastically turn “thumbs down” to seal the loser’s demise. [More…]

I was thinking about this painting because I’ve been playing around with Pandora — an internet music radio station that happens to be great fun. Pandora also happens to ask listeners to use the ‘thumbs down vs. thumbs up’ gesture a lot.

While I was looking for images of Gérôme’s Pollice Verso, I learned (from the same page linking to “thumbs down,” above) that, as the ring finger was believed to be connected to the heart (hence the wedding band on the left hand’s ring finger), the thumb was believed to be superior to all the other fingers because it was typically not banded by a ring. Further, it was believed to be connected to the genitals: “…the thumb had regenerative powers and, indeed, the erect thumb, in its suggestion of the phallus, was regarded as being apotropaic, i.e., having the power to avert evil.”

Who knew? It certainly gives “twiddling your thumbs” a whole new dimension… Guitar strings being strummed by the thumb suddenly focuses emphasis not just on the sound hole, but on the strummer’s digit…

Which brings me back to music and Pandora, where I, the listener, get to give the songs they play the thumbs up or the thumbs down, according to my pleasure. Well, now I can get an added mental thrill everytime I do that thing — even if it is only virtually. I learned about Pandora through an LA Times article, That song sounds familiar (Feb.3, 2006). From the article:

In the beginning, there was music. Childhood and young adulthood floated by to a soundtrack of lyrics and rhythms and searing guitar riffs that consumed you, became you, constituted your identity, galvanized your intent, spoke your soul.

But time passes, classrooms fade to cubicles, and a vast landscape of new music turns foreign and unexplored. [More…]

Enter Pandora, which lets you find contemporary music you’ll probably like. If you like it, you can keep on strumming, and if you don’t, you can give it the thumbs down.

Official Announcement – government seal about to change

Announcement

Originally uploaded by Yule.

A friend sent this picture to me yesterday and I immediately put it on my Flickr account. Thought it was worth blogging, too…

First time I’m blogging a photo directly from Flickr, too. Wonder if html works? Let’s try it: here’s the link to my account…

Trove

I just found this interesting page on Zombie Time called the Mohammed Image Archive. As an art historian, I’m fascinated by this as a resource. It includes historical images of Mohammed from the early 14th century through to the modern period. The early images are from Arab/ Muslim sources, putting the lie to the notion that Mohammed was never represented. As the Image Archive notes:

Controversy over the publication of images depicting Mohammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has erupted into an international furor. While Muslims worldwide are calling for a boycott of Denmark and any other nation whose press reprints the cartoons, Europeans are trying to stand up for Western principles of freedom of speech and not cave in to self-censorship in the name of multiculturalism and fear.

While the debate rages, an important point has been overlooked: despite the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world. The recent cartoons in Jyllands-Posten are nothing new; it’s just that no other images of Mohammed have ever been so widely publicized.

This page is an archive of numerous depictions of Mohammed, to serve as a reminder that such imagery has been part of Western and Islamic culture since the Middle Ages — and to serve as a resource for those interested in freedom of expression. [More…]

Fascinating stuff. By the 15th-16th centuries (but not before), Mohammed’s face is blanked out in Islamic representations, in accordance with the ban on portraying him. European Medieval and Renaissance Images, as well as later 19th century images, on the other hand had no such restrictions. Thus, we see the image of Christian propaganda via a fresco by Giovanni da Modena in Bologna’s Church of San Petronio that depicts Mohammed being tortured in Hell. Particularly fascinating is the link to this 2002 Guardian story about the al-Qaida plot to blow the church up on account of this 15th century fresco.

