Friday, February 17, 2006
Mohammad's Radio
The Islamic outrage over the 12 Danish cartoons finally trickled down into Hong Kong today when about 2,000 of the 70,000 Muslims here marched and shouted "Allah akbar!" for about an hour. There was a lot of energy in the all-male, no-Chinese (though the majority of Muslims in Hong Kong are Chinese) parade but all was ultimately peaceful.
Their goal besides getting on the evening TV news and in tomorrow's newspapers was to present a petition to a UN worker here calling on the Danish government to apologize for the cartoons. ``The UN is the head of world and we are asking them to teach [the Danish newspaper and cartoonists] a good lesson or put them in jail or something,'' the march organizer told me.
This rather shaky grasp of world affairs and how-things-work was also displayed by a few other protesters. My fave? A fellow with a hand-scrawled, five-line screed proclaiming that Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky and Mickey Cohen and the CIA were responsible for the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy.
And there was the geographically-challenged pair of outraged protestors brandishing signs topped with brown plush toy dogs representing ``the prime minister of Norway.''
The Islamic outrage over the 12 Danish cartoons finally trickled down into Hong Kong today when about 2,000 of the 70,000 Muslims here marched and shouted "Allah akbar!" for about an hour. There was a lot of energy in the all-male, no-Chinese (though the majority of Muslims in Hong Kong are Chinese) parade but all was ultimately peaceful.
Their goal besides getting on the evening TV news and in tomorrow's newspapers was to present a petition to a UN worker here calling on the Danish government to apologize for the cartoons. ``The UN is the head of world and we are asking them to teach [the Danish newspaper and cartoonists] a good lesson or put them in jail or something,'' the march organizer told me.
This rather shaky grasp of world affairs and how-things-work was also displayed by a few other protesters. My fave? A fellow with a hand-scrawled, five-line screed proclaiming that Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky and Mickey Cohen and the CIA were responsible for the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy.
And there was the geographically-challenged pair of outraged protestors brandishing signs topped with brown plush toy dogs representing ``the prime minister of Norway.''
# posted by Justin @ 3:45 AM 
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Yeah, pretty bad time to be a Dane. Even a harder job explain to the mob why the Danish government can't punish the cartoonists. I just hope the storm rides off, and things gets back to "normal" again.
One may wonder why it was the 12 cartoons from "lego-land" that started this world-wide riot, and not some of the other offending news that has been around for years. There is plenty to go around from other media and contries if you just want to find them. Guess it was the drop of water, that filled the bucket.
12 cartoons = 2 burned embassies, Several fatwas, a lot of demonstrations and boycotts of Danish goods. Good thing it was only 12 cartoons and not 24.
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One may wonder why it was the 12 cartoons from "lego-land" that started this world-wide riot, and not some of the other offending news that has been around for years. There is plenty to go around from other media and contries if you just want to find them. Guess it was the drop of water, that filled the bucket.
12 cartoons = 2 burned embassies, Several fatwas, a lot of demonstrations and boycotts of Danish goods. Good thing it was only 12 cartoons and not 24.
# posted by 
: 1:56 AM
: 1:56 AM << Home
