Cartoon Clash of Civilizations

For France to follow the Danish example and publish the cartoons out of spite seems also extremely foolish given that they`ve not yet cleaned up the ashes of the last Paris riots.


Yup..the french haven`t learnt their lesson..maybe muslims need to send them a stronger message..a theo van ghogh type of message..hint hint..

It`s amazing how seemingly level headed writers continue to rationalize the rioting by french muslims, the threats against salman rushdie and the killing of theo van ghogh..

Re: # 51

Arjun M - I have not rationalized the Paris riots, the targeting of Salman Rushdie, or the murder of Theo Van Gogh, neither in this article nor anywhere else on Chowk. To me this verges on the point of slander and you`d better prove your point by showing where exactly I`ve done any of that or retract your statement.

The philly inquirer has printed the cartoons..does that mean american pharmaceuticals won`t be prescribed either?

Look at the bright side..no viagara, no mukhtaran...

Pakistan medical assn to boycott European drugs over cartoons
02.06.2006, 03:43 AM




MULTAN, Pakistan (AFX) - The Pakistan Medical Association has vowed not to prescribe medicines from firms based in some European countries where controversial cartoons portraying the Prophet Mohammed were published, said Shahid Rao, the body`s general secretary for Punjab province.

The association will boycott drugs from Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France to protest the `blasphemous` drawings, Rao said.

#41 by rf786 on February 5, 2006 10:55am PT


Killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians not a good reason for protests? Its amazing how selective amnesia can impair one`s sense of morality.


where were the protests when the paki army killed a whole lot of bangladeshis...

selectivity cuts both ways..

Re: # 49
Dear Quick Draw Mcdraw,
Had you bothered to read my post w/o your anti-Pakitan bllinders you would have noticed that particular statement which you refer to was directed towards Muslim States protesting publication of those offensive cartoons yet fail to say anything about the continued carnage in Iraq. The same analogy can be applied to Pakistani crimes committed against its own people in East Pakistan, or for that matter Indian massacre of Kashmiris,Moros, Senhalese, Bengalese, Sikhs and the list goes on and and and on, like the Energizer Bunny. Maybe we Pakistanis should carry a badge saying ``Dear Arjun, we apologise for the East Pakistan massacre`` that will not satiate your anti-Pak apetitie either. I find your continuous carping and judging Pakistanis on the East Pakistan massacre without even knowing the other persons thoughts and sentiments on that particular episode downright prejuidiced and maliciously centered. Chill dude, your not the only one with a sense of morality.

Mark Steyn hits it out of the park..again...

`Sensitivity` can have brutal consequences

February 5, 2006

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

I long ago lost count of the number of times I`ve switched on the TV and seen crazy guys jumping up and down in the street, torching the Stars and Stripes and yelling ``Death to the Great Satan!`` Or torching the Union Jack and yelling ``Death to the Original If Now Somewhat Arthritic And Semi-Retired Satan!`` But I never thought I`d switch on the TV and see the excitable young lads jumping up and down in Jakarta, Lahore, Aden, Hebron, etc., etc., torching the flag of Denmark.

Denmark! Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza? Well, OK, that`s easy: the nearest European Union Humanitarian Aid and Intifada-Funding Branch Office. But where do you get one in an obscure town on the Punjabi plain on a Thursday afternoon? If I had a sudden yen to burn the Yemeni or Sudanese flag on my village green, I haven`t a clue how I`d get hold of one in this part of New Hampshire. Say what you like about the Islamic world, but they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least when it comes to threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offense or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they`d have.

Meanwhile, back in Copenhagen, the Danes are a little bewildered to find that this time it`s plucky little Denmark who`s caught the eye of the nutters. Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam. The cartoons aren`t particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world ``artists`` ``provoke`` with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries` flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how ``brave`` and ``challenging`` he is. The rule for ``brave`` ``transgressive`` ``artists`` is a simple one: If you`re going to be provocative, it`s best to do it with people who can`t be provoked.

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom ``Will & Grace,`` in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- ``Cruci-fixin`s.`` On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of ``respect`` for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president`s home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Jyllands-Posten wasn`t being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of ``self-censorship`` -- i.e., a climate in which there`s no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it`s better not to.

