Humour workout needed

Further dispatches from the gym: I was finishing off on the rowing machine this evening, which is in the same room as all the free weights, which is where you get all the really macho, muscle-bound gym bunnies. Actually, they're more like boars than bunnies, but anyway. So anyway, there I am, rowing away, back, forth, back, forth, and this guy down the back starts really going at the weights. He's sweating, veins are bulging, the grimace is going all the way round to the back of his head, and then he starts grunting. In a strangely high-pitched voice: "Egh. Agh. Egh. Eegh. Eghhh! Agh. Eeghhh! Eegghhh! EEghhh!!" and so on. It gets louder and louder. "EEGHHH! AAGH!" Okay, fair play to him, he can lift heavy things, but it's getting ridiculous - the headband, the tight shorts, the glistening muscles -you know what I'm talking about. Finally, he goes for the burn, pushes it to the max, cliches the cliche to the cliche-ing cliche. "EGH-EGH-EGH! EGH-EGH-EGH-EGH-EEGHH-EEGGHHH!" And stops, suddenly. Silence. The silence is like his applause; you can see him glancing round the room for it.

So I stop rowing and call across the room: "Can you keep it down there, lad, you're giving me a hard-on." Nothing. The silence gets even louder. Everyone looks back at him, with his big, dorky, confused face on him, his chest going up and down like pigs in a lycra blanket, but no-one says anything. Not even a tweak of a smile.

Fecking humourless gym bunnies. I'm wasted on them.

Viewpoints

I might have given the impression a couple of times that London can be a dangerous place, but, just like anywhere else, it's only as dangerous as you make it. In Cricklewood, the greatest threat to life is getting stuck in a swarm of old women as they try and get on a bus. Bulked up with several winter coats, heads guarded by big fluffy hats and armed with walking sticks and pokey bags of shopping, these girls are far worse than any gang of hoodies, chavs or yobs that the Daily Wail or the Torygraph would have you worry about. Seriously, they have no fear - I guess because they know they're close enough to the end anyway, or else because they feel they're beyond right and wrong at this stage - and they will, shove, elbow and hobnail-boot you into submission. Woe betide you if you get in their way as they cram, seemingly five abreast, through the bus door; a sharp glance is the least you can expect for having the presumption to get in their way. A jabbing finger and shrill remonstration is more likely. My bus passes a bingo hall; it makes for entertaining scenes every day.

Yes, I know this is about the fifth mention of buses on this blog, but, hey, a lot of London involves buses. Any visitor the Special One and I have had taken a bus every day of their stay. It's just one of those London things. Which got me thinking: what does London look like to other people, to our visitors, for example?

You know the way, when you go somewhere new, everything seems heightened? The smallest details stick out, like a fast food sign or an accent (every second shop in Kilburn/Cricklewood is a fast food place anyways); number plates always did it for me when I visited England when younger, always gave the place a feeling of otherness. Now, though, I've lived here for a year and a half (and I was familiar with London from many previous visits) so even when I go to a part of London I don't know, it still has that London feel. Another example; on Doney Casanova's first ever trip to London, not long after we'd moved over, the Snowman, who was also visiting, and I met him off the tube - the much-maligned, dirty, expensive, late-running, oft-cancelled Londerground - and said: "Lads, isn't the tube brilliant." And, of course, to him, it was. Brand new, exciting, underground, the kind of thing you'd only see in a film, and completely alien.

Same as when we went to New Orleans for the Snowman's (later ill-fated) stag weekend. Everything - houses, billboards, etc - looked flat, thin, as if it was all surface and no substance, and the rampant neon commercialism adds a further twist to the hollow feeling, as if the place has been built for one purpose alone; Miss Logic (currently studying in America) and the Scholar (studied there for a year) probably know what I mean.

So, sometimes it's good to look at your surroundings in that frame of mind, refresh yourself a little. Maybe it's age, or else living in a big city (in Cork, as in Belfast, you can see the countryside from places in the city centre), but these days when I get back to my home town, I have a new-found appreciation for going for walks and looking at the green hills - something I would never have done growing up there; as a teenager, there was nothing more I wanted to do than to get the hell out.

Stitched up

Right, I've had a day to think about this, and I still feel the same. So here goes.