Then there are the 18th and 19th century book illustrations, including ones by the abolitionist freedom-loving anarchist William Blake, who showed Mohammed with his entrails exposed, as was the iconographic custom when relating his tortures in hell. Apparently, that story was popularised by Dante’s Inferno, Book XXVIII, 19-42, where Mohammed is described as one of the “Sowers of Discord”: “The poets are in the ninth / chasm of the eighth circle, that of the Sowers of / Discord, whose punishment is to be mutilated. / Mahomet shows his entrails to Dante and Virgil / while on the left stands his son Ali, his head cleft / from chin to forelock.” Ok, I’ve said it before on this blog: I have never been able to get “into” Dante, and now I have another reason why. Pretty vile stuff. But obviously this was “good stuff” for artists: Gustave Doré, the 19th century printmaker who did such a brilliant job skewering the effects of industrialisation in London, also took on Mohammed in hell, as did Blake (another critic of modernity), as well as kissy-kissy Rodin, and Salvador Dali (no surprises here — if Dali wasn’t fixated on anuses and vaginas, it had to be trailing …entrails).

Then there were the later 20th century popular book covers featuring portrayals of Mohammed, including Tintin. (I can’t imagine that Obelisk & Asterisk left Mohammed untouched, either — there must be an example somewhere.) Yet none of these caused an uproar. There’s even a 1928 German advertisement for beef bouillion that features the archangel Gabriel guiding Mohammed…. One has to wonder. PR people are strange. Mohammed has also been profiled on South Park (a tv show) and on video/ computer games (Spke TV, wherein Mohammed defeats Joseph Smith, who is I believe the founder of Mormonism, who then in turn gets beaten by Moses…).

Don’t miss the section on modern satirical cartoons, either. There are some nasty examples in this section, much stupider than anything the Danish paper published, including a very offensive one of Mohammed as a pig, authoring the Koran — perhaps this was one of the illustrations taken to the Middle East by the Danish imams with the goal of whipping up anti-Western frenzy? But note that in regard to this illustration, Zombie Time notes the following: “In 1997, an Israeli woman named Tatiana Soskin drew this caricature of Mohammed as a pig authoring the Koran and tried to display it in public in the city of Hebron. She was arrested, tried and sentenced to jail.”

Others are funnier because they also skewer western Christianity, like the “What would Mohammed drive?” cartoon, which plays on the ubiquitous neo-Christian evangelical mantra of “what would Jesus do?” It shows Mohammed driving a Ryder rent-a-truck with a nuclear bomb sticking out the back. But as I noted, some of the later 20th century (early 21st century) cartoons are pretty stupid, the digital equivalent of toilet stall graffiti. For the really curious, Zombie Time does include the crap taken to Egypt and Afghanistan by the Danish imams, which really scrapes bottom, but which was never published in mainstream western media. Finally, at the end of the page are several below the belt illustrations that show what crass really means.

All in all, the page underscores (to my way of thinking) the political motivations behind the current “offense” taken over the Danish cartoons.

Timelines

Making a time line is a skill taught to children when they’re still quite young. At least it used to be — it’s certainly recommended as a teaching strategy by homeschooling how-to books, irrespective of their ideological or religious agenda. Perhaps it’s a skill no longer taught in public schools?

I’m wondering about this lost skill of making time lines as I reflect on what has been written in the western press about the Danish cartoons currently inflaming Muslim communities — and European embassies. When I wrote my $0.02 worth over the weekend, I noticed the time line problem right away: the cartoons were published on September 30, 2005, yet these “spontaneous” protests, still escalating, didn’t start until much later. What was up with that, I wondered? In my Addendum to ‘Connecting the dots’, published yesterday, I cited a number of newspaper articles that began to lay out a time line: the cartoons were published at the end of September 05; by the end of December 05, a delegation of fundamentalist imams (who don’t shy away from preaching hatred in Denmark) are embarked on a tour of Egypt and other Middle Eastern Muslim countries where they spread lies about the cartoons and their publication, telling their audiences that there were 120 cartoons (not 12) and illustrating the perfidy of western infidels with material never presented in the Danish press. By January 06, the Pakistani religious party Jamaat-e-Islami and its youth branch offer a bounty to anyone who murders the Danish illustators who drew the cartoons; by the end of January 06, moderate Muslims in Denmark are trying to get the hate-mongering imams to shut up, but unfortunately no one pays much attention to them; other European newspapers, noticing what’s happening in Denmark, begin publishing the cartoons also, defending freedom of the press but ironically playing right into the hands of the hate-mongering imams who only want to fan the flames — literally and figuratively. It’s difficult to draw any other conclusion than that they’ve been planning to use this incident to incite riots since the cartoons’ original publication in September. And by the beginning of February, there are indeed riots in the streets and European embassies are burning.

