Flogging the Blogger sounds dirty. In a manner of speaking, it is. If the story, below, is a portent of things to come, then I should consider keeping my big mouth shut, perhaps, for if this poor guy is getting a prison term, I will be stoned, most likely, and not in a pass da kouchie to da left hand side kinda way. Thankfully, I live in America where we believe in Free Speech, still, though that is being eroded even as we speak. Netizens, beware!
Court Upholds 4-year Sentence on Egyptian Blogger
March 12, 2007 7:35 AM
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) – An Egyptian appeals court on Monday upheld the four-year prison sentence given to an Egyptian blogger who criticized conservative Muslims and was convicted of insulting Islam and Egypt’s president, court officials said.
Abdel Kareem Nabil’s sentence, last month, had been widely condemned by local and international rights groups as a bid to curb free expression. Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, had been sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and inciting sectarian strife, and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.
Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims. His frequent attacks on Al-Azhar led the university to expel him in March 2006 and caused prosecutors to bring him to trial.
Court officials said, Monday, that the Appeal Court in Alexandria upheld the earlier sentence. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The judge in the original trial found that Nabil had insulted the Prophet Muhammad with a piece he wrote in 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria over a play deemed offensive to Islam.
”Muslims revealed their true ugly face and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity,” Nabil wrote in his blog. He called Muhammad and his 7th century followers, the Sahaba, ‘’spillers of blood” for their teachings on warfare – a comment cited by the judge.
In a later essay not cited by the court, Nabil clarified his comments, saying that Muhammad was ”great” but his teachings on warfare and other issues should be viewed as a product of their times.
In other writings, he called Al-Azhar the ”other face of the coin of al-Qaida” and he criticized Mubarak, describing him as ”the symbol of tyranny.”
Ah, this is my soul brother! I, too, am scathingly critical and sacrilegious when I look about and see that, after two-thousand years of Judaeo-Christian wandering in the Western wilderness of “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself,” apparently not everyone’s on the same page of the Good Book. Some have been coloring in the margins – badly, I might add – and others are ripping out any passages they don’t understand, which leaves us with Pages 69 and 666.
Likewise, we now have the Islamic Towelhead Contingent of Eastern extremist fucktards that believe in jihading your ass if you steal their parking space. Why can’t we all just get along? Between the Bible, the Koran and that fucking menu at Jerry’s Famous Deli on Ventura Boulevard, there’s plenty of room for misinterpretation. It’s also possible to order up exactly what you want, day or night at El-Jerry’s, as long as you don’t try to force-feed your matzo balls to that burly biker in the booth next to you.
I’m an Equal Opportunity Blasphemer and I don’t believe in sacred cows. In fact, the smoke you see rising over the neighborhood is not from my peace pipe; that’s my grill. I’m barbecuing your grandmother, right now. Hey, I told you to keep her fat ass out of my yard, but did you listen? Nooooo! So, granny’s goin’ down with ketchup and fries.
*burp*
Yes, speaking my mind could lead to the loss of my head. ‘Tis a small sacrifice, however, for if I have to keep biting my tongue, then the swelling resentment is going to explode in a rage of epic proportions and I might verbally nuke someone when, instead, I’d rather just lightly carpet-bomb them, occasionally, when I feel like letting off a little steam. I’d rather be dead than live in a world where I couldn’t say what’s on my mind – and I’ll fight for your right to verbally oppose me, as well.
It is an error to say that I don’t believe in violence. I do. Why? Because the world is filled with fucktards who, sometimes, don’t seem to respond well to a hug. Because of their narrow-minded tunnel vision and predisposition to “shooting first and asking questions, later,” it behooves the pacifists to befriend a few old-fashioned warrior types. Everything being relative, I would never say I’d never resort to violence. I’m not that enlightened or compassionate.
Until everyone beats their swords into plowshares, disassembles the last assault rifle and unscrews the warheads on their Ronco pocket nukes, I’m going to reserve the right to smack the shit out of anyone that looks at me cross-eyed, if I think that bulky flak jacket they’re sweltering in is just a bit too suspicious for a sunny summer afternoon. It’s called survival of the fittest. All of your damn laws and vain attempts at civilizing world societies has only brought us to this point: We’re still bombing the crap outta each other.
I wish I didn’t have to believe in violence. I’d rather believe in violins and chalk it all up to a typo, but I don’t get the impression that the Bush administration uses spell-check. They probably thought it was Wiccan and cut its funding. I wonder how much terrorism and strife we would have in the Middle East, if the Western powers hadn’t force-fed the Jewish state of Israel to the world, displacing the Palestinians in the process. That’s not anti-Semitic, by the way, just practical. I find that the only people who try to force square pegs to fit in round holes . . . are assholes.
Listen, I’m from West Virginia and I have many fond memories of the place, plus most of my family still lives there. But if they call me to say that Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky are going to wedge the boot of Virginia deeper into the ass of Appalachia, then I’m going to invite the kinfolk out to California, instead. You can have Appalachia. This doesn’t mean I don’t think there are some things, people and places worth fighting for, but to be so attached to a piece of land is ludicrous, to me. I don’t find it that holy and I don’t give a shit if that bothers anyone.
Here are some wise words about fighting:
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them.
Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
- attributed to Chief Seattle, Suquamish; 1786 – 1866
Regardless of whether Chief Seattle’s words were written by a screenwriter or a history buff enamored with the Native American’s sense of harmony with the land, they are powerful and wise words, which should be heeded. Follow the link and read the entire passage, and feel the weight of what we should be doing as caretakers of this planet and stewards of modern society.
As a whole, humanity has never listened to the majority of the great men and women and their deep-flowing wellsprings of wisdom. I am under no delusions that anyone will listen to me, either, assuming there is even one nugget of inspiration to be mined from my blog. However, I don’t write it, solely, for someone to discover and, perhaps, have a little 40-watt bulb go off over their head. If I don’t write or speak it, then I feel I’ve done a disservice to the planet and its people, even if that alienates me from the very ones I seek to enrich. Yes, I know my bedside manner is a bit rough. Tough.
It is human nature to trod heavily upon the planet, its tribes and bountiful harvest, but we are reaching a tipping point where the lack of sustainability is becoming the crux of impending crises, which mankind has never known. Till now, there was always somewhere else to escape – beyond the great lake, a mountain range or wide sea – to get away from annoying neighbors or family members. But those days are gone and the wilderness has dwindled. There will soon be a Starbucks at the mouth of every tributary on the Amazon.
If we don’t quickly solve the world’s wastefulness and recklessness regarding the finite resources that are being rampantly depleted, then our children will reap the rewards of our negligence and stupidity. It is time to change our behavior towards each other and the tiny blue orb we call home in this cosmos.
It may take a village to raise a child, but it only takes one child to raze a village – if he plays with fire. The global village had best mind their local idiots and stop electing them to public office. So, if my venom and verbal bombast seems extremely harsh and capable of causing more problems than it solves, I get that. But I’m fucking angry and I don’t feel like writing another goddamn letter to my shithead Congressman or eSigning an online ether petition that feels equally as futile.
My rage and roar will be heard. If someone takes offense, then they’re probably one of the fucktards I rant about. Until the fascist goosesteppers start rounding up all the stray Kats, I’m going to continue feasting upon fat ass bewildebeests who are too dimwitted and slow-footed to make it across my jungle.
However, if I’m not here, tomorrow, then you’ll know that either Homeland Security considers me a threat to the Administration or I’m just sitting at home in the dark, flogging my blog — which I hear can make you go blind.
The Kat
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