The Collapse of Western Morality

The Indispensable People?

The Collapse of Western Morality

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Weekend Edition

September 24 - 26, 2010

Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse.

In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel’s genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check.

I don’t mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.

And we have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting trophies such as fingers and skulls.

This revelation came on the heels of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged leak of a US Army video of US soldiers in helicopters and their controllers thousands of miles away having fun with joy sticks murdering members of the press and Afghan civilians. Manning is cursed with a moral conscience that has been discarded by his government and his military, and Manning has been arrested for obeying the law and reporting a war crime to the American people.

US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.

In other words, to obey the law constitutes “treason to America.”

US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by “a culture of disclosure” and that this “serious and growing problem” could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.

If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state that we don’t need.

The US government, a font of imperial hubris, does not believe that any act it commits, no matter how vile, can possibly be a war crime. One million dead Iraqis, a ruined country, and four million displaced Iraqis are all justified, because the “threatened” US Superpower had to protect itself from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that the US government knew for a fact were not in Iraq and could not have been a threat to the US if they were in Iraq.

When other countries attempt to enforce the international laws that the Americans established in order to execute Germans defeated in World War II, the US government goes to work and blocks the attempt. A year ago on October 8, the Spanish Senate, obeying its American master, limited Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction in order to sink a legitimate war crimes case brought against George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Tony Blair,and Gordon Brown.

The West includes Israel, and there the horror stories are 60 years long. Moreover, if you mention any of them you are declared to be an anti-semite. I only mention them in order to prove that I am not anti-American, anti-British, and anti-NATO, but am simply against war crimes. It was the distinguished Zionist Jewish Judge, Goldstone, who produced the UN report indicating that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked the civilian population and civilian infrastructure of Gaza. For his efforts, Israel declared the Zionist Goldstone to be “a self-hating Jew,” and the US Congress, on instruction from the Israel Lobby, voted to disregard the Goldstone Report to the UN.

As the Israeli official said, we are only doing to the Palestinians what the Americans did to the American Indians.

The Israeli army uses female soldiers to sit before video screens and to fire by remote control machine guns from towers to murder Palestinians who come to tend their fields within 1500 meters of the inclosed perimeter of Ghetto Gaza. There is no indication that these Israeli women are bothered by gunning down young children and old people who come to tend to their fields.

If the crimes were limited to war and the theft of lands, perhaps we could say it is a case of jingoism sidetracking traditional morality, otherwise still in effect.

Alas, the collapse of morality is too widespread. Some sports teams now have a win-at-all-cost attitude that involves plans to injure the star players of the opposing teams. To avoid all these controversies, let’s go to Formula One racing where 200 mph speeds are routine.

Prior to 1988, 22 years ago, track deaths were due to driver error, car failure, and poorly designed tracks compromised with safety hazards. World Champion Jackie Stewart did much to improve the safety of tracks, both for drivers and spectators. But in 1988 everything changed. Top driver Ayrton Senna nudged another top driver Alain Prost toward a pit wall at 190 mph. According to AutoWeek (August 30, 2010), nothing like this had been seen before. “Officials did not punish Senna’s move that day in Portugal, and so a significant shift in racing began.” What the great racing driver Stirling Moss called “dirty driving” became the norm.

Nigel Roebuck in AutoWeek reports that in 1996 World Champion Damon Hill said that Senna’s win-at-all-cost tactic “was responsible for fundamental change in the ethics of the sport.” Drivers began using “terrorist tactics on the track.” Damon Hill said that “the views that I’d gleaned from being around my dad [twice world champion Graham Hill] and people like him, I soon had to abandon,” because you realized that no penalty was forthcoming against the guy who tried to kill you in order that he could win.

When asked about the ethics of modern Formula One racing, American World Champion Phil Hill said: “Doing that sort of stuff in my day was just unthinkable. For one thing, we believed certain tactics were unacceptable.”