I saw an article today that lays out the timeline, warts and all on both sides: Muslim rage: Spontaneous, or political calculation? by Anne-Beatrice Clasmann and Thomas Borchert. Here it is in full:

Copenhagen/Cairo – It took four months before Muslims around the world began protesting against 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

These were four months in which Islamic preachers and diplomats spread the word from Copenhagen to the villages of Upper Egypt and Afghanistan that ‘the Prophet has been insulted.’

Some observers in Denmark see ‘agitation’ by Danish imams travelling in the Middle East as the spark that caused the conflagration of religious passions.

In the Arab world, there are those who suspect the increasingly violent demonstrations are the product of cynical political calculation by Arab regimes using anger for their own purposes.

The conflict is playing into the hands of Islamist groups. In some Islamic countries, a contest of sorts has broken out between the government and opposition to see which side is doing more ‘to defend the Prophet.’

When the cartoons were first published on September 30 in the Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s biggest paper and sharply critical of Islam, it initially looked like just another skirmish in Denmark’s heated debate over immigration and the proper attitude towards Islam.

It took nearly three weeks before the ambassadors of 11 Islamic countries demanded that the Danish government intervene and asked to speak with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Rasmussen, citing press freedom, coolly refused, which critics now say was a big mistake in crisis management. Among those critics are 22 former Danish ambassadors who spoke out in December. They also faulted what they said was Denmark’s overly harsh tone towards Islamic immigrants.

Meanwhile, imams resident in Denmark were travelling around Arab countries with the cartoons, showing them as well as other unflattering caricatures of the Prophet circulating in Denmark that the newspaper had not published.

Many Danes believe this is what set off the huge wave of protests. Danish government sources said the imams reponsible may be deported.

The imams themselves say indignation spread in January during the hajj in Mecca. The ‘tsunami of protest’ then swept over Denmark at the end of January, when Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Copenhagen and devout Saudis called for a boycott of Danish products.

Many Muslims have followed the call. In Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world, signs have gone up in supermarkets saying, ‘We don’t sell any Danish products.’

In the English-language Saudi newspaper Arab News, there was even a call on Monday for a total, long-term boycott of Western goods aimed at forcing Western countries to ‘apologize for having insulted our beloved Prophet.’ [article here]

Meanwhile, much gets written that muddies the waters. Shelley Powers and I disagree strongly about this crisis, with Shelley suggesting that the cartoons are equivalent to defacing a Jewish neighbourhood with swastikas. I think that’s an absurd comparison, and typical of how this issue is getting derailed. First, defacing private or public property with graffiti is not comparable to publishing something in a newspaper: the latter involves a regulated medium (newspapers), while the former involves activity that’s a priori illegal (destruction or defacement of public or private property). And there are libel laws that apply to publications. Second, a cartoon that “offends” a group’s religious beliefs is not comparable to a symbol (the swastika) that will now be forever associated with a murderous and criminal government intent on the genocide of an entire people, continent-wide. It’s just an absurd comparison, but that’s what this has come to.

Meanwhile, the imams who preached hatred in Denmark — and then took their lies to Egypt and Afghanistan, spreading absurd propaganda about 120 cartoons — were protected in Denmark by freedom of speech laws. They took that freedom, twisted it into lies, and deliberately planted the seeds that bloomed into “spontaneous” riots across the Muslim countries of the Middle East. They should go to jail.

