Moron Abroad

Egypt's Grand Mufti Gets It Right

2006-02-21T12:29:00.000+01:00

For once I'm apparently in agreement with the Grand Mufti of Egypt. In a Politiken interview I don't see translated anywhere, he tries to explain exactly what Denmark has done wrong and what it needs to do to restore its relations with the part of the world that's currently praying for its destruction. (Aside to Grand Mufti: Danes don't generally pray for anyone's destruction, and don't consider that kind of behavior a reasonable response to a personal affront, so we've got a communication gap there, as well.)

The Grand Mufti says (toward the end of the interview):

»Jeg tror, at fire ting er nødvendige i Europa. For det første skal undervisningsmateriale, der chikanerer islam, fjernes. For det andet skal de love, der diskriminerer islam, væk. Der er enkelte love, der er meget diskriminerende. Tørklædeforbuddet for eksempel. For det tredje skal islam kunne anerkendes som religion i de lande, hvor der bor muslimer. Og for det fjerde skal muslimer have lige rettigheder og muligheder. Når det er sagt, har de også et ansvar for at integrere sig i deres samfund. Men det skal ske uden krav om, at de skal opgive deres identitet«

To paraphrase quickly, rather than translate (quick lunches, remember): he thinks four things are necessary in Europe: educational materials that harass Islam have to be removed. Laws that discriminate against Islam need to be got rid of. Islam must be recognized as a religion in every country Muslims inhabit. And Muslims must have equal rights and opportunities.

I completely agree with all four points. I guess my problem is that I think all four of these conditions have already been met--the odious French headscarf law the only exception that jumps immediately to mind. (Yes, it's odious. There are girls all over Brooklyn and Queens doing very well at school in their headscarves.)

Also, there's a lot of translation being done better and faster than I can do it over here.... oops, that was supposed to be a link. I can't make it work for the moment. I'll edit it later today.

Lost Time

2006-02-19T15:17:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged in about a week. It isn't that I've lost interest in what's going on. It's not even just that I've been too busy. (I have been, but I can find time when I need to.) It's that every time I see something in the news that I feel compelled to blog about it, I start a post, am unable to finish it in the time I've got, and then when I finally do have time to finish it there's something else in the news that I'm even more anxious to write about.

Off the top of my head, I can remember wanting to write about the Swedisih government's shutting down of a private party's website because it hosted pictures of the cartoon; the Finnish prime minister's apology to the Muslim world for the cartoons having been hosted on a private site in Finland; the reaction of various Danish Muslims to the Prime Minister's meeting with only one particular group of Muslims; the momentary political shift in Denmark away from the Social Democrats and toward neither Venstre or the Conservatives but the Danish Folk Party; the ongoing lack of concern about Silvio Berlusconi's self-description as "the Jesus Christ of politics," especially when compared to the furor over another government minister's having been forced to resign for having worn a tee-shirt with one of the cartoons upon it; and, lastly, the dismally unfolding reality that while most western individuals on the left and right really do seem to "get it," our media and governments have put up their white flags.

Maybe that's because they're the media and governments and are so used to triangulating their statements, or trying to maintain the illusion that they're doing so, they've lost all common sense.

Because the common sense I'm hearing from pretty much everyone I talk to or correspond with, of every political persuasion, is this: whatever you think of the cartoons or the paper, the paper had the right to publish them. And the government has no authority to take any action against the newspapers for having done so. And Danish businesses and the Danish people certainly don't bear any collective responsibility for the behavior of a single newspaper. And Muslims around the world have every right to be offended, to express their offense, even to conduct peaceful though wrong-headed boycotts.

It's also common sense that when you start burning effigies, issuing death threats, inciting riots, attacking innocents, and burning down or attacking diplomatic installations, you've left the realm of the "peaceful protest."

Anyway, instead of trying to get caught up and make up for lost time, I'm just going to post this great link to Flemming Rose's own account of "Why I Published Those Cartoons." It's in English.

I'll try now to resume posting on my regular erratic schedule.

Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T12:15:00.000+01:00

Peter has sent me a new translated article to post, on the full chronology and activities of the Travelling Imams, and there's an interesting story in MetroXpress today about the harm this crisis has done to the average Dane's perceptions of Islam, but I have no time for any of that now.

Lunch is short, and it's Valentine's Day, so here's the old History of Valentine's Day from the almanac archives.

Brace Yourself

2006-02-13T17:01:00.000+01:00

Yes, strap yourselves in for another bumpy ride on Religion's wild ride: Italian PM Silvio Berluscnoi has apparently called himself " the Jesus Christ of politics."

Presumably there'll be demonstrations of outrage Christians on the streets of Rome within the next couple of days. A delegation of leading Jesuits will no doubt embark upon a tour of the "Christian World" to inform their co-religionists of Berlusconi's offensive remark.

Then it'll just be a matter of months before there are violent demonstrations in the capitals of all the Christian nations of the world. Italian ambassadors will be sent packing; foreign ambassadors in Rome will be called home for consultations. There'll be calls for an EU prosecution of the Italian head of state; the Organization of Christian Nations will demand satisfaction. Italian embassies in several Christian countries will be attacked and even, in some cases, burned to the ground.

Newspapers around the world will refuse to print the text of the remarks, for fear of offending Christians. A handful of newspapers in non-Christian countries will publish the text in solidarity with Mr. Berlusconi; in most cases the editors will be fired and the newspapers sued. But western media will trip all over themselves reporting on the offensive nature of the remark, and every major leader of the world will explain that although an Italian head of state does have the right of free speech, free speech has limits and comparing oneself to our lord and savior Jesus Christ clearly crosses that line. The New York Times will publish an editorial describing Berlusconi's contempt for the Christian condition, but will refuse to reprint the text of his remarks for fear of offending people further.

The EU will consider a ban on all metaphors involving the name of Jesus Christ. Wolf Blitzer will interview Silvio Berlusconi on CNN and ask him if he's prepared to apologize to the Christian world for taking the Lord's name in vain. Bersusconi will explain it was only a joke, told among friends. Blitzer will then press a secret button under his desk and release the College of Cardinals, who will subsequently devour Berlusconi on live television in a rabid fit of wanton cannibalism.

And I am Marie of Romania.

Iranian Police Participated in Attack on Danish Embassy

2006-02-13T12:18:00.000+01:00

I just get a short lunch break, so I don't have time to translate, but this new story from Teheran is disturbing but unsurprising: apparently the local police enabled the attacks on the Danish embassy last week, and even drank tea with the perpetrators afterwards.

Don't Iranian police, unlike Danish newspapers, work for the government? Or have the Iranian police been privatized? Because I think Denmark is due a very serious, very sincere apology from the Iranian government.

Isn't it?

(I won't hold my breath...)

Vandals in Esbjerg

2006-02-12T21:01:00.000+01:00

According to this story, more than two dozen Muslim graves were vandalized in a Muslim churchyard in Jylland last night.

That kind of thing is disgusting. I'll defend Denmark's free press with all I've got, but I will never, ever excuse something so ugly, hateful, crude, and disgraceful.

It's so damn frustrating to see the ugly extremes on both sides of this issue, when it's perfectly clear that the vast majority of Danes bear no ill will toward Muslim immigrants, and the vast majority of Muslim immigrants bear no ill will toward Danes. It's so important to prevent the extremists on both sides from framing the issue as an apocalyptic clash of incompatible civilizations. I regret that I myself can get caught up in some of the doomsday talk now and then. But secular western civilization is absolutely compatible with Islam. The millions of happy and productive Muslim immigrants who are perfectly at home in the western world are a testament to that fact. It's the uncivilized elements of both sides that are setting off all the sparks.

But I've read enough history to realize it was ever thus.

Anyway, I hope the perpetrators are caught and that the law comes down on them with full force.

* * *

On an entirely different subject, EuroCNN broadcasts "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" every Sunday evening. Anders Fogh Rasmussen was one of the featured guests tonight. I thought he held his ground firmly but diplomatically. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive Wolf Blitzer for asking the Prime Minister (at this late date!) if he intended to offer a government apology for the offensive cartoons. (I paraphrase from memory; eventually the transcript ought to turn up here.)

Fogh explained for the seven-hundred-thousandth time that under Danish law, the Danish government has no authority over or responsibility for the views expressed in privately-owned newspapers.

It was the right answer, I'm sure, but I would have found deep (if momentary) satisfaction if Fogh had replied: "That is an interesting question, Vulf. Since you apparently don't understand the concept of a free press, may I assume your own government told you to ask it?"

Per Nyholm: "We Are Being Pissed Upon"

2006-02-12T16:35:00.000+01:00

I was fortunate enough to receive the following translation of a Friday Jyllands-Posten column in my inbox this afternoon. The original may be found here. Thanks very much to its translator, who identifies himself to me only as "Peter." (I have made no modifications to the translation as it was sent to me; the bracketed editorial notes are his own.)

(Maybe American liberals will start climbing back aboard the (mostly vacant) free press bandwagon now that Danes feel a little betrayed by George W. Bush again.)

The translation follows.

* * *

We are being pissed upon
by Per Nyholm

Jyllands-Posten

February 10, 2006

I think it was the long departed H.C. Hansen, one of last century's great Danish statesmen who once - while the communists were demonstrating in front of Christiansborg [Ed: the seat of parliament] - threw his gaze across the palace square and remarked: "I will not be pissed upon."

Then he did what was necessary.

I feel that currently my beloved country is being pissed upon rather too much. Denmark has not been neglecting its duties on the international stage. We have supported poor people with acts and advice, we have worked for peace, we have sent soldiers, policemen and experts to all the far flung corners of the world. We have democracy, a state of law and a welfare state. Not all is perfect, but we harbor no malice to our fellow man.

And yet Denmark is being pissed upon. The spokesman of the US State Department is pissing on Denmark, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs is pissing on Denmark, the President of Afghanistan is pissing on Denmark, the Goverment of Iraq is pissing on Denmark, other Moslem regimes are pissing on Denmark. In Gaza, where Danes for years have provided humanitarian relief, crazed Imams encourage people to cut off the hands and heads of the cartoonists who made the caricatures of Mohammed for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Excuse my choice of words, but all this pissing is pissing me off.

What's happening? I am not so much referring to the threats against Danish citizens and Danish commerce. Nor are the burnt down Embassies what occupies my mind. I am thinking of a word that keeps popping up whenever the Mohammed cartoons are mentioned.

That word is BUT. A sneaky word. It's used to deny or relativize what one has just said.

How many times lately have we not heard people of power, The Formers of Opinion and other people say that of course we have freedom of speech, BUT.

They have said it, all of them, from Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General to our own Bendt Bendtsen [ed: Danish Politician]. Once we had to be sensitive of the easily hurt feeling of the Nazis, then came the communists, now it is the Islamists. The reason I say 'Islamists' is that I don't for a moment believe all the world's Moslems are pissing on us. I think we are dealing with thugs, fools and misled people. Those are the ones we have to deal with, and then the chickenshit politicians.

The cartoons are no longer something the Jyllands-Posten can control. They have already been manipuleted and misrepresented to the point that few know what's going on and fewer know how to stop it. This affair is artifically keept buoyant in a sea of lies, suppressions of the truth, misconceptions, lunacy and hypocrisy, for which this newspaper bears no blame. The only thing the
Jyllands-Posten did was that it with a pin-prick made a boil of nastiness explode. It would have happened sooner or later. That it happened more than four months following the publication of the cartoons, raises a question of its own. Are we dealing with random events or with a staged clash of civilizations? One might hope for the former yet expect the latter.

That's why I say: Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech. There is no but.

Initially I was doubtful of the timeliness of publishing the cartoons. Later events have convinced me that it was both just and useful. That they are consistent with Danish law and Danish custom seem to me less important than this: that we now know that remote, primitive countries deem themselves justified in telling us what we can do. Unfortunately we also have to recognize
that governments close to us agree with them in the name of expedience.

The just is in the offensive this newspaper has launched in the name of Freedom of Speech, the useful in our newly acquired knowledge. Welcome to a brave, new world, where even our Prime Minister - in spite of his laudable firmness - must gaze out upon a scorched political landscape. It's true, as is custom, his friend in Washington, George Bush, condemns the torching of our embassies, but his Department of State allude to us being the guilty ones in this case. The suggestion that Danish troops might benefit the democratization is buried under the charred remains of our diplomatic representations in Beirut and Damascus.

Perhaps it's time we started mopping up this mess. Perhaps Editor-in-Chief Carsten Juste ought to remove his apology which has gone stale sitting so long on the front page of our internet edition and which does not seem to interest madmen. Perhaps our government ought to announce to Mona Omar Attia, the strange Ambassador of Egypt, that she is persona non grata.

Perhaps it ought to be announced to the ambassadors that have been called home to fictive consultations in the Middle East that they may spare themselves the cost of the return ticket.

To the degree it is possible, The Lying Imams ought probably to be expelled. And then we ought to make an effort for the Moslems who in a difficult situation have proven themselves to be true Citizens.

We, for our part, have no wish to be a burden for the arab governments. We will happily withdraw our soldiers, policemen and diplomats. If they think our money smells, we will stop our aid. Our trade must make do as well as it can. We promise to not bear a grudge and, in time, we will be glad to return, but we are through with the hypocrisy. We have better things to do than being pissed upon at our own expense.

Turn down our activity in the Middle East. This world holds other opportunities.

Naser Khader: "I Feel Insulted"

2006-02-12T14:46:00.000+01:00

As promised in a previous post, I've translated Naser Khader's commentary "I Feel Insulted ." (The essay first appeared in Berlingske Tidende on January 31, when the issue was only just beginning to receive international attention.)

I've done my best to translate in a way that sustains the emotional tone of the essay and avoids awkward literal translations of Danish idioms and expressions. While this means my translation may not be 100% reliable on a literal level, it does mean you won't be scratching your head wondering what the hell writing "column up and column down," for example, could possibly mean.

His essay follows.

* * *

I Feel Insulted

by Naser Khader

January 31, 2006

The case of the Jyllands-Posten prophet drawings has now reached hitherto unseen heights. Saudi Arabia and a couple of other Muslim countries now feel insulted and offended, and consumers in those nations are therefore starting a boycott of Danish goods. The line of the insulted gets longer and longer, and this author hereby adds himself to the queue: I feel insulted in my democratic consciousness. And I demand an apology. Now!

The Danish debate about Jyllands-Posten's Muhammed drawings has drawn out many voices. We've heard from the press itself, from the Prime Minister, from the opposition, from Muslim organizations, and from Muslim individuals.

Some consider the drawings an unacceptable insult to all Muslims, others don't. The same can be said with regard to the Islamic world: some feel insulted, others don't. My impressions from different Arabic media is that the most pervasive opinion – maybe surprising for some – can be summed up like this: We cannot as Muslims dictate that non-Muslims obey the dictated prohibition of picturing the prophet. The uprising over Jyllands-Posten is in other words not a grassroots movement in the Islamic world, and that's certainly also reflected in the tally of countries that have complained and threatened boycotts to this point. That's approximately a handful of the world's roughly 55 Muslim countries, and among these the loudest and most pointed protests are coming from Saudi Arabia.

Given this background, it's noteworthy that in Denmark one hears critiques of the drawings based on the premise that they're insulting to Muslims. The spokesman for Grundfos, Niels Due Jensen, forthrightly urges Jyllands-Posten to give the world's Muslims an apology. This paints all Muslims with one brush, a tendency which Jyllands-Posten's critics are otherwise usually right to condemn. Some charge that the insult targeted a weak group. To that I say that just because one is a Muslim doesn't require one to be weak.

As a Muslim and a democrat I therefore wish to stress: I (and many others) don't feel insulted by the drawings. On the contrary, I feel strongly insulted that where there was once a tradition for religious satire in the Middle East, it's now become primarily a western privilege to treat religion satirically. And insulted that freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and artistic freedom are for the most part reserved to the western world. Why don't we in Denmark fight for the Muslim artists' right to the same privileges as their western colleagues?

I feel insulted that we in Denmark hear demands for an apology to fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia instead of demands for democratic liberties for everyone, including Muslims.

Why don't we condemn Saudi Arabia's outrageous absence of democracy? Why do religious insults outweigh democratic insults?

You can write yourself senseless on the topic of how wise it was for Jyllands-Posten to put out the drawings. You can do the same on the topic of whether they were or weren't an expression of anything more than tasteless provocation. Or whether the government could have handled it differently. But it is indeed nothing but wonderful that the foreign minister is now "working diplomatically to calm the troubled waters." Dialog, yes. Apology, never. What should he apologize for? That we don't interfere in the freedom of the press and artistic freedom? Whom should he apologize to? Saudi Arabia?

If anyone ought to say they're sorry, it's Saudi Arabia. Apologize for its glaring disrespect of human rights, for its disrespect of religious freedom and for its systematic war on equality. For denying women their voting rights, for denying them a passport without a man's permission, for only counting their witness as half a man's, and for forbidding them something as banal as driving a car. For the poor underpaid Filippino Christian guest workers imprisoned just for possession of a personal Bible. Apologize for Sharia punishments. For hand amputations for thievery and the lash for consumption of alcohol. For stoning to death for infidelity and homosexuality, yes, I could go on.

Saudi Arabia should be ashamed, and an apology for having insulted the country with satirical drawings is simply a bow to fundamentalism.

My message to Saudi Arabia and the other Muslim countries who have joined the boycott therefore goes like this: You insult my democratic consciousness. Apologize.

The Man

2006-02-11T23:17:00.000+01:00

I've mentioned Naser Khader a couple of times in the last few posts. I haven't linked to him yet.

I apologize for the oversight. Here he is.

If you can read Danish and haven't already read this, please read his essay "I Feel Insulted."

If you can't read Danish... damn. It's a lot to translate, but I'll do my best in the days ahead. As far as I'm concerned, in this little sliver of this little lightning-flash of a moment in history, I think he is doing the most important work in the world.

(And yeah, I'm aware of the fact that his politics are generally to the left of mine, but unlike the American left these days I'm capable of putting my ideological reflexes aside in emergency situations. Oh... and I'm capable of recognizing emergency situations.)

I Wish the Times, It Was A-Changin'...

2006-02-11T13:28:00.000+01:00

The New York Times publishes an article entitled "A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery" with the following opening paragraph:

They're callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.

Readers of the Times will have to take the writer's word for it since they've never seen the images themselves. But you have admire the audacity of the way this whole episode is being framed here. "Cooked up," "provocation," "exploiting," "cheap points." And that's just the first sentence! (But aren't we supposed to have to pay for Times opinion pieces now?)

But let's fast-forward to where the author really drops the ball, in comparing the current international fiasco to a little tempest-in-a-teapot I myself lived through in New York:

An obvious precedent, now comically tame by comparison, is the "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, a promotional bonanza for the British collector and wheeler-dealer Charles Saatchi, who owned the art in the show. The exhibition incited protests by the Catholic League. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani played the stern dad to a bunch of publicity-savvy artists whose work included a collage of the Virgin Mary with cutouts from pornographic magazines and shellacked clumps of elephant dung.

Previously unmoved to action by Catholic League protests against a play at City Center involving a gay lead character fashioned after Jesus, the mayor, contemplating a Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton, decided he was personally offended by the art, although he had never actually seen it, and threatened to cut off public financing for the museum.

"You don't have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion," he said, foreshadowing a bit the Danish debacle about freedom of religious expression, notwithstanding that the artist of the Virgin Mary, Chris Ofili, happened to be Roman Catholic.

The New York art world was shocked only because it had expected the show to pass without fuss, since the art was already old news to insiders. But then museums nationwide had to hold their collective nose to defend Brooklyn over the issue of free expression, and by the end the whole affair had turned into farce, obscuring even the quality of what were, in fact, a few not-so-bad works of art.

That's an obvious precedent? It's obvious in that it involves a religious symbol being desecrated, but beyond that I'm lost.

What Giuliani said is absolutely right, and does not foreshadow the current debate at all. No one has a right to a government subsidy for anything. A government is acting entirely within its rights if it decides that, based on a violation of what are considered community standards, a given exhibit ought not to receive the support of federal money.

But I don't even want to get into all that. What's interesting isn't that this particular writer thinks there are parallels between a mayor threatening to withhold a subsidy and a violent global movement calling for the destruction of a sovereign nation. What's interesting is that the times actually dared to show the offending art!

Here's the image:

You know what I think personally? I think publishing this image was a callous and feeble attempt, cooked up as a provocation by a liberal newspaper exploiting the general Catholic weariness at seeing their holiest symbols desecrated (by artists who don't have the courage to stand up to Muslim sensibilities on the same topic) to score cheap points about.... well, whatever. I don't see how it does much of anything other than put the lie to their editorial from the other day (see post below). Are you telling me the image in that photo isn't just as "easy to describe" as the images from Jyllands-Posten?

This is the kind of stupid hypocrisy that makes me sick. As America's leading newspaper, the Times ought to be very firmly leading the charge on the right side of this debate.

Instead they're playing whack-a-mole against America's Catholics.

What's the message? "Muslims worldwide have a right not to be offended by what we print in an American newspaper. American Catholics do not."

I guess the only way to get them to change their mind would be to put them through what Jyllands-Posten is experiencing: last night I saw on the news that the police count of bomb-, death-, and other threats against them had passed the century mark. Yes. And their cartoonists are in hiding for fear of their lives. Yes. And every day, all day, on every Danish media outlet, we are told more stories of which Islamic groups are vowing to kill which Danes (and which are simply declaring open season on the whole country). Danes are being ordered home from Muslim nations. An amnesty has been passed allowing Danes with family members in Muslim countries to bring them into Denmark without the usual bureaucratic hassles for the next 14 days. And so on.

And what Americans probably don't even know is that, within Denmark, the whole issue is being dealt with beautifully. Extremist groups (Abu Laban & co.) have been cut out of "the dialog" with the government, and MP Naser Khader is leading moderate Muslims into a new organization, for which funding is already flowing from every part of Denmark. (He's also saying Denmark has nothing to apologize for, but he himself is demanding an apology from Saudi Arabia.) These moderates are organizing trips to the Middle East to go and explain to their fellow religionists how a free press works in a free country. They've expressed their offense at the images, but have also expressed their understanding that this is simply how things work when you've got a free press. They're moving on. Yes.

