The Danish cartoons affair, a critical chronology
1. In September 2005, Flemming Rose, culture editor for the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, which in April 2003 engaged in self-censorship by declining to publish drawings lampooning Jesus Christ on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers, ACTIVELY SOLICITED IMAGES OFFENSIVE TO MUSLIMS by asking 25 (or 40, it depends which account you read) 'cartoonists to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad, something that is proscribed by Islamic law as blasphemous. Spelling out the provocative and inflammatory aim of this exercise, the chief editor said its purpose was “to examine whether people would succumb to self-censorship, as we have seen in other cases when it comes to Muslim issues.”' (NOTE)
Commentary: Please note that Jyllands-Posten solicited images not texts. It could, for example, have asked 25 or 40 historians to write short pieces on Islamic topics. But it didn't solicit texts. Obviously, the idea was to ensure that Muslims would be inflamed, a goal that could only be achieved by means of images. (Texts wouldn't have worked, because they would have to be translated before most Muslims would understand them and in any case texts would not contravene any of Islam's central doctrines and so would be much less likely to precipitate violence.) It's almost superfluous to point out that the Danish media, like the media in almost every non-Muslim country in the world, indulges in extensive self-censorship when it comes to Jewish issues. So when do we get to see Jyllands-Posten test the boundaries of self-censorship in relation to, for example, the Holocaust?
BELOW: Flemming Rose, the man behind the Danish cartoons scandal. According to Christopher Bollyn, Rose 'has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons behind the "war on terror."' He's apparently working in cahoots with key necon Daniel Pipes.
2. The newspaper proceeded to publish twelve of the drawings on September 30 causing a predictable uproar in Danish Muslim communities.
3. In October, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen 'refused to meet with the ambassadors of eleven predominantly Muslim countries who had requested a meeting to discuss their objections to the cartoons. Setting the tone for the ensuing developments, Rasmussen declared that the cartoons were a legitimate exercise in press freedom, and implied that there was nothing to discuss.' He added that he had no power - and wanted no power - to restrict freedom of the press in Denmark.
Commentary: Can you imagine Rasmussen not agreeing to meet with leaders of Jewish groups if, for example, Jyllands-Posten had published cartoons relating to the Holocaust suggesting that it was a hoax? Incidentally, Rasmussen does not seem to be very well-informed about Danish law. The Danish Constitution does indeed grant the right to free expression, but it does so on the basis that people are accountable for what they say or do. Here's section 77. It states: 'Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing, and in speech, subject to being held responsible in a court of law.' [My emphasis added.] What's more, the Danish Penal Code, Section 266b states: 'Any person who publicly or with the intention of dissemination to a wide circle of people makes a statement or imparts other information threatening, insulting, or degrading a group of persons on account of their race, color, or national or ethnic origin, belief or sexual orientation shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.'
4. In late November 2005, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, the leader of a radical Islamist group in Denmark, the Islamic Society of Denmark, toured the Middle East to publicize the images. In order to make sure that Muslims were duly incensed, he brought along with him three additional images, which Jyllands-Posten had not published and which, in fact, had not been published in any media source. Akhmad Akkari, spokesman of the Danish Muslim organisations which organised the tour, claims they were sent to him anonymously. 'Akkari claimed he does not know the origin of the three pictures. He said they had been sent anonymously to Danish Muslims. However, when Ekstra Bladet asked if it could talk to these Muslims, Akkari refused to reveal their identity.' The supplementary pictures can be viewed here.
Commentary: This is your smoking gun. Either someone at Jyllands-Posten sent Akkari the pictures in order to manipulate him or he's a willing accomplice in this operation, perhaps a tool of Danish intelligence.
5. In January 2006, the Swedish newspaper Expressen printed two of the drawings in conjunction with an article discussing the event and major newspapers in Norway had printed facsimiles from Jyllands-Posten and reproduced all the caricatures in their online versions. Then, on January 10, shortly after the U.S. government reprimanded a minister in the Norwegian government for speaking out in support of a boycott of Israeli goods and services, a Norwegian Christian evangelical [= Christian Zionist] magazine, Magazinet, decided to republish the Danish cartoons. All these media outlets - and Magazinet was actually the least important of them all - did so in full knowledge of the reality that the republication of the cartoons were likely to inflame domestic Muslim communities.
