Profiles in Cowardice

In America, whose government, at least until recently, recognized our right to freedom of speech, we have a trade publication for journalists reporting that few newspapers have chosen to show their readers cartoons of Mohammed that should have been famous months ago so that their readers might know what all that mysterious rioting is all about -- and calling the decision about whether to publish "difficult"!

Editors across the country continue to face difficult decisions surrounding the cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad, which have set off rioting abroad. Few American papers have published the cartoon so far, although several have shown them on their Web sites or provided Web links.

Difficult, hell. It's your job!

Whereas in China, which does not choose to recognize that inalienable right, some who exercise that right anyway die honorably -- at their government's hand.

A Chinese editor has died as a result of a police beating he received for his paper's reporting on corruption, journalists and rights groups say.

Wu Xianghu had been in hospital since the attack in October, suffering from an existing liver problem made worse by the beating, earlier reports said.

Wu was reportedly attacked by some 50 policemen after his paper accused them of charging illegal bicycle fees.

And, in case a few uppity proles won't learn by this example, there is no dearth of short-sighted American corporations willing to help the government sniff them out.

Yahoo Inc. provided evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of an Internet writer, lawyers and activists said on Thursday, the second such case involving the U.S. Internet giant.

The company cooperated with Chinese police in a case that led to the 2003 arrest of Li Zhi, who was charged with subverting state power and sentenced to eight years in prison after trying to join the dissident China Democracy Party, writer Liu Xiaobo said.

Who needs Islamist savages to tell freedom to "go to hell" when so many free men are perfectly willing, by their inaction or outright complicity, to send her there?

There is no excuse for the behavior of our media corporations in either case. Ever since September 11, 2001, hasn't it been clear that the Islamists all want us dead anyway? It makes not one whit of difference what we say or do, so we might as well make the most of it. Repeat after me: "Screw Mohammed and Allah both!" We're already marked men. The proper response is to fight back, not to snivel and whimper about offending Moslem "sensibilities".

And in China, Yahoo's behavior is positively reprehensible. "Customer service" means actually helping your customer, the man using your web portal, not handing his head to the Chi-Comms on a platter. You live by the government's whim, you die by the government's whim. How Yahoo thinks it will be exempt from the ire of the government when their time comes is beyond me.

Whether they admit it or not, our journalists and internet companies are endangering themselves by taking what they seem to think is the easy way out. The only ones these fools are making things easier for are their enemies.

-- CAV