In this morning’s mail…

The 15th of february 2006, SBS a national Australian TV showed horrible images of the torture made by US soldier at Abu Ghraib. Those pictures are now largely published around the world. (At least I’ve seen them in the biggest European Newspapers, Algerian and Maroccan Newspaper, Al Jazeera, and so on…) Those pictures are forbiden in the US!!!

Since the Stranger have been so brave lately and published the cartoon depicting Mohamed, will you be brave enough too, to publish those pictures? Will you carry on standing for freedom of press?

Here are some links :

nhttp://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3218,36-741969@51-740895,0.html
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=359637

Best regards
Houria

Thanks the note, Houria, but you’re incorrect about these pictures being somehow forbidden in the United States. They were all over television and the papers when the Abu Ghraib story first broke (an American television network broke the story), and these new pictures are all over the place now—they’ve been shown on CNN, in the Washington Post, one was in today’s New York Times, and they’re cropping up in other places. We’ll put one on our website, if you like:

These images pissed off a lot of Americans, particularly conservatives, just as the Mohammed cartoons pissed off a lot of Muslims. And they were published regardless. And it has to be said, Houria: there were no riots, no death threats, no deaths, no burning buildings. So the damning point you think you’re making—that Americans are hypocrites because we’re not publishing these outrageous photos—is doubly faulty. The pictures have, in fact, been published here, and people who were pissed about it—and some people were very, very pissed—tolerated their publication. Some Americans were outraged that when the pictures were published (decent Americans are more outraged by the torture), and they may think they’re offensive and harmful to the war effort, but no one called for the “trial and punishmentâ€� of the editors at the papers that printed them and television networks that showed them.

Finally, it seems that you’re a new reader of the paper. As that’s the case, you probably missed this cover: