Cartoon Psy-Ops? But whose?

No outrage when Egyptian publication headlined drawings on Ramadan cover

A late posting of the link above which I forgot to put in the earlier piece. The unfunny aftermath of the wandering funnies gets grimmer with each report but this one takes the ticket. An Islamic newspaper first reprinted those pictures in Egypt during Ramadam last year - before the Arab summit and well before the reprints in Denmark and Europe. They can't be that offensive!

The riots are playing both ways here. They will provide the excuse for the likes of Bush and Blair to take a tougher stance and further stigmatise Muslim populations at home and abroad. They also provide the excuse for militant Islam to capitalise on increasing anti-western sentiments and further promote violence and possible terrorism. The real question must be that if psy-ops are in play here, which side is using them?

The cartoons may well have been missed on their original Danish publication, but this Egyptian reprinting would hardly have gone unnoticed in the Muslim world. So why all the fuss now after the silence of intervening months? There is clearly orchestration in the current international uprising. For Al Qaeda and the like it must be good PR, but for Amerika it is helping contribute to a volatile scenario they need to justify action against Iran and maybe Syria too.

As moderate mainstream Islam demonstrates against the demonstrations themselves here in London on Saturday, it would be nice to think the tension could fade away a bit. Sadly, it looks like it may run and run - a harbringer for darker things to come. As Bush today revealed another "alleged" terror strike was aborted in California just after 9/11, it sounds like he is "upping-the-ante" in preparation for actions to come. As suspicions increasingly abound that 9/11 itself was a PNAC-engineered "own goal", we are reminded that, in a climate of fear, a trigger is always close to hand.

These conflicts of ideaology could so easily be turned into a fully-fledged religious war. Insolvent, addicted and greedy, Amerika has little left to lose. But the rest of the world has! Civilised nations should relegate religion to the domain of private mythological pursuit and organise society around freedom of speech, thought and opinion. Of dialogue and accomodation is born our human capacity for creativity and progress. Of its absence, the stuff of medieval nightmares reborn in a nuclear age.

You may have noticed it's getting late.

Later.