The problem is not Denmark. The problem is the militant extremists around the world running absolutely riot over an issue I'd wager most of them don't even understand. Embassies burn, people die, journalists go into hiding, newspaper offices must be evacuated...

...and the Times sees a good opportunity to put that provocative Danish newspaper and those rascally American Catholics in their place!

* Sigh... *

On the Lighter Side of Murderous Rage

2006-02-10T19:51:00.000+01:00

It's Friday night here in Denmark and there's so much wrong with this idiot world that I have nothing to say.

So I'm falling back on my default, which is two parts denial, two parts skepticism, and a liter of whiskey. (Stirred, not shaken, for that necessary touch of iconoclasm.)

But...

While surfing Yahoo News photos of the Happy Shiny People of the world calling for the death of my friends and family, I came across one that gave me unexpected pleasure.

Here's the caption:

Protesters chant slogans as they set fire to a Danish flag during a demonstration after Friday prayers at Beyazit Mosque in Istanbul February 10, 2006. Around two thousand Muslim protesters chanted slogans and burnt flags of Denmark, France and Israel in protest against the cartoons printed by Danish and European media. REUTERS/Ahmet Ada

Here's the photo:

Notice anything funny about this picture?

It's the Swiss flag. Seriously. Look, I know a thing or two about the Danish flag. It looks like this:

And the Swiss flag looks like... well, like that flaming thing up there.

So congratulations, you idiots: you're too stupid even to hate correctly.

* * *

If you click a few photos back from the Swiss-hating Turks over on Yahoo News, by the way, you can probably cash in on that $25 million reward...

Wobbly White House

2006-02-09T12:30:00.000+01:00

There's so much I've wanted to write about since the last post, but I haven't had time. (I haven't had time to go through email, either, so sorry if you're one of the people I owe a response to.)

I saw a clip on EuroCNN last night of George W. Bush and Jordan's King Abdullah chatting it up at a White House press conference yesterday. Bush managed to get a few platitudes about violence not being the answer and respect being important, then King Abdullah got his turn. I don't have time to look for a transcript, but it was something like this: "Any criticism of the prophet or negative portrayal of Islam must be condemned."

Hear that? I mean, do you really hear that? And Bush puts the whole weight and gravitas of the White House behind it?

I've been sputtering ever since. I've been unable to organize my thoughts into a single lucid exposition, though (more for want of time than want of ability), so I'm grateful to see Christopher Hitchens has done it for me... in Slate. (Which also features a "counterpoint" essay by an American offended by the Danish cartoons.)

* * *

On a personal note, Molli Malou said "Please, Daddy," for the first time yesterday, so I've just given up any remaining shreds of sovereignty I had.

The Gray Lady Weighs In

2006-02-07T21:29:00.000+01:00

I'm more than disappointed by today's New York Times editorial. I present it in its entirety, and will interrupt only where I really, really need to. (Pretty much everywhere.)

Those Danish Cartoons

Cartoons making fun of the Prophet Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper last September are suddenly one of the hottest issues in international politics.

There were twelve cartoons and not all of them "made fun of" Muhammad. Muhammed is only considered a prophet to Muslims. Will the Times begin referring to other religious figures as "the Savior Jesus Christ," or "his illustrious holiness David Koresh," and so on?

The issue has been hot long enough to make "suddenly" suspect, but I don't want to wast time on quibbles.

Muslims in Europe and across the Middle East have been holding protests with growing levels of violence and now loss of life.

At this point I think it'd be fair to say "Muslims around the world," unless you can find a way to fit Indonesia, New Zealand, and Afghanistan into "Europe" or "the Middle East," but that's another quibble.

The easy points to make about the continuing crisis are that (a) people are bound to be offended if their religion is publicly mocked, and (b) the proper response is not to go on a rampage and burn down buildings.

I don't know if these are such easy points to make. People may indeed be "bound to be offended if their religion is publicly mocked," but there's a world of variation, and plenty of ambiguity, in at least three of those terms: religion, publicly, and mocked.

Religon. Islam is of course a religion, and Muhammed is its holy prophet. But the context of this sentence suggests that the twelve cartoons were all directed at Muhammed or Islam. Most were not. The majority were directed at the hijacking of Islam by violent extremists. One could make the case that even the most notorious of the cartoons was doing this. (And, it bears repeating, several of the cartoons were mocking the very exercise of which they were a part.) If the readers of the Times could be entrusted with the adult responsibility of viewing the pictures and judging for themselves, of course, these fine points would be irrelevant. But because they apparently cannot be, they must be made. The Times is generalizing over-broadly with its implication that all of "Those Danish Cartoons" were anti-Islamic or anti-Mohammed.

Publicly. There's no doubt a newspaper is a public forum. Jyllands-Posten has a circulation of 157,000 on weekdays and about 215,000 on Sundays. It's a Danish newspaper, printed in Denmark for a Danish audience. Denmark is a Lutheran country full of lovely men and women who scarcely ever step into its lovely Lutheran churches any more. The idea that any kind of satiric criticism of an "outside" religion is somehow unacceptable in a paper owned, written, and read by such people strikes me as disingenuous: the kind of point the Times would never make in any other circumstance . How could Denmark participate in multicultural dialog, for example, if criticism of other belief systems were not allowed? Should Danish newspapers only be allowed to print favorable cartoons and editorials about all the religions of the world?

Mocked. I'd like to go through all twelve cartoons and describe what the hypothetical "reasonable person" would conclude each one was "mocking." (I'll go in the order in which they're presented here, but be sure not to click that link if you're going to be offended by what you see!)

(1) I don't see anything at all being mocked, unless people think maybe his ass is too big. But it is blasphemy. (2) I actually like this drawing because it's very simple: the question is, is that a halo over his head, or are they horns? (Advantage halo, since horns are rarely portrayed as being a luminous gold in color.) I'm not sure anything is being "mocked," but we've got more blasphemy. (3) Muhammed's face is crafted out of the Islamic star and crescent (in Islamic green). Nothing being mocked, but blashphemy again. (4) This one gets a lot of press. I don't think Muhammed is being "mocked" here, but he's not being portrayed in a flattering light: he's armed, bearded, turbaned, and flanked by startled-looking women in full veils. His eyes are boxed out to prevent his identity from being revealed, which I suppose is the artist's way of trying to get around the blasphemy thing. (5) Suicide bombers are being mocked. Period. (I heard Abu Laban explain the other night that "Muslims are not idiots, this idea that they expect 72 virgins in heaven is nonsense." Then I saw an interview with a Palestinian who said he was happy to have his sons be martyred because life would be better for them in heaven -- they would have 72 virgins waiting for them. (6) Jyllands-Posten itself is the target of this mockery. The only Muhammed is a student from Valby Skole, wearing a shirt that says "The Future." (7) There's no blasphemy here, either, since we've only got a drawing of a guy drawing Muhammed. But he's scared and nervous and working very furtively; if anything is being "mocked," it's the terrible fate awaiting anyone who dare draw Muhammed. But is that mockery or realism? (8) Blasphemy, since Muhammed's there in the line-up (with a halo), but the mockery is clearly directed toward Danish politics and editor Flemming Rose himself. (9) The images aren't blasphemous, but the poem certainly criticizes Muhammed. (10) Is this supposed to be Muhammed, or just some Muslim king/tyrant/president-for-life? I don't know. I don't think one can know. What's being mocked is apparently the reactive rage of some defenders of the Islamic faith -- it's as though the artist is suggesting they're a little too quick to rush for blood. (11) Presumably that's Muhammed in the bomb-turban with a lit fuse. Blasphemy, yes. Mockery? The suggestion, as I interpret it, is that Islam, as embodied by its holy prophet, is a bomb on the brink of blowing up in all our faces. Offensive to Muslims, I'm sure. But is it really unreasonable as an editorial cartoon? (12) Another drawing of a drawing, and this makes it absolutely crystal clear that the object of mockery is editor Flemming Rose himself.

As for the proper response not being to go on a rampage and burn down buildings, no argument here.

If Muslim organizations want to stage peaceful marches or organize boycotts of Danish goods, they're certainly within their rights.

Within their rights, yes. Within the bounds of logic, no. Assume for a moment that Jyllands-Posten really is a terrible rag written by horrible people. It's still not Denmark. By demonstrating against Denmark, and boycotting all Danish goods, demonstrators are only demonstrating their ignorance of the separation of press and state.

The pictures, one of which showed the prophet with a bomb on top of his head in place of a turban, violate a common belief among Muslims that any depiction of Muhammad is sacrilege.

It is not a common belief among non-Muslims that any depiction of Muhammad is anything but a depiction of Muhammad. This is an obnoxious point that needs to be overcome. Religions do not have the right to enforce their taboos on non-believers. I am astonished that the Times is actually giving this argument credibility. Are they really prepared to begin tailoring their own editorial pages to conform to all of the sacred rules of all the religions of all the world? Or is Islam special--and if so, why?

Also, it has to be repeated: not all the pictures violate that common belief anyway.

The paper that first published them did so as an experiment to see whether political satirists were capable of being as harsh to Islam as they are to other organized religions.

False. It was an experiment to see if Danish artists were self-censoring out of fear of extremist reprisals.

If that sounds juvenile, Americans still recognize it as within the speech protected by our First Amendment.

If that sounds juvenile, it's because the Times deliberately, and contrafactually, made it sound juvenile.

The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them.

Because it's easier to tell you what to think about them than let you decide for yourself?

That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.

Can we walk about the power of the word "usually"? Has ever an adverb been required to carry such weight? And let me pose a question: given the events we've seen in reaction to these cartoons, do you really think these cartoons were merely "a gratuitous assault" on Islam? Can we not acknowledge that there may in fact be something to the idea that there's a frightening violent streak at play in Islam?

As for the ease of describing the images: I haven't seen anyone do it successfully yet, including myself. And the inaccurate generalizations the Times makes about the cartoons in this very editorial suggest a compelling need for people to see them in print.

The cartoons were largely unnoticed outside Denmark until a group of Muslim leaders there made a point of circulating them, along with drawings far more offensive than the relatively mild stuff actually printed by the paper, Jyllands-Posten.

Suddenly the twelve cartoons are "relatively mild," but the Times doesn't explain that the bogus cartoons portrayed Muhammad as a pedophile and practitioner of bestiality, and were touted around with fiery speeches about the Danish government's plans to outlaw the Koran and oppress its Muslim population, among other things. The Times doesn't explain that these bogus pictures and rumors are still the leading incitement travelling the Muslim world today. By publishing the real pictures the Times and other papers could help Americans realize how disproportionate the reaction is. And perhaps a paper as respected abroad as the Times could make a difference by showing some agitated Muslims that the most offensive images described to them never really appeared in any Danish paper.

It's far from the first time that an almost-forgotten incident has been dredged up to score points with the public during politically sensitive times.

This is some kind of inside dig at someone, right? Is this about the Ems telegram that started the Franco-Prussian war? Or what?

The governments of the countries in which the demonstrations are occurring are responsible for keeping them nonviolent. Lebanese officials have rightly apologized to Denmark for failing to control a protest that ended with the torching of the Danish Consulate in Beirut. That's in stark contrast with what happened in Syria, a nation where there is no such thing as a spontaneous demonstration, yet where large crowds managed to assemble and set fire to the Danish and Norwegian Embassies.

True.

So what's the take-away from this editorial? You shouldn't make fun of people's religions; those Danish cartoons made fun of people's religions; Muslims were within their rights to demonstrate against and economically punish the whole nation of Denmark of one of its newspapers' actions; protests shouldn't get violent; Syria is bad.

Not a single word about the freedom of the press. Not a single word about freedom of expression. About skeptical inquiry. About all the things the Times would be shrieking about at the top of their lungs if the newspaper in question weren't some little Danish thing, but rather some big New York thing.

Shame on them.

What Hysteria Does...

2006-02-07T18:38:00.000+01:00

...is make people stupid. I am a person. Therefore, hysteria makes me stupid.

I apologize.

The "Brownshirts in Frederiksberg" incident appears to have been more a case of Sausage Vendor Fantasy than Brownshirt Nightmare. Or, to put it bluntly, the guy made the whole thing up.

The police find no evidence to support his story and are considering pressing charges for filing a false report.

I can't beat myself up too badly for trusting Berlingske Tidende on that story, but I'm ashamed of having passed along an untruth at a sensitive time like this. I'll make an appropriate adjustment to the relevant post later this evening, when I have time to log into the editor.

Faces of Islam

2006-02-06T20:09:00.000+01:00

Moments ago -- at about 2015 CET -- EuroCNN was running an interview with a Muslim cartoonist who was deeply critical of the notorious Muhammed-tegninger. At one point CNN showed a picture of one of the cartoons but blurred it, as they always do, to preserve the delicate sensibilities of the easily-offended.

A few moments later they showed one of their cartoonist-guest's cartoons: it was one he had drawn to protest Abu-Ghraib. It looked like a crude pen-and-ink drawing of Christ on the Cross, but in a black hood and loincloth like that of the iconic image of Abu Ghraib. Although the anchor did inform her viewers that "they might be offended" before showing this image, it was not blurred, and it remained on the screen for some time.

Does a double standard that brash not give the producers whiplash? Why are these "offensive" images treated differently?

(For what it's worth, the cartoonist insisted his image was "different" because the Christian nations of Europe had been using Christianity to enslave people around the world for 500 years.)

* * *

That's not what this post was supposed to be about.

An anonymous friend has shared some photos with me. I'm not sharing all of them, but here are two.

The first shows some demonstrators at Rådhuspdlads over the weekend. You can tell they're interested in dialogue because some of them have hidden their faces and their signs are all easily understandable to the average Dane.

The second is more disturbing.

Do you know who that man with the bruises, cuts, and gashed forehead is? Unfortunately I don't, either. But I did read the article about what happened to him at some point this weekend and can't seem to find it. I'll tell you what I remember, which my anonymous friend (who was a witness) did not contradict.

This man, a Muslim, was attending the demonstration and taking photographs. Three "second generation immigrants" then suddenly rushed him, smashed up his camera and cell-phone, then administered the beating that produced the lovely results you see above.

Why would "second generation immigrants" (andengenerationsinvandrer, Danish code for Arab, Turkish, and South Asian Muslims whose parents brought or conceived them here) attack a fellow Muslim?

Apparently last year this man caused a stir in the Danish Muslim community by coming out fairly hard against the ongoing tradition of forced marriages within Islamic culture.

Probably that doesn't even matter. Look at his face: that's the work of people our press and leaders seem to think can be appeased by apologies or positive dialogue.

In the very epicenter of Copenhagen, three Muslim thugs beat a fellow Muslim and destroyed his property because he'd openly criticized the institution of forced marriage.

To quote Sinclair Lewis, "You want to reform people like that when dynamite is so cheap?"

* * *

Thankfully Denmark's good Muslims have the courage of their convictions. They really are fighting to take their religion back from the evil bastards who've hijacked it. Further evidence is here: the Muslim residents of Gellerupparken in Århus will be conducting a torchlight procession tomorrow "under the motto 'For Denmark.' We will thereby send a message that when it comes to Denmark, we all have a common interest in urging reflection."

(Probably my translation of "at mane til besindighed" isn't exactly right, but from what I gather the intended sense is, "to urge restraint/reflection/calm.")

(I said "further" evidence because I thought I'd already cited this article about Naser Khader's announcement Saturday that he was forming a new union for Danish Muslims who "don't feel represented by the imams." That's a tremendous stride forward for Danish Muslims -- and a valuable stride away from Abu Laban.)

The Awakening West

2006-02-06T19:44:00.000+01:00

The world appears to have awakened! Strong statements of support for Denmark from the US, UK, France, and NATO's General Secretary.

They're a little late, but who knows: if they came in with their support earlier, the embassies might not have burned -- but if the embassies hadn't burned, they might still not have come in.

Next step: acknowledgment by western leaders that western governments don't owe anyone, anywhere, ever, an apology for something published in a privately-owned newspaper. (I haven't read the full statements of support issued by all these leaders yet, so it's possible their statements include words to that effect.)

Here's a terrific distillation of the issue from a Time Magazine essay by Andrew Sullivan:

Muslim leaders say the cartoons are not just offensive. They're blasphemy--the mother of all offenses. That's because Islam forbids any visual depiction of the Prophet, even benign ones. Should non-Muslims respect this taboo? I see no reason why. You can respect a religion without honoring its taboos. I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite. As a Catholic, I don't expect atheists to genuflect before an altar. If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one. Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.

But Sullivan, like a lot of other critics, misses an even larger point about the current case (and a point I haven't been hammering at myself because it seems so obvious as to hardly require stating, which shows just how naive I am): whether or not Jyllands-Posten is guilty of blasphemy the eyes of the Imams, or offensiveness in the eyes of the eggshell-walking appeasers, the anger directed at Denmark makes absolutely no logical sense whatever.

A free press means the press is not beholden to the government. Anders Fogh Rasmussen made this point very clearly at the outset of this crisis several months ago. Western liberals, including many Danish Social Democrats, have been unfair to Fogh in suggesting he could have helped the situation by having met with the aggrieved ambassadors back in September or October. He didn't need to. He told them publicly all that they needed to know: namely, that the Danish government has no responsibility for nor authority over the content of private Danish newspapers.

2000 Words

2006-02-05T20:05:00.000+01:00

"Suffer the little children?"

And to prevent myself from being accused of hyperbole:

(Both images taken from this interesting Telegraph article .)

Negotiating with Terrorists

2006-02-05T18:27:00.000+01:00

Western leaders seem to be scrambling over one another to describe how offensive the twelve cartoons are, even when they're trying to defend besieged Denmark.

I find this cowardly and disingenuous.

First of all, it would be difficult to construe at least two of the cartoons as "offensive" unless one were a rabid secularist who despises any favorable mentions or depictions of Islam at all.

Secondly, at least half of the cartoons can only be construed as "offensive" if one is willing to posit that the sectarian position that any depiction of Muhammed whatsoever is blasphemous, and that blasphemy is in itself offensive -- even when someone outside the religion in question is committing the act so judged.

Thirdly, anyone paying close attention to events this weekend cannot be seriously offended by political cartoons suggesting that there is a dangerous violent streak in Islam, that the violent streak in Islam is highly visible, and that moderates within the religion are unable to control the extremists. That is to say, the small minority of cartoons that associate the religion of Islam with violence are not entirely off the mark.

Lastly, whether or not they're offensive is not the point. Many editorial cartoons are offensive. So are many editorial texts. In fact, it's probably not unreasonable to say that any expression of political opinion is bound to be found somewhere on the scale from "annoying" to "infuriating" by persons who do not subscribe to that particular point of view.

The point is that the western press is supposed to be free to offend. It's stated pretty baldly in the first amendment to the American constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Obviously there are ethical and moral obligations to consider, but these typically vary from community to community. The things one reads in "alternative" big city weeklies, for example, would be unlikely to find a home in small-town, rural American newspapers.

So there's no question but that every newspaper in America has the legal right to publish the cartoons; the question is one of ethics and morals. The typical argument against publishing them is nicely summed up here:

The Los Angeles Times sent this statement to [Editor & Publisher] this afternoon: "Our newsroom and op-ed page editors, independently of each other, determined that the caricatures could be deemed offensive to some readers and the there were effective ways to cover the controversy without running the images themselves."

Let's break that down.

Our newsroom and op-ed page editors, independently of each other, determined that the caricatures could be deemed offensive to some readers....

Unlike the editorials and cartoons appearing every day in the L.A. Times, which never give offense to anyone?

and the there were effective ways to cover the controversy without running the images themselves.

As an American in Denmark who has seen the original images and is witnessing the unending barrage of horrors that have followed them, it is my opinion that there are not. For one thing, the pictures are the story. The Arab-Muslim extremists running riot throughout the Middle East have told a consistent story: it is rage over these images coupled with Denmark's refusal to issue a government apology for the private acts of a private newspaper that have driven them to burn embassies, attack Danish nationals, burn flags, burn effigies, and, most recently in Lebanon, attack random Christians. Americans who have not seen the images will have no choice but to judge their "offensiveness" by the scope of what they've provoked. That's not accurate or effective coverage: the story is how disproportionate that relationship is.

It is possible many Americans will see the images and determine that the violent reaction is justified. It is also possible that many Americans will see the images and conclude that the Middle East is in the thrall of overreactive ideologues willing to loot, burn, and assault (and let us hope nothing worse) when presented with ideas they disagree with.

In my own opinion as an agnostic (currently on the verge of hardcore atheism), the reputation of Islam has suffered much more prodigiously from the behavior of its extremist adherents this week than it has from the pens of Danish cartoonists. I saw that very question put to the leader of the Islamisk Trossamfund (Islamic Faith Society) in Denmark on television yesterday: wasn't it possible that images of hostages being held on television with knives to their throats, in the name of religion, was more damaging to Islam than a political cartoon? "No," Mr. Laban declared, "absolutely not." End of issue.

Furthermore, as I've already mentioned, the failure of the "liberal" west to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and declare that no editorial cartoon in any newspaper in any context is justification for the kind of violence we've been witnessing is partly responsible for the conflagration now upon us. By acknowledging the hitherto unprecedented "sanctity" of a sectarian Islamic law and publicly avowing a desire to honor the sensibilities of those espousing that law (many of whom were cotemporaneously issuing death threats against the artists), most of the western and almost all of the American press has given succor to the enraged jihadists. But I talked about that yesterday.

At this point it's probably too late to make a difference one way or another. Things will either calm down because the extremists will recognize their victory and decline to overplay their hand; or they will escalate further because the extremists have smelled the sweet scent of capitulation wafting toward them.

