I too believe that the Islamic militant threat is the biggest item of the day. Like they say, "America must be right 100% of the time, we just have to be right once". That's the whole point of my ranting here. I see a terrible disconnect between the organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR, or whatever) and the actions of the jihadists. Why don't they distance themselves from the violence, and condemn it? Their silence indicates complicity or at least sympathy, don't you think?

Where is the outrage in the Muslim world for what these idiots are doing? The whole religion is being tarnished in the eyes of the world.

Hello Neff. I've wondered that myself many times before. And yes, has the world ever witnessed such an example of fouling one's own nest? Far in excess of any grief Islamic Extremists have caused the West has been grief, misfotune and destitution their program of terror has foist upon followers of Islam the world around. In the public imagination it will take more than a century for the prejudice accruing to subside.
 

Beauty is momentary in the mind -
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
the cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.
Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrement of praise.

('Peter Quince at the Clavier' by Wallace Stevens)

Prime example of hypersensitive Islam: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5410472.stm

Headline news in the UK btw.

But today I hear that the opera is going to go ahead with two performances of the opera, with the severed Mohammed head scene, before the end of the year. Maybe Al-Jazeera will run video of it, like they did of Nick Berg getting his head sawn off...

Oh, I'm sorry... am I insensitive? It's OK to show an actual beheading on TV, but not a fictionalized one on a stage?

The Religion of Peace... mmmm hmmm...

Actually, there are a great many right-wing Christian militias in the U.S., and they are indeed VERY armed and dangerous.  Perhaps their (apparent) lack of activity right now can be traced to the simple fact that... ...they've got their man in the White House, and he's doing their violence for them ---although admittedly Bush isn't quite crazy enough to satisfy all of them.

Re. the censorship of Mozart, there is, alas, no end of censorship in this world, and of course it is always done for what people hope are the right reasons.  Lest one come away with the erroneous impression, which Jorkel apparently intends to foster, however, that in “an effort to not insult Islam because of potential violcen, they will curb freedom of expression and freedom of the arts. But when it comes to insulting Christianity or any other religion (which won't result in beheadings and flag-burning), then there's no problem to express those freedoms”, I offer the following examples---
First we have the banning of a Palestinian art exhibit at Brandeis University:

"Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
"Headlines for May 3, 2006
Brandeis University Removes Palestinian Youth Art Exhibit
And finally, in Boston, a free speech controversy has erupted at Brandeis University over the removal of an exhibition featuring the paintings of Palestinian youths. The exhibit’s 17 paintings depicted the young artists’ perspectives on life under Israeli military occupation. But just four days into a two-week run, the exhibit was removed by Brandeis officials after several complaints from students. A university spokesperson said the school would consider re-mounting the paintings if they were to appear alongside paintings showing an Israeli perspective. The exhibition was curated by an Israeli Jewish student who said she wanted to showcase a Palestinian perspective on campus. The student, Lior Halperin, said: 'This was an opportunity to bring to Brandeis the Palestinian voice that is not spoken or heard through an Israeli or an American Jew, but directly delivered from Palestinians. Obviously that was just too much for Brandeis."" [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/03/145215&mode=thread&tid=25]
 
With her usual thoroughness, reporter Amy Goodman later tracked down the principles of this affair, and had them explain their actions.  As is usual in these situations, the university's rep's made their acts of censorship sound perfectly reasonable:

