mediawatchwatch.org.uk

CNN have a profile of Lars Vilks, the Swedish Modog artist with an al-Qaeda bounty on his head.

The video is well worth a watch. It contains an interview with a demented burka declaring its intention to “slaughter Vilks like a lamb”.

The phlegmatic Vilks remains unruffled throughout; checking his car for bombs and sneaking through gardens to his safe house every night with amused resignation.

At one point during the interview he receives a death threat by text: “I will kill you, you son of a bitch.”

“Why aren’t you frightened?” asks the astonished reporter.

“You get used to it,” replies Vilks with a smile and a shrug.

CNN, by contrast, did not have the courage show any of his cartoons on air.

UPDATE: Lars Vilks has acquired a guard dog and named it Muhammed. It is a bitch.

Monsignor Tommaso Stenico was “outed” in an Italian TV sting. An independent reporter posing as a homosexual arranged via a gay website to meet several Catholic priests. Mgr Stenico, of the Congregation for the Clergy, actually invited him to his office in the Vatican.

Stenico asked the man “Do you like me?” and explained that he did not think homosexual sex was sinful. As the reported was leaving, the padre informed him that he was “tasty”. The documentary was shown on Italian TV, and Stenico identified by his voice and his office.

Stenico now claims he is not gay, and that he was simply conducting “research”:

I only pretended I was gay to study how priests are seduced.

There are people who go after them …I really believe there is a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists.

The Vatican is investigating. Intriguingly, photos of the pretend-gay padre have been removed from his website.

“Tasty” Tommaso Stenico is 60 years old.

(Hat tip The Freethinker)

The Local reports that Swedish hackers have exacted revenge upon their Turkish counterparts, who earlier this month attacked around 5000 Swedish websites.

The Swedes breached the security at the Turkish forum Ayyildiz, accessing their database and publishing details of thousands of usernames and passwords. Ayyildiz is a forum used by Turkish hackers to brag about their exploits.

We have chosen to leak these user details in response to the many recent attacks on Swedish web hosts and websites following the publication of a satirical drawing by Lars Vilks portraying the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a roundabout dog

The Swedes also broke into email and MSN accounts and sent messages using the stolen identities. One of the images posted was a pornographic depiction of Mohammed and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The expression, if we are not mistaken, is “pwned”.

Apologies for not informing you in time, but last night BBC2 showed Bloody Cartoons, the Danish documentary about the Motoons crisis.

In contrast to its cowardly reaction at the height of the affair, the BBC showed all 12 of the cartoons on screen. In fact, the opening sequence showed Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard painting another version of the controversial “Tur-bomb” cartoon.

The funniest part was the secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeliddin Ihsamogl, getting angry when asked if he would accept any responsibility for the violent street protests. He had written a furious letter to the Danish government, and stirred up anger at the OIC – but, of course, it had nothing to do with him.

UPDATE: (2:45 pm) The show provoked one complaint – and it was about perceived “bias”, rather than about the depiction of Mohammed.

The first film of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy has been stripped of its religious themes for fear of offending Catholic audiences.

Director Chris Weitz said:

In the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic Church gone wildly astray from its roots.

If that’s what you want in the film, you’ll be disappointed.

While this may be disappointing for Pullman fans and supporters of free speech, they can take consolation that this pious bowdlerisation is not enough to satisfy The Catholic League, who are still calling for a boycott. It’s all part of an evil atheist conspiracy, you see:

The Catholic League wants Christians to boycott this movie precisely because it knows that the film is bait for the books: unsuspecting parents who take their children to see the movie may be impelled to buy the three books as a Christmas present. And no parent who wants to bring their children up in the faith will want any part of these books.

We are launching a major educational campaign designed to alert the public to Pullman’s game plan.

Grrr. If it wasn’t for that pesky Catholic League he would have got away with it, too!

(Hat tip The Freethinker)

Last night’s Newsnight investigated West Midlands Police allegations against the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque, and found that those allegations were groundless – something that informed commentators have long suspected.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwCrzp_Mo2M[/youtube]

Ofcom’s ruling is due soon. The Angel Gabriel has reliably informed us that they will come to the same conclusion, and the West Midlands Police will end up with egg on their faces – deservedly so.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-OGJw80tdw[/youtube]
This video, produced by BBC Learning and the Terence Higgins Trust, has been branded “disgusting” and “degrading” by the National Confederation of Parent Teachers Associations and Mediawatch-UK. It is part of a safe-sex awareness programme aimed at 16-24 years olds.

With its rapid-fire double entendres and stop-action hero style it appears to hit its age-band target spot on. So it is hardly surprising that bone-headed prudes don’t get it.

David Turtle of Mediawatch-UK tells Metro:

This film is degrading to women and encourages casual sex and normalises certain kinds of sexual behaviour.

There is no hint of a loving relationship in this film. It is highly irresponsible of the BBC.

What a load of slimy spoff.

Bloody Cartoons, a documentary about the Motoons controversy, was shown on Danish TV last week. (The linked preview is worth a look, if only for footage the Egyptian pop singer threatening Danes with hell fire, and a defiant Kurt Westergaard painting another Motoon for the camera).

Flemming Rose blogs about it. They interview Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who called for a “day of rage”, and discover that he had never actually seen the cartoons himself. They talk to the secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeliddin Ihsamoglu, suggesting he had some responsibility for the violence. Both men get annoyed.

But the scoop of the film is an interview with a “professional demonstrator” in Iran:

This 72-year old man is instructing the Basij forces of the revolutionary guard to attack the Danish embassy. Reporter Karsten Kjaer finds him in a town outside Teheran, and contrary to all the official figures the guy is honest.
‘We heard that the Prophet had been insulted, so in a letter to the Danish ambassador we demanded that the Danish government punish the offenders and apologize,’ he explains.
‘But did you see the cartoons?’
‘No, I did not.’
When he is presented with the cartoon showing Mohammed with a bomb in his turban he replies.
‘Is this Mohammed? He doesn’t look like the prophet. He is an Indian Sikh.’

That’s what all the fuss was about?

Here’s a another trailer:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTeXXx8RvEE[/youtube]

MWW reported on the crap video game Left Behind last year. Based on the novels of sub-literate fundamentalist freaks Tim La Haye and Jerry Jenkins, the game is set in a post-rapture world where the aim is to convert baddies into God-fearing Christians. The Muslim Association of Britain wanted it banned.

It received dreadful reviews from gamers and bloggers alike, resulting in a massive drop in the company’s stock price and – now – threats of lawsuits to reviewers who have said nasty things about it.

As Bartholomew notes, one odd thing about the legal letter being sent out (apart from the fact that it “fails as a serious legal document”) is that it appears to be coming from a house belonging to the attorney’s mum, and its named “Administrator” is the CEO’s wife.

They shouldn’t have picked on gamers.

AP reports that more than 5,000 Swedish website have been attacked in the past week, many of them as a result of Lars Vilks’ Modog cartoons.

Apparently, dogs are traditionally unpopular among some Muslims because angels are afraid of them and won’t enter a house if there is one inside.

Mr Vilks has stated that Muslims in the West will need to get used to people making fun of their prophet because “here in the West we mock everything.”

Meanwhile, there have been reports that Mr Vilks is planning to write a musical on the whole affair.

“I think it would help the debate,” he said.