Commentary: It looks to me as though, by January 2006, those behind this particular psy-op (Rasmussen, Pipes and Rose?) were getting very pissed off indeed that the Danish controversy hadn't started any fireworks yet. Clearly, the idea was to spread the tinder around more widely in the hope that sooner or later there would come the spark necessary to start a conflagration.
6. A Norwegian man made death threats against Magazinet staff, but later claimed, when questioned by the police, that the threat had been a hoax.
Commentary: Who was this man, who was apparently not a Muslim (or he would have been identified as such)? And was his aim to ensure that the cartoons garnered more publicity than something published in Magazinet would normally deserve?
7. In late January, Saudi Arabia and Syria [one source says Libya instead of Syria] recalled their ambassadors from Denmark and the Saudi regime initiated a consumer boycott of Danish goods. (The boycott has since spread to include several other countries, including the Sudan.)
Commentary: Why the hell didn't the Saudis take this action when Denmark participated in the invasion of Iraq? Denmark's hostile intentions towards the Muslim world were already fully apparent then.
8. The Danish-Swedish dairy company Arla Foods, the second largest dairy producer in Europe, 'was badly hit by the boycott. The company, which had annual sales of some 480 million USD in the Middle East, saw its sales in the region plummet to nil as Muslim shopkeepers pulled Danish products off the shelves. "We have taken 40 years to build up a very big business in the Middle East, and we've seen it come to a complete stop in five days," company spokeswoman Astrid Gade Niels told the BBC. "Our sales in the Middle East have come to a complete stop - in all countries in the region," she said. "We have found ourselves in the middle of a game that we have no part in."'
Commentary: Too bad. In any case, you can bet your right leg that Arla Foods, like all big exporters, is a big supporter of the pro-big business Rasmussen government.
9. Much too late, the Danish government and Jyllands-Posten issued statements of regret. However, Rose remained unrepentant and had the audacity to compare himself to a rape victim.
10. Despite the intensifying controversy and the boycott of Danish goods, an Icelandic newspaper and a French newspaper whose chief editor is a Jew, Arnaud Levy, France Soir republished the cartoons. Other newspapers in France, including Le Monde and the (formerly liberal) Libération, followed suit.
Commentary: Who in France decided it was time to teach the Muslims a lesson in 'free speech'? Sarkozy?
11. Then newspapers and magazines in virtually every major European country decided to republish the cartoons! 'The German newspapers Die Welt [which is owned by Zionist and all-round ratbag Axel Springer], Die Tageszeitung, Tagesspiegel and Berliner Zeitung, the Dutch papers Volksrant, NRC Handelsblad and Elsevier, Italy’s La Stampa and Corriere della Sera, Spain’s El Periodico and two Dutch-language newspapers in Belgium were among those that published some or all of the cartoons' in the space of just a few days. 'In Britain, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 all showed some of the cartoons on television news broadcasts.' Muslim anger surged in about half the Muslim countries. Scandinavians travelling in the Middle East, as well as other Europeans who look Scandinavian, found their lives at risk.
12. Attacks on Danish and Norwegian consulates take place in several Middle Eastern countries. Bizarrely, there is no shortage of Danish flags for the protestors to burn. Writing in the neocon propaganda rag the Telegraph, Charles Moore - who points out that Danish flags are not normally in plentiful supply in Gaza - quite rightly wonders where all the flags came from. 'It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking.'
Commentary: For once I agree with a Telegraph columnist! (The rest of the column is 'clash of civilizations' trash, though.) That said, the below photo of the Gaza protest does not show many Danish flags and the one that can be seen looks like it was cobbled together in about half an hour.
13. Improbably, the only government to issue a sensible statement concerning the cartoons was the Bush administration, one of the biggest enemies of free speech in the world: '“These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims,” said a department spokesman, adding, “We fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.”'