But what precedent has this apologism set? How will the L.A. Times justify any editorial cartoon supporting abortion, for example, or criticizing the Catholic church, Israel, or Aztec human sacrifice? (Presumably they have never done so in the past.) How big a religion must one be to earn their restraint? How violent? Has their gentle treatment not been akin to negotiating with terrorists, in that it only encourages future episodes by rewarding appalling behavior?

The founders of America and all that it represents, the authors of our western liberties, understood that nothing, not even religion, especially not religion, should be legally protected from criticism in the press. This foundational belief suggests they understood that criticism of everything had a vital role to play in the ongoing dialogue of democracy. If our press is going to begin declaring taboos, they had better be prepared to address the long line of aggrieved religionists and issue-evangelists that are going to be expecting the same kind of kid-glove treatment.

And if our statesmen and -women are going to begin apologizing for "offensive" material in their domestic newspapers to tyrannies and dictatorships abroad, without demanding similar apologies for the hateful screeds so regularly appearing in those nations' presses, we are not merely ignoring our liberties: we are handing them away.

If you must declare the cartoons offensive, be specific: describe which particular cartoons are offensive, and to whom, and in what particular way. (And take care to describe any cartoons which are not offensive, if you find that in fact not all of them are.)

If you must preface your support for a free press with apologetic talk of respecting religion, at least be honest enough to admit what you're saying: that although Christianity and Judaism have learned to withstand the rigors of a free press, and that Christians and Jews of all denominations find plenty to be offended by in almost every major western media outlet at least once in a while, you're conceding that Muslims are not yet mature enough in their conviction to allow their religion exposure to public criticism.

I think this episode has given the theocratic enemies of liberty enormous encouragement. I hope we can all live with the consequences.

Unfit to Print

2006-02-05T13:25:00.000+01:00

The front page of the New York Times online at 7:12 am, Sunday, February 5:

Not one mention of this story. Not one.

I just cannot believe America's myopia right now.

Brownshirts in Frederiksberg

2006-02-05T12:54:00.000+01:00

UPDATE: This story is not true. Frederiksberg police revealed on Tuesday that they have no evidence to corroborate the sausage vendor's story, and are considering pressing charges on him for filing a false report.

In case you think I'm overplaying things, here's a new story to warm your heart:

Pølsemand overfaldet med baseballbat

En pølsemand på Frederiksberg blev fredag overfaldet af to unge mænd og slået adskillige gang med et baseballbat, fordi han solgte "urent kød."

- Danskersvin. Du sælger urent kød.

Sådan faldt ordene angiveligt, da en pølsemand på Frederiksberg fredag eftermiddag blev overfaldet med et baseballbat af to unge mænd med udenlandsk baggrund. Forinden havde de to mænd bedt om to brød, men da pølsemanden rakte brøddene over disken, greb den ene fat i hans hænder, mens den anden hamrede løs på pølsemandens hænder med battet og slog hans fingre til blods.

Efterfølgende tog pølsemanden på skadestuen, og lørdag henvendte han sig til politiet på Frederiksberg for at indgive anmeldelse. Vagthavende hos Frederiksberg Politi betegner overfaldet som grov vold, og er nu på jagt efter de to unge mænd, som ifølge pølsemanden har tyrkisk baggrund og er mellem 18 og 20 år.

In English:

Sausage Vendor Assaulted with Baseball Bat

A sausage vendor in Frederiksberg was assaulted on Friday by two young men and struck repeatedly with a baseball bad because he sold "unclean meat."

"Danish pig. You sell unclean meat."

Thus reportedly came the words when a sausage vendor in Frederiksberg was assaulted Friday afternoon with a baseball bat by two young men of foreign background. The two men had asked for two buns, but when the sausage vendor passed the bread over the counter one of them grabbed hold of his hands while the other hammered on the sausage vendor's hands with the bat and beat his fingers to bloodiness.

Afterwards the sausage vendor was taken to the emergency room, and Saturday he reported to Frederiksberg Police Station to file his complaint. The officers on duty at the Frederiksberg PD portray the assault as rough violence [felony assault, if I'm not mistaken] and are now seeking the two young men, who according to police are of Turkiush background and are between 18 and 20 years old.

Is it safe to assume they're wearing brown shirts?

I live in Frederiksberg, so there's no real way for this story to get any closer to home.

Disgusting. And a little frightening. But all part of the rich dialog of civilizations, I suppose.

Archduke Ferdinand is Dead... We Can Make That Play in the Mid-Term Elections!

2006-02-05T12:20:00.000+01:00

Now the Danish embassy in Beirut is under siege. Beg pardon -- it's on fire.

I went cruising around some of the leading left-wing American blogs and am saddened by what I've seen. On Daily Kos, there seems to be a dim understanding of what's going on, and that it's bad, but it's being viewed through the prism of such virulent hatred of all things Bush/Republican/conservative/Christian that the best solution they can come up with is... to mock American Christians.

Let's co-opt them, we must not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES let it become, us [the west] vs them [Arab Muslims]. Let's raise and attract the ire of the [American] religious nuts with irreverent and whatever description fits our expressive and creative art in cartoon and caricatures. I'm sick and tired of these opportunistic and hypocritical bastards, we are going to confront them sooner or later. Why not now?

That's right. Everything going on right now, and the "opportunistic and hypocrtical bastards" to worry about are... America's Christians? But in terms of this "becoming us vs them," hasn't that already been decided by them?

And on the Democratic Underground, the first post I saw tells the story:

When I see the administration ramping up war rhetoric again, while there's simultaneously embassies on fire in Damascus (wow, what a wild co-inky-dink) I'm of the suspicion that our present administration, who have made their bones playing on fear, might have had something to do with it.

From the right, Andrew Stuttaford seems to be following the events on NRO's Corner, but there's not a whole lot of discussion on the topic. (There, is though, a link to this "film" -- which gets things mostly right but neglects to show all twelve cartoons -- ignoring the self-deprecating and JP-mocking cartoons entirely -- and doesn't mention the Islamic Trossamfund's tour of misinformation, in which they traveled the Middle East whipping up hysteria.)

My disappointment in America is only deepening. Get over yourselves, dammit. The religious right has to realize this has nothing to do with "respect" for religious beliefs, and the far left needs to realize this has nothing to do with America's Christian right.

This is our second embassy burned in twelve hours, and you assholes are fiddling Denmark away, marginalizing the issue and trying to use it to whack each other rhetorically.

That's the kind of behavior I used to expect from Germany and France, but even they see the warning signs on this one.

On the other hand, Europe, it might be time to ask yourself if you're partly to blame: can you think of any reasons why America might be reluctant to involve itself in "European" affairs?

Something powerful and decisive needs to be done soon. Someone needs to turn on the red light.

(For what it's worth, the Danish embassy in Syria wasn't burned to the ground... some rooms are actually still standing. I'm not sure about the offices in Beirut: I think they're still on fire right now. And in case you're interested, the ADL has a whole repository of Arab journalism demonstrating categorically that the notion of "religious tolerance" isn't supposed to be reciprocal.)

Denmark is Burning

2006-02-04T22:13:00.000+01:00

Denmark isn't actually burning. Not literally. Not yet. Nor is its embassy in Syria, come to think of it: there's nothing left to burn. It's just cold ash in Damascus.

I have heard some people in the media tonight, "How could it come to this?"

I will tell you.

It has come to this because from the very start there have been people in western governments and in the western media without the moral courage to stand up for their own values. There have been influential people who put the appeasement of the Arab street above defense of the very institutions that allow western society to function. And in doing so, they gave that vaunted Arab street a very clear signal. Green light, it said. Go!

Each soothing proclamation by a western leader, each hand-wringing editorial in a major western paper, has poured the fuel of encouragement onto the bonfire of hatred, leading inevitably to the kind of violence we're seeing today.

You have paved the way for this, you apologists. Your good intentions have consigned tiny Denmark to the wrath of the barbarian horde.

We would not be here, today, had the west drawn itself together from the outset and said, simply and in chorus, "A free press is an indispensable part of western society. It can sometimes wound, but its absence would be fatal. You have every right to be offended and express your dissatisfaction, but neither Denmark nor Jyllands-Posten owes anyone an apology."

Even the Bush and Blair administrations have behaved shamefully, with Jack Straw and a spokesman for George W. Bush both speaking out only in the last 36 hours -- and only to condemn the cartoons as offensive, and to reassure the Arabs and Muslims of the world that of course they respect their beliefs, before ultimately and somewhat parenthetically conceding that, well, yeah, after all, they did support the freedom of the press and all that, yadda yadda yadda.

Hopefully the continuing escalation of this issue will begin to give some westerners second-thoughts about their wobbliness. But it's a shame that Denmark's economy should have to sink, its embassies burn, and its streets be stained with the blood of a nascent intra-Muslim civil war, before the rest of the west has the sense to realize political correctness in the face of a savage and implacable enemy is surrender to barbarism.

What is wrong with the west? This is the civilization that created me, that nurtured me on ideas about civil liberty that began with Plato and Aristotle and ran through Locke and Voltaire all the way up to Calvin & Hobbes. The civilization in which everyone of every political persuasion always told me they might disagree with what I said, but they'd defend to their death my right to say it.

Now that entire civilization seems to be saying, "Sucker!"

I am so proud of Denmark right now... and so ashamed of almost every other country in the free world.

Jeg er en dansker!

More "Chilling Effect"

2006-02-04T17:08:00.000+01:00

What's more offensive, after all... a cartoon, or this:

(Link to article in previous post.)

Piling On

2006-02-04T16:51:00.000+01:00

And now the Danish embassy in Syria has been burned down.

What do Arab journalists think about that?

Are Danes allowed to be offended and insulted yet?

Remember, Oh Men of the West, there is no connection between Islam and violence of any kind!

The Other Side of the Story?

2006-02-04T08:49:00.000+01:00

Leave it to Slate to take the intellectual approach and ask, "What do Arab journalists think about this? "

Guess what they think?

The first journalist quoted, Muhammad al-Hamadi of the UAE, admits unhappily that there is "reason" for these cartoons. "Any harm to the Prophet or Islam is a result of Muslims who have come to reflect the worst image of Islam and certain Arabs who have not conveyed faithfully the life and biography of the Prophet."

And it's all down hill from there. Al-Hamadi comes right back with the unsurprising "on the other hand," arguing:

If Denmark has tried to teach Arabs and Muslims a lesson in respect for the country's constitution and its laws, I believe it did not succeed in choosing the right issue. The justification that one must respect the constitution that guarantees freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to denigrate others, was not appropriate—this is the trap that Denmark fell into.

Here's the nub of the whole problem: Denmark didn't fall into any trap. Denmark wasn't trying to teach anyone anything. This whole issue begins and ends with Jyllands-Posten, and it's the Arab world's inability (or refusal) to grasp (or acknowledge) this that's so maddening.

Sati Nur al-Din of Lebanon has little sympathy for the cartoons, but does observe:

The Arabs and Muslims who are moving today against Denmark, its products, and embassies, are not exploiting the caricature issue for any political goal, as Khomeini did. Rather, they are sending what is by any standard the wrong message, choosing a foolish pretext for what is really a caricature of a battle.

So there's one acknowledgment that Muslims have to their own detriment allowed their extremists to become the face of their religion, and another that this is a foolish issue on which to mobilize... and both points are made in the context of larger criticisms either of Denmark or free speech itself.

Has Slate given this issue any other coverage? I don't honestly know. But it strikes me as typically leftist-alternative-academic (in America) to examine any issue by beginning with the "non-western" side of the story... and ending there as well.

How would the editors of Slate react, I wonder, if their ability to "publish" what they want, when they want, were challenged by any one, anywhere, under any pretext? Does the sanctity of Muslim "dignity" (strangely enough, a sanctity not insisted upon by a growing number of increasingly vocal, moderate Danish Muslims) really entitle them to a deference that Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Scientologists don't warrant?

Would they take seriously the comments of an American journalist who insisted that "Christian dignity" made the publication of any provocative editorial cartoons "denigrating" Christianity an abuse of the first amendment?

Why do American and European leftists condescend so to the Arab Muslim world? Why are Arab Muslims held to such a low standard of intellectual honesty?

Part of it is obviously the American leftist-alternative-academic obsession with the "narrative" of "the other." To its credit, I think, American culture is a culture of the underdog. Look at our films, from On the Waterfront to Cool Hand Luke to the Bad News Bears. Our music. Our sports enthusiasms. America loves an underdog. It's programmed into our psyche to appreciate the challenges faced and heroics required to succeed in the face of overwhelming adversity.

If I can overgeneralize for a minute, I think American conservatives tend to turn this into an obsession with the ultimate minority: the individual (an obsession, alas, I probably share). And American liberals tend to turn it into an obsession with minority groups.

There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the other side's point of view. And that's all Slate appears to be doing here: I don't detect any editorial slant within the article: the only slant is in its lack of a complement exploring the "free press" side of the argument. To appease the liberal establishment's obsession with "other" narratives, how about one of these:

What are Danish Muslims saying about the issue?

What are liberal Danish journalists saying about the issue?

What are the "European" journalists we find so authoritative on other issues (Iraq, gay marriage, Christian extremism, oil dependence, the environment, etc.) saying about this one?

What do the cartoonists who've been targeted with multiple death threats have to say about the Muslim journalists who've been fanning the flames of this "debate" with misinformation?

I think the answers to most of these questions would surprise a lot of American liberals.

I still hold out hope that the American left can recognize this issue for what it really is, but I'm also afraid that they've become so reflexively pro-Arab Muslim that they've lost the capacity to assess individual cases on the merits.

Look, I'm a Bush-voting conservative who supports gay marriage and abortion rights, wants to decriminalize marijuana, favors a degree of gun control, and wants to vomit at the notion of "creationism" being "taught" in our nation's public schools. Surely there are some Kerry-voting liberals out there who can find common cause with me, and many Danish liberals, on this?

And yet, without the facts that's going to be impossible. So it really has to begin with the American media. And the sad truth is, if the story is first given the prominence it deserves by, say, the Wall Street Journal, the left will only retreat further into the "narrative of the other."

Et Tu, America?

2006-02-03T20:24:00.000+01:00

Here's an excerpt from a Politiken article about American reluctance to come near the issue of these cartoons:

Amerikanske medier siger nej

De amerikanske medier har indtil nu afvist at trykke Jyllands-Postens kontroversielle Muhammed-tegninger, som en række europæiske aviser har gjort denne uge.

Redaktører ved flere af de store amerikanske nyhedsorganisationer siger, at de dækker sagen, men at de vil undlade at vise tegningerne af respekt for deres læsere og seere.

»Dette er et klart eksempel på noget, folk vil finde fornærmende, så vi kan ikke se nogen grund til bare at gøre det«, siger Keith Richburg, der er udlandsredaktør på dagbladet Washington Post.

American Media Say No

The American media have to this point refused to publish JP's controversial Muhammed drawings, which a bunch of European newspapers have done this week.

Editors at several of the big American news organizations say that they're covering the case, but that they want to avoid showing the drawings out of respect to their readers and viewers.

"It's a clear example something people would find offensive, so we can't see any reason to do it," says Keith Richburg, foreign editor of the Washington Post.

The Washington Post? Really?

Why, that's the very same newspaper that published an editorial cartoon about their own country's military that was so offensive it actually prompted a letter of disapproval from the Joint Chiefs--which letter has now become the free speech issue du jour for the American left!

So let's get this straight: the American media are backing down from supporting free speech to give succor to a liberal ally who is under attack (economically at the moment, with bloodshed routinely threatened) by extremist individuals, organizations, and governments -- because "people would find it offensive" -- but they're perfectly willing to offend when it suits their own domestic political agenda.

Anyone else suspect they really mean "people would find it offensive and try to kill us"?

The American left has gone up in arms and declared "a chilling effect" on free speech (the citation is out there, I accidentally closed the window and don't feel like looking it up again) because its military leaders object to an editorial cartoon by means of a simple letter... but they're ignoring a case in which editorial cartoons in a single paper have generated economic warfare, terrorism threats, recalled ambassadors, vows of jihad, burning of flags, and masked gunmen running amok in political offices.

It is as I feared: this is being viewed as a left-right issue by the American left, and they're going to let Denmark twist in the wind while they work feverishly to get Donald Rumsfeld exiled for writting a letter to the editor of the Washington Post. (In that link to the chatter on the Daily Kos, someone writing from Denmark actually directs readers to a display of the cartoons "so they can judge for themselves" -- but his link includes three particularly loathsome images that were not published! It's important to publish the twelve cartoons all over if only to make sure people know which twelve we're talking about!)

This just isn't a left-right issue. (And I hope American conservatives won't treat it like one either.) A small democratic country is being assaulted by the violent, manic passions of the world's most hideous regimes for having published editorial cartoons that some people found offensive.

Seriously. Read it again.

A small democratic country is being assaulted by the violent, manic passions of the world's most hideous regimes for having published editorial cartoons that some people found offensive.

One more time, and really think about it this time.

A small democratic country is being assaulted by the violent, manic passions of the world's most hideous regimes for having published editorial cartoons that some people found offensive.

And American "liberals" have their panties in a bundle over their free speech rights because of a letter to an editor.

You want a chilling effect? I got your chilling effect right here.

(And that link includes the following beautiful photo, which ought to be titled "Now do you get it?" and sent to every editor of every newspaper in the country.)

Come on, America. This ain't a left-right thing. Someone in America publish the damn cartoons! I don't care if it's the Boston Globe or the Orange County Register or the Springfield Shopper, just be that shining beacon I'm so proud of you for (sometimes) being!

(And drink Carlsberg.)

Oh... one more thing: be sure you've got the right 12 cartoons. (Although I don't like the editorial commenting that's been appended to some of the translations: delete that crap and get a real translator.)

Greetings from Denmark, One Part of the Trinity of Hell

2006-02-02T12:34:00.000+01:00

Maybe the Islamists won't back down after all. I suppose we'll know for sure after tomorrow's evening prayers. But this kind of thing (do read it!) doesn't inspire much confidence:

Decrees by the Saved Sect and the Al-Ghurabaa organizations, both founded by followers of notorious Islamist leader Sheikh Omar Bakri (who was banned from Britain after the July London bombings) have called on British Muslims to "support the jihad against Israel," and to "kill those who insult the prophet Muhammad," in reference to the cartoons of Islam's prophet that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

"The kuffar in their sustained crusade against Islam and Muslims have yet again displayed their hatred towards us this time by attacking the honour of our beloved Messenger Muhammad," a message in the Ghurabba website read.

Remeber all of this was triggered by twelve editorial cartoons published in a little, privately-owned newspaper in the Danish hinterlands... and then tell me the cartoons weren't spot-fricking-on. As to moderates who were offended but are trying to soothe the hurt feelings and very angry words (and death threats) coming from the Middle East -- thank you. Your effort is noted and appreciated. But can you not see these reactions and understand why those of us outside Islam associate it with a demented, violent, heavily-armed mania? The fact that you are taking steps to soothe the gorillas in your midst suggests that you acknowledge there are gorillas in your midst, and because they've been louder and more violent than you (moderates) for so many years, of course the rest of us have come to equate Islam with such behavior, which explains why two of the twelve cartoons depicted your prophet with (or as) a weapon.

As for those of you who were offended by political cartoons but now vow death and destruction on happy little Denmark, without any acknowledgement that your very reaction is what those cartoons were satirizing (and really only a handful of them!... we have to stop generalizing about the cartoons, we can't forget there were only a few that could possibly be considered offensive, and several that were supportive of Islam!) -- I can't even articulate my rage, my contempt, my fury.

Who's Winning?

2006-02-02T06:05:00.000+01:00

The editor in chief of Jyllands-Posten, Carsten Juste, thinks that freedom of expression has in fact already lost this battle.

And with yesterday's headline that perhaps a 50-million dollar mosque ought to be built in Copenhagen, and this morning's headline regarding the suddenly-increased interest in establishing an "Arab Culture House" in the middle of Copenhagen -- while Arla shuts down facilities and lays off workers, and Jyllands-Posten is evacuated every night due to bomb threats, he may have a point.

Appeasement is not the answer. Whether or not it's intentional, these "couldn't we do something nice to show our Arab Muslim friends we're not such bad folks" suggestions send a very clear signal: we surrender. Respect for your religion is more important to those of us who don't share it than our own commitment to free expression.

I wonder if these same kind-hearted folks would be ready to build a cathedral or a "Roman Catholic Culture Center" if the Pope issued an encyclical condemning the number of abortions in Denmark or something. Why is everyone only worried about offending Arab Muslims? Why aren't we all apologizing all over the place to offended Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, Heaven's Gaters, Scientologists, vegans, fetishists, teetotallers, New Agers, circus freaks, and blonds?

Yeah, how about offended blondes? Maybe Scandinavia should start boycotting every country where blonde jokes have appeared in the media! Quick, recall our ambassador to America--they're showing reruns of Three's Company!

I'm keeping the faith for now, so I disagree with Herr Juste, but I think we've just about reached the tipping point and I don't doubt it could go either way. Hopefully America and other countries will publish those damn cartoons and the Arab League and OIC will back down and their bullying gambit will be seen by everyone for what it really was.

Europe to the Rescue

2006-02-01T21:32:00.000+01:00

A phrase I never thought I'd hear myself exclaiming this decade: Hooray for France and Germany!

(And Italy and Spain and Holland, too, I think.)

The Muhammed drawing cartoons are being reprinted all over Europe, often accompanied by staunch editorials insisting that the west ought not to yield an inch in its commitment to a free press.

They're still not being reprinted enough for my tastes, but the stakes have clearly been raised for the Arab Muslim militants:

Are you now going to burn the flags of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Holland, along with Denmark's? Are you going to chant "Death to France! War on France!" (and Germany, and Italy, and Spain, and Holland) as you chanted against Denmark? Are you going to burn pictures of the heads of state of those countries? Are you going to boycott all of them? Are you going to issue more fatwas? Are your papers going to grind out editorials demand the EU and UN punish all of these countries? Are you going to demand apologies from all of their governments? And then more apologies? And then still more, since the first two weren't grovelling enough to suit your tastes?

Good luck.