There’s a bigger problem here: regardless of what the West does, fundamentalist hate-mongers will continue to look for opportunities to incite violence against anyone who disagrees with them. What the Western press should perhaps be doing is giving the moderate Danish Muslims (and other moderate Muslims elsewhere) more of a voice, and being respectful and encouraging of moderate Muslims anywhere in the West who stand up to and oppose their bigotted imams.

I harped on this in comments to my own entry yesterday (Connecting dots?), which readers can see there. I’m going to point again to Irshad Manji in closing, whose Project Ijtihad is nothing less than an attempt to reform Islam from within. Take a listen to her MP3 message, also cited in the previous comment: “There’s a toxic alchemy of duplicity and complacency among Muslims today, including those of us [Muslims] in the West. The way to promote tolerance is to actively tackle the intolerance that’s percolating in our own ranks.”

Joseph Duemer posted about this, too, and I commented there as follows:

This whole issue (and how it’s being mediated) has left me feeling very dispirited. In the west, we’ve made “iconoclasm” into a kind of on-the-edge virtue, as when we call some famous architect “iconoclastic” because s/he smashes the cliché. To an extent, we’ve internalised our own historical iconoclasm, forgetting just what a barbarous, brutish, and exceedingly violent thing it was. And so we constantly question the clichés, because that’s what good avant-gardists in the iconoclastic army of modernity do.

But have we now reached the point where we’ve evacuated the Enlightenment so that it, too, is just another cliché? Have we reached the point where our “inner iconoclasm” lets violent iconoclasms, fed by bigotted and hate-filled representatives of blinkered fundamentalism, set the tone?

…To which Joe responded, wryly: “Well, there are a lot of people—East & West—who have evacuated the Enlightenment, but I’m still trying to live in the rubble of that noble building.” Indeed. Let’s hope that we aren’t just rearranging the furniture in the parlour (sort of like the deckchairs on the Titanic?).

Addendum to “Connecting the dots”

Several hours ago, I added the following entry to my “Connecting the dots,” which I wrote yesterday but couldn’t post till today because the berkman server was down. Usually I don’t repost, but just now I checked my blog on another computer, and noticed that the addendum didn’t show up — weird. (Not much weirder than technorati telling me that I haven’t posted for nearly 50 days, so chalk it up to digital gremlins or something…) Anyway, here’s my postscript. In many ways this issue represents a mess I don’t want to get into, but I do feel strongly about freedom of the press and freedom of expression, and about imagery in social contexts…

—— ~~~ ——
Addendum:

To see the cartoons as they appeared, click here and scroll down a ways. For an explanation of the images in English words in a different article, click here — this is useful in terms of understanding any Danish text included in the cartoon(s), as well as understanding how the image illustrates a saying or some aspect of Danish popular culture or society. The entire article is worth reading for background information. Do take a look at the images, too: they’re pretty tame as far as cartoons go. Most of them would function easily enough as illustrations, which is what they were commissioned for in the first place. The ensuing row has to do with the fact that Islam forbids any representation of Mohammed, regardless of whether it’s favourable or not, and it has been exacerbated by fundamentalists’ insistence that they be accorded special privileges in western society by having this iconographic ban respected. No other religion that forbids representation of its gods is given this special status, however. Jews cannot sue or threaten to burn down the offices of newspapers (or kill its cartoonists) if they publish images that purport to represent God. (And let’s emphasise “purport”: one of the other things understood in the West is that images are fictions. They are not real. This might in part be a cultural quirk of ours, but it deserves to be admitted as one of our freedoms. If we agree on that basis, we can argue about whether the images are offensive, but we can’t argue from the basis of their “realness.” In part, the current arguments are clashes between literalists and those who are comfortable with fiction. Fundamentalists hate people who feel comfortable with fiction, it seems. To them, modern society is a decadent den of fictionalists who must be brought to heel by literalists.)