Commentary: Wow, what a sophisticated psy-op! Muslims come out looking bad, the most progressive countries in Europe come out looking bad and will henceforth less be trusted as intermediaries in Middle East conflicts, and the Bush administration emerges squeaky-clean! You really have to take your hat off to Rasmussen, Pipes and Rose over this one!
14. In Denmark, the penny finally drops: 'Now it has become more than a case about the drawings: Now there are forces that want a confrontation between our cultures ... It is in no one's interest, neither them or us,' Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Danish radio.
Commentary: Duh! How could a country have a foreign minister so dumb that he didn't know already that 'there are forces that want a confrontation between our cultures': What the fuck do you think the war in Iraq (in which Denmark's involved) is about, you goon!
15. According to a London neocon propaganda rag, the Danish cartoonists responsible for the offending cartoons are in hiding for fear of their lives.
Commentary: This is probably a load of bollocks. I'm sure Danish security is looking after them very well, thank you. However, sooner or later one of them is bound to get set up by Danish intelligence and beheaded. Then the Danish people will really have something to hate Muslims for! Stay tuned for the sequel story "Danish cartoonist hunted down in Roskilde today was skewered and kebabed by angry Turk."
16. The Danish cartoonists have decided to use all the money raised from the sales of the pictures to set up a foundation which will award an annual international prize for press freedom.
Commentary: Wouldn't it be a better idea, guys, to mend fences with the world's Muslims by giving the money to a Muslim charity or something? Perhaps for the victims of the recent earthquake in Pakistan? Funny how the idea of restorative justice no longer seems to exist. Well, it exists for Jews, who are still bilking Germany for Holocaust reparations, but not for Muslims or virtually anyone else.
17. Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based media monitor, loses all credibility after its secretary general, Robert Ménard, supported the publication of the cartoons saying, 'All countries in Europe should be behind the Danes and Danish authorities to defend the principle that a newspaper can write what it wishes to, even if it offends people. I understand that it may shock Muslims, but being shocked is part of the price of being informed,' he told The New York Times.
Commentary: I find it extremely offensive when someone decides that their freedoms can be pursued irrespective of its cost to others. This strikes me as the worst egotism. There's a big difference between, say, the right to fart (which I support) and the right to fart right in someone's face (which I don't). The first is fair enough, the second a hostile act. What this furore is about is really an incident comparable to the latter. It's also extremely hard to see how defamatory cartoons of Mohammed could be construed as 'information.' It's also an incredibly hypocritical position for Reporters without Borders to take since there are a great many topics the newspapers who've published these cartoons would never touch in a million years, for fear of offending their owners, or corporate and Zionist lobby groups. Apparently, it's only when Muslims are the targets that press freedom becomes absolute.
18. The Arab European League, a Belgian-Dutch Islamic political organisation, remains the only organization so far to take advantage of the new definition of 'free speech,' which has been broadened so that it now applies to deliberate attempts to insult people's most cherished beliefs, when it ran anti-Jewish cartoons on its website, including one showing Anne Frank in bed with Hitler. It is not known whether Jyllands-Posten has been approached to republish them.
19. In Sydney, Australia, blogger Social Democracy Now, who normally buys a good deal of cheese from Denmark, decides that from he will be boycotting Danish dairy products from now on. He sends an email to Jyllands-Posten inviting them to break through the wall of self-censorship that has attached to Zionism by actively soliciting cartoons recycling the old anti-semitic stereotypes that have suppressed in most parts of the West since the 1930s.
20. Flemming Rose persists in making disingenuous statements. '[A]s an editor, as a newspaperman, as long as I'm operating within the law, as long as I am not breaking any code of conduct in the Danish context, I cannot apologize for that.' (SOURCE)
Commentary: In fact, Rose and Jyllands-Posten have broken Danish law, specifically Section 266b of the Danish Penal Code, (See point 3 above.)