“Wednesday, May 10th, 2006
Brandeis University Takes Down Palestinian Youth Art Exhibit Mounted by Israeli Jewish Student
An art exhibit at Brandeis University featuring 17 paintings by Palestinian youths was removed by university officials last week, after several complaints from students. We speak with the Israeli Jewish student who organized the exhibit and the director of Brandeis University's International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life.
We look at a controversy that has erupted over an art exhibit at Brandeis University in Boston. The exhibit features 17 paintings of Palestinian youths who depict their perspectives on life under Israeli military occupation. But just four days into a two-week run, the exhibit was removed by Brandeis officials after several complaints from students. A university spokesperson has said the school would consider re-mounting the paintings if they were to appear alongside paintings showing an Israeli perspective. The exhibit was organized by an Israeli Jewish student who said she wanted to showcase a Palestinian perspective on campus. The exhibit was subsequently moved to MIT where it is being housed for one week.
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the telephone from Waltham, where Brandeis University is, by Lior Halperin. She's the student who organized the exhibit at the university. We're also joined in the studio by Daniel Terris. He is the Director of Brandeis University's International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. Lior's exhibit was a project for a class called “The Arts of Building Peace,” which is taught under the auspices of the Center. Lior Halperin is an Israeli Jewish student at Brandeis who organized the exhibit. We welcome you, Lior, as well as Daniel Terris, to this broadcast. Lior Halperin, we'd like to begin with you. Can you explain how you came to mount this exhibit at Brandeis?
LIOR HALPERIN: Hi, good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us.
LIOR HALPERIN: As you explained, I took a class called “The Arts of Building Peace” this semester, and we were trying to find ways in which art can be used as a mechanism for bringing people together, for enhancing debate, for conflict resolution and reconciliation. And since I believe in all of that deeply, and since I’m an Israeli and a peace activist, I thought about bringing my usage of art and my belief of art as a mechanism for bringing people together into the Brandeis community. And my connection to Palestinian children has been in the past through using art to express their belief and their opinions. This was my objective for bringing the exhibition on campus.
I contacted a dear friend of mine that is a director of the Alrowwad Cultural Center in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, and together we came up with the concept of having this exhibition brought to Brandeis, where I felt in my only year in Brandeis that the Palestinian voice has been very marginalized and not as freely expressed and prevalent as the Israeli point of view is on campus. And he contacted the children from the center and asked them a very simple question, to create paintings of images of their lives, which they did, and that was my exhibition, their exhibition.
AMY GOODMAN: How old are the kids?
LIOR HALPERIN: Between 11 and 16.
AMY GOODMAN: And the number of paintings?
LIOR HALPERIN: 17.
AMY GOODMAN: And Daniel Terris, can you talk about Brandeis University's decision to take down the paintings?
DANIEL TERRIS: Good morning, Amy, and good morning, Lior. Let me talk about the lens through which I looked at the exhibit. Over the last several years, Brandeis has been really deeply involved in trying to bring a more complex perspective to the Middle East and to really pursue a kind of goal of mutual understanding. My center has been deeply involved in not only bringing Israeli viewpoints to campus, but really making a sustained effort to bring Palestinian voices to Brandeis. We have actively recruited students, Arab students from all over the Middle East. We've established partnerships through my center with NGOs in Ramallah, in East Jerusalem, in Nablus and in Bethlehem, and we've also put together a multiyear, multidimensional partnership between Brandeis University and Al-Quds University, one of the premier Palestinian universities.
So, I’ve been deeply involved in those efforts, and one of the things I’ve learned in the whole series of programs that we've done on the Middle East, many of which have brought Palestinian voices to campus, even during this year when Lior says they've been silenced or marginalized, is that these kind of things need to be done with great care. There's a lot of sensitivity on every side, both in the Jewish community and the Palestinian community and in the American community, over these issues, so that any activity that we undertake needs to be done with great care, not only to not to offend people, because that's not necessarily the issue, but to do something so that the educational context is maximized, and so the goal of mutual understanding is pursued.
Lior's exhibit, while done with the best of intention, is really nurtured in the very climate in which Palestinian voices are welcomed onto campus, had the admirable goal of trying to humanize Palestinian youth, but I was concerned that the form and the content of the exhibit actually in some ways undermined the goal that she was trying to pursue, so I called to advise her that I thought the exhibit was in some ways not reaching the goals that she really wanted to achieve.
AMY GOODMAN: And was it your decision to take down the exhibit?
