Rioters clash with NATO troops over cartoons http://sympaticomsn.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060207/lebanon_cartoon_060207 NATO troops clashed with protesters in Afghanistan on Tuesday, in the second day of violent demonstrations over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Afghan officials said Norwegian troops shot at hundreds of demonstrators outside a NATO base in Maymana after the protesters opened fire and hurled grenades. ...Security has already been ramped up in the city, which is home to some 3,000 foreign diplomats, aid workers and others, after four people were killed and at least 19 hurt in clashes in Afghanistan on Monday .... [Note the paragraph near the bottom:] .... Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, charged that the publication of the cartoons was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over the victory of the militant Hamas group in the Palestinian elections last month. [Wrong - the cartoons are quite a bit older than that - about six months or more was the first I'd heard of them. - Geoff] "The West condemns any denial of the Jewish holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities," Khamenei said. [In the reverse, we are to suppose that islam permits denying the Jewish Holocaust - since it draws sympathy away from islam, and since it draws that sympathy to the enemies of islam - but that it does not permit questioning the behaviour of islam and muslims today, nor the questioning of the 'prophecy' of a man for whom there exists no proof whatever of any affiliation with any god. "Question the Prophet or his followers? Oh, well then we question the documented murder of six million people." 'Draw', if you'll excuse the pun, your own conclusions. - Geoff]
