Free Days...

For anyone wondering what to do on your "free" days:

Via twitpic.

Tom & Jerry -- The Final Show...

I obviously have too much time on my hands if I have the time to find things like this. However, it must be noted that I am not the only one with too much time on their hands. Someone had to go to all that trouble to create it in the first place.

I am not sure that I will ever be able to watch Tom & Jerry ever again. I think I might now be scarred for life!

Should this have a "viewer discretion is advised" disclaimer?

Good Governance -- Indonesian Style?

I found the above on one of my recent internet surf trips. I figure it is worth posting here.

I find that it makes an interesting comment on the current state of play in Indonesia. Some might agree with the message it is advocating. Others might vehemently oppose the insinuations that it makes.

Who would have ever thought that SBY would be taking lessons from the former president, and now deceased, Soeharto.

In any event, it is worth a look.

Islam and Terror...

I found this cartoon here. The original can be found here.

It will be interesting to read any comments. Although, I am not expecting any comments. However, the cartoon could be construed to be offensive or it might reinforce the beliefs of many that perhaps the terrorists are misinterpreting religion and in fact facing the wrong way.

The cartoon could have been drawn for any religion. Nevertheless, there has been a tendency since 9/11 to link Islam with terror, and I think that this cartoon says something about that connection or lack thereof.

Team America -- Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Il

Is It Just A Cartoon?

I am not going to re-post the offending cartoons here. For no other reason than I did not bother to save them. I did not find them particularly funny and I did not see them as making any real political statement worthy of debating.

The issue for me is one of how seriously must this matter be dealt with? When does a cartoon cease being a cartoon and become something else that is worthy of this much debate? What are the legal implications and ramifications considering the government seems certain to pursue this to its conclusion?

The cartoons that were hosted on the Wordpress hosted blog depicted the Prophet and his wives. The accompanying text was written in Indonesian. Therefore, the assumption is that the blogger is Indonesian and that they are based here. I am not sure how this conclusion has been reached. Perhaps there is more information that has not been released to I have yet to see on this matter. I know quite a few non-Indonesians that can read, write, and speak in Indonesian.

The response to the cartoons has seen Wordpress close off the link. There has been demands that Wordpress divulge the identity of the blogger or perhaps information that might lead to the uncovering of the identity of the mysterious and currently anonymous blogger. There have been claims that if Wordpress does not provide this information that the Indonesian National Police Force's digital forensic squad will get in on the act and find the information itself.

However, it is the responses from others that are worthy of some consideration.

Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, spokesman for Hizbut Tahrir, has declared that shutting down access is not enough. The government must conduct a full investigation and when the blogger is uncovered he must be punished according to Islamic law and that the death penalty must apply once the blogger's guilt has been determined.

Hidayat Nur Wahid, who maintains a significant affiliation with the Prosperous Justice Party which he once chaired, has described the cartoons as "an act of terrorism against the Muslim people," and something that the authorities must deal with firmly.

So, I guess my question is, "when is a cartoon not just a cartoon?"

Anonymous Blogging, Wordpress, and the Prophet

This story is a couple of days old and I have been too lazy to write about it before. However, I figured I should as I have recently made a presentation relating to the recently enacted Information and Electronic Transactions Law (ITE Law).

The story is that there is an anonymous blogger in town and they are posting a comic strip of the Prophet Muhammad which has riled the sensibilities of many Muslims. What caught my attention was the headline in the Jakarta Post which reads "Govt to pressurize Wordpress into disclosing blogger's ID". I am not sure that pressurize is the right word for this sentence. I am guessing that it is like terrorizing using pressure to get a pressurize situation.

The language choices aside, there are just a couple of points that are worth making here.

If you think that you are anonymous then make sure that you are smart enough to know how to use the technology to make it so. The government is demanding that Wordpress reveal the identity of the blogger because the content of the offending blog is deemed to be a cyber crime. The threat is that if Wordpress does not disclose the blogger's identity then the National Police Force's Digital Forensic Lab is going to get involved and uncover the blogger's identity themselves.

It seems that there is still a fair amount of road to be travelled in terms of what constitutes free speech and freedom of expression, particularly in light of Article 27 of the new ITE Law.

Freedom of Speech Under Attack?

I am an advocate of free speech. I have never considered free speech to be an absolute right but rather one that is modified by defamation laws and protected by an ability to prove what one says.

However, it seems that this freedom of speech is slowly but surely being whittled away as vilification and hatred laws are introduced to the regulatory framework and discourse is restricted to agreed truths that cannot be questioned.

This is a direct attack on the freedom of speech! The cartoon is a statement about the Canadian Human Rights Commission system and it can be found here at the FreedomSite Blog.