My guess is the Saudi masters recognize they've lost this round and retreat. (I don't think any of this could have or would have happened without the active incitement, if not orchestration, of the Saudi Wahabbists.)

If the Wahabbists don't issue an order to stand down, however, this is just so ugly it may well lead to the definitive confrontation of the war on terror to this point.

(I wish an American paper would step up and reprint the cartoons, though.)

Tragedy of Errors

2006-01-31T21:57:00.000+01:00

DR1 has been running "expanded coverage" of the continuing crises the last couple of nights at 9pm. This stuff just makes my jaw drop. I absolutely cannot begin to fathom the virulence, the hatred, and the ignorance of the Arab-Muslim world as portrayed on tv.

My favorite comment came from a woman in, I think, Kuwait. She spoke in English. Asked by the Danish reporter if Jylland-Posten's "apology" was enough to satisfy her, she said, "We need more, we need more, we need your king to apologize."

Okay, lady. We'll send the king right over.

Another beautiful moment--beautiful because it proved me prophetic--was when an Arab Muslim immigrant in Copenhagen explained patiently to a reporter that "even Bill Clinton has said these drawings were wrong, that it's wrong to insult someone's religion."

Even Bill Clinton!

They also had interviews with some of the Arla employees being laid off from their jobs as a result of the company's lost revenues from the boycott. That was sad.

It was also noted that some Danish Muslims are considering a tour of the Middle East to explain to their co-religionists exactly how back-asswards they've got this whole thing. That was cheering.

There was more coverage of the bomb threat that evacuated Jyllands-Posten. That was depressing. (You have offended me with your cartoon portrayals of my prophet, which drawings hurt my feelings. It is therefore right and reasonable that I threaten to kill you.)

And then there was a smarmy journalist from Al Jazeera, in Copenhagen to cover this whole ugly meltdown, explaining with indescribable condescension that if only Anders Fogh Rasmussen had met with the offended ambassadors in October, none of this would be happening.

Sure.

And I am the king of Denmark.

(So I guess I'm off to Kuwait. . .)

"War on Denmark, Death to Denmark!"

2006-01-31T17:45:00.000+01:00

Overheard at a demonstration by Islamic Jihad in Gaza today.

When are we allowed to get "insulted" and "offended"? I know they've already burned the Danish flag, but is it alright to declare that "fury and rage burns in my breast--death to Gaza! War on Gaza!" now that they're calling for the death of my wife and daughter? Does that yet merit the kind of rage that editorial cartoons can apparently understandably inspire, or have we not reached that level yet?

How long do we have to pretend these people actually have a legitimate ground for this disgusting, ceaseless, murderous rage? There are good peaceful people all over the Middle East. It's past time they rein these whackjobs in. Or just have a civil war and shoot them, for ------'s sake. (I almost wrote "for God's sake," but that's kind of the problem here, ain't it?)

One heartening note: "Unge palæstinensere oplyser dog, at ingen danskere skal føle sig utrygge i Gaza, skriver Politikens korrespondent i Gaza, Hanne Foighel." English: "Young Palestinians inform, however, that no Dane should feel unsafe in Gaza, writes Politiken's correspondent in Gaza, Hanne Foighel."

(Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, is counting down their 72-hour ultimatum for all Danes to be out of Gaza.)

Think Twice?!

2006-01-31T17:13:00.000+01:00

Here's a disturbing story from Politiken: apparently the police are advising Danes not to participate in demonstrations in retaliation to the demonstrations we're seeing on the news every day from the Middle East (in which Danish flags are burned, Palestinians chant, "Look out, Denmark, Islam will bury you," and so on).

The head of PET, Lars Findsen, says "Det er noget, vi er optaget af. Hvis den slags gennemføres, kan det medvirke til, at situationen eskalerer yderligere." In English: "This is something we're concerned about. If this type of thing comes about, it can contributed to the situation escalating further."

The PET says the extreme right wing of Danish politics is organizing these demonstrations, which isn't surprising. What's surprising is the gentle request that they not happen. Even if it's fricking neo-Nazis who want to demonstrate, I can't recall a precedent of a government organization advising Danes not to express themselves in any way. (Although the authorities did close down a Nazi radio station last year after one of their "hosts" suggested Muslims had to be driven out of the country or killed.)

I certainly don't recollect the police issuing any "think twice"-type advisories when Muslims demonstrated against Jylland Postens exercise in free expression. Can you imagine? "Muslims ought to think twice about demonstrating, because they'll be sending a message of religious extremism that may not be well understood by ethnic Danes." Maybe you've got a better imagination than I do, but I think it'll rain herring in Riyadh before the Danish police issue any kind of advisory as to what Danish Muslims ought and ought not do.

I don't want to defend these demonstrations, because I don't know enough about them and they may well be more anti-Arab than pro-free expression. But to hear this kind of language from an official source in Denmark is troubling.

But maybe that's just me. Any Danes want to cast some light on this for me? (Trine's off on a play date with Molli Malou, so my default advisor is absent for the time being.)

Oh... Another thing. This whole "Buy Danish" thing seems to be catching on in the states and I love it. I'm going to write an email later tonight urging my American friends and family to drink (imported!) Carlsberg and Tuborg during the Super Bowl. And maybe put some Danish blue cheese on their burgers ( mmmm). And maybe buy some Lego. If I had rich friends I'd urge them on to Bang & Olufsen, Georg Jensen, and Royal Copenhagen.

Oh... baby back ribs, too! And ham! And those cookies in tins! There's all kinds of Danish stuff you can buy!

Clinton's Bold Stand against Blasphemy

2006-01-30T19:12:00.000+01:00

Denmark adores former U.S. president Bill Clinton. He gets rock star treatment here. I'm wondering if that may change, now that he's basically taken the Arab-Muslim side on this issue ( Danish; English).

He said some startlingly inappropriate things, especially considering he was speaking in Doha, Qatar. Or maybe that makes them startlingly appropriate, given his brilliance at saying exactly what the audience around him wants to hear.

"So now what are we going to do? ... Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?" he said at an economic conference in the Qatari capital of Doha.

"In Europe, most of the struggles we've had in the past 50 years have been to fight prejudices against Jews, to fight against anti-Semitism," he said.

Clinton described as "appalling" the 12 cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in September depicting Prophet Mohammed and causing uproar in the Muslim world.

"None of us are totally free of stereotypes about people of different races, different ethnic groups, and different religions ... there was this appalling example in northern Europe, in Denmark ... these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam," he said.

The cartoons, including a portrayal of the prophet wearing a time-bomb-shaped turban, were reprinted in a Norwegian magazine in January, sparking uproar in the Muslim world where images of the prophet are considered blasphemous.

Those appalling cartoons. Those totally outrageous cartoons against Islam. Remember them? Have another look. (There's a link below somewhere.)

Out of the twelve images, three are clearly intended to be supportive of Islam and critical of the newspaper's "stunt" in soliciting drawings of Mohammed. Five are simply renditions of Mohammed that don't strike me as being either obviously supportive or critical.

Four are clearly intended to be negative and/or critical: (1) Mohammad, his eyes boxed out (to protect his anonymity?), drawing a blade and scowling, flanked by two startled-looking women in Burqas; (2) a line of apparent suicide bombers arriving in heaven to someone, presumably Mohammed, with outstretched arms exclaiming, "Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!"; (3) a sort of weird doodly thing with a couplet accusing the prophet of keeping women under the yoke; (4) Mohammed in a turban that's actually a bomb with a lit fuse.

So first of all, only a third of the cartoons can even rightfully be called "appalling" or "against Islam." (And frankly it's only the turban-as-bomb image that I think begins to merit that kind of language, and even then I think it still falls short of it.)

Secondly, as this article makes clear, an enormous amount of the perceived insult in the Arab and Muslim world has to do with the fact that such images of the prophet are considered blasphemous. I have a hard time imagining Mr. Clinton getting worked up about blasphemy.

Thirdly, he (and many other critics) seem to find fault with the images for perpetuating stereotypes. They only have one thing in common that I can see, and that's that of the eleven images that do in some way represent Mohammed (remember, two of them don't even picture the prophet!), all of them feature him in a turban and with a beard. In two he has a halo.

In one he's holding a staff and leading a donkey.

In one his face is partly composed of the star-and-crescent emblem of Islam.

In one he's in heaven.

And, of course, in one his turban is a bomb with its fuse lit. (I've seen some people speak of this as a ticking bomb, but I've never heard a fuse that ticked.)

Fourthly, as I mentioned earlier, while the former president was delivering these no-doubt well-received platitudes, masked gunmen were storming the EU office in Gaza to protest the cartoons... suggesting by example that perhaps there was some little truth that a link did in fact exist between Islam and a certain kind of theocratic militancy, suggesting in turn that perhaps an editorial cartoon addressing this relationship might not be entirely out of line.

So I'd like to ask Mr. Clinton exactly what's so appalling and totally outrageous that he felt the rights of a free press in a secular, democratic state should be shitcanned by a popular former president of the U.S., with all the gravity that connotes. Do you think the Arab world isn't going to hail him as their champion for this show of solidarity with their offended dignity? Do you not think his words are already flashing around the Middle East via SMS? Do you think those words will not be thrown back in the face of every well-meaning Dane trying to explain how a free press works to the furious Muslims whom Bill Clinton has just helped persuade are right to be so offended?

I hope the message isn't lost on Danes. I suspect it won't be.

Thanks, Mr. Clinton.

Bad Ideas

2006-01-30T12:44:00.000+01:00

I'm struck by two idiotic developments in this escalating crisis today.

The first was a report that there's apparently a Danish SMS campaign underway encouraging Danes to boycott "Muslim" businesses (such as pizzarias and kiosks) in retaliation for the Arab-Muslim boycott against Denmark.

Very clever. Let's punish the hard-working, law-abiding, entrepreneurial Muslim immigrants in Denmark to get back at the crazy, violent extremists in the countries they left behind.

AP Photo

The second is the news that a group of masked gunmen stormed an EU office in Gaza. That's right. To protest a Danish newspaper's blasphemous depiction of Mohammed as, among other things, a terrorist, we're going to respond by masking ourselves and waving some guns and grenades around a civilian political office. Good idea. That'll make sure no one ever again mistakes Islam for a religion of terrorism.

I'm frankly astonished things have gotten this ugly this fast. Surely they're going to get worse. Hopefully the prime minister will be well received the the special EU meeting today and the EU and NATO can make it crystal clear to the hysterically overwrought Arab League and OIC that in our civilization, freedom of speech and of the press trumps all things ecclesiastical.

(One is certainly tempted to ask: if their civilization is so respectful of other belief systems, why do such awful things about Judaism make such regular appearances in their media? Has any western media outlet referred to Muslims as pigs and monkeys? Is there an anti-Islamic equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and, if so, has it appeared on any state-owned western media? Has anyone written a book accusing Muslims of secretly controlling the Vatican, the World Bank, and Major League Baseball?)

See, there I go again, trying to inspect all this from a rational perspective. It doesn't work. This is a terrifying kind of religious mania that probably can't be extinguished without. . . well, hell, I don't even like to think about it. So I won't.

Lunch is over, and I think I'll spend the rest of the day in denial.

Happy Monday!

1000 Words

2006-01-29T20:57:00.000+01:00

From the West Bank...

* sigh... *

Once a Quisling...

2006-01-29T13:52:00.000+01:00

Norway's government is sorry, it's really sorry.

Which is ironic, given their longstanding historical commitment to freedom of expression.

My question about the courage of the European left has been answered. When democratic Israel is insulted and outraged, we get paragraphs like this:

Youngstorget Square "is the place where political opinions are traditionally expressed in Norway, and it is not for us to decide what is acceptable or not," the official, Oscar Halvorsen, said.

and this:

Ms Herzl said it was unacceptable to link Israel and the United States to Nazism, but Mr Reddy said that the ambassador was using the fascists' own tool, censorship, and that his art challenged nationalism.

But when you anger the democratic governments of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait, you get paragraphs like this (my own hasty translation):

The caricature drawings in the Christian magazine Magazinet are not constructive toward building the necessary bridge between people with different religious faiths and ethnic backgrounds. They contribute sooner to creating mistrust and unnecessary conflict.

Got the message, everyone? Terrorism works: the Norwegian government has been terrorized into willfully renouncing freedom of expression and genuflecting to the imperious commands of theocratic dictators . Hell, the government even advised its diplomatic corps to play down the notion of a free press when talking the situation over with protesting governments!

But don't go blaming Norway as a whole. They may be lousy whale-snarfing bastards, but they wouldn't have been put in this position if one of their magazines hadn't republished the JP photos in an act of ytringsfrihed solidarity.

Quislings, thy name is still Quisling...

And remeber this, in Sweden? Is it safe to assume our friends across the sound will close ranks with Denmark and defend the Muhammad drawing "Art" with the same admirable dedication to the sanctity of free artistic expression that they exhibited in the face of Israeli protests?

(Lastly, from time to time I ought to re-post a link to the twelve drawings that inspired Saudi Arabia to boycott Lego. You think Jesus comes off much better in South Park?)

Unbearable

2006-01-28T20:23:00.000+01:00

Every now and then the human race, or subsegments of its population, does something to astonish me, fill me with hope and wonder and awe. Much more often it makes me want to slam my head against a wall until it bleeds. (My head, not the wall.) And sometimes, like this evening, it makes me want to scoop my eyes out with melon-ballers and let wild ferrets suck out my brains through crazy straws.

From Reuters, as published in "The Gulf Times":

A prominent Saudi cleric warned Denmark yesterday of the danger of failing to apologise for printing cartoons seen as offensive to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in a row that has led Riyadh to recall its ambassador.

Friday prayer leader Osama Khayyat praised the Saudi decision taken on Thursday because it said Copenhagen had failed to do enough over the cartoons, printed in the country's largest newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September.

"This … government has warmed our hearts with its clear Islamic stance," Khayyat told worshippers at the Grand Mosque in Makkah in a sermon aired by state television.

"It showed its extreme displeasure, did justice to the Prophet and warned of the dangers of continuing this grave hostile path," he said. The recall came after pressure from powerful clerics and a popular campaign to boycott Danish products.

Norway said on Thursday it had advised its Middle East embassies to voice regret that an Oslo-based newspaper ran reprints of the cartoons.

Kari Karame, an expert in conflicts and the Middle East at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, said it was wrong to exploit freedom of speech to defend any insults.

"It's a very bad principle to say you can treat people who are different from you as you want because of freedom of expression," she said, adding Norwegians were not anti-Muslim.

Saudi papers on Wednesday published an edict from Saudi's top cleric asking Denmark to punish the paper. Danish-Swedish dairy Corp Arla Foods said stones were thrown at a company car in Riyadh in one incident.

"This is a religious duty and all businessmen should do something," said Sultan, manager of a Riyadh supermarket which had signs warning customers where the Danish products were.

After Arab foreign ministers spoke out about the cartoons over a month ago, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged Danes in a New Year address to exercise the right to free speech without inciting hatred against Muslims.

What do you like best about that article? There's so much to love about it, but my particular favorite is the notion of a god-loving people so incensed by the unbearable offense of a newspaper article that they'll throw rocks at things.

As Tom pointed out in a comment earlier today, Jyllands-Posten is feeling the heat. The front page of their website featured a big box full of Arabic text -- with a link to a Danish translation of the article. I translate hurriedly and sloppily but mostly pretty accurately:

Honored Citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Allow me this opportunity to correct some misunderstandings surrounding the drawings of the prophet Muhammed, which have now led to a boycott of Danish goods in your nation.

The drawings were published four months ago as part of a Danish debate about freedom of expression -- a right which we value highly in Denmark.

The initiative has been portrayed as a campaign against Muslims in Danmark and throughout the world. I must categorically refute this. It was not our intention to insult anyone's belief. That it happened anyway, was actually unintentional. We've apologized many times for that in the course of the past months. Both in our own paper, in other papers, on tv, radio, and in international media. We have at the same time held meetings with representatives of the Muslim culture in Denmark. They took place in a positive and constructive spirit, just as we also in a different way are seeking to establish a fruitful dialog with Danish Muslims.

We are sorry that the case has reached its current level and will therefore repeat that we had no intention of insulting anyone, and that we, just like the larger Danish culture, respect freedom of worship.

Most sincerely,

Carsten Juste

Editor in Chief

Meanwhile, Iran has joined the fray and Per Stig Møller, the Danish foreign minister, plans to take the burning issue up with his EU colleagues.

The one bright spot on all this? An opinion survey in which a majority of Danes have said they don't believe the Prime Minister (79%) or Jyllands-Posten (62%) owe the offended Muslim nations (or anyone else) an apology.

(Of course, the average Danish citizen isn't trying to sell milk and butter in Saudi Arabia, so we'll forgive Arla their craven obsequity.)

I'm astonished that this story isn't even getting brief mentions on CNN or BBC, and I haven't seen it picked up in any American media (besides brief wire reports buried in international sections). The Arab League and OIC smell blood and are clearly trying to bully Denmark (and Norway) into submission.

But of course we're not in a clash of civilizations. . .

Piling On...

2006-01-28T13:35:00.000+01:00

Now Kuwait is piling on:

»Kuwait fordømmer på det stærkeste, det der er blevet trykt i en af de danske aviser«, siger en højtstående repræsentant for det kuwaitiske udenrigsministerium i en erklæring, som er sendt til aviserne.

»Det gør stor skade på profeten Muhammed«, sagde han og tilføjede:

»Dette er en af de former for foragtelig racisme, der har ført til katastrofer for hele det internationale samfund«.

English:

"Kuwait strongly condemns that which has been put out in one of the Danish newspapers," says a high-ranking representative of the Kuwaiti foreign ministry in an explanation what was sent to the newspapers.

"It does a great injury to the prophet Muhammed," he said, and added:

"This is one of the forms of despicable racism which has led to catastrophes for the whole international culture."

Fair enough, right? Some of those illustrations did play into racist stereotypes, and the anger seems appropriately directed at Jyllands-Posten, rather than Denmark itself.

Except that this representative also explained that Kuwait has "begun the procedure to call the Danish ambassador (who lives in Saudi Arabia) in for conversation."

So that's the new direction this seems to be taking: instead of just blasphemy and denigration of Islam (which accusations don't get much traction in the secular west), the Danish government is now to be held accountable for the "despicable racism" of Jyllands-Posten.

Is someone gonna call bullshit on these guys at some point, or what? Because the fact that there's no opposing voice outside of Scandinavia contradicting these frivolous claims (is there?) means they're just going to get more and more play in the Arab world, and even the more outrageous claims are going to become accepted as given truths.

Arla Agonistes

2006-01-27T18:03:00.000+01:00

This makes me want to boycott Arla:

A Saudi Arabian boycott of Arla products leads the company to purchase advertisements to explain its side of the story to Saudi consumers.

[...]

The Danish ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Hans Klingenberg, wrote the text for Arla's advertisements.

'In certain connections the issue has unfortunately been presented as if the drawings were part of larger smear campaign against Muslims in Denmark. That is clearly not the case,' Klingenberg wrote. 'The Danish government respects Islam as one of the world's great religions.'

The ambassador cited PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen's New Year's speech, in which the prime minister condemned attempts to demonise groups based on their religion and ethnicity.

About 300 stores in Saudi Arabia have removed Arla's products now. A number of other stores have placed yellow plastic markers with a warning text that states the products come from Denmark.

It's embarrassing. Arla should be ashamed. (I think.) Believe it or not, though, this Danish dairy firm has a blog, of all goddam things.

And they have a mention of the Saudi boycott in it. Right here.

Når forbrugere i Danmark vender ryggen til vores mælk, fordi de ikke bryder sig om vores måde at drive forretning på, så kan ændre vores adfærd og dermed gøre noget ved det. Men i dette tilfælde retter harmen sig ikke mod Arla, men mod Jyllands-Posten og det officielle Danmark. Og vi kan ikke gøre meget andet end bare se til. Øv.

("When consumers in Denmark turn their back to our milk because they don't care for our way of doing business, we can altar our affairs and thereby do something about it. But in this case the harm isn't directed at Arla, but toward Jyllands-Posten and official Denmark. And we can't do much except watch. Argh.")

Which does kind of make me feel bad for them. What are they supposed to do? I don't know.

But somehow Arla's campaign seems wrong to me. I realize they didn't bring this on themselves, but is it really the right answer to say, "Denmark loves Islam! It's just those bastards at Jyllands-Posten who wanted to see if their exercise in free speech would stir up trouble... they're the ones that stirred up this trouble! Those trouble-stirrers... blame them! But please keep buying our milk!"

Complicated mess. I don't know. But shame on Arla anyway.

I think.

(It's like if the Dixie Chicks said, "Hey, wait, we love George W. Bush! We just said we didn't like coming from the same state as him because, you know, those ugly Texas license plates. And those damn Rangers. So don't misunderstand us--keep buying our albums, please! Please!")

Comments are welcome on the Arla blog, by the way, so you can give them a thumbs up or thumbs down for their behavior if you want.

Blame Liberty

2006-01-27T12:41:00.000+01:00

It just keeps getting worse... and apparently domestic Danish politics aren't hardening around the notion of a free press trumping the Wahhabist "right" not to have Mohammed's picture drawn. Instead the opposition parties, including the Social Democrat's former front man, are holding the government partly responsible for the indignant absurdities of the Arab League and Saudi Arabia.

Says Lykketoft:

»Det er klart, at vi kunne have undgået meget - og mange misforståelser - hvis statsministeren oprindeligt havde taget det møde med ambassadørerne, som de bad om«, siger Lykketoft, der opfordrer udenrigsministeren til igen at tage kontakt til de arabiske lande.

"It's clear that we could have avoided a lot, and many misunderstandings, if the prime minister had taken the meeting requested by the [various protesting "Islamic" governments'] ambassadors," says Lykketoft, who urged the foreign minister to reach out again to the Arab countries.