In today’s Western moral climate, driving another talented driver into the wall at 200 mph is just part of winning. Michael Schumacher, born in January 1969, is a seven times World Champion, an unequaled record. On August 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, AutoWeek Reports that Schumacher tried to drive his former Ferrari teammate, Rubens Barrichello, into the wall at 200 mph speeds.

Confronted with his attempted act of murder, Schumacher said: “This is Formula One. Everyone knows I don’t give presents.”

Neither does the US government, nor state and local governments, nor the UK government, nor the EU.

The deformation of the police, which many Americans, in their untutored existence as naive believers in “law and order,” still think are “on their side,” has taken on new dimensions with the police militarized to fight “terrorists” and “domestic extremists.”

The police have been off the leash since the civilian police boards were nixed by the conservatives. Kids as young as 6 years old have been handcuffed and carted off to jail for school infractions that may or may not have occurred. So have moms with a car full of children (see, for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AaSLERx0VM ).

Anyone who googles videos of US police gratuitous brutality will call up tens of thousands of examples, and this is after laws that make filming police brutality a felony. A year or two ago such a search would call up hundreds of thousands of videos.

In one of the most recent of the numerous daily acts of gratuitous police abuse of citizens, an 84-year-old man had his neck broken because he objected to a night time towing of his car. The goon cop body-slammed the 84-year old and broke his neck. The Orlando, Florida, police department says that the old man was a “threat” to the well-armed much younger police goon, because the old man clenched his fist.

Americans will be the first people sent straight to Hell while thinking that they are the salt of the earth. The Americans have even devised a title for themselves to rival that of the Israelis’ self-designation as “God’s Chosen People.” The Americans call themselves “the indispensable people.”

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09242010.html

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Steal From the Poor, Give to the Rich

Steal From the Poor, Give to the Rich

The Redistribution of Wealth

By PATRICK IRELAN

September 27, 2010

The United States is undergoing a great redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. President Obama and the Congress have done nothing to alter this trend. Despite the corporate media’s obsession with the alleged differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, this transfer of wealth has increased in both size and speed regardless of the party in power. The number of poor people has steadily increased and their loss of income has made their situation increasingly desperate.

In September of this year, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee released a report called Income Inequality and the Great Recession. A statement from that report summarizes the problem. “Over the past three decades, income inequality has grown dramatically.…” Most of this inequality was observable in “…the share of total income accrued by the richest 1 percent of households. Between 1980 and 2008, their share rose from 10.0 percent to 21.0 percent, making the United States as [sic] one of the most unequal countries in the world.”

The report also states that “Income inequality peaked prior to the United States’ two most severe economic crises—the Great Depression and the Great Recession.” If you want the rich to steal from the poor at a faster rate, join whatever political outfit seems most likely to promote economic disasters. At present, when comparing the two major parties, I see little difference between their respective abilities to promote economic crises at a rate satisfactory to the corporate plutocrats who rule our lives.

The Congressional report provides other examples of the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich and finally makes some tepid proposals to solve the problem, none of which would ever correct the central causes.

In order for the United States to recover from its present economic and financial disaster, it must do two things. The first is simple. The second is not. Neither is likely to occur.

First, following the failure of George W. Bush, the Obama administration and the Congress, which was controlled by Democrats, should have passed legislation to reregulate the banks that created the initial financial catastrophe that led to the Great Recession. The deregulation of banking during the Clinton administration had led directly to the introduction of banking practices such as subprime loans and credit-default swaps that eventually caused the financial crisis in the first place. One simple step needed to correct these problems was an updated version of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, which had created a firewall between depository banks and investment banks. This law had prevented the worst banking practices for decades. At this moment, nothing like the Glass-Steagall Act has been introduced by Congress or the President.

Regulations that prevented the issuance of subprime loans could have already been in place if the Bush administration had heeding the warnings that arrived years before. Even I could see the danger. An agent from Countrywide, a firm that mastered the subprime-loan racket, once offered me a loan for a condominium less than two hours after my initial inquiry, much too little time for the company to have checked my financial history and pondered the wisdom of the loan. All our discussions took place over the telephone. I never saw the agent, and he never saw me. I rejected the offer and remained in my apartment.