That`s the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they`ll marvel at how easy it all was. You don`t need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that`s a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural ``sensitivity,`` the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the ``sensitivity`` of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

No doubt he`s similarly impressed by the ``sensitivity`` of Anne Owers, Her Majesty`s Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds that it shows the cross of St. George, which was used by the Crusaders and thus is offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he`s impressed by the ``sensitivity`` of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word ``Allah`` in Arabic script. I don`t know which sura in the Koran says don`t forget, folks, it`s not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be ``sensitive.``

And doubtless the British foreign secretary also appreciates the ``sensitivity`` of the owner of France-Soir, who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the ``sensitivity`` of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy ``Shouf Shouf Habibi!`` on the grounds that ``I don`t want a knife in my chest`` -- which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose ``right to dissent`` all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they`re just being ``sensitive,`` too.

And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the ``sensitivity`` of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard. And maybe he even admires the ``sensitivity`` of the increasing numbers of Dutch people who dislike the pervasive fear and tension in certain parts of the Netherlands and so have emigrated to Canada and New Zealand.

Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a ``diverse`` ``tolerant`` society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.

One day the British foreign secretary will wake up and discover that, in practice, there`s very little difference between living under Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity and Sharia. As a famously sensitive Dane once put it, ``To be or not to be, that is the question.``

© Mark Steyn, 2006

Re: # 48

``Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a ``diverse`` ``tolerant`` society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.``

Well said.

#44 by omar_r_quraishi on February 6, 2006 0:12am PT


-- that is the case in any country in the world, even the US, where notwithstanding the First Amendment, freedom of speech does not extend to hate speech, racist speech, anti-inflammatory material and so on --


Mullah omar...wtf are you smoking..?

If the first amendment doesn`t allow hate speech, why don`t the publications of the national alliance get sued? Why are klan rallies allowed?

You should stick to paki affairs and avoiding commenting on issues regarding the American constitution, something you know nothing about..

Muslims need to realize the simple truth: You DON`T have the right to not have your feelings hurt.

People who threaten others with the Theo Van Ghogh example have brought this on themselves..So someone drew ol`mo with a bomb in his turban..get over it..

omar_r_quraishi:
incitement to violence and branding a group(muslims, jews, arabs, etc. etc.) in hateful terms is a Crime. Moses, Buddha or Mohammad being public figures donot qualify for this cover. I am sure you must be aware of a TV program South Park. if not then enlighten yourself.

German law expressly defines holocaust denial as a crime because (not 100% air tight case) they claim that people who deny holocaust are predominantly racists against jewish people.

kaalchakra:
sir, you are going haywire with your use of socratic irony :-).. problem with your take is that noone has the Right to judge Mohammad in the first place without getting booked for Hell`s deepest compartment.

unbelievable -- none of the `intellectuals` debating here has even vaguely referred to the fact that many european countries including the ones where the cartoons were reprinted have legislation against material seen as being anti-semitic or anti-jewish -- i doubt it very much that any danish newspaper could get away with a cartoon mocking the jews, or moses for that matter, or glorifying hitler, or something to the effect of denying the holocaust -- hey but wait

---

isn`t that also freedom of expression -- i am a practising journalist since 1993 and any moron (and there are of coursem any on chowk as well, some who think they are big tees maar khans/khanees) will know that freedom of speech or expression is not absolute and has a limit -- that is the case in any country in the world, even the US, where notwithstanding the First Amendment, freedom of speech does not extend to hate speech, racist speech, anti-inflammatory material and so on --

unbelievable --

Re: # 44
Dear Mr Qureshi,
Bina Shah posted a link to Simon Jenkin`s article which comes very close to your apprehensions. Enclosed are some excerpts from this article:

``A newspaper is not a monastery, its mind blind to the world and deaf to reaction. Every inch of published print reflects the views of its writers and the judgment of its editors. Every day newspapers decide on the balance of boldness, offence, taste, discretion and recklessness. They must decide who is to be allowed a voice and who not. They are curbed by libel laws, common decency and their own sense of what is acceptable to readers. Speech is free only on a mountain top; all else is editing.

Despite Britons’ robust attitude to religion, no newspaper would let a cartoonist depict Jesus Christ dropping cluster bombs, or lampoon the Holocaust. Pictures of bodies are not carried if they are likely to be seen by family members. Privacy and dignity are respected, even if such restraint is usually unknown to readers. Over every page hovers a censor, even if he is graced with the title of editor.

To imply that some great issue of censorship is raised by the Danish cartoons is nonsense. They were offensive and inflammatory. The best policy would have been to apologise and shut up. For Danish journalists to demand “Europe-wide solidarity” in the cause of free speech and to deride those who are offended as “fundamentalists . . . who have a problem with the entire western world” comes close to racial provocation. We do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence. To be a European should not involve initiation by religious insult.``

Reason why the Jewish angle was not discussed is simply because it is understood by everyone as a given fact. Ofcourse double standards are applied here, then again are Muslims societies not guilty of the same crime?

Danes Finally Apologize to Muslims (But for the Wrong Reasons)

By RACHARD ITANI

In many European countries, there are laws that will land in jail any person who has the chutzpah to deny not only the historicity of the Jewish holocaust, but also the method by which Jews were put to death by the Nazis. In some of these countries, this prohibition goes as far as prosecuting those who would claim or attempt to prove that less than 6 million jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. In none of these countries are there similar laws that threaten people with loss of freedom and wealth for denying that large percentages of gypsies, gays, mentally retarded, and other miscellaneous ``debris of humanity`` were also eliminated by the Jew-slaughtering Nazis.

Quickly now: what defines a hypocrite? Answer: a person who follows the letter of the law, but not its spirit. The laws against anti-semitism are just that: laws against anti-semitism enacted by hypocritical Europeans with blood on their hands from the genocides in their recent and distant past, and much guilt to atone for in their hearts and minds.

The spirit of the law, which would extend this protection to Muslims as well, if not indeed other religious groups, is nowhere to be found in the Western legal code. You can curse the Prophet of the Muslims at will and with total impunity. However, approach the holocaust at your own risks and perils if you do not include in your discussion the standard, ritualistic incantations about the six million Jewish victims of the European Nazis. There is a word for this in the English language: hypocrisy.

I used to have a lot of respect for the Dutch, the Danes, and the Norwegians, and still do. However, I cannot claim that this respect is not more nuanced today. The coloring started when the Dutch, who are invariably and automatically described as being amongst the most ``tolerant`` people in the West, if not the world, proved that their tolerance was little more than skin deep. Their reaction to the murder of Theo Van Gogh was anything but driven by tolerance. They behaved as a mob in reaction to the criminal, despicable action of an extremist and murderer, by painting the whole Dutch muslim community with the same broad brush that Vincent Van Gogh would have eschewed. They burnt Muslim schools and mosques. They directed opprobrium at Muslims in their midst, calling on them ``to go home`` though many had been born in the Netherlands. No subtlety in the Dutch reaction. Just collective anti-semitism which they directed not at the Jews, but at the Jews` cousins, the Muslims.

Then the Danes, who must have felt left out, decided to go the Dutch one better: a Danish paper published cartoons that are no less offensive to Muslims than anti-semitism is to Jews. The cartoons were described by Danish politicians and the press as not provocation, but a principled case of free speech, although many Danish and Scandinavian newspaper editors are on record stating that they published the cartoons as an act of defiance against ``radical Islam.`` This is akin to these ignorant morons recommending that the U.S. ought to nuke Tehran because that would teach Iranian President Ahmadinejad a lesson.

What free speech are we talking about here? The law says thou shalt not utilize or publish anti-semitic language or imagery. Consequently, Danish (and other European) papers will refrain from doing so, lest they fall foul of the law and offend Jewish sensitivities. The law does not say: thou shalt not offend muslims or use imagery that may be deeply offensive to them. So Danish papers will not refrain from doing so, in fact they will go out of their way to offend Muslims both in Denmark and around the world, in the name of ``free speech.`` And the Norwegians? Well, they just decided to follow the Danes down perdition lane, all in the name of holy hypocrisy, so a Norwegian paper also published the offending cartoons. The statement about ``confronting radical Islam`` was in fact made by the Norwegian editor of a newspaper that is described as a ``Norwegian Christian Paper.`` And now that other European papers and Magazines have also followed suit, if there was any doubt that this affair is one of anti-Muslim bias, it was swept away by the statements of the Editor in Chief of Die Welt, the German magazine, who declared that the right to publish the cartoons was ``at the very core of our culture`` and that Europeans cannot ``stop using our journalistic right of freedom of expression within legal boundaries.`` It`s the ``legal boundaries`` qualifier that gives the game away: there are no legal boundaries in Europe protecting Muslims from the same ignominies that the law protects Jews from.