DANIEL TERRIS: I wasn’t involved in the decision to take down the exhibit. What I did was suggest to Lior that there were ways in which this exhibit, while with the intent of humanizing Palestinian children and Palestinian youth and giving them voice, in some ways actually contributed to the opposite kind of perception, the combination of paintings with political speech, the controversial images that were part of the exhibit, and the absolute lack of any educational context, so that viewers who came and went by the exhibit in a library space had no real opportunity for understanding, might have contributed to the opposite effect that Lior intended. And this was kind of confirmed when some of the Brandeis students who went by the exhibit the couple of days after it was over, called the administration and said, “Why -- is this exhibit intended to show how Palestinian young people are propagandized by their elders?” And so, that was the kind of concern I had, that actually the form and content of the exhibit had the opposite effect that Lior was trying to achieve.
AMY GOODMAN: Lior Halperin, your response?
LIOR HALPERIN: Well, I agree with almost everything that Daniel Terris says. My only question is: was the decision to take it down the right decision, if the intent was to allow an educational debate to take place? Because, if anything, the debate that is going on right now between the Brandeis community, which has been amazingly supportive, proved that the university community is ready to discuss those issues and is ready to see those images, and it's a community that refuses to have a decision taken by the administration for it, saying that it's not ready to deal with those images portrayed in the paintings of the children.
DANIEL TERRIS: I think everybody on the Brandeis campus agrees that we need a better process for thinking about how to host controversial speech on campus. I think it's clear that we need a better advance process, where an exhibit like Lior's, instead of just kind of through a bureaucratic method going up on the library, has some kind of advance preparation, in which faculty and students and administrators are all involved in thinking what's the right context, what are the right kinds of events that stimulate conversation, what are the ways in which we can maximize the educational opportunities.
AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Terris, what were the images you most objected to of the kids' drawing?
DANIEL TERRIS: Well, it wasn't any particular image. It was the way that the whole exhibit was framed and the fact that there wasn't really much explanation about how the images were chosen, how the speech and the images were put together, and that there wasn't really much opportunity for real public conversation and expression around the exhibit. So it was the combination of all those things, not the fact that any particular image was controversial or difficult. I mean, we've sponsored dozens of programs on campus that have had -- where people have said controversial things from all different perspectives, so that isn't the issue. The issue is how it's held, how the conversation is promoted on campus.
AMY GOODMAN: Lior Halperin?
LIOR HALPERIN: Yes. Let me say that a week before the exhibition opened, I did an enormous outreach to the Brandeis community. I wrote emails and phone calls to almost every activist group on campus, including a lot of professors and faculty, asking them to please attend the exhibition opening that we had on the 26th of April, telling them that this is going to be a controversial issue and a difficult issue for many people in the Brandeis community, and I’m asking them to come and create a dialogue and debate. I got no response from the community. I got no response from the community.
Also, alongside the paintings, there was my narrative, my statement as a creator of the exhibition, explaining that as an Israeli and a peace activist, I believe in the power of the art to bring people together, and my ability to empathize and understand the paintings that are coming from Palestine is what I believe the core of our ability to create coexistence and reconciliation in that complex area. And I also noted there were students who complained for a very specific number of paintings that were very difficult for them.
But my question is: how would we expect Palestinian children from refugee camps to portray anything else but the reality of their lives? If it's difficult to see in the third floor of a beautiful library in Waltham, we can imagine what it means to live those daily lives, which is exactly the intent of my exhibition. It was taken down, because I think people could not allow themselves to respect those images in a respectful way. I don't think the intent of taking down the exhibition was to create a better forum for it to be taken back. I think the intent was to take it down, to continue silencing those voices.
DANIEL TERRIS: Well, during the week that the exhibit controversy was going on on campus, I was hosting eight prominent Palestinian administrators from Al-Quds University, who were meeting with people from all over campus, speaking on campus, learning both about administration, in order to build partnerships between Brandeis and Al-Quds, and also speaking about larger issues on the Middle East, and this has followed a whole series of other visits by people from Al-Quds University, as well as the appointment of a prominent Palestinian to our Crown Center of Middle East Studies, as well as a series of other programs that have presented a variety of views on the Middle East. So, I really don't think this is about silencing Palestinian voices.
This isn’t to say it was the right or wrong decision to take down the exhibit, but I do think the question of care, the question of genuine collaboration between faculty and students and administrators about how to do each of these programs best is really at the core, and I think Brandeis will look forward and look for ways to do this kind of thing better over the months to come.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you sorry Brandeis has taken the -- made the decision it did to remove the exhibit?
