Alameda, what is more saddening is that common people have been agitated enough to jump on the band wagon of hatred without ever thinking about the consequences. The streets everywhere are full of people who have turned this into a football like fanaticism. Everybody is talking about us and them. It is no surprize that this system keeps eradicating those defending peace and advancement (John Lennon, Kennedy, Bhuttos).

You certainly remember several episodes in our near history when the hopes of peace and brotherhood kept people together. After all those years, we have falcons and neocons running us the Hitler style.

 The thought you find these cartoons as bad as the Holocaust, where people were murdered, tortured and used as guinee pigs for awful medical experiments I find sickening.

Trudy, it is wrong to assume that Alameda is trying to find other incidents matching the magnitude of  the Holocaust. Both she and I are trying to find just other examples which are still going unnoticed no matter how small or how big. Man some of them are actually quite big events.

Have you seen the pictures taken in US POW camps? Although we have access to the uncensored ones, they are still apalling. These incident have happened only recently in a society where people have better means compared to 60 years ago. All these people fell to the hands of the butchers who talk about democracy, civilization and freedom.

You never said a word about 18 million unarmed Soviet people who were butchered by Nazis pretty much the same way.

Sorry that I wasn´t clear, but to me the Holocaust is more than ´just´ 6 million Jews, to me it is also the gypsies, gays, political opponents, and ideed the Russian who were butchered.

No, I haven´t seen the pictures - on purpose - but I´ve read about them and yes, I do find that horrible. I do find the guys who did that, including the leaders (no, ´Ich habe es nicht gewüsst - I didn´t know) awful, psychopathic and first in line to be judged and sentenced.

But I still object to the fact that whatever horrible happened there in the POW-camps, or how many people felt insulted/hurt by the cartoons, or other examples that one can compare it (or even name it in the same sentence) with the Holocaust. To me, maybe I´m a bit sentimental in that regarding my fathers history, it sounds just a little too much as trivializing the horrors of 1933-1945.

Trudy, many of us have been deeply effected by WWII....and WWI. ...many who lived through it are still alive.  IOW it is still very much in living memory.  I have seen the tatoos, the schrapnel in flesh, heard crys of  nightmares, seen photos of missing relatives, helped dry tears.......I have known people who were in concentration camps......Jews and Roma in particular.

Holocausts do not come out of a vacuum, there are stages to them.  It´s like getting the flu, first you don´t really feel quite well....immediate attention and care to the system is needed.  If not rapidly attended to  you can be overcome with fever, which goes into your lungs and you die.  If you are careful in your conduct (that is washing your hands, fortifying your system, not getting run down) , you may avoid it.

Hate speech, that is the demonizing whole groups of people, making fun of them, belittling them.....IS one of the stages towards genocide/holocaust. ....and we want to prevent another holoaust.  It is only in recognizing (not denying)  the signs that we can do that.

Politicians and intellectuals have so different agendas  then real nations´s agendas,and  they using to history´s bad events for make stronger their positions or chairs while real nations only looking for more peace,more freedom and more friendship and more justice.Ý belive real nations´s agendas full with hopes about future while Politicians and intellectuals scrabbling  in history´s dumps,and thats really strange they doin that under name of more democracy...

I think there´s a huge difference between denying something that has already happened and commenting on recent events be it by means of articles, cartoons or public speeches. Everybody´s free to talk about Holocaust and so everybody should be free to talk about acts of terrorism. It is known who is responsible for Holocaust and we know who was responsible for the terrorism that cartoon portrayed. Not letting people talk about it would be like forbidding to accuse Nazists of Holocaust.

The cartoons portrayed Muslims as a group in a very negative manner....one in particular had the basic creed of Islam and what was supposed to have been a protrayal of the Prophet of Islam (saw),  neither of which were responsible for the terrorist attacks.  They were designed to belittle and  provoke....and they did. 

Could you imagine anyone today doing something similar with a Jewish theme?  I´m quite sure there would have been a strong outcry against such an activity, it probably would have been more sophisticated, due to the fact that the Jewish community has more experience dealing with the issue and "Western" society.

At the least the "cartoons" were in bad taste......in reality they were a part of a propaganda program against a group.  Yes, they have a legal right to have been done, but was that a wise decision?  Was it a decision that will help bring about understanding and help ease tensions?

My moral compass says they were a very bad idea.

Actaully, an "adamant justification" of the Mohamed cartoons does make some reasonable points, I wish some people on the "other" side could see them. I think that the fact that you can´t see the points that those who "justify the cartoons" make, makes you the same kind of person as those who can´t see why some people may be offended by the cartoons.

Also, I think that you are stretching this a bit too far... Mohammed was mocked in the cartoons, not "all Muslims", no group was "dehumanized or belittled" in the cartoons. At least that is how the cartoons were seen by the westerners -- mocking religion, mocking how contradictory religious beliefs are -- not mocking people. 

Another point I have in mind is that every country/nation has conventions that are relevant in that particular region. Europe makes laws against denying Holocaust, but also they feel free to mock ANY religion.. that´s their culture and that´s what they understand by freedom of speech. Some Arab countries deny the existance of Holocaust, dehumanize the whole West, demolish churches, call for the death of the pope (or whatever that was), and penalize (sometimes by death) any criticism of Islam...

So is there a universal law that should guide the rules regarding "freedom of speech"?

When Muslim/Turkish/Arab people mock about Christians I´ve never heard of groups in western countries demonstrating in the streets, burning flags, attacking embassies etc. People in the ´West´ shrug and think ´they´re mad´. Is it really a question of long toes?

As I said previously, it was in very poor taste.  If the objective was to provoke distrust & hate,  it was a job well done.  It could just be that in "Western" cultures there is little passion regarding religion.   IOW....they don´t care.  In any analysis of the situation, it was a very provocative action.

Of course attacking embassies was ridiculous and counterproductive.  However, people do not have to patronize businesses who practice policies they don´t agree with.

Again, it was in very poor taste.

I was revisiting the controversy and am amazed how much damage those stupid cartoons wrought.