So those of you who aren't entirely sure of what I do, I'm a sub-editor; basically a glorified newspaper mechanic. It's my job to read stories, correct any mistakes - grammer, spelling, inaccuracies, etc - rewrite where necessary, cut the story so it fits into the allocated space, and then write the headline. Pretty simple really. Somehow - dumb luck, most likely - I nabbed myself a job in London for one of the best papers in the world. Go me, etc.

At the moment, I'm working in a general pool of sub-editors; rather than being attached to a particular department, we sub where needed, picking up stories from several departments, which means we cover a wide range of subject matter and a number of different needs and styles. So far, all well and good. It makes for a varied evening's work.

However, last night, my immediate boss, the head of the general pool - a really decent, down-to-earth Aussie - called me over for a little chat. Apparantly, five different people from one particular department had said to her that they didn't want me to sub copy for that department any more; I made too many mistakes, she was told, and I couldn't write headlines in that department's preferred style. I know, you're shocked that anyone could think that I am anything but perfect.

While you catch your breath, let me first consider the possibility of there being some truth in the accusation. On De Paper back home, we struggled with a nightly deadline struggle, as well as rubbish copy. On the department I was last on - a nine-month stint - we were under tremendous pressure, with three deadlines in as many hours. So, as my boss said, I do need to slow down; there's more time to 'finesse' the copy. However, what of this suggestion that my copy was littered with so many mistakes that this particular department found it necessary to take this drastic step? When my boss and her second asked for examples, they offered two stories that, in fact, I hadn't worked on. Rightly, my boss stood up for me. However, that doesn't entirely counter the accusation.

Now, I don't mind admitting that I could have made a mistake or few. Perhaps there is a particular style or idiom unique to this department that I've missed. Nor do I mind someone coming over and pointing out a style point that I've missed. I take fair criticism and direction quite well. But for all five of them to sit around together and actually let me make this (at the moment still hypothetical) mistake over and over, rather than pointing it out to me, until it looks like a congenital error, and then go over my head to my boss and suggest that drastic action needs to be taken, is not just unprofessional (it wastes their time, her time, and also mine) but a downright stab in the back. What were they thinking? That I'm such a badass that they feared to approach me and help me with this supposed problem? Or that I'm such a flower that the criticism might break me?

I've worked in newsrooms for six years, mostly at De Paper, but also here for a year and at three other newspapers and one magazine. They are often tense, terse places: there's never enough time, there's always a computer system, there's pressure from editors, missing stories, missing journalists. If the place isn't in a state of perpetual crisis, people begin to fret as to why this is not so. It's not a place for delicacies. There are clashes of personality, clashes of news values. There are fluid hierarchies - there have been times when I've had to shout down my own editor because, with 10 minutes to deadline, there's no way what he wants is feasible. However, everyone accepts that this is the way things are once they get into newsroom journalism - even the biggest ego is sacrificed on the alter of nightly deadline, daily publication - and rows are nearly always patched up over a pint later. I've had many's the nose-to-nose shouting match with Twitchy, my old night editor and mentor, and I consider him a good friend.

What's never happened to me in my six years, though, is being stitched up like this, though. In fact, I can think of only one occasion when I've been stitched up at all (I went to an all-boys' school, so hostilities were pretty open). I cannot belive that five of my fellow professionals, by far my senior in both years and authority, would act in such a low, cowardly fashion. And what's worse, my boss, rightly, didn't reveal which members of that department were involved, so I have no-one specific towards whom I can feel angry.

This isn't over, though. when I go back on the general pool next month, I will continue to pick up copy for that particular department. Let them come over and helpfully point out my errors then, because this time, I am going to be a fucking badass.

St Hallmark's Day

No thank you. As you know by now, I don't do religion, so I certainly don't to religious festivals co-opted into a consumerist celebration of forced sentiment. What, you may ask, does the Special One think of this lack of romance? Hell, I'm romantic every day of the year. Sadly, the Special One is sick today - the usual post-project run-down.

Meanwhile, yes, gym bunnies, I am wearing my Superman t-shirt ironically. Same with my Jack Daniels and my Solomon Burke t-shirts. Whereas you are wearing your London marathon t-shirt unironically. I don't care that you've run a marathon, I don't care that you can put your feet behind your ears, even when your head is up your ass, so now leave me alone. I've got a sense of humour, you think spending an hour on a treadmill is some sort of heightened human achievement.