CONCLUSION: I tend to agree with Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones that 'The riots that are currently sweeping across Europe and the Middle East in response to caricatures of Mohammed that were originally printed in Danish newspapers are staged managed and are helping the Neo-Cons advance the "clash of civilizations" that they need to impose world order and imperial hegemony.'
NOTE: The chief sources for this chronology were 1, 2 and 3. Additional information was grabbed from all over the place and much too much trouble to try to list.
Commentary: Please note that Jyllands-Posten solicited images not texts. It could, for example, have asked 25 or 40 historians to write short pieces on Islamic topics. But it didn't solicit texts. Obviously, the idea was to ensure that Muslims would be inflamed, a goal that could only be achieved by means of images. (Texts wouldn't have worked, because they would have to be translated before most Muslims would understand them and in any case texts would not contravene any of Islam's central doctrines and so would be much less likely to precipitate violence.) It's almost superfluous to point out that the Danish media, like the media in almost every non-Muslim country in the world, indulges in extensive self-censorship when it comes to Jewish issues. So when do we get to see Jyllands-Posten test the boundaries of self-censorship in relation to, for example, the Holocaust?
BELOW: Flemming Rose, the man behind the Danish cartoons scandal. According to Christopher Bollyn, Rose 'has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons behind the "war on terror."' He's apparently working in cahoots with key necon Daniel Pipes.
2. The newspaper proceeded to publish twelve of the drawings on September 30 causing a predictable uproar in Danish Muslim communities.
3. In October, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen 'refused to meet with the ambassadors of eleven predominantly Muslim countries who had requested a meeting to discuss their objections to the cartoons. Setting the tone for the ensuing developments, Rasmussen declared that the cartoons were a legitimate exercise in press freedom, and implied that there was nothing to discuss.' He added that he had no power - and wanted no power - to restrict freedom of the press in Denmark.
Commentary: Can you imagine Rasmussen not agreeing to meet with leaders of Jewish groups if, for example, Jyllands-Posten had published cartoons relating to the Holocaust suggesting that it was a hoax? Incidentally, Rasmussen does not seem to be very well-informed about Danish law. The Danish Constitution does indeed grant the right to free expression, but it does so on the basis that people are accountable for what they say or do. Here's section 77. It states: 'Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing, and in speech, subject to being held responsible in a court of law.' [My emphasis added.] What's more, the Danish Penal Code, Section 266b states: 'Any person who publicly or with the intention of dissemination to a wide circle of people makes a statement or imparts other information threatening, insulting, or degrading a group of persons on account of their race, color, or national or ethnic origin, belief or sexual orientation shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.'
4. In late November 2005, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, the leader of a radical Islamist group in Denmark, the Islamic Society of Denmark, toured the Middle East to publicize the images. In order to make sure that Muslims were duly incensed, he brought along with him three additional images, which Jyllands-Posten had not published and which, in fact, had not been published in any media source. Akhmad Akkari, spokesman of the Danish Muslim organisations which organised the tour, claims they were sent to him anonymously. 'Akkari claimed he does not know the origin of the three pictures. He said they had been sent anonymously to Danish Muslims. However, when Ekstra Bladet asked if it could talk to these Muslims, Akkari refused to reveal their identity.' The supplementary pictures can be viewed here.
Commentary: This is your smoking gun. Either someone at Jyllands-Posten sent Akkari the pictures in order to manipulate him or he's a willing accomplice in this operation, perhaps a tool of Danish intelligence.
5. In January 2006, the Swedish newspaper Expressen printed two of the drawings in conjunction with an article discussing the event and major newspapers in Norway had printed facsimiles from Jyllands-Posten and reproduced all the caricatures in their online versions. Then, on January 10, shortly after the U.S. government reprimanded a minister in the Norwegian government for speaking out in support of a boycott of Israeli goods and services, a Norwegian Christian evangelical [= Christian Zionist] magazine, Magazinet, decided to republish the Danish cartoons. All these media outlets - and Magazinet was actually the least important of them all - did so in full knowledge of the reality that the republication of the cartoons were likely to inflame domestic Muslim communities.