My second proposal will never be adopted because the politicians in this country are too meek and too stupid. Before millions of workers can rise from the poverty of unemployment and remain employed, we must reindustrialize the United States. We must again manufacture things. We must make our own washing machines, clothing, computers, and thousands of other useful products. A country that doesn’t even make its own refrigerators is a third-world country. Manufacturing and strong labor unions raised millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class during and after the New Deal. The alleged benefits of a “post-industrial society” that became popular more recently were a mirage, the inventions of primitive thinkers trained in the universities of the Lower Paleolithic Period.

In order to convince corporations to again manufacture things within the borders of this country, tax incentives and tax disincentives could be offered. To really convince the corporate predators, an even better strategy would be to criminalize the export of jobs to foreign countries. To bring back the jobs that have already gone to foreign countries, we should try, convict, and fine the predators any amount of money required. I wouldn’t oppose jail time for malefactors of great wealth. I’m a law-abiding citizen. I’d support such laws. It’s a crime to rob a woman at gunpoint. Why is it less of a crime to rob her by stealing her job and giving it to someone in Asia?

This plan would not necessarily create ex post facto laws. Legislation could penalize the future import of products made by U.S. companies in foreign countries. Nor am I advocating an end to international trade. Maytag used to manufacture washing machines in Newton, Iowa. One of my uncles worked there during his entire adult work life. Whirlpool now owns Maytag, and the factory that used to be in Newton has now been replaced by a factory across the Rio Grande in Reynosa, Mexico. In a more perfect world, Whirlpool would have to sell or give that plant in Reynosa to the Mexicans, who could then use it for whatever they wanted. If they decided to continue making washing machines, I’m sure the people of Newton could still make better ones.

All this is so logical, practical, and moral that I can promise you that our rulers will never accept these modest proposals. We’re supposed to let the magic of the markets save us. The notion that markets can solve our problems is one of most primitive superstitions I’ve ever heard of. It’s more primitive than belief in a deity who lives in a volcano and requires the periodic sacrifice of a virgin.

If you want to remain safe from a volcano, don’t build your town right beside it. If you want a good washing machine, don’t buy one manufactured by Whirlpool in Reynosa, Mexico. And while you’re thinking about it, don’t buy Whirlpool refrigerators made in Reynosa. The people of Galesburg, Illinois, made them much better.
Patrick Irelan is a retired high-school teacher. His most recent book is Reruns, a collection of comic short stories.

http://www.counterpunch.org/irelan09272010.html

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The Danish Cartoon Affair

How and Why It All Began

The Danish Cartoon Affair

By RUNE ENGELBRETH LARSEN

Weekend Edition

September 24 - 26, 2010

On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, some of which were extremely demonizing in their outspoken anti-Muslim symbolism. Four months later violent protests erupted outside Danish embassies in some Muslim countries, and the terror threat against Denmark increased dramatically. Yet what happened during those four months, and could the escalation of the crisis have been prevented? Was it simply about freedom of speech and a "clash of civilizations" or were other agendas in play? Moreover, why did it happen in Denmark of all places?

The End of Diplomacy

Among the most important and often overlooked elements in understanding why the Cartoon Crisis originated in Denmark and how it escalated into the biggest international crisis in the history of Danish foreign politics since World War II, are. 1) The increasing acceptance of demonizing and antagonistic rhetoric directed against Muslims in Danish mainstream politics and the media since the mid-1990's. 2) The lack of diplomatic efforts by the Danish government to prevent the escalating crisis. 3) The stridently patronizing and arrogant approach of the Danish government and media towards ambassadors from Muslim countries as well as the deliberate misrepresentation of their intentions displayed by the then Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in October, November and December 2005.

