Hackers operating from Saudi Arabia aiming at shutting down Aaron’s CC blog today successfully knocked out one of the servers at Hostings Matters shutting down temporarily a number of prominent blogs, including:

Instapundit
Power Line
Captain’s Quarters
SondraK
Pundit Guy
Chuck Simmins
Small Dead Animals
Radioblogger
Hugh Hewitt
IMAO
Mountaineer Musings
Say Uncle
Counterterrorism Blog
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Castle Arggh!
She Who Will Be Obeyed
Michael Totten
Ticklish Ears
Samizdata
Theodore’s World
Something……And Half of Something
Big Lizards

What provoked all this was a posting on Aaron’s CC cached on Google) responding to some earlier Islamic hacking attacks, derogating the civilization of the Islamic Golden Age, and asserting:

the Muslim world’s contributions to civilization, were entirely derivative, bereft of originality, applying principles derived by Westerners. While script kiddies might have taken down my site earlier this month, they’re no match in the long run against motivation, resources and creativity. Hell, let’s face it, by any quantitative measure, Israel invents more in a month to benefit mankind than Arabs do in a century. OK, that was too generous… in half a milennium.

Stories:

LGF

Michelle Malkin

UPDATE

Also temporarily disabled were:

Big Lizards
Lone Star Times
The Strata-Sphere
Blogs For Bush

I had no idea that so many blogs, some with large readerships, some with small, all used the same hosting service. There is a real vulnerability here.

This is going around today as an email titled “One of the best emails you will receive.”

It’s clearly a fake picture, cooked up by some wag in Photoshop, but it’s amusing enough to pass on.

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This picture is not doctored. Most Syrians struggle to even read Arabic, much less have a clue about English.

Obviously, pictures of this protest rally never made their way through the Arab TV networks, but the results were “Priceless.”

The sex industry, which is legal in Germany, is anticipating a bonanza of lonely customers from abroad, travelling to attend the World Cup soccer tournament taking place June 9 to July 9. So the Pascha Brothel in Cologne, which boasts of being the largest bordello in Europe and the only business of its kind to offer a money-back guarantee to dissatisfied customers, wanting to welcome customers from all 32 participating countries, placed a 9-story tall advertising poster on its high-rise building, featuring a smiling blonde removing her bikini, above the flags of all 32 countries, captioned with a paraphrased version of the official motto: “The World as a Guest Among Girlfriends.”

Well, the sons of the Prophet were not amused. The BBC reports that Brothel-owner Armid Lobscheid told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper that Muslim groups accused the brothel of insulting Islam:

He said they had accused the brothel of insulting Islam by using the flags.

First there were telephone threats of violence, then about 30 hooded protesters armed with knives and sticks turned up outside Pascha on Friday, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper reported.

“The situation was explosive,” Mr Lobscheid told the paper.

“Some of the people compared our ad to the Danish Mohammed cartoons,” he said, referring to cartoons which sparked violent protests in several Muslim countries in February.

German brothel-keepers are no more courageous on the average than the management of Borders, of course, so the flags of first Saudi Arabia and later Iran were obligingly blacked out.

Josh Stulman, “Our Greatest Hero”
(said by Yassir Arafat of Haj Amin Al-Husseini,
(pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem)

The Collegian (the independent student newspaper at Penn State) reports that University authorities cancelled an exhibition of art by student Josh Stulman on the basis of the Pennsylvania State University’s infamous Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment:

Three days before his 10-piece exhibit — Portraits of Terror — was scheduled to open at the Patterson Building, Stulman (senior-painting and anthropology) received an e-mail message from the School of Visual Arts that said his exhibit on images of terrorism “did not promote cultural diversity” or “opportunities for democratic dialogue” and the display would be cancelled.

The exhibit, Stulman said, which is based mainly on the conflict in Palestinian territories, raises questions concerning the destruction of Jewish religious shrines, anti-Semitic propaganda and cartoons in Palestinian newspapers, the disregard for rules of engagement and treatment of prisoners, and the indoctrination of youth into terrorist acts…

Charles Garoian, professor and director of the School of Visual Arts, said Stulman’s controversial images did not mesh with the university’s educational mission.

The decision to cancel the exhibit came after reviewing Penn State’s Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment and Penn State’s Zero Tolerance Policy for Hate.”

The Centre Daily Times‘s story today serves as a vehicle for an attempted whitewash.

An art student is claiming his work is being censored by Penn State because of its provocative images of terrorism, while school officials say the decision to cancel his exhibit is not content-related.

In an e-mail sent Friday to fifth-year student Josh Stulman, Charles Garoian, director of the School of Visual Arts, said the exhibit was pulled because it was sponsored by Penn State Hillel, making it a commercial work. The Patterson Gallery is dedicated to unsponsored class work. Garoian wrote in the e-mail that the exhibit would continue if the sponsorship is removed.

Hillel donating “$75 to $100 for a reception” suddenly magically transforms Mr. Stulman’s paintings into (non-exhibitable) commercial work? Right. Tell us another one, Professor Garoian.

Let’s hope Mr. Stulman’s parents know some hungry lawyers.

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Volokh Conspiracy also reports.

The Scholars for Peace in the Middle East organization is desperately searching for a copy of the following article:

Garoian, C.R., “Fighting censorship in the art classroom.” School Arts: Inspiring Creativity in Teaching, Vol. 95, No. 14, December 1996 (with Albert A. Anderson).

If anyone can lay hands on a copy, please send it by fax it to: 717.561.9494, or email it to scholarsforpeace@aol.com or send it to: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, c/o Susquehanna Institute, 624 Sandra Avenue, Harrisburg, PA 17109.