DANIEL TERRIS: I think I really regret that the exhibit has become the center of this kind of controversy, and I think everybody agrees that the process that we had in place was not a good process, either for mounting this, because Lior mounted the exhibit without any real kind of genuine discussion, and I think everybody agrees that we didn't have a good process for considering it once it was in place. So, I think that's the kind of thing we're going to try to fix.
AMY GOODMAN: I was with people from MIT, a professor, last night, and I asked about the art exhibit, because it's on display now at MIT. And he was saying there's absolutely no controversy about it. You know, it's hardly gotten any attention, actually, just by it being up.
DANIEL TERRIS: Well, the context has been well established by the public controversy that there's been, and it may not be the same kind of issue on their campus.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the people that objected -- students, donors, who?
DANIEL TERRIS: Well, I certainly saw some complaints from students. I don't know whether there were complaints from donors or others outside the university, but the complaints I saw were from students. But I want to say that my phone call to Lior was not prompted by student complaints, although it was somewhat exacerbated by the fact that students were confirming the doubts that I had had about the exhibit.
AMY GOODMAN: Looking at some of the articles on the whole controversy, the Daily News Tribune, an article called “Facing Censorship,” it talks about students carrying signs outside the library to criticize what they say is censorship by the university, and then it says Alice Rothchild of Boston, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, carried a sign that said, “Closing our eyes to injustice is not a Jewish value.” Your response?
DANIEL TERRIS: I think trying to create a full-body picture of all points of view, bringing them to campus, discussing them, having them as an integral part of our community is absolutely a Jewish value. It's absolutely a Brandeis University value. And I think we're going to continue to do that kind of work in the months and years to come.
AMY GOODMAN: Lior Halperin, the response of the community. You were saying they didn't respond to your original call to come out for the opening of the exhibit, but once the paintings were taken down.
LIOR HALPERIN: Yes, and -- well, I think it's a combination of people being outraged that the university has decided for them they're unable or not mature enough to respect those images. So it's a combination of people going out for the freedom of expression or freedom of speech and people who are for freedom of Palestine and freedom of the art. But I think the outreach has been truly amazing. If anything, the debate that’s taking place right now, I bless for that. I disagree with Mr. Terris that the discussion that has followed taking down the exhibition is not useful. I think it's a useful -- it's an intelligent and civilized and wonderful discussion that is taking place right now, and I absolutely bless for that. I received the most enormous amount of support from people, from professors, from students, from faculty, from people within the larger community of Boston saying that they bless for my initiative, and they see the beauty in what I was trying to bring on campus, to show the human connectedness between people who are different, and even though they live in a conflict area, they're able to create this connection.
DANIEL TERRIS: Amy, I want to say, I think the debate going forward is, indeed, healthy in many ways. And I think one of the things we need to do coming out of this is to remember that there is an inherit tension on university campuses today between academic freedom and freedom of expression, and I’ve gotten a lot of emails and communications saying that is simply a pure case of academic freedom. But academic freedom is not an absolute in a context in which universities have an interest in thinking about the educational fabric of the community and in thinking about how to contain and hold speech in a way that is productive and that doesn't incite issues of hatred and violence. Now, I’m not saying that the young -- in this particular case, that was the issue and that these young children were advocating hatred and violence. I’m only saying that this is an issue attention that universities have been dealing with for a long time in this country and are going to continue to, and the debate that comes out of this will help us deal with it better.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see the exhibit being mounted again?
DANIEL TERRIS: There's certainly talk about that on the Brandeis campus. The administration has invited some faculty to begin considering ways in which it could be brought back, but in a way that's fully productive.
AMY GOODMAN: Lior Halperin, would you consider mounting it again?
LIOR HALPERIN: I will definitely consider mounting it again. I have yet to receive any response from the university administration directly, and they’re still not considering me a part of this equation. So, until they do and explain to me in a respectful and intelligent manner why was the exhibition taken down, what was so intimidating about these images, and what would be a good way they would think to bring it back, and why do they want to bring it back on campus, I don't feel I can bring back the paintings of the children. These are paintings by children, not by me, and I respect their opinion and their decision, so it's a decision of me and them together.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. I want to thank Daniel Terris, Director of Brandeis University's International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, and Lior Halperin, an Israeli Jewish student at Brandeis University who organized the Palestinian youth art exhibit that the university took down. “

“Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
 My Name is Rachel Corrie” Opens in New York
 Amy Goodman: “My Name is Rachel Corrie” – a play based on the life of the late US peace activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer - was scheduled to open last March at the New York Theatre Workshop. But six weeks before opening night, the theater announced it was indefinitely postponing the production. The move that was widely criticized as an act of censorship. On Sunday, the play finally opened at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York. We play exclusive excerpts of the play, and speak with Rachel Corrie’s father, Craig; her sister, Sarah; and the play’s co-editor, Katharine Viner….

....We really -- and we never canceled the play. We were having a conversation with our colleagues at the Royal Court about the difficulties that we were having, not only just with the research that we were doing about the project and about the play, but also about, you know, contracts and budgets and fundraising, and all that sort of stuff.
JAMES NICOLA: Visas.     LYNN MOFFAT: Visas. We were having a conversation with them, and then Katharine's letter appeared in the Guardian.
AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Viner, your response.
KATHARINE VINER: Yeah. I mean, I'm actually not a co-producer of the play. I was just the co-editor, so -- but as I understand it, we had everything set. Our tickets -- our flight tickets were booked. I was due to fly out yesterday to New York. The production schedule was finalized. Both sides of the Atlantic had agreed on a press release that was going to go out to the press, announcing the production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, and then the Royal Court, as I was told, received a telephone call saying that the play was to be postponed indefinitely. That's where the phrase came from.
AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Viner, speaking on Democracy Now! in March. She joins us now in our firehouse studio. She is the co-editor of My Name is Rachel Corrie, also an editor at the London newspaper, The Guardian, also joined by Rachel's father and sister, Craig and Sarah. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! As you watch that, Katharine Viner, you were speaking to us from London, had planned to be in New York at the time, and yet, here you are, and the play is being shown now at the Minetta Lane Theatre. What happened?
KATHARINE VINER: Well, we're so delighted that it's finally on -- the play is finally on in New York. We always said that it's an American play. Rachel was always just wholly American and should be heard here, and I think it just shows that the whole controversy was needless. The play has been very well received. Ticket sales are sort of through the roof. Word of mouth is fantastic, and it just shows that New York wanted to see this play all along.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah, you're a key part of this play. You are [Rachel]'s older sister, and you're the person who started this process of collating your sister’s emails. Can you talk about that process?
SARAH CORRIE: Yes, actually we received an email from the Royal Court Theatre shortly after Rachel was killed, asking if they could do some sort of a work based off of Rachel's emails. And at the time it was just too emotional for us to be going through Rachel's writing. We knew there was a vast amount of material there, but it also felt very important to us. Rachel was a writer. She had always wanted to be published. I think it was one of the dreams that she had, and so I felt like it was something that I could give back to my sister in order to sort of allow that part of her life to still move forward.
So it was approximately a year after we first got the email from the Royal Court Theatre that I sat down and was able to sit down with Rachel's journals. She was -- in the play, she describes herself as a very messy girl, so these journals were in tubs, they were in closets, they were in places all over the house.
AMY GOODMAN: You live in and she grew up in Olympia, Washington?
SARAH CORRIE: In Olympia, Washington, and we actually both lived together. She had moved back into the house that we grew up in, with my husband and I, and lived together for the last four months before she went over to Rafah, so she was living in the home with my husband and I at that time. So I was able to sit down with those journals. I'd take an evening to just look at the journals, read them, gain sort of the emotional need that I had for myself to understand the context, and then the next day, I sat down with a glass of wine next to me and just typed them out without trying to edit anything, sort of like a secretary would, just to get the words down on paper, and that is what became the text that we then sent to the Royal Court for editing at that time.