Without these elements, an escalation of the crisis would have been highly unlikely, and the violent protests and riots seen in some Muslim countries four months after the publication of the cartoons would never have taken place. The whole affair would have most likely blown over before it became a global media phenomenon.
Yet how did it all begin?

The first crucial event after the publication of the cartoons was a letter to the then Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, October 12 2005, by ambassadors from eleven Muslim countries requesting a meeting concerning (among other things) Jyllands-Posten's Muhammad cartoons.

The ambassadors' letter contains four main points: 1) A criticism of the "very discriminatory tendency towards Muslims in Denmark" and "the defamation of Islam as a religion." 2) A warning of the danger of the possible escalation of the crisis. 3) An appeal to the Prime Minister to "censure those responsible" to the extent the law permits. 4) A request for a meeting with the Prime Minister.

Primarily, the ambassadors criticised what they perceive as an "ongoing smear campaign" against Islam. To illustrate their point, in addition to the Muhammad cartoons they cited several other "recent instances" of this phenomenon, e.g., Racist articles published on the website of Danish MP Louise Frevert, in which, among other derogations, Muslims were compared to "Cancer"; Minister of Culture Brian Mikkelsen's speech at the annual meeting of the Conservative party, in which he called for a new cultural struggle against "medieval Muslim culture" in alleged Muslim parallel societies in Denmark; and a xenophobic local radio station, which in the summer of 2005, called upon Danes to "kill a significant part of the country's Muslim immigrants".

Furthermore, the letter placed great emphasis on the very real possibility of serious consequences and repercussions in the wake of these events: "We must emphasise the possibility of reactions in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities throughout Europe."

Nevertheless, the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen refuses to meet with the ambassadors and instead chooses to respond in a letter dated October 22, proclaiming that freedom of speech is "the very foundation of Danish society".
Neither in his written response nor in public does the Prime Minister refer to the issues raised by the ambassadors, failing to comment even once on any of the specific examples of the "very discriminatory tendency" provided by the ambassadors.
Large sections of the press as well as political commentators quickly reduce the content of the ambassadors' letter to an example of their (Muslim countries) ignorance of Democratic society. They even portray it as a direct assault on freedom of speech itself, despite the ambassadors' repeated assurances to the contrary.

The Palestinian representative, Maie Sarraf emphasises that the purpose of the letter was never to control the press: "It's not as if we are asking Anders Fogh Rasmussen to exercise control over the Danish media, but even Western politicians have the option to make certain recommendations to the media, and that is what we ask him to do." (October 22, 2005).

Notwithstanding, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said of the ambassadors' criticism that "a Prime Minister cannot intervene and control the press" (October 25, 2005), and that "the principles upon which Danish democracy is built are so self-evident, there can be no basis for convening a meeting to discuss them" (October 25, 2005).
Despite the fact, the ambassadors had never requested a meeting to discuss the principles of Danish democracy, Anders Fogh Rasmussen nevertheless claimed that the ambassadors' intentions in this matter were in conflict with Danish democracy itself.

Egypt's Ambassador, Mona Omar Attiah repeatedly points out that they only requested of the Prime Minister that he distance himself morally from dehumanizing utterances: "It is a big misunderstanding when people think we have asked the Prime Minister to put limits on freedom of speech. We wished for him to call for a responsible and respectful use of this freedom. We also wished for him to take a moral position by declaring that Danish society is striving for the integration, not the demeaning, of Islam." (October 27, 2005).

Fügen Ok, Turkey's ambassador to Denmark points out: "We're not stupid; we know the Prime Minister has no authority to intervene. Our intention was to encourage him to improve the situation in the country; what happened is very serious and very provocative. This is not about closing newspapers. It's about presenting your views on the issue and trying to promote dialogue." (October 28, 2005).