Dr. Prof. Matthias Storme Y (M.A.) ’82,offers very nice example of earlier European treatment of Mohammed. The Church of Our Dear Lady in Dendermonde, Flanders (Belgium) features a late 17th century pulpit, sculpted in wood by Mattheus van Beveren, upheld by angels who are treading underfoot the false prophet Mohammed, who is leaning on the Al-Koran.

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Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

An Italian conservative Catholic magazine, Studi cattolici [Catholic Studies] (Pretty darned conservative, no web page!), informally associated with Opus Dei, published in its March issue a cartoon alluding to Dante’s Divine Comedy Canto XXVIII (which places Mohammed in Hell), in order to make a satirical comment on contemporary Italian politics.

Despite the fact that Mohammed is not even illustrated in the cartoon, its publication produced the now-predictable Islamic howls of indignation, and the equally-predictable Occidental cringing.

Opus Dei’s prelature, represented by Manuel Sanchez Hurtado, resorted to boot-licking:

It is one thing to appreciate Dante’s Divine Comedy and a very different thing to joke about this particular scene in the present climate and in a Catholic magazine,” said that Opus Dei communications director. While the prelature is not directly responsible for Studi Cattolici, he said, the editors responsible had apologized for the illustration and Opus Dei leaders wanted to “unite ourselves to this request for forgiveness.”

Cesare Cavalleri, the editor who published the cartoon, apologized,

Cavalleri was quoted as saying the vignette “was interpreted as being anti-Islam when, if anything, it was a denunciation of a cultural identity crisis in the West,” the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Cavalleri as saying. “In any case, if, contrary to my and the author‘s intentions, someone felt offended in his religious feelings, I willingly apologize as a Christian.”

But some detect a possible note of saracasm in his apologizing, “as a Christian.”

In the characteristically valiant fashion of the MSM, today’s news reports have universally omitted publishing the controversial cartoon.

Associated Press did present a tiny, unintelligible image of the wrong cartoon. Malcolm Moore in the Telegraph mistranslated it, and misidentified the respective speakers.

Michelle Malkin, who is doing her characteristically thorough coverage, asked for a translation, and here it is:

Dante: “There, split in half from head to cheeks, isn’t that Mohammed?”

Virgil (balloon 1): “Yes, he is divided, because he sowed divisions in society.”

Virgil (balloon 2): “And that one there with his pants down, that’s Italian policy towards Islam.”

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The relevant text of Dante, and a better illustration (by Gustave Doré), can be found by clicking this button in the right hand column.

I don’t actually watch South Park, but the big story today was about a poke the South Park show’s writers took at their own network for forbidding the cartoon program’s displaying an image of Mohammed.

video

There is some debate on whether or not this story may be a spoof.

Why should I do all all the work of writing this up, and attaching all the links to the major bogs covering all this, when Pajama Media‘s editor in Sydney already did?

Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna

Guiseppe Pisanu, Interior Minister of Italy, announced that security forces prevented two Islamic terrorist attacks, scheduled to occur directly prior to the upcoming Italian elections. One attack targeted the Milan subway system; the second was aimed at Bologna’s 14th century Basilica of San Petronio, whose circa 1415 fresco of The Last Judgement by Giovanni da Modena

visualizes an uncomplimentary final fate for the Prophet Mohammed: bound to a rock in Hell, being clawed by demons.

Mahound has been getting what’s coming to him in Bologna for nearly six centuries so far, whether his infatuated and fanatical disciples like it or not, and it seems that the artists of Christendom, in Italy at least (if not in Borders) will continue to be able to express their opinions of the prophet for some time to come.
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We previously published another image of the painting. And we too have consigned Mohammed to Hell (Ã la Dante and Gustave Doré), just go to our right column button links and click:

Danish cartoonist (with snakes for brains) draws anti-Islamic cartoon, inspired by bribes of bags of money, egged on by a djinn, with a star of David between his horns.

Egyptian blogger Sand Monkey reports that the Syndicate of Egyptian Cartoonists has organized a response to Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten’s Mohammed cartoons. The results were published in al-Fagr (“the Dawn”), the same newsaper which published the Danish cartoons last October.

More of the new Egyptian cartoons can be seen at Sand Monkey‘s blog. They are not very witty, but neither were the Danish cartoons really (though the latter were more colorful, and a bit better drawn). Still, even taking into account the antisemiticism, it is refreshing, and seems a positive development, to see the Islamic world responding cartoon-for-cartoon. not beheading-knife-for-cartoon.

Yesterday, Borders and Waldenbooks surrendered to the savages, and announced that would not carry the April/May issue of Free Inquiry, containing a mere four of the cartoons featuring Mohammed published in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten. (You can find all twelve right over in my right-hand column, all day, every day. And try clicking on them!)

In the true spirit of capitalists always willing to sell rope to those intending to hang them, the bookstore chain’s management attempted to justify capitulating to Islamic censorship of expression thusly:

“For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority,” Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday…

..Bingham said the decision was made before the magazine arrived at the company’s stores. Borders Group, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., operates more than 475 Borders and 650 Waldenbooks stores in the United States, though not all regularly carry the magazine

Or, “Threaten us, and we’ll do essentially anything you want.”

The Amherst Times offers:

American flag: $25

Gasoline: $2

Cigarette Lighter: $2.50

Catching yourself on fire because you are a terrorist a__ hole: PRICELESS!

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Hat tip to YARGB.

Flagg Youngblood Y’97, and non-Yalies Jason Mattera and Jedediah Jones, have cooked up a satirical Application for Admission to Yale for the likes of Rahmatullah Hashemi.

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Hat tip to Scott Drum Y’70.