AMY GOODMAN: I watched the play last night at the Minetta Lane Theatre, and afterwards you all spoke. You talked to the audience and answered questions. And one of the key parts of this play is the list that Rachel makes. Can you talk about the process of going through these and deciding whether on earth the Royal Court Theatre would be interested in Rachel's lists, like when she's going to do her laundry?
SARAH CORRIE: Yes. Rachel throughout all her writing had these sort of what most people would look at, say these are odd little lists, but interesting in a way, and I'd see this things within her writing and look at them and say, “Well, what possibly could somebody do with these?” But at the same time, they struck my interest. I don't consider myself a writer. I don't consider myself someone that would be good at creating a piece of theater, and I told myself, I don't have the right to edit that out. They were interesting to me, and so I ended up just typing them up along with everything else, putting them in, and then that became sort of the piece that wove the different aspects of the play together.
AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Viner, you are careful to say you’re not the playwright here, but that you co-edited Rachel's letters. What about these lists? Can you talk about them, and for people who don't understand what we mean by lists? What's on these lists?
KATHARINE VINER: Well, some of the lists are sort of “five people I wish I'd met who are dead,” or “five people to hang out with in eternity,” and that was very entertaining. Some lists are quite sort of functional, but actually convey something very revealing. So there may be a list about tasks to do in Gaza, which sort of showed you what life is like under occupation, just from a list. And it was interesting when we were editing the play, how they worked dramatically, these lists, because it became a kind of recurring motif for, somehow, something you knew about Rachel, that she loved making these lists, and you could chart her sort of psychological progress through these lists and how they developed while she was there. They also worked really well on stage, I think, and the audience gets very involved in them.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the people she wanted to see who are dead. Jesus?
KATHARINE VINER: Jesus, E.E. Cummings, Gertrude Stein, Martin Luther King, Josephine -- a selection of those anyway, wasn't it?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, this is an excerpt from My Name is Rachel Corrie. In this scene, Rachel sits down and reads an email from her father.
MEGAN DODDS, as RACHEL CORRIE: Rachel, I find writing to you hard, but not thinking about you impossible, so I don't write, but I do bore my friends at lunch, giving vent to my fear. I am afraid for you, and I think I have reason to be, but I am also proud of you, very proud. But as Don Remfert says, I'd just as soon be proud of somebody else's daughter.
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie. Craig, as you listen to that, your daughter, Rachel, reading your letter. Do you remember writing that email?
CRAIG CORRIE: Oh, yes. Chills are going down me right now. I had such a hard time. That's the only email I wrote to Rachel while she was in Rafah. I’m a Vietnam vet, and when I was in Vietnam, of course, Cindy and I, my wife and I, were corresponding by mail, and that was easy for me, but I think it was hard for her. And I was learning from Rachel being over there that it was hard, because I didn't know how she was. We were talking by telephone, and so when she was on the telephone I knew that she was okay for that period of time, but I was so worried about Rachel after she got over there.
When she started reporting about what she saw, the bullet holes next to the windows and stuff, I became extremely frightened for her, because I recognized, this is a military that’s out of control, and I know how much effort I spent in Vietnam to keep the people around me in control and understanding that the other people there are human beings, and I didn't see anything about what Rachel was reporting that indicated that, so I became frightened that somebody would just needlessly harm her or the people that she was with.
And so, I finally got the nerve to write this email to her, and so it always chokes me up, because I had not envisioned her reading this email until I saw Megan doing it on the play, and then it's -- her reply is the last thing that we ever heard from Rachel, and so her reply in an email back to me, that’s our last contact with Rachel”. [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/18/1437210&mode=thread&tid=25]
 

Then there was apparently another art show, which was likewise rejected due to its Palestinian content.....:

Pesky Jews.

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin