For example, this guy's tagline is "Nothing is Sacred" and if you thumb down the list you can find cartoons poking fun at both Islamic and Western beliefs. Many of the comments are in Arabic, and those that are in English are generally bad English but you can get the idea. One of my favourites is Bin Laden's retirement package with isn't exactly subtle (seems like ages ago that George Bush swore on his honour to hunt down Bin Laden).
The anti-Islam sentiment gets more intense on other sites: "Fashion for Women Suicide Bombers" is obviously having a dig at both Islamic dress regulations and the often cited "Warrior's Paradise" belief. This is actually an Arabic site and the authors don't seem afraid of calling the shots as the see them. Another cartoon leaves nothing to the imagination when it comes to documentation of theocracy.
Speaking of Arabic sites, good old Al Jazeerah have plenty of cartoons mostly poking fun at the West but also having a go at the terrorists. In fact, cartoons have a strong place in all sorts of Arab communication. They also have a strong presence other cultures and in some cases they span the bridge between cultures.
Is the middle cartoon insulting Islamic dress, or Western pop culture or both? Or is it just drawing a valid contrast? Certainly none of the other cartoons on the same page have anything flattering to say about Britney Spears but she makes enough money that if she needs flattery she can find plenty for sale.
But there's plenty of Christians end up the butt of jokes too and rightly so because nothing stabs the heart of hypocrisy and injustice like humour does. These things even get quite nasty at times, Like this stab at W's Pretense of Christian values but the truth can be nasty and even though George W Bush is personally responsible for a lot of death and destruction in this world, he can still stand up to criticism and ignore it with good grace.
I think these three spell out the current situation quite nicely (you have to click them in order):
If you want to go a step further, how about this one?
Interesting to see which ones were considered "unsafe"... one of the dangerous ones was the cartoon of a Arab child's body, burnt to cinders after the Israeli air strike that was supposedly a targetted assassination on Palestinian leaders. While horrific in concept, the cartoon doesn't convey the sort of graphic violence that has become popular on Television or video games but it does convey a tone of sad helplessness that no doubt many Palestinians can relate too. Still not the cartoon, have to search more.
Another cartoon that popped up once the filter was gone, was this young person shot through the head and the blood pools into a hand that reaches for a rock to throw back. Probably a difficult image to explain to your kids I'll admit.
I'm finding propaganda cartoons about Iran's potential for nuclear weapons, I'm not sure of the date of this cartoon but it seems that most of the world is siding against Iran and in favour of Israel despite Israel being the ones who were first to build atomic weapons (in that region) and Iran still being well behind. Everyone treats you as "evil incarnate" if you try to build nukes but once you have a few and you can show that they work, suddenly everyone treats you with respect... funny old world.
We can also see how the Jews react to critical cartoons. They don't like it much either, but they don't start street riots about it. There can be no doubt that the cartoons here are both intentionally offensive. Then again, America certainly does do a lot to support Israel and a fair percentage of the US troops fighting right now in Iraq are indeed the descendants of African slaves imported in chains not so many generations ago. The cartoons are offensive and all the more offensive because there is some seed of truth in them. Note that the Jews react to this by holding up the offending material for all the world to see and crying out how defamatory it is. That's a very different reaction to the radical Islamic approach of sparking violence and demanding the material be removed from existence.
No surprise to see this one registered as dangerous after all the Australian government's answer to protests in our detention centres was to outlaw any press visits or media coverage of those centres. No one is allowed to know how the inmates are treated or what goes on in those places. No photographs, no stories, no more problem. The contextual page for that one is pretty interesting too with lots of strange pictures and seriously cutting comments. Yet even these didn't manage to spark the same level of outrage as a cartoon of Mohamed with a bomb in his turban.
Those sewn-shut mouths remind me of another topic...
So at the end of the day, who is doing wrong? Is it the people who publish an offensive cartoon or the people who react to this publication by public violence and death threats? In simple terms, censorship is wrong. Obviously the world is not a simple place but it's one of those creeping things where you just have to draw a clear hard line and say that censorship must be considered wrong in every case because once you start saying it might be OK here and there, then you find it gets very convenient to use a bit more censorship and a bit more.