Commentary: It looks to me as though, by January 2006, those behind this particular psy-op (Rasmussen, Pipes and Rose?) were getting very pissed off indeed that the Danish controversy hadn't started any fireworks yet. Clearly, the idea was to spread the tinder around more widely in the hope that sooner or later there would come the spark necessary to start a conflagration.
6. A Norwegian man made death threats against Magazinet staff, but later claimed, when questioned by the police, that the threat had been a hoax.
Commentary: Who was this man, who was apparently not a Muslim (or he would have been identified as such)? And was his aim to ensure that the cartoons garnered more publicity than something published in Magazinet would normally deserve?
7. In late January, Saudi Arabia and Syria [one source says Libya instead of Syria] recalled their ambassadors from Denmark and the Saudi regime initiated a consumer boycott of Danish goods. (The boycott has since spread to include several other countries, including the Sudan.)
Commentary: Why the hell didn't the Saudis take this action when Denmark participated in the invasion of Iraq? Denmark's hostile intentions towards the Muslim world were already fully apparent then.
8. The Danish-Swedish dairy company Arla Foods, the second largest dairy producer in Europe, 'was badly hit by the boycott. The company, which had annual sales of some 480 million USD in the Middle East, saw its sales in the region plummet to nil as Muslim shopkeepers pulled Danish products off the shelves. "We have taken 40 years to build up a very big business in the Middle East, and we've seen it come to a complete stop in five days," company spokeswoman Astrid Gade Niels told the BBC. "Our sales in the Middle East have come to a complete stop - in all countries in the region," she said. "We have found ourselves in the middle of a game that we have no part in."'
Commentary: Too bad. In any case, you can bet your right leg that Arla Foods, like all big exporters, is a big supporter of the pro-big business Rasmussen government.
9. Much too late, the Danish government and Jyllands-Posten issued statements of regret. However, Rose remained unrepentant and had the audacity to compare himself to a rape victim.
10. Despite the intensifying controversy and the boycott of Danish goods, an Icelandic newspaper and a French newspaper whose chief editor is a Jew, Arnaud Levy, France Soir republished the cartoons. Other newspapers in France, including Le Monde and the (formerly liberal) Libération, followed suit.
Commentary: Who in France decided it was time to teach the Muslims a lesson in 'free speech'? Sarkozy?
11. Then newspapers and magazines in virtually every major European country decided to republish the cartoons! 'The German newspapers Die Welt [which is owned by Zionist and all-round ratbag Axel Springer], Die Tageszeitung, Tagesspiegel and Berliner Zeitung, the Dutch papers Volksrant, NRC Handelsblad and Elsevier, Italy’s La Stampa and Corriere della Sera, Spain’s El Periodico and two Dutch-language newspapers in Belgium were among those that published some or all of the cartoons' in the space of just a few days. 'In Britain, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 all showed some of the cartoons on television news broadcasts.' Muslim anger surged in about half the Muslim countries. Scandinavians travelling in the Middle East, as well as other Europeans who look Scandinavian, found their lives at risk.
12. Attacks on Danish and Norwegian consulates take place in several Middle Eastern countries. Bizarrely, there is no shortage of Danish flags for the protestors to burn. Writing in the neocon propaganda rag the Telegraph, Charles Moore - who points out that Danish flags are not normally in plentiful supply in Gaza - quite rightly wonders where all the flags came from. 'It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking.'
Commentary: For once I agree with a Telegraph columnist! (The rest of the column is 'clash of civilizations' trash, though.) That said, the below photo of the Gaza protest does not show many Danish flags and the one that can be seen looks like it was cobbled together in about half an hour.
13. Improbably, the only government to issue a sensible statement concerning the cartoons was the Bush administration, one of the biggest enemies of free speech in the world: '“These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims,” said a department spokesman, adding, “We fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.”'
Commentary: Wow, what a sophisticated psy-op! Muslims come out looking bad, the most progressive countries in Europe come out looking bad and will henceforth less be trusted as intermediaries in Middle East conflicts, and the Bush administration emerges squeaky-clean! You really have to take your hat off to Rasmussen, Pipes and Rose over this one!