I think Fogh had it right: what kind of absurd meeting would it be in which the prime or foreign minister of a democratic country has to explain to a roomful of despots, dictators, and theocrats exactly what freedom of the press actually means? They're all playing this game for domestic consumption, and from some reports last week (or the week before), at least in some countries they're playing fast and loose with the actual circumstances to make it all sound much more insulting than it actually was.

I think this is an actual front in the current conflict. I think the notion that a free press has to be apologized for is repugnant. I don't think any western government should give an inch on this. I think this would instead be a great opportunity to explain freedom of the press not to these disgusting governments, which obviously do understand it, but to the poor people suffering under their brutal regimes. Because to them it must be unthinkable that a newspaper could publish something without the full consent of the government.

How do you do that? No idea. Can it even be done? No idea. So never mind...

Denmark's Saudi Problem

2006-01-26T21:24:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week--this morning or yesterday--I noticed an article about Saudi Arabian plans to boycott Danish goods (in protest of the Mohammed drawings discussed in previous posts), but I didn't get around to it. Now I see they've recalled their ambassador to Denmark.

»Den saudi-arabiske regering har tilbagekaldt sin ambassadør til en konsultation i lyset af den danske regerings mangel på opmærksomhed omkring fornærmelsen af profeten Muhammed«, siger en talsmand for regeringen til Reuters.

"The Saudi-Arabian government has recalled its ambassador for a consultation in light of the Danish government's lack of attention to the insult of the prophet Muhammed," says a spokesman for the government to Reuters.

Wait... Reuters? This story has to be out there in English somewhere. Hold on... yes, here. They also mention the boycott:

Danish food producers Arla Foods said the anger sparked by the cartoons had prompted a boycott of its dairy products in Saudi Arabia.

Arla director Finn Hansen said there had been calls for boycotting Danish products in Friday prayers and on Saudi television and in newspapers.

"We are certainly afraid this will spread across Saudi Arabia and affect our business," he told Reuters news agency.

The thing speaks for itself.

Professor Hitman?

2006-01-22T20:57:00.000+01:00

This is cool... Hitman is being used to teach business leaders to get better at training their staffs. (Why not staves?) That means my sparkling dialogue is helping to inspire a whole generation of business leaders--er, okay, a seminar or two full of Danish HR bosses--how to get better at training and motivating staff.

Okay, maybe it's not so cool after all. Interesting, though... and kind of dubious.

(In case you just tuned in, I write the dialogue for the Hitman games. I've signed my weight in non-disclosure forms, so I will never discuss it at any greater length than that, but my name's right there on the credits when you buy the game so it must be legal to acknowledge it publicly. Which I think I've done before anyway, come to think of it.)

Dillinger's Reaching...

2006-01-22T11:14:00.000+01:00

Politiken recently concluded some research and determined that the Nordic countries are the cultural elite of the world.

I'm going to translate on the fly:

THE NORTH IS THE CULTURAL CENTER OF THE WORLD

Nowhere on earth publishes more books and produces more films per capita than the Nordic lands. Denmark is tops in most culture areas.

by Lars Trier Mogensen and Marcus Rubin

Maybe it's the long, dark months that make us crawl under the blanket, turn on the light, and read thick books and watch a bunch of movies. Or maybe we really are just more cultural than other people.

A comparison of the global cultural production and population tallies, conducted by Politiken, shows that the Nordic lands are way ahead of the big culture nations like Germany, France, and Great Britain.

The Culture Elite Live in the North

Every other year in Denmark alone there are just as many books published per capita as in these three European great powers combined.

In relationship to countries like Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the rest of the world's small and middling countries must also bow down: the north is the world's culture elite.

Denmark proves itself best on the film front, where we are clearly number one in the world with the most films produced per capita.

Henning Camre, Director of the Film Institute, thinks that Denmark's top placement is the result of a combination of public support policies and a creative school system.

"Relative to Denmark's size, we've got a disproportionately big bunch of talent. I think that the school system -- which gets criticized so often otherwise -- has played a big role. The Danish schools have evidently been good at encouraging creativity and talent."

The same explanation comes from the editor of Monday Morning, Mikael Lindholm, the very one to have written the report "The North as a Global Winner Region" for the Nordic Council:

"Strictly value-wise the Nordic lands produce a form of avant-garde that's some steps ahead of most other regions in the world."

I haven't translated a whole story since well before the holidays, so my translating may be a little rusty, but I think that's a pretty good representation.

Are the north countries in general, and Denmark in particular, really any more or less "cultural" than other countries of the world? Are books and movies alone enough to make such a measurement? What about sculpture, painting, music, tapestry, theatre, dance, whittling? Is there some way to quantify quality and content, or can we measure culture by sheer volume? Is a country of one million people that publishes five books on, say, turnip raising, as "culturally great" as country of one hundred million that publishes less than 500 books, but on topics as varied as classical Hellenic finger-painting, indigineous Siberian dance choreography, and so on? Can any defender of "culture" really argue that the concept is at all quantitative? Are "avant-garde" ideas inherently good? Will the egalitarian Danes really countenance the notion that in declaring themselves the cultural elite, they're obviously using a value-system that consigns some countries to the cultural rubbish heap? Which countries are in the cultural rubbish heap? Where is the link to Politiken's raw data?

American gunman and sometime philosopher John Dillinger once famously observed that "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver."

That strikes me as an appropriately American answer to virtually all of the preceding questions, so I'm going to leave it at that.

(p.s.: Yes, the little dunkling was baptized a Christian.)

Royal Dunkling

2006-01-21T10:21:00.000+01:00

Denmark's newest little crown prince will be baptized today, so if you'd like to see how a nation that prides itself on its egalitarianism treats a royal baptism, just sniff around DR for gratuitous coverage (if you're out of the country... if you're in Denmark you'll have to run outside and bury yourself in the snow and ice to avoid coverage).

Denmark's odds-makers wouldn't even lay odds on the name Christian being assigned to the little dunkling, so confident are the experts that this will be his name. (Almost all Danish kings for quite some time have been Frederiks or Christians.)

I'd like to see a King Moe, so I'll be sitting by the television with my "Moe!" pennant... as usual.

Staying the Course

2006-01-20T12:28:00.000+01:00

Denmark, the world's most ethical, most civilized country (see comments a few posts below if you need an explanation), is staying the course in Iraq. So that must be the ethical, civilized thing to do.... six million Danes can't be wrong! (I'm sorry, Lasse, it's all in good fun.)

Mmmmmm, Human Flesh...

2006-01-19T21:35:00.000+01:00

Cannibalism in Sweden. In case you were wondering.

(I've been swamped but felt like I had to post something other than comments, if only to allow people somewhere else to comment. But I was damned if I was gonna talk about Saturday's baptism of the little prince.)

Anne Mette Hommel's 15 Minutes

2006-01-14T11:37:00.000+01:00

Soren's comment to the previous post got me thinking (for a change).

If Denmark were like America, Anne Mette Hommel would be getting her full 15 minutes right now as the political right and left tripped all over themselves to get some tv face-time supporting or condemning her.

This Sunday she'd be on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and that awful Stephanopolous version of This Week. Her dignified defense of her actions would be offset by hysterical guests citing her as the personification of everything wrong with the military, if not the country itself. McLaughlin would make her Issue One and Eleanor Clift and Tony Blankley would attack each other ferociously over "The Anne Mette Hommel Question."

The blogosphere would react predictably, the long-since ossified partisan camps falling duly into line. The virtual pages of the Huffington Post would be full of vitriol for this immoral, hypocritical, vicious, lying, stupid, whoring bitch. Victor Davis Hanson would write up a lengthy piece for National Review comparing Anne Mette Hommel to some heroic soldier immortalized by Thucydides or Herodotus.

Molly Ivins would tear Anne Mette Hommel apart in a syndicated column on Monday, calling her names and trashing her appearance.

Senator Robert Byrd would prop himself up in the senate and scream "disgrace!" until he ran out of breath.

The senators from Massachusetts would co-sponsor a bill called the "Clean Military Bill" in which soldiers using untoward language in the presence of enemy combatants could be jailed for two to six years. (The bill would also include generous federal budgetary supplements for Boston's MTA.)

John McCain would introduce a bill declaring January 13 "Anne Mette Hommel Day." It would pass in the Senate on purely partisan lines but would never even get to a vote in the House.

In New York, Kofi Annan would trot his cheshire smile out before the microphones that afternoon to announce something with the words "Anne Mette Hommel" in it, if only to get some face time. He would make tsk-y sounds worthy of Al Gore.

Speaking about an entirely different subject on Tuesday, Jacques Chirac would make an offhand reference to the disgraceful military conduct of a supposedly democratic country. His europhiliac audience would chuckle gleefully: they know who he means! They know! They really do!

At next week's question time, Tony Blair would be asked if it weren't clear, now that Anne Mette Hommel had been convicted of some of the charges against her, would the right estimable minister not concede that perhaps he had in face been mistaken in allying himself with a nation whose military could produce such a monster?

At an unrelated press briefing, the president himself would be asked by a member of the the White House press corps whether he would characterize the convicted Anne Mette Hommel as a hero, as some of his supporters are doing. The president would give a political non-reply. The right would be infuriated and pillory the president's wobbliness (for not calling her a hero outright), although some cooler heads would explain the president couldn't really say anything else. The left would be infuriated and pillory the president's evasions (for not conceding she had been convicted on some counts and therefore obviously couldn't be a hero), although some cooler heads would explain that... well, eventually cooler heads would emerge, presumably, and explain that, in fairness to the president... well, okay, the analogy kind of breaks down here.

What wouldn't happen if Denmark were America, any more than it seems likely to happen while Denmark remains Denmark, is for anyone of any influence to stand their ground and say, "This is a big mess and we need to sort it out. Let's work through the complications together and come up with a compromise that protects our soldiers while still preventing real abuse of POWs. Let's have a public discussion about what torture really is and is not. And let's start to educate the public about what the Geneva Conventions actually mean in black-letter law."

A legal system that punishes its soldiers for using abusive language towards enemies whom they are lawfully permitted to kill on the battlefield just doesn't make any sense. (Are soldiers allowed to call the enemy names while they're shooting at them?) But that's where this policy and judicial precedent seem headed. "Here comes an enemy, surrendering to me. No one's watching. If I shoot him dead, there's one less enemy in the world and that's that. If I take him into custody, he'll probably end up suing my government and getting me court-martialed or worse." If you really and truly care about taking care of enemy POWs, wouldn't you rather encourage they be taken alive rather than shot? And do you really think that name-calling--something the ACLU will forever defend your right to deploy against me in civilian life--ought to be a crime?

Anyway, at this writing Anne Mette Hommel only gets 11,400 hits on Google. That's less than me, for crying out loud. So it doesn't look like her story's going to break through the clutter and give her the fifteen minutes that all of us (for very different reasons) probably believe she deserves. Maybe that's good. Maybe the powers-that-be can get more done without the hot glare of global attention.

And maybe Dom Perignon will start flowing from my tap.

(If you can read Norwegian, here's some more angst on the topic from Norway.)

Tortured Reasoning

2006-01-13T12:19:00.000+01:00

I haven't had much time to follow the news lately, but just browsing the news in English during lunch today I came across this old (English) article in Jyllands-Posten and it sort of staggered me.

Hommel and the MPs were charged with mistreating Iraqi prisoners in March, April, and June 2004 during questioning at the Danish military camp in Basra.

The five were convicted of aggravated dereliction of duty in the case. The court, however, found that the military had not adequately prepared Hommel for duty in Iraq, and therefore decided not to issue prison sentences.

Hommel was found guilty of forcing detained Iraqis to sit in stressful positions during questioning, as well as for requiring that guards hold them in position if they tried to move.

She was also found guilty of using degrading terms such as 'dog', 'dog shit, and 'penis' to refer to the detainees.

Calling someone names during war is a prosecutable offense?

Bring back the troops, man, we already lost...

(Not only that, but I think the Chicago cop that arrested me in 1985 for--well, I'm still not sure what, and neither was the judge who dismissed the case--that cop tortured me, and probably needs to be hunted down and prosecuted. Or is name-calling legal in America, savage bastards that we are?)

The Awful Danish Language (& Natural Nudism)

2006-01-12T15:18:00.000+01:00

Molli's language skills have been constantly accellerating since our trip to the states. She's learning so many words we can no longer keep up. The first thing she does when you pick her up out of her crib in the morning is to begin feverishly pointing at things and naming them (in whatever language she wants). Anything that should fall under the sweep of her index finger but whose word is not yet known to her will elicit a simple "dih-deh," which is ordinarily short form for "What's that?" but in these cases is merely being used as "whatever."

A couple of days ago I noticed Molli sticking her tongue out a lot during some of her babble sessions. It kind of disturbed me. I thought maybe something was wrong with her tongue, or that maybe she was turning into one of those kids that's always sticking her tongue out. I asked Trine if she'd seen any of this behavior. She hadn't, but she didn't seem too concerned. Yesterday I met Trine down on the sidewalk as she was strolling Molli home from some errands. Molli was making "bleah" sounds and sticking out her tongue like mad.

"That's what I'm talking about," I said to Trine, "isn't that weird?"

"Isn't what weird?"

"That tongue thing she's doing!"

"What tongue thing?"

"Bleah," Molli said, as if on cue, sticking her tongue out and leaving it out.

"That!"

"Oh," Trine said. "That's nothing. She's just saying brød. I bought some bread at the bakery and she won't shut up about it."

"But why does she stick her tongue out like that?"

"She's learning the soft D."

"I never stuck my tongue out like that when I was learning the soft D."

"You never learned the soft D."

Touché.

God, I hate this language. . .

* * *

I came across a two-month old copy of DSB's "Ud og Se" magazine the other day. (DSB is the regional train service in Denmark, and Ud og Se is free on board their trains... but apparently you can get home delivery for 172 kroner a year. You can also check it out online.) The issue I encountered included a feature on nudists. I didn't have time to read the article, which included several splashy full-frontal photos of the nudists interviewed, but I did have time to get the gist: nudism isn't about sexuality, see, it's about being natural. There were comments like, "Man is the only animal that gets dressed to go swimming." Very "aren't-we-superior-for-not-wearing-clothes" type stuff. Fair enough, especially given the way the nudists looked.

Problem is, one can't help noticing that every single one of the nudists pictured in the article is completely clean-shaven down below. How natural is that? "Man is the only animal that shaves his naughty bits," I wanted to shout back at the snarky nudists.

Had to get that off my chest. Sorry.

The Awful Danish Language (& Natural Nudism)

2006-01-11T16:48:00.000+01:00

"That's what I'm talking about," I said to Trine, "isn't that weird?"

"Isn't what weird?"

"That tongue thing she's doing!"

"What tongue thing?"

"Bleah," Molli said, as if on cue, sticking her tongue out and leaving it out.

"That!"

"Oh," Trine said. "That's nothing. She's just saying brød. I bought some bread at the bakery and she won't shut up about it."

"But why does she stick her tongue out like that?"

"She's learning the soft D."

"I never stuck my tongue out like that when I was learning the soft D."

"You never learned the soft D."

Touché.

God, I hate this language. . .

* * *

Had to get that off my chest. Sorry.

Øst, Vest, Hjemme Bedst

2006-01-07T20:38:00.000+01:00

Light. Book. Santa. Home, pasta, pretzel, car, cookie, nice, up, juice, shoes, cup, Elmo, baby, happy, eye. These are among the many English words Molli Malou learned or perfected during our three weeks in America. She also learned at least a dozen names and a lot of Danish.

She got her first haircut a few days before Christmas. She was starting to look like a hillbilly. The stylist evened out the bangs I'd destroyed, trimmed her sides, and gave her kind of a bob in back. It's adorable but also strange to see her with any kind of a hair "style." Civilization has got its hands on her.

She became dependent on three things while we were stateside: her pacifier ("dee-dee"), her blankie ("doe-doe"), and pasta with pesto. She's been sleeping and napping with dee-dee and doe-doe for months, but the pesto dependence took us by surprise. Her first healthy morning I lifted her out of the crib and she kicked to be let down; I set her on the floor and she went scrambling across her aunt's apartment to the kitchen, where she began thumping the refrigerator with her palms and chanting, "peshta! peshta!" I tried giving her oatmeal. I tried giving her yogurt. Then I finally caved and gave her leftover bowtie pasta with pesto for breakfast while I hosed the oatmeal and yogurt off myself.

She traveled surprisingly well. We probably logged about 12,000 miles on this trip, and we only experienced a cumulative half-hour or so of truly difficult behavior.

She was awed by Chicago. She craned her neck up at the tall buildings, unlike anything she'd ever seen, and said, "Nice." She even learned to say Chicago, sort of. She calls it 'cago. Cool by me.

She was thrilled by the cows and the apes at Lincoln Park Zoo. She was thrilled by the El. She was suspicious of elevators until we let her hit the buttons. We only made that mistake once and we got off easy at that: only three superfluous floors visited.

The visit wasn't all about Molli. We are human adults, sort of, with interests beyond Molli. Surrounded by eager babysitters, Trine and I managed to find time to go out with old friends, visit the old familiar places, and, on several occassions, drink ourselves extraordinarily stupid.

I wanted to have something at least semi-intelligent to say about America in comparison to Denmark, but the subject is too huge for breezy treatment. America is vast and loud and anarchic, Denmark is small and tidy and well-organized. But any idiot could tell you that. An idiot just has.

There's more to it than that, obviously, but I think a lot of the differences are overstated. I think Americans have weird ideas about Denmark--to the extent they even recognize it as anything but the pastures around Amsterdam--just as Danes have weird ideas about America. But Americans also have weird ideas about America and Danes about Denmark. We've all got pretty weird ideas about damn near everything. I, for example, still worry about gravity suddenly being turned off.

Of course Denmark and the United States are extremely different in some very fundamental ways... but it's not hard to imagine Denmark as an American state, either. (Sh, don't tell any Danes I said that, they'll revoke my residency.)

I'm glad we're raising our daughter in Denmark because Denmark has to be one of the world's best countries for child-raising. I like Denmark's values. I feel at home in Danish culture. But I'd like her to be at least partly raised in America because I think despite everything you read to the contrary, America--the America people actually live and work and play in--is the most fully integrated, heterogenous blend of people and ideas anywhere on the planet. And it works. Denmark is proud of its receptivity to other people and ideas, but in fact it's often a conformist and extremely homogenous culture.

I love Denmark and I love the United States. I could happily spend the rest of my days in either country, even to the exclusion of the other. But I'm very, very glad I don't have to.

(That's all. I'm back. I will now return to my usual haphazard pattern of half-assed blogging.)

Finally

2005-12-28T18:08:00.000+01:00

Network Solutions has finally resolved the complications involved in my transfer of hosting plans. That means all the images and files that I host on JustMorons and link to from here (including the lovely logo, above) are finally active again and will remain so into the future, since I also got a whole bunch more storage space in the new, cheaper plan.

America is as big and beautiful and boisterous as I remembered it, and then some. I'm drinking oceans of Diet Pepsi Twist and eating all my favorite American foods to excess. (And, starting today, spending a little time at an American gym to counteract all those American calories.) Molli has had a rough go of it, struggling first with the seven hour time change from Denmark to Chicago, then with what we thought was a bad cold but turned out to be a sinus infection. She's on antibiotics now and getting better every day.

(Anyone got any tricks for getting a kid to take that awful sweet pink antibiotic serum they give kids here, by the way? What's America got against suppositories? Molli loves suppositories. Seriously. She even loves her rectal thermometer. It's kind of disturbing, to tell you the truth. Are we in the next Freudian stage here? If we ruin her relationship with her thermometer now, is she going to end up stacking her shoes in alphabetical order when she gets older?)

I haven't been paying much attention to the news or current events: this whole trip has been--and will for another week be--all about seeing family and friends and sucking the marrow out of every precious moment we've got here. Molli is drinking the English language as though by sheer osmosis, and even at her sickest she was learning a couple of new words a day. (Personal favorite: she knows that frogs say "ribit" now, but she pronounces it "RIB it!" -- as though offering an emphatic answer to the question, "Should we have ribs or chicken tonight?")

I got to watch the Bears clinch their division in a Chicago sports bar on Division Street (and even won three out of four squares during the game). I got to watch the Patriots smack the Jets around at my parents' home in New England. I've seen my actor friends on stage, my singing friends--er, friend--singing at a club, and got to watch my nieces torment my daughter with glee. It's been a great trip and there's just no point in pretending I'm going to do any significant blogging before I get home early in the new year.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and have a brilliant new year!

O Shit

2005-12-12T10:18:00.000+01:00

Molli Malou's vocabulary in both languages is expanding faster than we can keep up with it (it took a few usages before we realized that "peez," for example, was her rendition of the Danish verb at spise , to eat; the fact that you never know what language she's going for doesn't help).

The pedagogs at her vuggestue say she's become an absolute parrot, repeating almost everything she hears. We're noticing that at home, too, of course, and we're trying to take appropriate corrective action in the deployment of incendiaries.

A week or so ago we were talking about this very subject over dinner, in fact, when Molli suddenly knocked her milk cup over and it splashed all over me. I unleashed the f-bomb instinctively. I more or less roared it.

Molli didn't miss a beat. "Buck!" she roared right back at me, grinning enormously. We lucked out: she hasn't mastered the "fff" sound yet.

Two nights ago, however, she didn't have to take a cue from me when she spilled yet another glass of milk. She just looked down at the spill, then up at Trine and me, and coolly uttered "Shit."

I assumed I'd heard wrong. I glanced over at Trine to see if she too had heard wrong and was going to blame me for what we'd apparently both misheard. I couldn't make eye contact with her, however, because she was still staring down at her own jaw, which had dropped down to and through the floor. I took that as a sign that she'd misheard it the same as I had.

"She didn't really mean it," I said.

"No," Trine agreed.

We decided that if the word came out of our precious 17-month-old daughter's mouth again while we were in the states (we leave very soon) we'd say it just sounds like shit, but is actually a messed up version of some Danish word. Then we tried to think of a word that would be used in most situations where people say shit. We eventually realized it was pointless, since she'd probably only be swearing around people who know her father, and none of them are going to be surprised that this 22-pound bundle of blue-eyed innocence should talk like an angry, drunken sailor with Tourette's. (I know, I know, it's wrong to make any motherfucking jokes about a cocksucking illness like Tourette's.)