I have always wondered for example why it was wrong to publish a cartoon of Muhammad, or more specifically how that was any more wrong than say publishing a cartoon of Jesus or Buddha or some other religious icon?

I have always wondered why there cannot be academic debate say on the holocaust or why saying that the numbers of Jews killed under the "Final Solution" might not have been six million. To my mind there is no doubting that Nazi Germany as led by Adolf Hitler adopted a policy known as the "final solution" and that the purpose was to rid Europe of the Jews.

Yet, I do not understand the fear of having to defend this position. If someone questions whether the gas chambers were capable of poisoning the number of people claimed, then they are labeled anti-Semitic and threatened with jail. Where is the free speech in that and who is protecting the rights of these people to exercise their right to free speech?

Or is it the case that when you want to talk about Muhammad or Israel or other things you can only do so within the "agreed" discourse and to stray from this very limited path makes you a criminal?

Whatever happened to the idea that I might disagree with what you say but I will fight for your right to say it.

How can we ever live in a truly functioning democracy if the narrative and the discourse is dictated by the few? Many vilification and hatred and denial laws are used purely for the purpose of stifling legitimate debate. And, this is a sad development and sets back our ability to live in peace and harmony with each other as these laws foster the ill-will and hatred that they seek to overcome.

It is time that we started behaving like adults rather than allowing our politicians to regulate us like we are children.

The freedom of speech must be a freedom to disagree, a freedom to challenge, and a freedom to question. Anything less makes a mockery of the freedom of speech as a legitimate human right.

Thus endeth the sermon!

Political Correctness vs. A Sense of Humour

As I am prone to do in the wee hours of the morning I have been surfing the Internet and amusing myself with the myriad of sites that are there to be seen. I came across the cartoon that I have posted here. My first reaction was to smile.

Nevertheless, the PC radar clicks in and my mind wanders to heated debates about whether a burqa can be worn for a photo on some one's driver's licence or in some one's passport. Then it wanders to whether the State can regulate whether a Muslim child or girl can where the hijab at school.

This all happens from a single cartoon that is designed to challenge our politically correct biases while making us laugh at ourselves.

I wonder what is your view on this cartoon.

Superheroes Past Their Prime

I guess small things amuse small minds. Nevertheless, I found these cartoons to be very humorous indeed. Everyone grows old and I guess superheroes are no different to the rest of us!

I believe these cartoons are from the mind of Donald Soffritti. I stumbled across his blog in my travels and the cartoons are great. I cannot read it all because it is in Italian and I do not speak or read any Italian yet (I plan to learn)...

Funny Cartoon

Keeping with the cartoon theme. My blogging colleague Rima has this uncanny ability to find really funny crap and then post it to her blog. I should probably not be such a lazy bastard and surf the Internet and find funny crap of my own but hey Rima does such a good job at finding it in the first place so I figure why not just steal it from her and re-post it in my own blog with credit?

I have always thought that this particular line should be in the pick-up artists Hall of Fame! What is more classic than a line that involves a shadowy organization and a place to park your member until such time as the said shadowy organization disappears. The line is universal in that you simply insert the name of your local shadowy organization and you have a line for the ages!

Cartoons

These cartoons are sure to offend someone and they are not even of the Prophet Muhammad or that other Prophet, Jesus...For the others who read this and check out these cartoons they might even put a smile on your dial!

This is also a reason I should not be on holidays even when it is a national holiday. I should just go to the office and pretend to be inspired to be working. Simply, holidays means too much time to be surfing the Internet for cartoons like this...enjoy!

All cartoons were sourced from this site via this one.


Ummmm...goes without saying, doesn't it?

Friends like these? Open house...

Selfish or what?

Never really liked Reese's and now I know why!

See Mum! Experimentation with drugs and alcohol can have positive outcomes too!

Argh...does this remind you of anyone?

I might have even eaten Rice Bubbles (brand in Australia) if this had been their marketing campaign when I was a kid!

Is it time for a good waxing?

Bashir and Tourists

This is old news but I just found this cartoon while surfing the Internet for other interesting cartoons to publish and offend my readers with. It is OK to publish cartoon depictions of Muslims, right? Just not of the Prophet, right?

Bashir (Ba'asyir) is somewhat renowned for his calls to violence against the infidels and his desire to form a pan-Islamic Caliphate in Southeast Asia. So, his comments implying that foreigners are nothing more than worms, snakes, and maggots is hardly surprising! Pretty tame stuff really. I would have thought each of these things are one of God's creatures and have been created with a purpose in mind. I might have been a little more offended if he had have called me Satan's love child or something similar!