Miss Logic

More snapshots of my London today. Walking across the bridge from the gym to the office, in daylight at least, one can see: St Paul's, the Gherkin, Canary Wharf, Tower Bridge (often mistaken as London Bridge - lads, the towers on it are kind of a giveaway), the London Eye, the Oxo building, the Tate and, most importantly, peaking out from between two much bigger buildings, Shakespeare's Globe. Oh, and the Thames, of course. It's quite, quite something.

All of this looks completely different, but equally spectacular, by night. At night, of course, I'm going to the gym, and have to walk off Southwark Bridge, down some snuck-away stone stairs and onto the bankside walkway. There's building going on on the stairs, so there's looming scaffolding and a light that flickers off more than on. It's all very Sin City, if you've seen Sin City. A work colleague takes the long way round to avoid these stairs and the bankside walkway, where homeless guys sometimes sleep in the niches of a private sailing club. He mentioned last week a TV programme about urban behaviour that said the way one walks has a lot to do with whether one gets attacked or not. He is small, slight and nervous. I stroll on through regardless, safe in the knowledge that sleeping homeless people are too tired, weak, cold and maybe drunk, to be a danger to anyone but themselves (insert cliche about poverty and wealth accumulating together in their extremes).

A friend said something similar today, that I had "a way of stalking around city streets at night with an air of one in his natural habitat". Just call me Patrick Bateman. Or Batman. Christian Bale will do. Anyway, today I'm going to tell you about this friend of mine, Miss Logic (I love blog-christening my friends. Dangerous though; it might reveal to them what I actually think of them).

Miss Logic is a fellow blogger - detectives will find it themselves - and we have a sort of mutual blog appreciation group of two. She, similarly, is a Corkonian in a foreign country. Unlike me, she's been a student for 20 years solid (Masters, or Doctorate or Ruler of the Universe in philosophy at the moment), and is, well, not religious in the conventional sense, but has a strong faith: believe me, I've tried shaking it. Anyway, aside from this, and the fact that she can't open a carton of orange juice for herself, Miss Logic is one of the most right-minded, and like-minded, people I know. I was going to say practically-minded, but this might give the wrong idea. She barely lives in this world, but in the world she does live in, she is firm. And she can drink a bottle of tequila standing.

We're similar in a number of ways besides the strident belief that we are always right (although she is a little kinder than I am). While we can both be gregarious, lifeandsouloftheparty.etc, there is something kept back about both of us, as if always observing, and conscious of the invisible, but artificial, almost insincere, role of the observer. And, I think, because we're both aware of this, both in ourselves and in each other, we have an unspoken 'nod': "I see you, you see me, let's leave it at that." There comes a great fondness from recognising, in having an unspoken. Of course, we didn't hang out as much as Doney Casanova, the Scholar, and, latterly, the Snowman, did; she doesn't know football or poker, I don't know clothes, the OC, etc. Funnily, our gang often divides along gender lines.

I don't have, want or need many friends and none of my friendships, whether with Miss Logic, Doney Casanova, the Scholar, even with the Special One, have very conventional origins, such as school, local sports teams, family, etc. In fact, I came into contact with all four in one very special place - Freakscene, which has been a constant, welcome fixture, a beacon, an ivory tower even, on Cork's nightlife for more than a decade now. Miss Logic, the Scholar and I were all members of Freakscene's once-vibrant talkpage community, and, after a year or so of rattling sabers, burying hatchets and throwing ourselves on our swords online, it was decided that the whole online community meet up. Friendships were made, cliques formed, old enmities either resolved or renewed. You get the picture.

The advantage of this method is that you can choose your friends on criteria other than old, out-grown acquaintances and shared childhood experience. In a way, it's more pure, especially for adults. (In case you're wondering, Doney Casanova was a tag-along friend of the Scholar. The Special One came on the scene a few years later, as the result of a bet...)

Anyway, back to Miss Logic. In a recent blog, she said she was just recently finding happiness, that, for 10 years she'd been little more than a shell. Obviously this doesn't mean that she's been on the brink, in the depths, for all that time; she and I have shared plenty of times of delirious happiness and enjoyment. But then, I guess, everyone's underlying happiness, their lodestone if you will, is up to them. Miss Logic is currently reading Plotinus, a Greek philosopher and father of neoplatonism, which is a western philosophy (rather than some half-baked eastern 'philosophy' or proslytising western religion) that, basically, suggests the existence of god, which might have something to do with it; alternatively, she might have realised that choosing to be happy is a big part of being happy.