And what further argument does Die Welt put forward to justify its ``legal`` action? `` It pointed out that ``Syrian TV had depicted Jewish rabbis as cannibals.`` You can imagine how helpful a similar argument would hold up in a court of law: ``But your honor, I only killed one guy and raped two women: the other guy killed four and raped 10!`` That a German editor-in-chief of a major German paper should use the ``legal`` argument to justify offending the religious sensitivities of Muslims, when that same ``legal`` framework would see him thrown in jail faster than he could spell the word legal if he offended the sensitivities of Jews, may be a testament at least of his own deep-seated contempt for Muslims. That so many European papers have now reprinted the offensive cartoons is an indication that the contempt for Muslims does not stop with the editor-in-chief of Die Welt.

This whole affair is nothing but an over-reaction to a simple cartoon, you say? Not if you remember a certain other cartoon that appeared in the British newspaper, The Independent, on 27 January 2003. It depicted Prime Minister Sharon of Israel eating the head of a Palestinian child while saying: ``What`s wrong? You`ve never seen a politician kissing babies before?`` Jews in Britain and around the world erupted with indignation, arguably because the depiction reminded them of millennial charges levied against them by Christians who accused them of using the blood of babies in ritualistic killings. You see, Sharon can actually kill, maim and spill the real, actual blood of Palestinian babies: that is not offensive to Zionist Jews and their apologists in the West. But let Sharon be depicted in a cartoon metaphorically as the ogre that he has proved to be in his real life, symbolically eating a Palestinian child, and the world will erupt in offended indignation. A cartoon that is offensive to Muslims, on the other hand, is depicted as nothing but an expression of ``free speech.`` There is a word for this in any language: hypocrisy.

Before the Danish cartoon incident started to evolve into a growing international crisis, the Danish Prime Minister and the publisher of the Danish newspaper that first published the offending cartoons both declared that they would never apologize on grounds of free speech and because publishing the cartoons had not broken any Danish laws. (Yes, the ``no law broken`` argument again.) Yesterday, however, they both ended up apologizing in the face of a growing tsunami of protests on the part of Arab and Muslim governments, some of whom withdrew their Ambassadors from Copenhagen. The Danish prime minister did not apologize because his moral compas suddenly found True North again. The real reason, of course, is that he understood, though a tad too late, the potential economic consequences of a widespread boycott of Danish goods on the part of one billion people. There is a word for this in the Danish language: realpolitik.

Muslims and other reasoning people around the world understand well that European laws against anti-Semitic speech, writing, and behavior, were enacted for two reasons. The stated reason was to protect the Jews from the continued onslaught of anti-Semitic attacks, both verbal and physical, which culminated historically in the repeated pogroms that Christian Europeans launched against Jews repeatedly through the centuries. (Historically, it was the Arabs who protected the Jews and took them in whenever they fled Christian barbarity, especially in the Middle Ages.) The real reason, of course, is to protect the Europeans from the pangs of their own conscience, which has very good reason to feel guilty indeed, given what Europeans did to Jews in the last millennium, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, not to mention what they did to the indiginous people of the Carribean and the Americas since the 1600s, and to the people of Asia, Africa and Oceania as well. I have long thought that it`s European Christians, more so than Jews, who ought to observe Yom Kippur, or adopt a similar atonement observance of their own.

While the spirit of the law is that Europeans shalt not offend any ethnic or religious groups including Muslims, this seems to be lost only on the Europeans themselves, or at least the Danes, the Germans and their ilk amongst them, who only care about, or fear, the letter of the law. Why should we therefore be shocked when Muslims depict Europeans as nothing but a bunch of hypocrites? Why shouldn`t Governments of Muslim countries recall their Ambassadors to Denmark in protest, as some did? The only disappointment is that no Western or non-Muslim government, the meek complaints to a French newspaper by the French Foreign Office excepted, had the moral and ethical courage to publicly, unequivocally and forcefully condemn an act that is as deeply offensive to Muslims as the desecration of a Torah scroll, or of a Jewish cemetery, is offensive to all civilized people in the world, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Animist, or Atheist.

There are two ways for Europeans to redeem themselves: the immediate temptation would be to call on their national parliaments to extend the protections of the laws against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denying to Islam and Muslims, as well as any other religious group . That would be the wrong recommendation however. The right recommendation would be to repeal the laws that govern holocaust denying and other laws that favor one group over another, so that the issue truly becomes one of free speech. And if Europeans are the civilized people they claim to be, then their politicians and newspaper publishers ought to find it easy to immediately apologize when they have unwittingly offended the taboos of any human community, be it religious or otherwise.

Muslims and Arabs have suffered enough hypocrisy on the hands of European Christians, just as Jews suffered in the past on the hands of these same Europeans, and as Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike are suffering today on the hands of Americans, Europeans and, of course, Zionist Jews, both Sephardim and Ashkenazi. If Europe thinks of itself as a civilized society, then it ought to do its utmost to redress the wrongs that too many people around the world have suffered as a result of European misbehavior and often outright criminal actions, most especially since the 1400s.

Muslims deserve nothing more nor less than for Christians in the U.S. and Europe, and Zionist Jews in Israel, to simply abide by the golden rule: treat others as you would have others treat you. So far, Christians and Zionist Jews have proven that they only abide by the alternative definition of this rule: ``They who have the gold, make the rule.`` The gold in this case is a combination of economic and military might. Of this, Europeans, Zionist Jews and their American overlords have aplenty in reserve. Were it that they also had an equal reserve of un-hypocritical, civilized morality and ethical behavior to underpin their feelings of sanctimonious superiority.

And the other measure that Europeans can adopt to redeem themselves? The European people can start by throwing out of office, and initiating criminal proceedings against, any politician responsible for sending a single soldier to invade, occupy, and initiate pogroms against the people of Iraq: these politicians have been guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which makes them unfit for the honors that continued office holding bestows upon them. Europeans can also give the boot to any politician who has approved or turned a blind eye to a single rendition flight that sent any person to the torture chambers of the Americans or their surrogate torturers in some Arab or Muslim countries. These are the same countries whose religious sensitivities we should all respect as strongly as we respect Jewish sensitivities when it comes to the Jewish holocaust, not because the law says so, but because it`s the right thing to do. These are also the same countries whose human rights trespasses Europeans ought to condemn as equally and vehemently as they should condemn the continued human rights abuses and state terrorism perpetrated by the Israeli government in Palestine/Israel, and by some European governments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other out-of-sight/out-of-mind places like Haiti, Africa, and elsewhere.

In other words, Europeans can start by applying the simple rule of one weight and one measure to both friends and foes, equally to themselves and to the rest of the world, because policy and politics, both domestic and foreign, ought to be based upon and subject to principled moral considerations, not expediency of the economic, financial or religious kind.

Is that such an unreasonable moral proposition to consider?

Rachard Itani can be reached at: racharitani@yahoo.com

Bina,

You argue about boycotting danish products in muslim lands. but what about looking at the bigger picture:the clash of culture between the european and islamic ideals.

what about the mulsim immgrants who live in european country???

it throws open the quesiton of integration of muslim immgrants to european values and culture. and its not the radicals/conservatives who are asking for it but the liberals.

europe stands for secularism where religion is not above scrutiny. whereas islam and its prophet, in its present form, cannot be judged.

instead of worrying about depiciton of mohd. in a satirical cartoon, it would be interesting to knowing whether the european and muslim values would to be compatible with each other or not.

Bina Shah,
Being offended by such deliberately provocative cartoons is but natural, what puzzles me being a muslim is how selective Muslims are when it comes to protests. Where were these Govts when Abu Ghraib pictures were published? How about the genocide in EE-Rak? Were those pictures not derogatory to muslim sensibilities? Killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians not a good reason for protests? Its amazing how selective amnesia can impair one`s sense of morality.

Iam angry, extremely angry with the so-called secularists europeans for supporting this maliciously centered freedom of expression. Moderate muslim`s who wish to build bridges with western societies are found searching for excuses for their western friends and at the same time defending their religious sensibilities.

Lasltly, the Saudi`s should be the last people on earth to express shock and dismay for they are the same people who have been systematically destroying all symbols and historical artifacts linked to the Prophet, his family and friends. Niether have they shown any religious tolerance to other religions in their country, take for example the arrests of 40 xtians in Riyad last year on the ground sthat they were practicing banned religious services. These poor Pakistani (desi, browns) were caught performing their service behind closed doors, that is considered to be a crime in Saudi Arabia, then they expect others to respect their religious sensibilities? I do not agrree or like Ibn warraq, but what he says about these fanatics and their desire to control all spheres of life is correct, one cannot allow fanatics from any side of the world to dictate terms, that also includes El Prezidento Busho, Herr Ahmed Nijad and Monsieur Bin Laden.

An article that I thought made sense from the Sunday times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025511,00.html

An article that I thought made sense from the Sunday times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025511,00.html