But that's just one kind of language problem: words she says right. The other problem is words she says wrong. (Grammarians back off, I'm in a hurry.) The Danish word for elves, which are everywhere at this time of year, is nisser. Molli skips right over the s's and says what sounds exactly like the pronunciation of neger, which is Danish for "negro." So you're walking through Frederiksberg Centret and suddenly she cranes around in her pram and points excitedly to a shop display and starts shouting, "negro! negro!" Apparently it's a source of great hilarity to the pedagogs at Molli's vuggestue. (Schoolmarms back off, she's obviously not a racist and it'd be just as goddam funny if she were saying caucasian!)

We're going to be in the states for three weeks starting right about... now. Sorry I've been so busy, sorry the Moron's site still hasn't been resolved (it will be, I'm going to keep it another year), and in case I don't blog from the states... glædelig jul og godt nytår!

Ah, screw it, I'm going home: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Jared Walks (&c.)

2005-12-01T10:20:00.000+01:00

You know what vuggestue is? Yes, yes, it's Danish for toddler day-care, but beyond that. You know what it is in a biochemical sense? It's a great big petri dish. And every day my daughter comes home from that petri dish just bubbling over with nasty bacteria that her own super-charged immune system is already decimating--so they jump ship and climb aboard the good ship Daddy. I've had more colds this fall than I've had in the previous five years, and right now I'm in the middle of one of the worst. Hence the low posting.

* * *

Now you can read it in English: Jared Heller has been sentenced and released. The account of the episode is about as grisly as it gets:

Prosecutor Lone Damgaard read aloud from Heller's previous statements taken during closed court sessions before the verdict was announced on Monday.

'The atmosphere in Jaguar's apartment was relaxed and good, and there was cocaine on the table. But then Jaguar asked the taxi driver to take a bath. He followed him to the bathroom, while the American went to sleep. He heard knocking noises from the bathroom and thought they were cleaning the bathtub. After that there was a single cry of help, but who was screaming?' Damgaard read from the statement.

'The American walked to the bathroom and saw Jaguar leaning over the taxi driver, who was lying in the bathtub with his legs hanging down the side. Jaguar was hitting him with his fists. The American tried to drag him away. There was blood spilling out of the taxi driver's mouth. It was like a film.

Jaguar said the taxi driver was dead, and that he could not tell anyone. The American was scared to be in the apartment with a man who had committed a murder. He wanted to call the police, but the other one demanded and took his telephone. He did not dare to run away, but left the bathroom, because it was a terrible sight. Jaguar called him in again and wanted his help to saw the body to pieces. He had already sawn off one leg and both arms. The American felt he did not have a choice.

He tried to saw the other leg off, but threw up after a few moments. He left the room, and was called in again. He tried to cut the body in two, but gave up again. Jaguar called him 'a bitch' and finished the work.

Jaguar placed the body parts in trash bags and told the American to take a bag and follow him to the street, where they emptied the bags. The torso and the head were put in a suitcase and a laundry basket, which they carried out and emptied in a corner.'

Jared Heller is going to be carrying those images and memories around in his noggin for the rest of his life. Punishment enough for whatever he did to find himself in that situation to begin with... and then some.

Meanwhile, as long as we're trolling the English-language Danish news, here's a story of every Danish parent's worst nightmare:

A woman in the [Fyn] town of Odense received the fright of a lifetime on Saturday, when an unknown perpetrator stole her pram - and two-month-old baby along with it.

There's a happy ending, sort of:

After ten minutes of frantic search in the neighbourhood, she found the pram and her unscathed baby behind a nearby container. Police guess that the man stole the pram and drove it to the container to throw away the toys lying in it. When he discovered that there was a baby sleeping inside, he ran away.

This is the kind of crime that cannot stand. This "blond junkie-type" guy needs to get very publicly whacked down with the full force of the law, nailed with every charge that can conceivably be made to stick, so that the message is spread loud and clear: you snatch a pram, your life is ruined.

You snatch my pram, and you'll wish your life were merely ruined.

Compared to pram-snatching, this may not seem as bad, but it's still sad: Santa's ripping people off in Denmark. I won't bother translating the whole article, which is only a couple of paragraphs, but the gist is that an autodialer program is apparently calling Danes, declaring "This is Santa Claus from the North Pole" (in English), and informing the call recipient that if they punch in their bank account number, they've won "something or other." You can guess what happens to the unhappy souls that give Santa the benefit of the doubt.

Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T12:06:00.000+01:00

A History of Thanksgiving from the old Moron's Almanac.

In the winter of 1620-1621, a group of immigrants in Massachusetts experienced a devastating winter. The weather was fierce. Food was scarce. Many died. At last spring came, then summer, and by the time of the autumn harvest things were looking about as rosy as they ever look in Massachusetts.

At a fundraising dinner that fall, Governer Bradford stood up and gave a speech.

"Thank God we survived last winter," he said. "Thank God this harvest gives us a fighting chance to survive the coming winter. And thank you for your support in the last election, please make checks payable to the Committee to Re-Elect the Governor, God bless America, amen. Let's eat."

The ensuing winter didn't turn out too badly, so the superstitious immigrants concluded that Governor Bradford's magic spell of "Thanksgiving" had done the trick.

The holiday was intermittently celebrated for years, with an enthusiasm scaled to the previous winter's weather, until November 26, 1789, when President Washington issued a proclamation calling for a nationwide day of thanksgiving for the establishment of the Constitution.

Washington's proclamation wasn't much different from Bradford's.

"Thank God we survived last winter," he said. "Thank God we've got a fighting chance to survive the coming winter. Thank God we've got our own damn country now and don't have to put up with a bunch of meddling European bastards. And thank you for your support in the last election, please make checks payable to Federalists for Washington, God bless America, amen. Let's eat."

Washington, the Constitution, and many of the immigrants (who were now Americans) survived the winter, so this new spell was also deemed effective.

President Lincoln later proclaimed the last Thursday of November Thanksgiving Day in 1863, but President Roosevelt moved it back to the fourth Thursday of the month in 1939 to extend the time available for holiday shopping.

President Ford proposed making it the third Wednesday in September, in order to really extend the time available for holiday shopping, but he only made the proposal to his golden retriever, Liberty, so the suggestion never reached congress.

And so we celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November every year, in honor of having survived last winter, having got rid of those meddling European bastards, having invented our own rules, having bitch-slapped the Confederacy, and having plenty of time to shop before the holidays.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Danskvin

2005-11-19T14:52:00.000+01:00

There are some things about the EU that I will never understand. For example, that a sentence like this could be published without sending the radical masses of the whole quasi-socialist continent into riotous demonstrations: " In 2000, EU accepted Denmark as a wine-producing country, but only granted it permission to produce table wine without geographical denomination."

Quick, what do you call a sovereign nation that needs permission from the EU to produce any kind of table wine it wants? Sorry, trick question: a sovereign nation don't need no stinkin' EU permission.

What the hell kind of regulation is that, anyway? Do we (in America) have federal laws that tell the various states what kinds of products can and cannot be produced by private parties within their borders? I mean, I'm not even a Dane, but my wife and daughter are Danish and the craven obsequity of this paragraph makes my skin crawl on their behalf:

Armed with the escalating production figures, the [Danish] government is prodding the European Union for permission to produce wine with etiquettes indicating the region, grape type, and vintage.

"Can we please, please put this information on our labels?"

"Absolutely not! There must be no such disclosure on Danish wine bottles! Consumers must be kept completely ignorant of the contents of Danish wine! You're lucky we let you bottle and sell that nordic vinegar as wine to begin with... don't push your luck!"

Anyone want to explain to me the logic behind a prohibition on labels saying where and when a given wine was produced, and what sort of grapes went into it?

Denmark, Colored by Numbers

2005-11-18T11:46:00.000+01:00

Among other things revealed by Politiken's politically-colored map of Denmark: Copenhagen is ten times the geographic size of Frederiksberg, but has only about 5.5 times the population. That means Frederiksberg, with its 91,000 inhabitants crammed into just 9 square kilometers (as opposed to the half a million Copenhageners lolling about in almost 90), is almost twice as dense.

But that's just demographics. The politics are interesting too: I didn't realize how conservative Frederiksberg was until this past election. Thirteen of its 25 seats are in the hands of the Conservative party; only one belongs to the Prime Minister's Venstre party. The Social Democrats have just 5 seats, and the remaining six seats are evenly divided between three parties which are, if I'm not mistaken, all to the left of the Social Democrats.

Strange to think that in Denmark I'm living in the most politically conservative neighborhood I've ever lived in (most of my adult life prior to moving here was divided between the conservative bastions of greater Boston, Hollywood, the north side of Chicago, and the borough of Queens).

Turkish PM Walks Out on Danish Presser

2005-11-15T19:14:00.000+01:00

The Turkish Prime Minister cancelled a joint press conference with Denmark's Prime Minister here in Copenhagen this afternoon because a journalist from Roj-TV, a Danish TV station that serves the Kurdish community in Denmark, was among the press. Turkey claims that this television station is funded by the separatist Kurdish terrorist group PKK.

Here's a nice streaming video of Anders Fogh Rasmussen explaining all this to the press . Don't worry: the first half of the clip is entirely in English.

Turkey Reconsidered

2005-11-15T14:16:00.000+01:00

[Note: I'm experimenting with posting via email and until I get comfortable with this process there may be certain formatting glitches that mess up my posts. I apologize half-heartedly for any inconvenience. ]

Right up until about fifteen minutes ago I was a big supporter of getting Turkey into the European Union as swiftly as possible. There were a lot of reasons I felt that way, but all of them have been bitch-slapped to death by my sudden realization that it's a horrible idea for Turkey and for Europe.

How do I draw such a rash conclusion? Because of this recent statement from Turkey's sitting Prime Minister (who may in fact have been standing at the time) Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

"Freedom of speech is important, but it's more important, what's sacred for me. I would never abuse my freedom of speech to attack things that are sacred for Anders Fogh Rasmussen," said Erdogan.

The irony here is that in attacking the notion of free speech, Erdogan is attacking something that's sacred to the Danish Prime Minister, and he doesn't even realize it. The same way, I'm sure, that we dimwitted secular westerners have no idea just how horribly offensive a cartoon of god almighty might appear if we had been raised to perceive it so.

But the fact remains that a country whose prime minister is unable to embrace free speech as a political principle--whether because that prime minister really doesn't get it, or merely because he feels that he has to pretend not to get it--just doesn't strike me as ready to be part of modern Europe.

"It's therefore with deep regrets that I've been following the current developments. We have things that are sacred to us, and no one should attack these things. You have to respect my faith, as much as I respect yours. Otherwise we can never speak of a world where we live together in peace and harmony," said Erdogan.

There are so many logical flaws in that reasoning I'm not even going to address them--although I'll acknowledge they're only logical flaws if we're agreed on certain Aristotelian principles of logic and certain Enlightenment ideals of political liberty. Which we may well not be.

In a companion piece, it's noted that the Danish Prime Minister intends to try and educate his Turkish colleague about freedom of the press when Erdogan is in town for a NATO meeting in a couple of weeks. I'm one of the 17 people left in Denmark who likes the current Prime Minister, but this is about as diplomatically ham-handed a gesture as I've seen since Jacques Chirac chided half the population of Europe for "having missed a good opportunity to shut up."

Or is it?

A REAL OPTIMIST, of Candidean magnitude, would assume that both of these politicians were playing to their domestic bases. Erdogan is playing to the affronted Muslims of Turkey; Rasmussen to the affrighted secularists of Denmark. Behind closed doors they'll laugh merrily about the whole thing as they buy each other drinks and and do body shots off strippers. But from where I'm sitting (in the cheap and less than-entirely-optimistic seats) that's only more of an argument to keep Turkey out of the EU for the time being. Does it really serve any of our needs if western European and Turkish political leaders are going to exacerbate the existing tensions between "average" secularists and "average" Muslims by making political hay out of every little scrap that comes along?

I don't think so. I think, to my own deep disappointment, that East is East and West is West and the twain are nowhere near prepared to meet. Not yet.

But boy would I love to be wrong...

(Note: I realize the same logic I've been using against Turkish EU membership suggests Bosnia should be bounced out of the club as well, but what's done is done.)

Youthful Indiscretions

2005-11-14T23:12:00.000+01:00

Louise Frevert is an interesting case study in something. You may remember Frevert as the Folk Party politician who got into trouble over racist remarks on her website earlier this year. Now she's apparently getting massive exposure on the eve of tomorrow's elections.

I haven't seen any of the forged posters referred to in this article, but there are links to still shots from her youthful exploits here (stand warned: although it's not a pornographic site, in this post about Frevert's past they do have links to extremely pornographic images).

A couple of new advertisements on television have also had me thinking about the different American and Danish/Euro attitudes about sex.

In one, a young man is going down on a young woman when he suddenly lifts his head up to spit out a bit of fluff... bit of hair on his tongue or something. The girl looks embarrassed or offended, but then he repeats the muffled spitting sound again, and again, and next thing you know it's a bass line. The girl smiles, picks up the mobile phone on her nightstand, and cues up "Like a Virgin." As it begins to play, her lover lowers her head back to her loins and she leans back with a beatific smile.

In the other, a young woman in bed gets a video message on her mobile phone from a friend at a big party or concert or something. "You gotta come," the friend is saying, "this party is huge!" But the girl in bed is not convinced. "Not now, thanks," she replies into the camera-end of her mobile phone, "I've got something bigger right here!" And she lowers the phone under the quilts toward the crotch of the young man we now see she's in bed with.

There's a third ad I think I've already mentioned, in which three girls step up to a bar, order chilled Jagermeister, then giggle and cover their breasts after the Jager shots cause their nipples to stiffen conspicuously.

I just can't imagine seeing any of these ads in the states. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's clearly a thing and I've been meaning to mention it.

So I have.

Daddy & Mor

2005-11-14T08:41:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged in a week, and almost all the recent blogging up until then was about Islamofascism in and around Denmark. This isn't supposed to be "JihadWatch: Denmark," so I'm going to hold off on posting anything about Hizb-ut-Tahrir's weekend conference—tempting as it is. Frankly, I like when the bad guys declare themselves out in the open.

But I've been writing all this pointless political pontification at the expense of indulging my paternal pride. I ought, for example, to have shared this series of pictures at least a week ago:

Notice that the cap is on the bottle.

At about this point Molli Malou got tired of sprinkling "pretend" hot sauce all over her meal, so before we could stop her she jammed the top of the bottle into her mouth and sucked hungrily at it. Immediate reaction:

Long-term reaction:

Full disclosure: I'm exaggerating. No child was hurt in the production of these photographs. Molli did appear to get a little hot sauce off the top of the bottle, and wasn't exactly thrilled about it, but she didn't really freak out until we snatched the bottle away from her. So you don't have to call social services after all.

Besides, Molli does appear to enjoy spicy food, within limits. I spice my lunch soups to the point that Trine calls them "pepper soup," but our daughter seems to enjoy them as much as I do. Molli also likes Danish blue cheese, gorgonzola, and even mellem-lagret (as opposed to mild) Danish cheeses. (Most American adults I know are, say, unenthusiastic about anything mellem-lagret or stronger.)

Watershed

One afternoon last week I went to pick up Molli at her mormor's: no sooner had mormor opened the front door of her apartment than Molli caught sight of me and squealed excitedly, "Da-dee! Da-dee! Da-dee!" It was the first time she'd called me daddy so unambiguously. This is one of the great moments of your life, I told myself. I hurried over to Molli to share all the love and awe that was overwhelming me. She shrieked, ran away, and started to cry. Remember that she did that, I told myself.

Chekhov in a Nutshell

It is a strange behavior, the way Molli and other children her age get so obviously thrilled by the sudden appearance of a loved one—then suddenly have no idea what to do with all their emotions and typically end up crying or turning away or ignoring them altogether. I guess it's no stranger than wanting to eat paper, chew keys, or climb radiators, but it's much more personal.

Even before last week's triumphant realization that we can be addressed as daddy and mor (more on mor below), Molli would often light up as soon as she saw us arriving to pick her up at vuggestue. She'd run straight toward us with giggles and a big smile. Then she'd falter a few steps short of us and pretend she wasn't really that excited after all. It struck me as an astonishing level of emotional manipulation for someone of her age until I saw the same behavior exhibited by some of her classmates. Thinking back, I could even remember her cousins doing the same:

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you — wait a second, you're no big deal, never mind—look, a leaf!

The fact that every toddler seems to do this suggests it's hard-wired into us. I'm going to go out on a limb and declare this Chekhov's great secret. Didn't see that coming, did you? Neither did I. But I had to declare something once I announced I was going to go out on a limb, and I really didn't know what to say. On reflection, I think "Chekhov's Great Secret" was pretty good.

What the hell are you talking about?

If you've never seen or read Chekhov, never mind. But if you have, take another look at that toddler formulation: I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you — wait a second, you're no big deal, never mind—look, a leaf! Isn't that every Chekhov character in a nutshell?

The more I think about it, the more I see all kinds of toddler behaviors in his major characters. That's probably just because he was one of the best illustrators of character ever, and toddlerhood is the true window to our soul.

From now on I'm going to look for the latent toddler in everyone I meet.

More on Mor

The Danish word for "mom" or "mommy" is mor, pronounced more or less as a Bostonian might pronounce "more". But that's not what you hear Danish children call their mothers. Instead they turn it into a two-syllable word: mo-ar. (Which is, I suppose, actually even closer to how a Bostonian would pronounce "more": Danes drop their trailing R's just like Bostonians—it's one aspect of Danish that my New England upbringing has made a little easier.)

When Molli Malou says what you or I would hear as "more," she really does means "more," although she's much more likely to say "mee-ya" (for the Danish mere) in those cases. When she's talking about or to her mother, though, it's almost always the two-syllable "mo-ar" (or "mo-ah"). Once in a rare while, if she's talking to me, she'll say "mommy" when referring to her mother. I find that interesting. I've never heard her refer to me as far, probably because Trine and her family have done a much better job of referring to me as "daddy" in Molli's presence than I have of referring to Trine as mor.

She's also recently aced nej and no. She knows both and isn't shy about using them. At first it was cute: we'd be telling her not to do something and would bark out a stern, "no!" Then she'd kind of backpedal away from the activitiy and shake her head, muttering, "no no nej nej no nej no nej..."

But she's evolved. First of all, she's learned that she can use the magic n-word in either language to refuse things. That's very helpful when she's saying "no," "nej," "nah," or "naw" to decline a piece of fruit or a cup of milk. It's much easier and more pleasant to deal with a verbal "no," after all, than a vicious swipe of the hand that invariably sends everything flying. It's much less pleasant, though, when it comes to things like changing diapers or getting dressed.

Even worse, she's learned that our word isn't universal law: that just because we're saying "no" as she reaches out for the catfood, it doesn't mean she can't get a handful into her mouth before we actually get close enough to physically stop her.

It would be useful if we could give her a little electric shock every time we said "no" and she disobeyed us, but probably that would run afoul of some overprotective legislation—legislation that I promise you was not drafted by parents.

"What we got here is a failure to communicate..."

2005-11-07T10:04:00.000+01:00

Egypt is breaking off its "dialogue" with Denmark on human rights and discrimination because its government is an ass.

Seriously:

Egypt's ambassador in Libanon, Hussein Darrar, told news service AFP that Egypt had decided not to continue its dialogue with Denmark on human rights and discrimination.

The Egyptian ambassador in Denmark requested, along with ten other ambassadors of Muslim states, to meet with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to discuss daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten's decision to print twelve caricatures of the prophet, an act considered blasphemous by many Muslims.

Rasmussen refused to meet with the ambassdors [sic], saying that if they thought he had any power to influence what a national newspaper did and printed, the essence of Danish democracy had been lost on them.

The eleven ambassadors in question are either being disingenuous ("You mean the government doesn't control the media? A thousand pardons, we did not know!") or ignorant ("You mean the government doesn't control the media? Then what is the purpose of the media?").

"The Egyptian ambassador in Denmark has said that the case no longer rests with the embassy. It is now being treated at an international level. As far as I have been informed by my government, the cartoon case has already been placed on the agenda for the Islamic Conference Organisation's extraordinary summit in the beginning of December," [Egyptian Embassy Councillor Mohab Nasr Mostafa] Mahdy said.

If the Cartoon Eleven are being disingenuous, I'm not sure what they hope to gain by this ploy... I can't imagine any westerner of any political persuasion being at all moved by their indignation, so it's safe to assume that all of this grandstanding is for domestic consumption. But let's say I'm an ordinary Egyptian Muslim. Do I care if a little newspaper in a tiny little Christian country commits blasphemy? I don't see that it would make a damn bit of difference to me. Which might, perhaps, just prove me as ignorant of ordinary Egyptian Muslims as their government is of the notion of a free press, but based on the Egyptian Muslims I've known I don't think that's the case. (On the other hand, the only Egyptian Muslims I've known have been immigrants to America or Denmark, and since the average Egyptian obviously doesn't emigrate, my sample is obviously skewed.)

If they're not being disingenous and the desire to see punitive action taken against Jyllands-Posten or Denmark itself is as strong and sincere as it's being made out to be, then we've got a really, really dangerous failure to communicate on our hands.

Contract with Denmark / Vote Strange

2005-11-04T11:19:00.000+01:00

Immigrants to Denmark are now being asked to sign a contract in which they recognize the conditions of their existence in Denmark. Among those conditions, it should come as no surprise, are loyalty to Denmark and to its values.

Politiken has chosen, in the article linked above, to frame this story around the big Muslim festival of the end of Ramadan. Their article begins, "While Muslims celebrated the end of the month of fasting and showed their loyalty to Allah, on the Immigration Ministry's website they could read the words of a new contract, which new Danes will henceforward have to sign—a declaration of loyalty to Denmark." (There's a picture of some kids on hand at Valby Hall to celebrate the end of the Muslim fast.)