Read this article for more on how death threats were issued against the cartoonists months ago, back in December 2005: “The Pakistani religious party Jamaat-e-Islami and its youth branch have offered a bounty for anyone who murders the Danish illustators who drew cartoons of Muhammad for the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten”. Since then — in January 2006 — “Muslim intellectuals and representatives of Muslim organizations in Denmark have visited a number of Muslim countries to ‘explain’ the matter to local political and religious leaders and media. Their ‘explanations’ were biased and inaccurate. The Danish-Egyptian Dialog Center in Cairo says that after meeting with the Muslim representatives from Denmark the Egyptian press has claimed that Danish newspapers are waging a campaign against Islam, that Copenhagen plans to introduce a state censored version of the Koran, that a Danish film is underway ‘to show how horrible Islam is’, and that the matter involves 120 cartoons – not 12.” (See here. In response, the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, responds some days later that he “is shocked at the way in which some Muslims are misrepresenting Denmark in the Islamic world.” See here.)

By the end of last month, Denmark’s moderate Muslims were politely telling the fundamentalists to get lost, but to no avail. See this article:

A group of Muslims in the Danish city of Århus intend to organize a network of Muslims who do not want to be represented by fundamentalist Danish imams or others who preach the Sharia laws and oppression of women. “There is a large group of Muslims in this city who want to live in a secular society and adhere to the principle that religion is an issue between them and God and not something that should involve society,” said Bünyamin Simsek, a city councillor and one of the organizers. Århus witnessed severe riots after the publication of the cartoons in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten last Autumn.

In Copenhagen, too, moderate Muslims are speaking out. Hadi Kahn, an IT consultant and the chairman of the Organization of Pakistani Students in Denmark (OPSA), describes himself as a modern Muslim living in a Western society. He says that he does not feel he is being represented by the Muslim groups. When he goes to the mosque for Friday prayers he says the imam does not say much that is useful for him. “We have no need for imams in Denmark. They do not do anything for us,” he says. According to Mr Kahn the imams are not in touch with Danish society. He says too few of them speak Danish and too few of them are opposed to stoning as a punishment. [More…]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali posted a funny counter-counter cartoon on her website: it depicts a George Smiley-ish fellow in cap and glasses talking to a person in full medieval armour, on whose back a thrown rock is bouncing to the ground. Cap-man points to armoured guy and says, “You’re a cartoonist working on Jyllands-Posten, eh?”. Hirsi Ali incidentally supports solidarity with western freedoms and advocates publishing the cartoons as widely as possible. And if anyone still thinks the cartoons are offensive, take a look at these photographs (i.e., not made-up drawings), also courtesy of Hirsi Ali, which show European-based fundamentalist Muslims protesting with placards that read “Behead those who insult Islam!”; “Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer”; “Exterminate those who slander Islam”; and “Europe you will pay — demolition is on it’s [sic!] way”, among other niceties of tolerance and peace. Oh, and it warns Europeans that they should “Be prepared for the real Holocaust!”

Connecting dots?

Call me paranoid, but here’s something that bothers me: via very different sources, I came across two articles in the www.timesonline.co.uk today (Feb.4/06) that make very similar arguments, albeit for seemingly different purposes. Seemingly. The first, by Simon Jenkins, is called These cartoons don’t defend free speech, they threaten it. It begins with a soothing affirmation of inclusionist sentiments (sentimentality?) that publication of the offending cartoons (and c’mon, you know which ones, unless you’ve been under a rock) cannot be defended under the guise of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and it then goes on to argue that unless the press censors itself (Mr. Jenkins, can you hear yourself here?), governments will be forced to accept the kind of crypto-fascist legislation that was only recently defeated in the UK:

The traditional balance between free speech and respect for the feelings of others is evidently becoming harder to sustain. (…) [um, tradititional, Mr. Jenkins? whatever do you mean?…]

(…) Last week there were demands from some (not all) Muslim leaders for governments to “apologise” for the cartoons and somehow forbid their dissemination. It was a demand that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, commendably rejected. It assumed that governments had in some sense allowed the cartoons and were thus in a position to atone for them. Many governments might be happy to fall into this trap and seek to control deeds for which they may have to apologise. (…)

In all matters of self-regulation the danger is clear. If important institutions, in this case the press, will not practise self-discipline then governments will practise it for them. Ascribing evil consequences to religious faith is a sure way of causing offence. Banning such offence is an equally sure way for a politician to curry favour with a minority and thus advance the authoritarian tendency. The present Home Office needs no such encouragement.