That's always been my attitude - well, after I stopped being a shitty teenager - as handed down from my old man. Or, for Miss Logic's benefit, a muscular, non-ascetic epicureanism, mixed with the 'those who can, should' and the indifference to passion of stoicism.

Shaky

I have an overwhelming desire to punch the night editor in the back of the head as I walk past his desk, his nose pressed to yes another copy-proof. Not just a solid tap across the crown like one would a younger brother, but a full blockbuster, bruised knuckles and all. I've just been given the all-clear to go home, which is fortunate, albeit in a dreadful mock-Irish accent.

Three buses and the truth

If you can't read this it's because the entire internet has been sucked into the twin black holes that are the bags under my eyes. I was up all last night helping the Special One complete her project for today's deadline. She does the concepts, I do the words; it works quite well. She this week decided that she wants to go on and study at the London College of Fashion, not St Martin's, so, alas, there goes another chance of legitimately quoting Pulp lyrics. No-one ever mounted a blue plaque out in that field in Kerry either...

Actually, sleep has been rather hard to come by of late in general. Having worked evenings for six years now, I am perfectly used to the routine - get in late, wind down for an hour or so, get up late, occasionally get up when the Special One goes to college; however, this last month I've been working a shift that starts at 4pm and ends between 12am and 12.30am, and it's thrown my body-clock off completely. More importantly, the last tube home leaves at 12.25am; it's a bit of a lottery.

When I miss the last tube, the first of the three night buses I have to catch doesn't start until 1am, so a little more time sitting round the office. The first takes me to Trafalgar Square, the second to Victoria, and then on to Cricklewood. And, yes, it is an awful dose, especially when it was so cold a couple of weeks ago, but part of me quite enjoys my late-night jaunts around London. Unlike during the day, when it is wall-to-wall rambling tourists, cut with a few impatient Londoners trying to walk around and weave through a stubby forest of gyroscopic rucksacks, Trafalgar Square is almost empty at night - the crowds are packed a couple of hundred yards away in Soho and Leiscester Square. It's ever so slightly eerie.

This impression is reinforced on the next leg, which takes me through Westminster, past Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, etc, and they are absolutely dead to the world. Passing through the centre of power, where so much happens during the day, is like sneaking a peak at the stage and set of a play during the day, hours before the curtain comes up. There's a feeling of trespass, and a feeling of emptiness; the magic hasn't begun, the stage looks strangely vulnerable. It's like the opening scene of '28 Days Later', when Cillian Murphy wanders round a completely deserted London.

After the wait at Victoria - usually the longest - it's a quick jaunt through the kind of places you'd expect on a Monopoly board or a Richard Curtis film - Grovesnor Place, Park Lane, Marble Arch - before things get grottier the closer you get to Kilburn and Cricklewood, as they do. A quick lash up Edgeware Road and Maida Vale and you're at the foot of Kilburn High Road and almost home.

On these journeys, I like to sit up front upstairs - most people stay downstairs at night, safety in numbers, etc - and these scenes unfold in front of me like it's a cinema. Sure, getting the tube is more convenient, but this way you can really link up the vast city you're living in.

Six-pack of your choice

Oh, my poor legs. Argh, my sides. They feel like a Danish embassy.

I've started going to the gym, you see.

I am not, by and large, a vain person. Actually, no, scratch that, I think I'm fucking gorgeous, but I've never felt under pressure to do anything to maintain that. Spending a fortune on my appearance, on clothes, wanky haircuts, etc, is not what makes someone sexy. Being, as we humans are, one step out of the jungle, especially in the realm of sex, attraction is all about attitude, posture, charisma, etc. Some women, obviously think that part of charisma is plenty of cash, which is why Peter Stringfellow gets his end away, but , well, he's welcome to them. Me, I have a smouldering gaze, an air of danger and some cool leather jackets.

So, that doesn't count as vanity in my book. Nor am I the kind of person who will do something just out of obligation. For example, my one and only reader thus far, the delightful Miss Logic, is a Catholic, and she feels her beliefs are helpful and important to her. But I wouldn't pull any punches in yesterday's post for fear of offending someone, for fear of not being polite. I don't do things just because they are expected of me.