Despite the ambassadors' direct rejection of the Prime Minister's wilful misrepresentation of their letter, he blatantly ignores them, intensifying his hostility in a way which can only be characterised as arrogant. In response to the ambassadors' criticism and allegations that the Muhammad cartoons represent an attack on Muslims and Islam in general within a bigoted Denmark, he declares: "In my opinion, this reveals an abysmal ignorance of the principles of true democracy, as well as a complete failure to understand that in a free democracy the government neither can, must nor should interfere with what the press may write." (October 30, 2005).

The ambassadors' request that those responsible for the cartoons be prosecuted "to the extent permitted by Danish law" is fully compatible with Danish jurisprudence and custom (blasphemy is illegal in Denmark). Hardly an attack on freedom of the press!

Otherwise stated, Anders Fogh Rasmussen chose to pontificate to eleven ambassadors as if they were schoolchildren who simply did not understand the definition of democracy, instead of discussing the issues raised by them, and commenting on the fact that their single request was for him to take a moral position on the issue of the cartoons.

Subsequently, Minister of the Church (and Religious affairs), Bertel Haarder reduces the whole affair to a clamour for "censorship" (October 30, 2005), and Foreign Affairs spokesman for the Prime Minister's party Venstre - The Liberal Party of Denmark, Troels Lund Poulsen, can see no reason to "enter into dialogue with persons who want to short-circuit the democratic process" (December 20, 2005).
The Danish government it seems is not content with refusing to meet with the Muslim ambassadors: they proceed to lecture them in patronising tones and their request for a dialogue suddenly becomes an attempt to "short-circuit" Danish democracy.

Portraying the ambassadors' appeal as an attack on freedom of speech is simply a wilful attempt at misrepresenting their intentions. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister continued his insistence upon this false interpretation, disregarding the ambassadors' explanations and statements to the contrary.
All of this was completely absent from his reasoning. The media and most Danish commentators also ignored it.

Paradoxically, Anders Fogh Rasmussen encourages the offended Muslims to respond to the cartoons in the very manner he himself refused to respond to the ambassadors: "The Danish tradition is to call a meeting, where we can sit and talk peacefully with each other. Sometimes we disagree strongly even when the meeting's over, and sometimes we reach an understanding of each others' motives. That's the Danish model. That's what we call conversational democracy." (Jyllands-Posten, October 30, 2005).

Apparently, "conversational democracy" does not apply to Muslim ambassadors! They were refused a meeting with the Prime Minister who obviously did not intend to discuss the matter with them, peacefully or otherwise.

Escalation

It was brought to the Prime Minister's attention on several occasions how easily he could end the conflict with no implications whatsoever for freedom of speech, but each time he adamantly refused to consider it.

The Prime Minister's rejection of the ambassadors' request for a meeting, his wilful misrepresentation of the contents of their letter and his denial of any anti-Muslim tendencies in Danish politics, significantly increased the rifts in Danish society between Muslims and non-Muslims as well as between Denmark and Muslims worldwide.
Simultaneously, the Danish government chose to overlook the fact that the ambassadors' letter warned about possible "reactions in Muslim countries", and a few days later - still in October 2005 - the Egyptian government warned the Danish ambassador in Cairo about "a possible escalation of the problem".

As early as October 29, the Egyptian ambassador Mona Omar Attiah, makes very clear recommendations: "The Egyptian Embassy urgently appeals to the Danish government to adopt a more serious approach to the problem in order to avoid an escalation, and expects at the very least, a statement from the government confirming its disapproval of these types of drawings as well as any violation of Islam in general." An Egyptian official who described the sort of reaction his government was calling for suggested the same: e.g. "an official statement condemning the mocking of Islam and its Prophet".

On November 18, the Egyptian Foreign Secretary Ahmed Aboul Gheit, emphasizes what several ambassadors have told the Danish press: that nobody asked for the newspaper "to be closed or for it to be censored", they had simply hoped for some sort of official statement. He goes as far as to detail all that was required of the Prime Minister to prevent the crisis from escalating: "Gentlemen, you must understand that my hands are tied. I cannot act against it, yet I would like to declare that this is not my opinion". (Politiken, November 18 2005).