Here must they acknowledge, among other things, that one has to work and pay taxes, that one cannot hit one's children, and that the sexes have equality.

If one's a refugee, one has to attest that one will move home again if the conditions in the homeland improve. The contract is the result of the summer's integration agreement between the government and the Danish Folk Party.

In terms of describing the contract, that's it. Suddenly there's a subtitle declaring "Find It Insulting," under which we have three short sentences in which the contract is dismissed by critics.

Some new Danes find the contract disrespectful and insulting.

Journalist and Author Rusty Rashind calls it "suspicious-making."

Ahmed Dualeh, spokesman for the Somali Union in Aalborg, says: "The government thinks it's talking to a bunch of barbarians."

I'll take Dualeh's point a step further: the government is talking to a bunch of barbarians. Unfortunately, rather than isolate the barbarians and deal with them seperately, the government is trying to reach them by means of a general wash. When we see honor killings on the streets of Copenhagen, I don't think it's unfair to say that barbarians have indeed established themselves in Denmark, but I doubt they're going to be very intimidated by the fact that they've signed a contract. They are, after all, barbarians.

And yet there must be at least nine honest and productive immigrants entering the country for every barbarian, and these "good" immigrants are more likely to read, understand, and abide by the contract—which makes no difference, since they'd probably abide by its conditions even without having signed it. So the contract strikes me as a losing proposition in that respect.

On the other hand, what are Dualeh and Rashind complaining about? Which particular clause in the contract (no, I don't have time to translate the whole thing) do they find so objectionable? And why does Politiken have to go framing the whole story of the contract as some insidious anti-Islamic thing? When did immigration become the exclusive province of Muslims?

The subtext here isn't very subtextual: religious celebrants showing their loyalty to Allah, the article seems to imply, are unknowingly in violation of the stipulation that their highest loyalty be to Denmark and its values. Fair enough... but stop the press! Here comes Christmas. Worse, here comes the season of the Christmas Lunch, a riotous and liquor-lubricated season of festive and drunken merry-making in the name not of Denmark, but of that nice Jewish kid who got nailed to some sticks two thousand years ago. Imagine if the article began like this:

"While Christians celebrated the coming of Christmas and showed their loyalty to Jesus Christ, on the Immigration Ministry's website they could read the words of a new contract, which new Danes will henceforward have to sign—a declaration of loyalty to Denmark."

So I retract my bewilderment. I get it. The article is framed the way it is because non-Christians can't honor their faith and their loyalty to Denmark, so the contract is a kind of Catch-22. A non-Christian can't sign in good conscience, because the state church of Denmark is Lutheran.

This is why it's a good idea to get your church and government seperated. That way your citizens can be loyal to their religion and their country.

* * *

Meanwhile, 24 Chinese babies have disappeared from Nordsjælland (North Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen sits).

The headline's misleading: it's 24 children since February, not a sudden disappearance of two dozen kids. They've been disappearing from an asylum center in Græsted. And it isn't as though they're being kidnapped: they're simply finding homes. The only problem is that the Chinese couple charged with "placing" them is apparently making a tidy profit on the placement deals, which sounds a little (to state prosecutors) like human trafficking, even though its more like aggressive adoption marketing.

The prosecutor's name in this case is Susanne Bitsch.

Which reminds me: I haven't written much about the municipal elections coming up, but one candidate has certainly piqued my interest: Simon Strange. That's his name. His website is StemStrange.dk, which translates literally as "Vote Strange." (Yeah, I know, in Denmark it's pronounced with a soft a and a glottal "ng," but still.)

Halloween

2005-10-31T12:19:00.000+01:00

I thought I published this yesterday. I obviously didn't. It's pointless and seems even more pointless in retrospect, but I don't have time to get into the whole Danish Priests versus Dandruff Ad thing right now, so this will have to do for now.

What follows was written yesterday.

* * *

I'm blogging over lunch because I don't have much time today. (How can virtual unemployment keep me so busy?) There are a couple of things I wanted to blog about over the weekend but never got around to.

The first is that I found out what was wrong with the JustMorons site: Wilma was. Here's a note I got from my hosting provider (it's easily skimmable):

Dear Verio shared hosting customer:

Please see the customer message below from our CEO on the impact of Hurricane Wilma. This letter was originally provided Thursday, Oct. 27 to all of our impacted customers who were hosted in the Florida facility. The letter was sent via a link from your online control panel and the Hurricane Wilma information site on verio.com.

October 27, 2005

Since Hurricane Wilma came ashore in the south Florida area Monday morning, many of our shared hosting customers have been impacted by power and service interruption this week. We know that the past few days have proven difficult for all of you whose businesses have been affected.

I would like to first offer my sincere apology for this disruption as I realize that this event has had an enormous impact on many of your business operations. As you know, Verio prides itself on its track record for performance, service and reliability. We have extensive disaster recovery plans that have been put into place, tested and re-tested in an effort to prevent events of this magnitude. Unfortunately, we had a system failure with respect to a critical piece of our backup infrastructure and we take this issue very seriously. In our earlier updates to customers provided on our information site on verio.com, we provided detail on the cause of the service interruption and what we have been doing to rectify the situation and restore service.

As noted, the south Florida facility is now operational and has full municipal electrical power. We have restored service to customers, the systems have stabilized and the servers are operating at normal capacity. Of course, we continue to closely monitor the system and will quickly rectify any problems that arise. Please be assured that Verio has been 100% focused on resolving this issue and helping to ensure our customers' online business services are operating.

With the hurricane causing extensive damage to the south Florida area, and disrupting electrical service to millions, the generators, which were tested and were operating as expected, later failed on Monday morning, Oct. 24, 2005. We deployed internal and external teams of technicians and specialists to identify and repair the problem. These efforts included flying in specialists from around the country to restore service as soon as possible. Although we successfully brought the generators back online Tuesday morning, they failed again on Tuesday afternoon, and our continued attempts to bring in alternate generator power were delayed due to the catastrophe in the greater south Florida area. With extensive effort, manpower and resources, we successfully restored the data center power back early Wednesday morning, Oct. 26, 2005, and full electrical service to the data center was restored Wednesday afternoon.

Again, we realize the impact that many of our customers have experienced. In consideration of the impact that this outage has caused our customers, Verio will issue a full one month credit to Verio customers who are hosted in the Florida facility. We will shortly provide specific details as to the process Verio will initiate to credit each such customer.

We will be conducting a detailed review and assessment of the generator failure, and plan to give our customers the results of this review as a follow up, as well as telling you about our future plans to ensure this type of occurrence does not happen again.

Your business is important to us and we greatly appreciate your patience and understanding. We will continue to work around the clock to stay on top of this situation and provide additional information to you.

Sincerely,
Kiyoshi Maeda
President and Acting CEO
Verio Inc., an NTT Communications Company

They explain, they apologize, and they throw in a little candy. It's nice to see a big company that can actually handle crisis communications better than the average third-grader. I'm trying to imagine how Microsoft might have responded in similar circumstances. "Hi, this is Microsoft, our servers were down because of a problem you can read more about in knowledgebase article 43211GA54-a, if you have an MS Hurricane Outage Emergency Service Contract. If you don't, you can subscribe now and receive 20% savings or you can eat a cold bowl of fuck."

* * *

A friend with a sense of humor knew I was looking for work and sent me this listing from Craig's List Chicago:

Revolutionary Publisher/Media Group Seeking Submissions
Reply to: job-105045567@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-10-18, 5:55PM CDT

Arissa Media Group is a limited liability company (LLC) formed in Portland, Oregon in 2003. Our mission is quite simple. We believe that a revolution is necessary in the United States of America to rid the world of one of the greatest terrorist organizations in planetary history, the US government. The historical record of domestic and foreign policy atrocities committed by the US government, combined with decades of unsuccessful attempts at reform, indicate that only a political and social revolution in the United States can provide an atmosphere where fundamental change is a possibility.

While the creation of a revolutionary movement is a necessity in the United States, we are aware that a true revolutionary consciousness is lacking amongst the American public. Arissa Media Group was created to assist in building that revolutionary consciousness by producing various forms of professional quality media all united with one educational aim - to demonstrate the necessity for a revolution in the United States.

Keeping in mind the above mission, Arissa Media Group welcomes submissions for print, audio, and video projects. Please send only a high quality project proposal and not complete manuscripts or other projects. If we are interested in your project we will contact you for more information. To submit a project proposal please mail a proposal, cover letter, and resume/cv to:

Submissions
Arissa Media Group
P.O. Box 6058
Portland, Oregon 97228

*We will not accept submissions over email.
For all other inquiries please contact us at:

Arissa Media Group
P.O. Box 6058
Portland, Oregon 97228
(503) 703-6069
info@arissamediagroup.com
www.arissamediagroup.com
Job location is anywhere

Compensation: TBD

no -- Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
no -- Please, no phone calls about this job!
no -- Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
yes -- Reposting this message elsewhere is OK.

If you go to Arissa's website (no way I'm going to post a link, but you'll see its address above), you can see their "Catalogue" page, which offers, among the usual assortment of latte-revolutionary books, the "Arissa Poster." It's a downloadable Acrobat file that I'm not going to link to, but which I did download and read.

The site urges you to "Download and distribute this free Arissa poster inspiring readers to take action against the US government."

First of all, it's not actually inspiring readers to take action against the U.S. government (which would, I think, be illegal). It does, however, exhort them to visit arissa.org.

Arissa.org is mostly under construction, but you'll see they have one "chapter," in Buffalo. You'll also notice they're apparently built around the organizing principle of getting Lynne Stewart out of jail.

So the "revolutionary" poster leads to the "revolutionary" website that leads to the "revolutionary" notion that Lynne Stewart shouldn't be in jail.

And the poster dares to ask why activists are feeling a little disillusioned these days? Hell, if I were a revolutionary I'd want to overthrow Arissa on principle. I'd want to march into their headquarters and decapitate their leaders and set the building on fire. (If I were a revolutionary.)

If you're gonna be a revolutionary and you're scared to walk the walk, at least have the nosser to talk the talk.

But it raises an interesting question. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, so I honestly have no clue: is there a legal distinction between actively calling for the overthrow of the government, and merely claiming that you're calling (or will call, or have called) for the overthrow of the government? In a parallel vein, pretend it's libel if I own a newspaper and publish statement X about you. Would it be equally libelous if I'd merely given an interview to another newspaper in which I told them that I'd libeled you in my newspaper?

And what the hell am I doing wondering about all this? What do I care? What does it matter?

Mars Attacks?

2005-10-28T16:11:00.000+02:00

According to one of the few lead stories on Politiken's website that doesn't deal with the terror arrests, an Indian astrologer is warning that Mars and the earth will be "too close" on Saturday, and that this will lead to "earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanoes."

But don't start loading up on canned goods just yet. Consider this paragraph:

På lørdag befinder Mars sig nærmere Jorden end nogen gang siden 2003, og det betyder problemer, hvis man ellers skal tro astrologen Ashok Kumar Joshi i New Delhi.

EN: On Saturday Mars will find itself closer to the earth than at any time since 2003, and that means problems, at least if you're going to believe the astrologer Ashok Kumar Joshi of New Delhi.

Are you going to believe the astrologer Ashok Kumar Joshi of New Delhi? I'm not. Kunjilal Malviya's my guy. Anyone who can predict his own death and live with the disappointment of being wrong is obviously an astrologer suited to the moronic temperament.

"Quiet, Introverted" Danish Teens of Middle-Eastern Background Arrested for Planning Terror Attack

2005-10-28T09:17:00.000+02:00

Last night Danish police arrested four Danish teens (English) of Middle-Eastern background for planning a terror attack. The details of the attack don't appear to be known: Denmark can't be ruled out as their target, but all that's known for certain (according to police) is that they were in the process of planning an attack "somewhere in Europe." They believe it was to have been a suicide terror attack.

All of the suspects were 16-20 years old.

The trail of clues that led to the arrests apparently began with the arrest in Sarajevo, just over a week ago, of a Turk, a Swede, and a Bosnian preparing a terror attack in that city. One of the three was apparently planning a suicide attack against an embassy in Sarajevo. BT reports that Swedish newspapers identify the targeted embassy as America's or Britain's, but Politiken refers to it only as that of "an EU country" (which would seem to rule out the US).

According to BT, the police described the suspects as "very quiet, introverted young men, who are consumed by their religious faith."

Lighter Fare

2005-10-27T22:23:00.000+02:00

That previous post was too depressing. I can't walk away from my blog like that. So, on a much happier note and with an available link in English: Part-Danish Rocket Launched!

It's just a charming story with nothing to feel bad about. My favorite detail:

Nielsen concluded that the students had planned to celebrate the launch with a beer bash, but that they were so excited, that they decided to continue working on the satellite instead.

It's all good!

There's Honor in Killing Your Daughter?

2005-10-27T21:51:00.000+02:00

I spent a rough evening alone with Molli tonight. She's been a little cranky since she got her MMR vaccination. I'm assuming it's because of the poisons or pathogens or whatever the hell it is that were injected into her bloodstream, and not from some sense of betrayal at my having condoned the needle. She was fussy and hard to please and extremely fickle about what she wanted to make of our time together. (Great googly moogly—I just described half my ex-girlfriends!)

I tried to give her a bath, but for the first time ever she refused to let me lower her into it. She flailed like a cat. We abandoned the bath and she ran screaming naked around the apartment. It took fifteen minutes for me to calm her enough to get her into a new diaper, and then she ran me ragged for another half hour. She cried and screamed. Finally I calmed her down by letting her take my glasses off and try to put them back on me again. This cheered her enormously and I managed to get through the game without losing both eyes.

She was then absolutely charming for half an hour and ended up falling asleep in my lap as I read to her. (Er... I meant to read to her, but just played herself to sleep with an old cloth while I watched Frasier.)

Then I cleaned up the havoc she'd left in her wake and had a glass of wine (we're out of bourbon). At last I sat down to read the Danish news with the full intent of blogging something.

Then I have to go and read that the suspect jailed in the recent "honor killing" of a 19-year-old girl (the day after her secret wedding to a young man the family didn't approve of) is... her father.

Here's a thought. Maybe she disgraced the family by making such an unwise choice because her father was a murderous scumbag. If the shame is really so deep, maybe the father ought to have blown his own brains out for having failed to raise his daughter in a way that might have prevented all that shame. Maybe he still will. If he can live with himself after killing his own daughter, then he's certainly no father. If he does manage to off himself, at least it's conceivable that a father's heart was beating somewhere in that murderous breast.

But it's too depressing. I'm going to look in on my own daughter one more time, kiss her little forehead, watch her breathe, marvel at her sheer amazingness, then trip over some damn toy lying in the periphery of her crib and sprain three muscles trying to fall as quietly as possible.

Up and Down

2005-10-24T16:54:00.000+02:00

About two weeks ago Molli began climbing things. She's a very persistent climber. She needs to be, because she's not a very good one. It takes her enormous effort to get onto most couches and chairs. We do, however, have one of the ubiquitous Danish Tripp-Trapp chairs, which makes for easy climbing.

All too often in the early going, Molli would quickly hoist herself up to a standing position on top of this chair and suddenly be wobbling uncertainly three full feet above the ground. We reacted instinctively, commanding "Down!" ("Ned!" in Danish) and rushing over to guide her down.

Over time she got more reliable, and we felt we ought to let her climb the chair as long as she wasn't reckless on it. We would only holler "down" at her when she did something up there to endanger herself, which almost always came in the form of standing perfectly upright on the very top of the chair and letting go with her hands.

Now, Molli is a pretty good learner. Most kids are. They're easy to condition at this age. By very easy repetition we've taught her the meaning of "hot" and "yuck" and "gentle," to the point where she can be warned away from various dangerous behaviors (pressing her face against the oven door, say, or seizing an unfamiliar dog by the tail) with a word.

Late last week Molli demonstrated to us that you can condition a child without realizing it. In fact, I'm guessing that's what parenting consists of: teaching your child in spite of yourself.

Molli has taken the logical leap and determined that "down" is the word for being up on top of things. And when I spent time with her on Friday trying to teach her the real meaning of up and down, I somehow only reinforced her confusion. She now says "down" and "up" fairly clearly (although only in English), but she has them backwards. She will scramble up her chair and proclaim herself "down!" — yelling it fiercely, as we once must have yelled it at her— and will then squat down and declare herself "up."

It doesn't seem fixable. The more we try to correct her, the more adamant she becomes in her convictions.

On a happier note, though, she called me "daddy" several times over the weekend. She's not consistent about it: sometimes I'm just "dah," sometimes I'm "da-dah," and only rarely am I actually "da-dee," but it's a start. She certainly knows that I am daddy, and will indicate me one way or another when asked "where's daddy?" or "who's daddy?" She also recognizes Trine as both "mor" and "mommy." And, most adorably of all, if she's paying attention to you and you ask her, "Who's Molli Malou?" or "Where's Molli Malou?", in English or in Danish, she'll beam back at you and thump her chest proudly.

* * *

I had to hold her in my lap this morning while a doctor gave her the 15-month MMR vaccination. She was adorably well-behaved right up until the moment the needle punctured the skin of her thigh, at which point she gave me a look of pain and betrayal like I've never seen—and it only got worse as the needle sank deeper into her flesh. If I could carve a marble statue of her expression, it would turn its viewers' hearts to dust and ash. I could hardly live with myself for the forty-five seconds it took for her to forget all about it. And forty-five seconds after that, I too forgot the whole thing.

What was I talking about?

* * *

The JustMorons site appears to be down. I'm not sure why, but I'm sure it'll come back up soon. Its temporary outage reminds me, by means of a dozens of tell-tale red X's popping up on this site, that all my graphics are stored on that server and I'm going to have to do something about that before it expires for real on December 2. If anyone knows of any good free file storage sites, please let me know in a comment. Or email me—not at the JustMorons address, obviously, but by using the first letter of my first name and my full last name @gmail.com.

* * *

Eurovision had a special 50th Anniversary event in Copenhagen on Saturday night, at which the annual European pop-music award crowned the greatest songs of its 50-year career. The winner was Abba's "Waterloo."

The recent Danish winner "Fly on the Wings of Love" came in sixth.

As Yogi Berra used to say, "Res ipsa loquitur, baby..."

Speaking of music, though, have you tried Pandora yet? I'm still in the 10-hour trial but have every intention of subscribing once it's expired. I love it. I love it the way I love Skype: I no sooner started using it than I found myself suddenly dependent on it. But after approving of the first few songs the service offered me, it suddenly threw a Regis Philbin number at me. Regis Philbin. When I expressed my disapproval, the service immediately apologized and promised never to play that particular cut, or anything like it, ever again.

And it didn't even ask if that was my final answer.

Rust Doorman Free

2005-10-21T16:39:00.000+02:00

ACQUITTED. The doorman who was arrested for a shooting at the cafe Rust last spring. The state's attorney has determined he acted in lawful self-defense.

You may remember this case because of the sensational hospital raid in which a group of armed, hooded thugs snatched the shooting victim's brother out of the hospital, where he was under guard. (That brother now lives in Jordan, but has been convicted in absentia for his involvement in the attack on the doorman.)

The doorman was, however, charged with illegal possession of a firearm, for which he received a five-month sentence without possibility of parole, but that time has already been served.

Ambassadors Amok

2005-10-20T10:56:00.000+02:00

I didn't catch this story in the Danish media, but this article just popped up in my inbox and offers some interesting updates on the Mohammed cartoon issue.

A number of Muslim countries with embassies in Denmark have sent a protest to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the caricatures.

"We are hoping for understanding about Muslims' feelings about Mohammed. And we're hoping for an apology from Jyllands-Posten," said Mascud Effendy Hutasuhut, minister counsellor at the Indonesian Embassy.

In addition to Indonesia, a number of Arab states, Pakistan, Iran, and Bosnia-Herzegovina have complained about the cartoons, which they see as a hate campaign against Muslims in Denmark.

See, this is the problem. It's one thing for religious extremists to get cranked up about something while the mainstream practitioners shrug it off. It's another thing altogether for the official apparatus whole countries, whole blocs of countries, to freak out when the free press in one little democratic country (with a population about the size of one Indonesian suburb) runs a little exercise in free speech. And as for accusations from a Danish "hate campaign against Muslims" coming from countries that routinely compare all Jews to pigs and monkeys (and worse) through the various organs of their state-controlled communications... well, color me unsympathetic.

I don't deny those cartoons were insulting to Muslims. It sucks to be insulted. But I think Peter Viggo Jakobsen gets it right:

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, department chief at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said the Muslim ambassadors should not get their hopes up.

"If they have the faintest idea about how a Danish and democratic society works, they should know that the Danish government doesn't have any say about Jyllands-Posten's rights of expression," Jakobsen said.

This is the kind of story that makes me wonder if it isn't just Islamic extremists that don't get it—if perhaps Islam itself really is incompatible with a free press. I suppose the logical argument would be that no, Islam is not incompatible with a free press, but these particular governments, each of which has perverted Islam in its own particular way, are incompatible with a free press. Which raises the next logical question: if Islam as defended by the nations of Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, "a number of Arab states," and Bosnia-Herzegovina is a "perverted" form, then where exactly is this "ideal" form of Islam practiced? Where is this beautiful, harmonious version of Islam I keep hearing about that's so compatible with all the liberties enshrined in the western tradition? Where are its defenders? Where are the reasonable and clear-eyed Muslims who can say, "This is foolishness. Islam is about the relationship between man and God on a one-to-one basis. What a newspaper says or doesn't say about the religion, or any of its practices or dogmas, has absolutely no relevance to the practice of our religion. It can be insulting, but so can the service at most Danish restaurants, and we've learned to live with that."

I ask sincerely. Because if Islam and freedom of speech can't get along, we really are in for a clash of civilizations.

I just hate those.