I used to do a little,
But the little wouldn't do it.
So the little got more and more.
I just keep trying
To get a little better
A little better than before.
For those who don't know, that's a Guns and Roses quote referring to drugs but it does tend to apply to a bunch of other stuff like state-sanctioned torture, oppression of dissent... and yup, it applies to censorship too. That's why on some things you need a nice simple rule and the rule is that censorship is wrong. Violence is also wrong, just for the record, except in self defense and only then as an absolute last resort. That's why we have defense forces not offense forces or grab the oil forces despite what some people may believe -- that's a different story.
Offensive cartoons? They are used by every culture to poke fun at both themselves and at other cultures too. No one can claim to be so holy as to have never laughed at a discriminatory joke so trying to claim righteous indignity at offensive cartoons is a joke in itself. When people have no avenue left to speak their mind, they still have jokes. Radical Muslims have shown to the world how quick they are to resort to violence and in doing so they are asking for the logical response, "if violence is the language they understand, then that's the language we will use."
Ultimately, attempting to suppress humour is doomed to failure anyway. In Australia, supporters of multiculturalism tried telling people how they could speak. First it was illegal to incite racism, then it was illegal to say a racist joke, then we were not allowed to say any joke that mentioned any racial or religious or political group. Next they tried to get rid of certain words (like you can't say "disabled" anymore because it is discriminatory). Pretty soon the politically correct word-police were out and about everywhere. We haven't quite shaken it off but thankfully increasing numbers of people are getting damn sick of the bullshit and rejecting this form of censorship as well. It is starting to become a new form of humour just to piss the politically correct people off.
Long live the offensive political cartoon!
Someone pointed out to me that adding the word "Danish" to the search does cause the offending immage to appear along with suitable images of violence demonstrating Muslim intolerance of free speech. I gave it a try and sure enough the cartoon is here. So google isn't deleting the cartoon as I first presumed...
Which does not prove that google is free from censorship, there certainly have been documented cases of censhorship by google outside China. Consider this discussion of google removing a site entirely for reasons that they are not willing to explain. Certainly just a slight smell of governmental interference here.
Not surprisingly, this behaviour has been predicted by Robert Locke in his discussion of Corporatism. I'll quote just the bit that is relevant to google:
The first thing big business has in common with big government is managerialism. The technocratic manager, who deals in impersonal mass aggregates, organizes through bureaucracy, and rules through expertise without assuming personal responsibility, is common to both. The second thing big business likes about big government is that it has a competitive advantage over small business in doing business with it and negotiating favors. Big government, in turn, likes big business because it is manageable; it does what it is told. It is much easier to impose affirmative action or racial sensitivity training on AT&T than on 50,000 corner stores. This is why big business has become a key enforcer of political correctness.
Google certainly seems to be keeping up it's side of the deal by being nice and obedient to government demands. Only a matter of time before we find out where the kickback come into the picture.
By the way, there are those who seem to think that a little censorship is OK. If you think that, then take a look at this. Apparently, it is against "advertising standards" to mention Australia's rejection of Kyoto and the advent of global warming. And the people being censored are just trying to sell solar cells on the open market! Once again, a decision is made but no one is willing to take personal responsibility for it and no one wants to attempt to explain the reasoning. It is perfectly clear that the mainstream media have signed an agreement to never embarrass John Howard. A quick search of google shows only ONE mainstream media article even mentions the censorship, and that is the ABC.
The Commercials Advice regulatory body rejected an advertisement by the Solar Shop in South Australia because it includes a statement by well-known scientist, Dr Tim Flannery, saying "Climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity today."The shop owners and the Greens believe the ad was pulled for political reasons.
... or in somewhat more direct language ...
CHRISTINE MILNE: In my view it is a public interest advertisement to tell Australians that climate change, global warming is the greatest threat facing humanity, and that there's a solution to it, we can move to renewables. And I'm horrified, and I'd like to know why a television regulatory body doesn't want Australians to know the truth about climate change.