The escalating crisis could probably have been contained if the Danish government had distanced itself from the image of Islam depicted by the cartoons, without doing any damage to the freedom of the press in the process. End of story.

Instead, the Prime Minister responded to the ambassadors' letter by misrepresenting their intentions whenever he spoke to the press. He distorted and omitted critical phrases and warnings in their letter, simultaneously ignoring the ambassadors' own explanations of its contents, even though they have repeatedly emphasised, starting immediately after receiving his response to their letter, that they have neither expressed any desire for control of the press nor for any kind of encroachment upon freedom of speech.

The entire affair gave the Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister the distinct impression that "there are actually people within the Danish government who like what they see" in the cartoons.

Yet the Danish government continues to ignore the continuous requests for a clear indication of its moral position regarding the message behind the cartoons. Despite the constant flow of clarifications and repetitions of this request from numerous foreign government officials, the Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Per Stig Møller in November 2005 still chooses to overhear everything: "The Constitution prevents censorship from ever being reintroduced. If Jyllands-Posten, claiming the protection of the constitution has violated the blasphemy law, then that's the business of the courts." (November 8, 2005).

Time and again, with equal condescension, the Danish government neglected to comment the many specific requests from ambassadors and other official agents from Muslim governments and the Islamic world in general, who ask for no more than a statement of disapproval from the Prime Minister.

Shortly after Christmas 2005, the Secretary General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ISESCO, threatened calling for an economic and political boycott of Denmark among its 51 member states. The Egyptian ambassador Mona Omar Attiah emphasised that the Secretary General's threat should be taken seriously: "He's not the only one calling for a boycott. The public sentiment is such that it may lead to people not buying Danish products." (December 27, 2005).

Even though Attiah still believed in the possibility of a diplomatic solution, she warned that there were also "elements in the Middle East who are not as interested in solving problems through dialogue as we are". Nonetheless, the Danish government chose to ignore the political reality for months, showing no understanding of the gravity of the situation.

On the contrary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen criticised 22 former Danish ambassadors for "bad timing", when they in December 2005 in an open letter criticised his handling of the case, which they found had prevented a diplomatic solution.
Since mid-October, Anders Fogh Rasmussen has maintained this wilful misrepresentation of the situation despite repeated warnings of a possible escalation of the crisis, including the possibility of a trade boycott, never once heeding the opinions or advice of the ambassadors.

There is plenty of documentation after events began to spiral of control in late January. Whatever one's opinion of Jyllands-Posten's initial publication of the Muhammad cartoons, and how exaggerated the violent reactions may have been four months later, it was still the Danish Prime Minister's wilful manipulation and distortion of events throughout the three months of conflict that resulted in the greatest international crisis in post-war Danish history.

This so-called Muhammad Cartoon Controversy has succeeded in establishing a rift between Denmark and many ordinary Muslims worldwide, as well as providing a host of anti-Muslim movements in the West with ammunition in their proclaimed struggle for 'freedom of speech'. A struggle which often seems to be nothing more than an excuse for the 'right' to demonize Muslims! At the same time radical Islamists have benefited from the cartoons by 'proving' that freedom of speech and other human rights serve to legalize blasphemous and Islamophobic hatespeech, whereas various types of anti-Semitism on the other hand are often considered serious offences.

Unfortunately, these double standards are the rule rather than the exception, enforcing an ongoing conflict that stimulates anti-Muslim tendencies in the West, as well as anti-Semitic and anti-Western tendencies in the Muslim world. In this way, the fundamental weakness of Danish diplomacy, coupled with a constant flow of anti-Muslim rhetoric and provocations in Denmark have played a key part in deepening the religious and ethnic rift that unfortunately dominates parts of the international political arena today.

Rune Engelbreth Larsen is an historian of ideas and columnist in the Danish newspaper Politiken.

http://www.counterpunch.org/larsen09242010.html

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