However, his calls to violence and statements to the fact that it would be OK to beat tourists up is extreme and must be considered as an incitement to violence. He should be called on this and be punished according to the law if the alleged statements are proven true. There is supposedly a video of this speech but in a quick search before writing this post I could not find it. If I do track it down I will post it as a link.

This is not an issue of free speech. As I have posted many times, with free speech comes great responsibility. This is not a man exercising his right to free speech but rather an abuse of free speech to preach hatred and violence. Free speech must be protected and hate speech and vilification must be prosecuted. This is simply not a case of one person's free speech being another person's vilification!

I have been pinged recently on another forum for quoting from the movie Forrest Gump! Apparently, quoting from a movie casts some degree of doubt on my ability to make rational or logical argument -- essentially I was an intellectual minnow in the big scheme of things, oh well.

Anyway, as Forrest would say in this case "stupid is as stupid does!"

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

Killing the Cartoonist!

Sometimes I might be at a loss for words but this is not one of those times!

Surabaya and Medan, Indonesia's second and third largest cities respectively, endured protests about the re-publication of 12 cartoons depicting the image of the Prophet Muhammad. The issue here is a prohibition against the publication of any depiction of the Prophet. Presumably this prohibition also extends to non-Muslims as protestors in both cities demanded that the cartoonist here be arrested and put to death. I would guess a trial would not be necessary because there is already an aknowledgement (admission or confession) from the cartoonist that he drew the 'offending' cartoons.

I guess we can just cut to the chase and be off with this poor fellows head!

Aside from the obvious freedom of speech and freedom of expression issues that permeate this debate there is the issue of whether the response is proportional and whether it does more harm or good to the perception of Islam being a tolerant faith.

The freedoms of speech and expression are not absolute and not without some restriction, but it does not appear on face value that these cartoons have breached this standard. Sure, they are offensive to some members of the community and by the world-wide response here this community is not just in Denmark! This has culminated in the recent arrest of some individuals plotting to bring the cartoonist to justice by murdering him for his alleged misdeeds in drawing cartoons of the Prophet.

The fact that these type of protests get off the ground and draw considerable numbers in Indonesia, which promotes itself as practicing a tolerant and moderate form of Islam, highlights and plays into the hands of those fear-mongerers suggesting that radical Islam and fundamentalists are taking over the religion debate and Indonesia is on the path to a much less tolerant demeanor towards those who are non-Muslim. This is even more of a concern when the debate is characterized as one of being either your with us or against us! Simply, the debate degenerates into one of the enemies of Islam doing whatever they can to undermine the true faith (Islam) including the publishing of cartoons.

In response at the time, and if I am not mistaken, my "favourite" Islamic hardliner, the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, held a competition that allowed entrants to take the proverbial 'piss' by drawing cartoons intended to offend all Christians and Jews. By all accounts entries were few and the majority of those seemed to be directed at Jews and the holocaust. This would fit though with the Zionist conspiracy beliefs of Ahmadinejad and his continued statements regarding the fiction, as he sees it, of the holocaust...

It seems that engaging in rational debate and defending the positions that we adopt has been replaced by the idea of vigilante justice where one kills first and asks questions later. It is a fine line between freely expressing offensive ideas and crossing over into the less savoury territory of vilification. But perhaps this is not a decision that should be made by the court of public opinion but rather by learned judges if the sentence demanded is death.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind!"

Tempo and the Last Supper

Religious satire and the question of blasphemy rises again in Indonesia. The furore that accompanied the publishing of cartoons depicting the image of the Prophet Muhammad has now turned to Indonesian Catholics being offended by a cover on Tempo Magazine depicting the Last Supper with Jesus and his Disciples replaced by the happy and smiling heads of Soeharto and his kiddies!

This is a case of making a mountain out of a mole hill and the fact that some Indonesian Catholics are forcing the issue by suing Tempo is another attack on the freedom of the press. That said, the cartoons of the Prophet, and Koran / Haddith teachings aside that prevent the rendering of the image of the Prophet in any form, the question of double standard is sure to be asked.

When it is all said and done, and even giving much leeway to the genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, the painting of the Last Supper is no more than one artists interpretation of what might have been. Any reader of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code will probably be able to provide you with all sorts of conspiracy and trivial pursuit knowledge of the coming into being of DaVinci's Last Supper. But it is but a painting.

What is more surpising is the rapid nature in which Tempo backed down and apologized for the offence. There is nothing to apologize for here...

On the cartoon front. It is being reported that Danish police have foiled a murder plot that was being hatched to target and kill the cartoonist who dared publish cartoons depicting the image of the Prophet.

A threat to the freedom of thought and expression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere -- freedom of thought, expression, religion, and democracy must be defended wherever it needs to be...as Thomas Jefferson once said:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

May we one day find the tolerance that this world will so desperately need to survive its human occupation!