Wednesday, January 18, 2006

BifSniff - 'obviously not terrorists'

For those of you who don't follow the comments on this site (and sometimes they are hard to follow) I thought I should alert you to this one.

We have been causing some concern to certain of our fans, one of whom was kind enough to take the time to put his concerns in writing.

We originally caused some controversy with 'the First Noel' cartoon, followed by controversy over the 'Education Reform' cartoon and then most recently controversy over our 'Probing Questions' cartoon.

You will need to read the comments on all the cartoons to get the full effect, however here is one concerned citizen's latest comment reproduced here for you:

First of all, I don´t want to be confused with the individual above. Secondly, My name is not Val & I don´t live in Hamburg, let´s say my name is Daniel & I live somewhere in the USA, but as this information cannot be verified it`s useless, which is why I have been posting as "Anonymous". Thirdly, I run a small business so I don´t have a lot of time on my hands in actual fact. I´m responsible for several negative comments on your site, which I have been visiting for six months or more, in other words I´m a fan. The NASA comment may have been a little short of the mark but this is an area of particular interest to me so I may have been over emotional, NASA has been severely underfunded in recent years & has received a lot of bad press, especially in the States. Just so you know I did not contact any organisation about the content of this site, as I have decided to monitor your work on my own, for the time being. Lately, I´m sorry to say, I think you have been overstepping the mark. As you say yourselves, this site is meant to attract a broad spectrum, so I think you should give a little more consideration to this fact which you yourselves recognize. Although I am a supporter of Israel, I made the Jenin comment in the interest of fairmindedness. If you care to ridicule me in the future you should know that hanging above the desk where I am writing is a letter of thanks signed by the Field Director of the CIA for my service to my country. I alerted the CIA to an Islamist website which provided the intelligence services with information which prevented a major terrorist attack, which one is classified as it may endanger my life & the lives of my family. In case you didn´t know most internet research is conducted by concerned citizens as the CIA simply cannot monitor the entire web. While you are obviously not terrorists, I do think you need to recognize that we are all active participants in the current "culture wars" whether we like it or not, so anyone transmitting material needs to fully consider the consequences of his actions & the effect his opinions may have on ignorant viewers, whether unintentional or subversive.

I'm gobsmacked to be honest, if comforted by the fact it is obvious we are not terrorists.

Some have advised us that these are hoax comments, some seem to agree with the comments being made... what do you think?