Offending an opponent has long been a feature of polemics, just as challenging the boundaries of taste has been a feature of art. It is rightly surrounded by legal and ethical palisades. These include the laws of libel and slander and concepts such as fair comment, right of reply and not stirring racial hatred. None of them is absolute. All rely on the exercise of judgment by those in positions of power. All rely on that bulwark of democracy, tolerance of the feelings of others. This was encapsulated by Lord Clark in his defining quality of civilisation: courtesy.

Too many politicians would rather not trust the self-restraint of others and would take the power of restraint onto themselves. Recent British legislation shows that a censor is waiting round every corner. This past week must have sent his hopes soaring because of the idiot antics of a few continental journalists.

The best defence of free speech can only be to curb its excess and respect its courtesy. [page one and then page two…]

Got that? Let it sink in: what it means is that we have these wonderful freedoms here, and they’re ever so civilised, don’t you know, and never a nasty word is spoken and never a feeling is ruffled out of place, because — well, because our nice little freedoms are, well, nice, you know, and we don’t go around pissing anyone off, and as long as we don’t go pissing anyone off, then the government gets to play nice, too, you know, and keep everything real friendly, like. See? But if any of youse go pissing people off, well then, don’t come crying to any nice folks in the diplomatic corps if all of a sudden you find yourself with your very own dictatorial government on your hands that’s passing out fascist legislation on the homefront. ‘Cause the government really couldn’t help itself, it had to do something to rein all those nasty uncouth brutes in who weren’t being civilised!

I think I’m going to weep.

And then, on the very same day, I read an opinion piece dated January 27 from the same paper, the www.timesonline.co.uk. It’s by Gerard Baker, and it’s called Prepare yourself for the unthinkable: war against Iran may be a necessity. Mr. Baker, uncannily, sounds just like Mr. Jenkins (or should that read: Mr. Jenkins sounds just like Mr. Baker?). Tewwibly, tewwibly ciwwiwised, don’t you know, as he makes his case for the postmodern post-orwellian white man’s burden:

THE UNIMAGINABLE but ultimately inescapable truth is that we are going to have to get ready for war with Iran. Being of a free-speaking, free-thinking disposition, we generally find in the West that hand-wringing, finger-pointing and second-guessing come more easily to us than cold, strategic thinking. Confronted with nightmarish perils we instinctively choose to seize the opportunity to blame each other, cursing our domestic opponents for the situation they’ve put us in. [More…]

Why do we have to face this “inescapable” truth? Because if we let Iran continue, our very own western governments will be forced (against their terribly civilised will, presumably) to crack down hard on our civil freedoms, all in the effort to keep us safe …from ourselves:

…the kind of society we live in and cherish in the West, a long way from Tehran or Damascus, will change beyond recognition [if Iran continues on its nuclear path and if we don’t pound it into the dust now, according to Baker]. We balk now at intrusive government measures to tap our phones or stop us saying incendiary things in mosques. Imagine how much more our freedoms will be curtailed if our governments fear we are just one telephone call or e-mail, one plane journey or truckload away from another Hiroshima. [More…]

And there you have it, dear civilised ladies and gentlemen: in order to preserve our cherished, civilised civil freedoms, we have to self-censor and make war. Make sense? Good, you may move up in the orwellian ranks.

