On vacation and without CNN for over a week, I flipped on the hotel's TV late Monday evening and saw Muslims rioting and embassies burning. DANISH embassies? Over those insignificant cartoons The Brussels Journal discussed back in December or January?
It's like I've landed on some other planet or something.
If you've been following the story, you probably know much more about it than I do. But here's a few of my reactions:
Saturday: Danish protesters march with placards reading, "We're sorry." And I'm thinking – what a buncha goddamn pussies. By all means, apologize when you hurt someones feelings. But when buildings are set alight, it isn't YOU who should be the ones offering apologies.
Sunday: TV says most Danes see this as a free speech issue. And they're NOT apologizing for the crime of living in a country with freedom of speech. Good for them.
But CNN International claims that the "world standing of Denmark has been damaged". Huh? How so? No offense to Danes, but I've never previously given their country a second thought. Now I'm seeing them as a tiny country being pushed around by a bullying mob numbering one billion. A situation rather similar to Taiwan's, when you stop to think about it. That's pretty heroic, in my book.
Wednesday: Sounds like the US State Department fumbled the ball a bit at the beginning. Clinton kicked the Danes while they were down, too. All of which is uncool. But the Yanks and Brits seem to be giving Denmark support now. The time for humoring vicious theocrats ends when they start breaking things, killing people and promising a new holocaust.
Thursday: Anderson Cooper today had a guest who made the bizarre claim that blasphemy restrictions would somehow demonstrate to Muslims that there really is religious freedom and equality in Europe. 1984 and Animal Farm all at once now. Freedom is slavery. All religions are equal, but some are more equal than others.
I'm sure you've all heard of the contest launched in Iran for cartoons mocking the Holocaust. The Belmont Club informs its readers of another contest:
A contest to humiliate Mohammed has been launched not in Texas, not in Israel but in the [politically-correct] Netherlands. The Netherlands. Almost inconceivable.
The Dutch website can be found here. Some of it's pretty offensive, but TS. Right now the only thing that the Danes should apologize for is the fact that the original cartoons just weren't all that funny. Leave it to the Dutch to rectify THAT:
This one wasn't bad:
As Sun Tzu wrote, "When your enemy is angry, annoy him":
A little more risque', this one:
But it's pretty tame compared to:
Hardcore atheists will like:
But in my opinion, the final one is spot-on:
I am free, and I am uncowed.
UPDATE (Mar 2/06): Danes issue the kind of apology that the situation merits, giving Islamofascists the middle finger salute. Uitstekend!
(Hat tip to Sandmonkey.)
UPDATE (Dec 20/10): The internal links to three of the images seem to have become broken. Looks like these were BMP files, and the newer versions of TypePad have problems with that format.
After much searching, I found the original BMP copies, and converted them to TIFFs & JPGs. The JPG files have now been linked where the old BMP files once were in this post.
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