So, I'm not going to the gym because it's the done thing, or because the health nazis gasp when I say I don't exercise, or because I want to look good (although, now that I do go, for the reasons that will be explained below, the image of a six-pack and bulging biceps does spur me on). The reason for going occured to me when I started having trouble fitting into my jeans (waist 32, since you ask, but probably stretched out to 33 by wear and tear - like I said, I don't buy clothes often. The jeans I'm wearing today are probably seven or eight years old.) See, not only is buying a new wardrobe compliment of jeans (three's enough for anybody, right?) expensive and wasteful (what do you do with the old, still-good-after-a-decade jeans?), squeezing into too-tight jeans is uncomfortable.

With this in mind (discomfort, expense), and considering that I'm a smoker, a drinker and not the healthiest eater in the world (being vegetarian helps, but does mean I eat a lot of dairy), I decided it was about time I did something about getting old. Going grey (distinguished), getting wrinkles (ditto) and balding (shave it when it gets too bad) are not a problem. However, getting old and becoming unhealthy to the extent that it starts to affect your lifestyle and well-being is a problem - the aforementioned discomfort and expense.

You see, the Special One and I will eventually have kids - we're engaged a year, and we're thinking about thinking about having a chat about having a conversation about maybe setting a date and getting things organised - and it's extremely likely that I'm going to be the main provider, unless of course the Special One cracks the fashion world wide open. On top of that, I'm six years older than her. I'll be in my 30s when we have kids, I'll be in my mid-50s by the time we get rid of them (providing the world hasn't gone kaput by then, as Gaia theorist James Lovelock now believes) and I want to be fit and healthy both for the time I'm bringing them up, and for enjoying my autumn years. So, in a sense, I'm (cliche alert) investing in my future by getting fit. Of course, I could give up drink and fags too, but, you know, I think weaning myself off the crack cocaine is a big enough step for now.

Plus, I'll get a six-pack out of it.

Please do not offer my god a peanut

My my, what a week.
1: The British government's bill making it an offence to incite hatred on religious grounds is defeated.
2: Muslims protest being caricatured as terrorists by terrorising the western world.
3: BNP leader Nick Griffin is cleared of inciting racial hatred - comments he made to a private audience, unaware he was being filmed.
4: And today, fundamentalist London preacher Abu Hamza is jailed for seven years for similar comments, incitement to racial hatred, murder and terrorism, made in public.

So, what's it all about? It's all about freedom of speech. The Danish cartoons came about originally because a Danish author couldn't find an artist to illustrate a childrens' book about the Koran; they feared a backlash for transgressing the Islamic edict against pictorial depictions of people, animals and especially Allah and Muhammed, in case it inspires idolatry. strictly speaking, Muslims are not supposed to have posters of pop stars, footballers, etc, on their walls. The call for the cartoons was part of a debate on self-censorship in the eye of sensitivities to other faiths.

Were they funny? No. Were they sensitive? No. was the Jyllands-Posten right to publish? Perhaps not, but that's actually not relevant. Were papers in Germany, France and 10 or 11 other European countries right to republish? Absolutely.

Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland (nominally, and much more so these days), Britain (despite its lack of constitution) and other members of the EU are secular states. The separation of church and state is absolutely vital to modern life. For one; faith is a choice, like which football team you support. It's a ludicrous basis for making decisions about people's lives. It's a hobby, as Eddie Izzard once said of the Church of England faith. Secondly, and more importantly, if the church, any church, is allowed to influence state actions, you get human rights abuses, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Mother-and-Baby scandal of 1950s Ireland. The bottom line here is that religions are evil. More than any capitalist organisation, they distribute wealth and power upwards and enslave the weak, facilitating child abuse, political massacre, dismemberment and plague, not to mention bog-standard poverty, guilt, hate and backwardness.

With this in mind, it's essential for your continued freedom and mine that religion learns its position in the world: we will not be enslaved. We, the human race, are free people and we will not be told who to talk to, who to love and who to hate, what to read, what to eat, where we can and cannot go, what we can and cannot have, what we can and cannot think. Women's bodies, lives even, will not be commandeered to make babies. The poor will not die of terrifying, withering diseases in exchange for a crust of bread. The young and vulnerable will not be imprisoned and tortured in the name of nurture and protection. Moreover, religion truly is the opiate of the masses; it robs them of their potential and denies humanism.

Christianity, thankfully, has learned this lesson. Whereas 40 years ago, people burned effigies and images of a pop band who joked that they were bigger than Jesus, whereas 25 years ago, a group of comedians received death threats for making a film about someone who was born in the shed next to Jesus, last year a far more overtly blasphemous operetta saw protests by, at most, 100 middle-Englanders who muttered 'down with this sort of thing' and burnt the receipts for their TV licences. The world munched its cornflakes and turned to the horoscopes.

Of course people are wary of offending Muslims, or appearing to sing from the same hymn sheet as the BNP. There's a school of thought that we should be sensitive to Muslim concerns because, after all, European secularism is merely a belief system, just as is Islam; how can you weigh one as more important than the other when so many people believe in it so fervently that they will lay down their life for it? Who hasn't, in the last week, quoted, or at least thought of the Voltaire aphorism: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"?

However, such seemingly benign relativism is in fact a betrayal of the principals which allow you to enjoy your life as you please, the politics - for which people have suffered and died - which give you the freedom to live as you choose; to drink, smoke, dance; to listen to music, watch TV; to say what you like, to go where you want, live where and how you wish; to see, talk to, sleep with and love who you like; to speak which ever language you choose; to write whatever you want with whichever hand you feel most comfortable with, and even where to go and pray of a Sunday morning. People have worked, fought and died for those liberties, and to put secularism on a par, to give it an equal footing, to make it a mere accident of birth, as religion, any religion, which subjugates people to the will and whim of the self-appointed interpreters of ancient, liberally interpreted, selectively read, writings, is to give up those hard-won, hard-kept liberties.

With liberties and rights come responsibilities - firstly, the responsibility to protect those liberties and rights, as mentioned above, by not giving in to those who wish to censor us. Secondly, to use those liberties and rights responsibly. There are some who say that freedom of speech is not absolute, that there are necessary strictures that we have to observe to all live together in harmony. No. There is an obvious courtesy one should observe when possible so that we can all live in harmony, but sometimes such courtesy comes second to the necessity of speaking out. The Jyllands-Posten didn't have to publish those cartoons - the point they made by doing so was a rather weak, badly made one - but the subsequent publications were absolutely necessary, just as 'The Life of Brian' was necessary; change and progress does not come from placating those who would censor us. Any freedom is not a freedom if it is limited; otherwise it is a mere allowance given to us by those who do the limiting, and just as you let them give, you let them take away.

Unfortunately, there are always those who will abuse their freedoms (which is not, of course a reason not to have them). If I am to have absolute freedom of speech, then unfortunately so must far-right groups and fundamentalist preachers. For their speech to be curtailed, there must be a curtailer. In a classic "who will guard the guardians" case, it's better to have anarchy than slavery. Hence the British government's defeat on the Racial and Religious Hatred bill this week. Liberty prevailed over regulation. It's worrying, of course, to think of the BNP with free reign to spread their hate and lies, but, and this is where the Abu Hamza conviction is interesting. There are laws already covering public order offences, assault and incitement which can be used to police them, without ever transgressing their right to speak, as Abu Hamza has found out. Nick Griffin is free to talk about whatever he likes in private, with his own friends, however odious, and this is a good thing.

Another reason why the BNP and the like should not be censored is because of how they can twist such censorship to their own aims. It's rather crude, but the air of martyrdom and persecution presents them as freedom fighters and wins them votes. Rather, letting their views stand in the full blast of the oxygen of publicity is the only way of revealing the lies, misinformation and manipulation they use to present their racist agenda. You can't tell a BNP member that immigrants brought a net gain of £2.3bn to Britain in 2003 if you've already silenced the dialogue.

Similarly, you can't address the contradictions of Islamic fundamentalism if you self-censor for fear of causing offence, or, god forbid, for fear of causing riots, building-burning and murder. Seriously, it's like Kristallnacht out there. And this from a body of people whose media regularly caricature and lampoon Jews in the most derogatory fashion. When they're not proclaiming the destruction of Israel and Zionism, of course. Or threatening to "slay/massacre/annihilate those who mock Islam".

Which brings us back to the cartoons. It was right to publish them in the first place, and it was even more right to republish them is support of Denmark and the Jyllands-Posten after the initial outcry. The fact that buildings have been burnt and people killed is scary, but that is exactly what makes it so right - you cannot abandon the principals on which your life is founded simply because because the pawns of an anti-humanist organisation object with fire and bullet when you exercise those principals. Otherwise, what is the point of having them?