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Addendum:

To see the cartoons as they appeared, click here and scroll down a ways. For an explanation of the images in English words in a different article, click here — this is useful in terms of understanding any Danish text included in the cartoon(s), as well as understanding how the image illustrates a saying or some aspect of Danish popular culture or society. The entire article is worth reading for background information. Do take a look at the images, too: they’re pretty tame as far as cartoons go. Most of them would function easily enough as illustrations, which is what they were commissioned for in the first place. The ensuing row has to do with the fact that Islam forbids any representation of Mohammed, regardless of whether it’s favourable or not, and it has been exacerbated by fundamentalists’ insistence that they be accorded special privileges in western society by having this iconographic ban respected. No other religion that forbids representation of its gods is given this special status, however. Jews cannot sue or threaten to burn down the offices of newspapers (or kill its cartoonists) if they publish images that purport to represent God. (And let’s emphasise “purport”: one of the other things understood in the West is that images are fictions. They are not real. This might in part be a cultural quirk of ours, but it deserves to be admitted as one of our freedoms. If we agree on that basis, we can argue about whether the images are offensive, but we can’t argue from the basis of their “realness.” In part, the current arguments are clashes between literalists and those who are comfortable with fiction. Fundamentalists hate people who feel comfortable with fiction, it seems. To them, modern society is a decadent den of fictionalists who must be brought to heel by literalists.)

Read this article for more on how death threats were issued against the cartoonists months ago, back in December 2005: “The Pakistani religious party Jamaat-e-Islami and its youth branch have offered a bounty for anyone who murders the Danish illustators who drew cartoons of Muhammad for the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten”. Since then — in January 2006 — “Muslim intellectuals and representatives of Muslim organizations in Denmark have visited a number of Muslim countries to ‘explain’ the matter to local political and religious leaders and media. Their ‘explanations’ were biased and inaccurate. The Danish-Egyptian Dialog Center in Cairo says that after meeting with the Muslim representatives from Denmark the Egyptian press has claimed that Danish newspapers are waging a campaign against Islam, that Copenhagen plans to introduce a state censored version of the Koran, that a Danish film is underway ‘to show how horrible Islam is’, and that the matter involves 120 cartoons – not 12.” (See here. In response, the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, responds some days later that he “is shocked at the way in which some Muslims are misrepresenting Denmark in the Islamic world.” See here.)

By the end of last month, Denmark’s moderate Muslims were politely telling the fundamentalists to get lost, but to no avail. See this article:

A group of Muslims in the Danish city of Århus intend to organize a network of Muslims who do not want to be represented by fundamentalist Danish imams or others who preach the Sharia laws and oppression of women. “There is a large group of Muslims in this city who want to live in a secular society and adhere to the principle that religion is an issue between them and God and not something that should involve society,” said Bünyamin Simsek, a city councillor and one of the organizers. Århus witnessed severe riots after the publication of the cartoons in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten last Autumn.

In Copenhagen, too, moderate Muslims are speaking out. Hadi Kahn, an IT consultant and the chairman of the Organization of Pakistani Students in Denmark (OPSA), describes himself as a modern Muslim living in a Western society. He says that he does not feel he is being represented by the Muslim groups. When he goes to the mosque for Friday prayers he says the imam does not say much that is useful for him. “We have no need for imams in Denmark. They do not do anything for us,” he says. According to Mr Kahn the imams are not in touch with Danish society. He says too few of them speak Danish and too few of them are opposed to stoning as a punishment. [More…]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali posted a funny counter-counter cartoon on her website: it depicts a George Smiley-ish fellow in cap and glasses talking to a person in full medieval armour, on whose back a thrown rock is bouncing to the ground. Cap-man points to armoured guy and says, “You’re a cartoonist working on Jyllands-Posten, eh?”. Hirsi Ali incidentally supports solidarity with western freedoms and advocates publishing the cartoons as widely as possible. And if anyone still thinks the cartoons are offensive, take a look at these photographs (i.e., not made-up drawings), also courtesy of Hirsi Ali, which show European-based fundamentalist Muslims protesting with placards that read “Behead those who insult Islam!”; “Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer”; “Exterminate those who slander Islam”; and “Europe you will pay — demolition is on it’s [sic!] way”, among other niceties of tolerance and peace. Oh, and it warns Europeans that they should “Be prepared for the real Holocaust!”