14. In Denmark, the penny finally drops: 'Now it has become more than a case about the drawings: Now there are forces that want a confrontation between our cultures ... It is in no one's interest, neither them or us,' Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Danish radio.
Commentary: Duh! How could a country have a foreign minister so dumb that he didn't know already that 'there are forces that want a confrontation between our cultures': What the fuck do you think the war in Iraq (in which Denmark's involved) is about, you goon!
15. According to a London neocon propaganda rag, the Danish cartoonists responsible for the offending cartoons are in hiding for fear of their lives.
Commentary: This is probably a load of bollocks. I'm sure Danish security is looking after them very well, thank you. However, sooner or later one of them is bound to get set up by Danish intelligence and beheaded. Then the Danish people will really have something to hate Muslims for! Stay tuned for the sequel story "Danish cartoonist hunted down in Roskilde today was skewered and kebabed by angry Turk."
16. The Danish cartoonists have decided to use all the money raised from the sales of the pictures to set up a foundation which will award an annual international prize for press freedom.
Commentary: Wouldn't it be a better idea, guys, to mend fences with the world's Muslims by giving the money to a Muslim charity or something? Perhaps for the victims of the recent earthquake in Pakistan? Funny how the idea of restorative justice no longer seems to exist. Well, it exists for Jews, who are still bilking Germany for Holocaust reparations, but not for Muslims or virtually anyone else.
17. Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based media monitor, loses all credibility after its secretary general, Robert Ménard, supported the publication of the cartoons saying, 'All countries in Europe should be behind the Danes and Danish authorities to defend the principle that a newspaper can write what it wishes to, even if it offends people. I understand that it may shock Muslims, but being shocked is part of the price of being informed,' he told The New York Times.
Commentary: I find it extremely offensive when someone decides that their freedoms can be pursued irrespective of its cost to others. This strikes me as the worst egotism. There's a big difference between, say, the right to fart (which I support) and the right to fart right in someone's face (which I don't). The first is fair enough, the second a hostile act. What this furore is about is really an incident comparable to the latter. It's also extremely hard to see how defamatory cartoons of Mohammed could be construed as 'information.' It's also an incredibly hypocritical position for Reporters without Borders to take since there are a great many topics the newspapers who've published these cartoons would never touch in a million years, for fear of offending their owners, or corporate and Zionist lobby groups. Apparently, it's only when Muslims are the targets that press freedom becomes absolute.
18. The Arab European League, a Belgian-Dutch Islamic political organisation, remains the only organization so far to take advantage of the new definition of 'free speech,' which has been broadened so that it now applies to deliberate attempts to insult people's most cherished beliefs, when it ran anti-Jewish cartoons on its website, including one showing Anne Frank in bed with Hitler. It is not known whether Jyllands-Posten has been approached to republish them.
19. In Sydney, Australia, blogger Social Democracy Now, who normally buys a good deal of cheese from Denmark, decides that from he will be boycotting Danish dairy products from now on. He sends an email to Jyllands-Posten inviting them to break through the wall of self-censorship that has attached to Zionism by actively soliciting cartoons recycling the old anti-semitic stereotypes that have suppressed in most parts of the West since the 1930s.
20. Flemming Rose persists in making disingenuous statements. '[A]s an editor, as a newspaperman, as long as I'm operating within the law, as long as I am not breaking any code of conduct in the Danish context, I cannot apologize for that.' (SOURCE)
Commentary: In fact, Rose and Jyllands-Posten have broken Danish law, specifically Section 266b of the Danish Penal Code, (See point 3 above.)
CONCLUSION: I tend to agree with Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones that 'The riots that are currently sweeping across Europe and the Middle East in response to caricatures of Mohammed that were originally printed in Danish newspapers are staged managed and are helping the Neo-Cons advance the "clash of civilizations" that they need to impose world order and imperial hegemony.'
NOTE: The chief sources for this chronology were 1, 2 and 3. Additional information was grabbed from all over the place and much too much trouble to try to list.