There is some scholarly material on the subject: like here (.pdf), for example. And here's a 1998 news story from Ireland that's worth a look, if only for this astonishing paragraph:

The United States is arguably the best place on earth to be Muslim. Multicultural democracy, with its guarantees of religious freedom and speech, makes life easier for Muslims than in many Islamic states in the Middle East. It's an idea they'd like to export. U.S. Muslim social organizations send money and medicine to beleaguered Kashmiris and Bosnians. The Web site of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an organization devoted to "promoting the establishment of free trade and justice," has links to the Islamic University of Gaza. "The U.S. Constitution describes the perfect Islamic state," says Muhammed Muqtader Khan, who teaches American politics to Muslims. "It protects life, liberty and property."

What's Good for the Goose is... Naw, Screw It, Just Kill the Goose and the Gander

2005-10-19T22:28:00.000+02:00

As fears of an Avian flu pandemic kick into full panic mode, some are already laying the blame on the Bush Administration. For example, a Counterpunch article entitled "The Excuses Begin to Fly: Bush and Avian Flu" hypothesizes that the administration's aggressive movements and big noises related to the flu are merely pre-emptive spin control. The administration is just setting the rest of us up, the author suggests, so that after the flu has come and killed and gone, they can say, "we really, really tried, people!"

Fair enough.

The point is also made that the administration opposes a suspension of patent rights on Tamiflu in order that it might be produced by everyone, everywhere, without fear of lawsuits, as a contingency against a pandemic. "No urgent call for suspending those rights in an emergency from the administration that has deemed virtually no human right worth protecting as it pursues its GWOT (Global War on Terror)."

Problem is, the people making these arguments haven't generally been real supportive of the War on Terror. The citation makes that pretty clear.

If it's fair to criticize Bush's handling of the bird flu threat on the basis of his handling of the War on Terror, it's got to be appropriate to assess what an avian flu pandemic response might be like if handled the way "GWOT" critics would like to see the War on Terror handled. What would such a response look like?

Root Causes! We'd have to begin by trying to understand the root causes of the eventual pandemic. That won't be easy. First of all, they're going to involve a lot of biology. Not just human biology, but bird biology. And cellular chemistry. And maybe even math.

Sensitivity! We're going to have stress that it isn't birds we hate, but the strain of influenza that they're carrying. Wherever possible we should try to coax the flu out of the birds so that we can kill the flu without killing the bird.

No Profiling! It isn't as though bird-borne influenza is the only dire threat to humans posed by our animal friends. There's no need to make them feel targeted. A lot of European countries are already passing laws restricting the trade of fowl, and some Asian countries have already slaughtered millions of birds—most of them perfectly innocent!—out of sheer panic. This must end. If we're going to ban the import of chickens and turkeys, it's only fair that we ban the import of pigs and horses. And monkeys. And dogs and cats and insects and fish.

Hearts and Minds! If we took the time to get to know these birds, and gave these birds a chance to know us, surely we could persuade them to identify the flu-carriers in their midst and have them migrated down to some uninhabited island somewhere.

Halliburton! Goddammit, you just know they've got something to do with this!

One Man's Influenza... Lastly, it's possible we brought this flu on ourselves. Maybe we haven't been very good to our bird friends, what with all the... the... you know, the corporations and things... and maybe it's actually morally and ethically fair that they should bring this flu at us. Presumably certain news services will spell this out for us by using scare quotes around such incendiary terms as "influenza," "avian flu," and "pandemic." Ready for "the so-called war on influenza?"

Doesn't sound like a winning formula to me. Personally, I say we kill every suspect bird population out there, impose an immediate 6-month ban on the movement of any birds (in the infected population) across any borders, and, yes, suspend the damn patents already and crank out any effective medicine we can as fast as we can and start setting up the means for its distribution.

But that's just me.

Dog Bites Man

2005-10-19T14:12:00.000+02:00

The author of some Massachusetts legislation to hold owners responsible for any attacks their dogs make on others is... attacked by his own dog.

It's a beautiful world.

Princeling in the Public Eye

2005-10-18T21:23:00.000+02:00

About fifty percent of Danish media attention is being dedicated to the little royal mewling, so if you're really interested just keep on playing Danish Media roulette with the links in my masthead. As a public service, I give you this link to the Danish princeling's first public appearance. That done, I'd like to leave the whole thing behind. After all, if I'm going to waste your time going on and on about a baby in Denmark, it's going to be this one:

* * *

Actually, as long as I've given myself that segue into the land of Molli Malou, allow me to extend the digression to boast of her having passed her first swimming course. It was an eight-week course (or maybe ten-) and she didn't exactly learn how to swim so much as how not to drown if suddenly submerged in water. Here's a scan of an underwater photograph of her taken by the instructor. Observe her incredible talent at not drowning!

* * *

I should also mention for those of you who aren't here that the darkness is beginning to descend upon us, and will be here in earnest once we turn the clocks back this weekend. As it is we're waking up in darkness and eating our very early dinners in darkness; by this time next week we'll be dropping Molli at daycare in darkness and doing our last-minute shopping for the things-we-need-for-dinner-but-forget-to-get-during-the-day in darkness. Then it's only a matter of a month or so until it's so dark for so long that by the time you realize it's gotten light outside and your eyes begin to adjust, it's already getting dark again.

And as long as I'm mentioning things, I might as well mention that I think my daughter called me daddy for the first time today. It wasn't exactly daddy... more like "Dah Dee," two words, slight reflective pause in the middle.

I'll allow it.

* * *

I've talked about Denmark's egalitarian streak in the past. Here's a new manifestation: violent girl gangs.

In a gentler vein toward gender equality, Danish "experts" are now urging Danish companies to close the "perq gap" between Danish men and women. Apparently men get annual perqs worth about 4.2 billion crowns (~ $700 million), while women's annual receipt of perqs only amounts to 679 million (~ $113 million).

* * *

It's "efterårsferie" in Denmark right now—fall vacation. So things are pretty quiet out there. BT has been kind enough to offer a section on "fall vacation inspirations". They suggest spending one day of your fall vacation staying in and baking on the Great Bake Day. What's "Great Bake Day" about? What are its origins? According to the article I just linked to, it's "a concept developed by a handful of ad-boys from the ad bureau Just/Kidde."

Just/Kidde? Sounds an awful lot like Just/Kidding, but apparently they're for real. Ironically enough, Trine's baking some bread as I write this. I don't have the heart to tell her we've still got two whole shopping days left until Great Bake Day.

Busted

2005-10-16T00:10:00.000+02:00

The issuer of death-threats against the nefarious Drawers of Mohammed was apparently arrested on Friday with little fanfare. He was a 17-year-old man "with a Muslim background." The two artists who'd been advised by police to go underground have now been advised that it's safe to go back to their regular lives.

Hell, it's late and I'm tired. Read it yourself. If you need a translation, I'm sure the Jyllands-Posten in English link will have it tomorrow.

Meanwhile... bonfires all over the nation to celebrate the birth of Denmark's latest royal heir.

It's a Boy

2005-10-15T11:59:00.000+02:00

Mary gave birth to a boy in the wee hours of this morning.

Denmark has its next heir to the throne: "experts" anticipate the name Christian, who as king would be the 11th of that name. (Quick! Someone buy the domains ChristianXI.com and ChristianXI.dk and make the royal family pay up the butt for them later!)

The first official press release read "Hendes Kongelige Højhed Kronprinsesse Mary har lørdag den 15. oktober 2005 kl. 01.57 på Rigshospitalet født en velskabt søn."

("Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary has on Saturday, October 15, 2005, at 1:57 am, given birth to a well-made son at Rigshospitalet.")

The boy is 51cm long and weighs 3500 grams.

Denmark will now embark on a national orgy of celebration.

I'm not going to bother posting all the links. It would be more of a challenge to find Danish media links to stories about anything but this birth. So just take the Danish media link of choice from the list to the right and see all the coverage you want. Drown in it. If you want English-language coverage, just chart a course toward the Australian media.

Hmm...

2005-10-15T00:12:00.000+02:00

Try to read the preceding post, then this article, and ask yourself why the Social Democrats are more worried about sexist attitudes in television commercials than... oh, hell, it's that damn elephant in the living room again. Excuse me while I pour him a drink...

The Growing Bonfire

2005-10-14T23:45:00.000+02:00

Apparently 3500 Muslims demonstrated against Jyllands Posten today, for reasons obvious to anyone who's been following this blog for the last week or two. Meanwhile, two of the artists from that infamous series of cartoons have been advised by the police to go into hiding due to the death threats against them.

The spokesman for the three organizations behind the demonstration distanced the demonstration from the death threats.

»Det er meget forkert, at man truer folk på den måde. Vi må i stedet tale med dem. Vi skal i dialog. Og give tegnerne tid til at tænke over det, de har gjort«, siger Adil Hassan.

"It's very wrong to threaten people in that way. We must instead talk to them. We should enter into dialog. And give the artists time to think about what they've done," says Adil Hassan.

What they've done is drawn pictures that hurt your feelings, Mr. Hassan. And I know that's a drag, but they're allowed to do that. (Maybe we could compare notes... you should see some of the caricatures I've seen of my president!) Of course you're allowed to object, and to raise a big stink, and speak truth to power, and all that, but if you really want to generate sympathy for your cause, you might want to avoid segregated demonstrations in the future.

(Seriously. See the photos from the demonstration. Look at photo number six. It's the women from the demonstration, draped from head to toe, picking up the rear. You'll notice the pictures of the main demonstration are exclusively of men.)

As an interesting sidebar, I present the following additional excerpt without comment:

Flere kilder bekræfter, at politiet eftersøger en »sindsforvirret« mand af anden etnisk oprindelse end dansk, der menes at have fremsat dødstruslerne.

Several sources confirm that the police are seeking a "mentally confused" man of an ethnic origin other than Danish who is thought to have made the death threats.

Oh: God.

2005-10-13T14:57:00.000+02:00

More than half of all Americans "believe that God created human beings in their present form exactly as described in the Bible. Man, from the dust of the earth. Woman, from man's rib."

At least, that's columnist Jane Eisner's interpretation of a new poll.

I just stumbled across Ms. Eisner's column while looking for something else, and it made so apoplectic I couldn't continue what I was doing. I've seen enough columnists spin enough polls to say stupid enough things over the years that I like to see the raw data myself. So I did a little extra digging and found this additional polling data on the subject.

And I'm just... lost. Here's a representative question: "Which of the following do you believe about how human beings came to be? Human beings evolved from earlier species. Human beings were created directly by God. Human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them."

Sixty-four percent responded, "Human beings were created directly by God."

Nearly two-thirds! And if you happen to be a smug, big-city liberal who wants to lay all this at the feet of the religious right, get over it: it isn't just the 66% of self-identified Republicans who believe this... it's also 51% of self-identified Democrats. (And 51% of self-identified Independents.)

I'm as shocked by my own reaction as I am by the data. I like to think of myself as agnostic rather than atheistic, but I also like to think of myself as living among men and women capable of a little skepticism at the notion of an all-knowing, all-powerful God creating men and women exactly as they exist today.

This is a serious intellectual crisis for me, so I'm going to do what I always do in such circumstances. I'm going to rationalize my way out of it. I'm willing to accept that an all-knowing, all-powerful God created man and woman exactly as we exist today, but only with one proviso: we have to be allowed to assume that He meant it as a joke.

I guess I've led a much more insular life than I thought. I grew up in the New York and Boston suburbs and have subsequently lived in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, rural Connecticut, New York City, and Copenhagen. I've spent at least a month each in the cities of Seattle, Oakland, and San Diego. Now, you might say, "There you have it, Moron! You've spent your whole life in the big cities! You haven't spent a day in flyover country! You don't know diddly about the heartland! And you've been out of the country for two-and-a-half years!"

Fair enough.

But given the demographics of the United States, these statistics require that a large segment of our metropolitan populations be just as religiously conservative as our rural populations. After all, 78.1% of American housing is in metropolitan areas, and "housing" is where most of us tend to live. So even if 100% of rural America is religious, that's just 21.9% of all Americans. That means for every rural American who thinks God waved his magic wand to create humanity, there are two metropolitan Americans who believe it—which is more than half of the urban population!

So I'd like to commission a poll to find out what percentage of Americans lie to pollsters.

People Unclear on the Concept of the Freedom of the Press

2005-10-12T17:46:00.000+02:00

The inevitable death threats made their way to Jyllands Posten, so they've had to hire security personnel.

An interesting philosophical point:

[Århus imam Raed] Hlayhel told al-Jazeera's reporter that he considered the cartoons derisive of Islam, and described one of the drawings as showing Mohammed wearing a turban-like bomb, and another as brandishing a sabre, with two burka-clad women behind him.

Hlayhel said he did not understand how such illustrations could be printed with reference to freedom of expression, when Denmark did not tolerate the slightest sign of anti-Semitism.

This is a fair point. I think there would be enormous public backlash against newspapers mocking Abraham (for example) just for the sake of seeing whether or not Denmark's cartoonists had the nosser to incur the wrath of the Jewish community. Since no one in Europe makes fun of Jews, though, I guess we'll never know.

On the other hand, I don't know how many death threats such a stunt would generate. Much more likely the Zionist-controlled secret police of the U.S. Treasury and the Trilateral Commission would send their black helicopters out to... oh, man, I can never keep these things straight...

But who cares about all this nonsense? There's soccer happening...

Blasphemy, Bad Taste, Indifference

2005-10-10T09:19:00.000+02:00

Here are the cartoons of Mohammed that are causing such a stir. (Maybe not a full-blown stir... let's just call it a tiff for now.)

I can see how a Muslim would be offended by the very idea of the series, as well as by all but one of the illustrations. I was sympathetic to Christians disgusted by "Piss Christ" and I'm sympathetic to Muslims distressed by these cartoons.

Sympathetic, but I'm not empathetic. Freedom of expression isn't just a luxurious and decadent development of the west: it's one of the pillars of our civilization. Without it we've got nothing. (It may sound like an overstatement, but imagine the shape any western country would assume if its government assumed control of the press, the publishing industry, all broadcast media, the internet, etc.)

Freedom of religion is also important. I respect everyone's right to worship whatever god they want and observe whatever religious rituals they like. This liberty is another essential pillar of the west. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Scientologists, and Red Sox fans can worship however they like—but they all have to respect the same civic laws.

I don't have a problem with Muslim leaders asking Jyllands Posten for an apology in this case. Nor do I have a problem with Jyllands Posten refusing to give one. And as long as the government stays the hell out of the whole thing, it seems to me this is just how things ought to be working in a free society. In fact, I'm sure things are working correctly, because pretty much everyone comes out of this looking stupid, including myself, and that's as good a sign as any that freedom marches on.

Truly, we are living in the best of all possible worlds!

Theology Island

2005-10-09T13:54:00.000+02:00

Denmark beat Greece 1-0. Now Albania has to beat or tie Turkey and Denmark has to win on Wednesday. Those are both possible because Denmark beat Greece, which was the hardest of the three hurdles.

In doing some lazy Sunday browsing of English-language news, I stumbled across yet another story I'd somehow missed:

The newspaper [Jyllands Posten] urged cartoonists to send in drawings of the prophet [Mohammed], after an author complained that nobody dared to illustrate his book on Mohammed. The author claimed that illustrators feared that extremist Muslims would find it sacrilegious to break the Islamic ban on depicting Mohammed.

Twelve illustrators heeded the newspaper's call, and sent in cartoons of the prophet, which were published in the newspaper one week ago.

...

"This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims," Imam Raed Hlayhel wrote in a statement. "Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world. We demand an apology!"

(The article's in English, so you can go ahead and click on the link even if you don't read Danish. I was too lazy to find the cartoons themselves, but if I stumble across them later in the day I'll update this post with a link.)

I was happy to see that Danish illustrators rose to the occassion, and even happier to see that one even used the opportunity to stick his thumb in the eye of the paper itself. The whole exercise was kind of ridiculously provocative... but that's journalism, baby.

I still haven't decided whether or not I'm surprised that an Imam stepped into the stupid trap. Were his remarks sincere, or was that an attempt at self-parody? Bah, who cares... one fruitcake imam does not a movement make.

Conclusion: free speech is alive and well in Denmark, and not all Danish artists are afraid of the Islamofascists.

And Imam Raed Hlayhel needs to lighten the hell up.

Maybe we could find an island somewhere for all the religious extremists of the world (even atheist zealots), and we could say: nobody leaves this island until you've figured out which religion is actually right and you're all excommunicated from the rest of us until you've agreed on an answer.

There's a reality show for you: Theology Island!

(As if human civilization hasn't been one long, bloody episode of Theology Island already...)

More on the Anticipated Tot

2005-10-08T18:54:00.000+02:00

I just thought this would be helpful because it's an English language account of the lunacy.

Yes, lunacy:

But the fevered excitement that has infected the normally reticent Danes for their adopted princess and her husband, Crown Prince Frederik, has moved the Government to crack down on effusive behaviour.

The Danish Ministry of Culture has warned revellers against sparking impromptu fires on the ancient beacon mounds used by the Vikings to pass messages.

An official line of 350 "fires of joy", starting from Copenhagen and controlled by several thousand soldiers, will light up the entire nation on news of the royal birth. That delivery could come "in only a few days' time", the Danish Palace said.

Count me among the "normally reticent" that isn't feeling the "fevered excitement." No effusiveness here!

(Effusion?)

And isn't it typical that the government's prohibiting the lighting of bonfires by anyone but itself? "No spontaneous outbursts of joy, people... we can hand it out much more efficiently from a central location!"

Soccer and a Baby

2005-10-08T09:41:00.000+02:00

The Danish National team plays Greece at eight o'clock tonight in a must-win qualifier for the 2006 World Cup. If they lose it's all over; if they win, they still need to beat Kazakhstan on Wednesday and need Albania to beat (or tie) Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Crown Princess is due more or less any day now. (I should probably add thisroyal-obsessive tabloid onto my list of links, but I can't bring myself to do it.)

Marys fødselslæge, Morten Hedegaard, er med garanti på plads på lyserød stue, før kronprinsessen ankommer for at føde.

Mary's obstetrician, Morten Hedegaard, is guaranteed to be in place in the pink room before the crown princess arrives to give birth.

How can such a guarantee be made? Because the doctor now literally lives at Rigshospitalet, and will remain there until after the royal birth. (Living conditions are a little tight at the hospital, though, so the doctor's wife and kids remain at their home in Aarhus.)

You'd think Denmark would be egalitarian and confident enough to let their crown princess give birth with the best available obstetrician on hand when she goes into labor. That's how the rest of Denmark's women do it, after all. If the royal family can't trust the state-controlled health system, what kind of message are they sending the rest of us?

In any case, it promises to be an interesting week in Denmark...

Muslims Diminish Ethnic Danish Birth Rate?

2005-10-04T14:52:00.000+02:00

That's right. According to Louise Frevert of the Danish Folk Party, there's a kind of "White Dane's Burden" to provide for immigrant Muslims that's so onerous that the strain has actually diminished the capacity of ethnic Danes to reproduce more copiously.

(Ms. Frevert is currently her party's candidate for Mayor of Copenhagen. At least she was...)

Since I don't have enough time to do any translating myself, here are some nuggets from Jyllands Posten:

Last week, Frevert was reported to the police for posting derogatory comments on Muslims on her website. A number of articles stated that young Muslim men, even if they were born in Denmark and spoke Danish, harboured fundamental attitudes that were incompatible with Danish society.

"Whatever happens, they feel it's their right to rape Danish girls and stamp out Danish citizens," the article stated. "Our laws forbid us to kill our enemies in public, so our only remedy is to fill our prisons with these criminals."

The article on Frevert's website went on to recommend that Muslim criminals be sent to prisons in Russia.

In another article, Muslims were compared with cancer cells, which could only be treated with chemotherapy or surgically removed.

Naturally the Danish Folk Party is trying to distance themselves from the remarks, and have promised "an investigation."

I don't know what they're going to investigate: certainly the sentiments expressed could have come from most Folk Party regulars—behind closed doors. Probably the party wants to find out how someone could have been fool enough to actually express in public what most of their members believe in private.

The Danish Folk Party represents the extreme side of Denmark's struggles to reconcile its liberal traditions with the less liberal traditions of its growing immigrant population. They are real struggles, and there are real problems, but this kind of talk is just scary.

"Muslims were compared with cancer cells, which could only be treated with chemotherapy or surgically removed."

Anyone making such blanket comparisons is either too ignorant or too evil to hold any kind of public office.

One of her political opponents in the mayoral race, Lars Rasmussen, correctly observed that "Her comments sound like something she heard from the Nazi Party." That's one of the first times in recent years I've actually seen the Nazi-grenade tossed with any precision. But the horror that ought to be inspired by its very accuracy is diminished by its excessive recent use.

If Rasmussen really wanted to tar Ms. Frevert's character, he would have said her comments sounded like something she heard from Karl Rove. That would have knocked her out Danish political life forever!

Jared Heller Interrogated

2005-10-02T16:36:00.000+02:00

Somehow I missed this story last week: Jared Heller was interrogated by police on Thursday, September 22.

My own translation of the article follows:

American Interrogated in Case of Dismembered Body

An American who's been charged for the macabre March murder of taxi driver Torben Vagn Knudsen in Copenghagen was interrogated in Copenhagen City Court on Thursday [the 22nd].

The 34-year-old Jared Heller had hitherto been closed as an oyster [absolutely silent] but the police now hope to get an explanation so the murder case can be brought before the state's attorney.

The interrogation was held behind closed doors, and the police have no clue as to the whereabouts of his presumed accomplice, a Sudanese called "Jaguar."

The murder of the 41-year-old tax driver excited a lot of interest because his body was dismembered and found in several pieces in inner Copenhagen back around Easter.

I can't find any follow-up to this story, so presumably even if Jared did start talking, the criminal justice system isn't sharing the information with the press.

John Bull, Weenie?

2005-10-01T10:31:00.000+02:00

A week or two ago (scroll down) I wondered aloud if Danish artists were less stalwart in their commitment to free speech than their American counterparts. The question presented itself to me in the form of a story about the refusal of several Danish artists to illustrate a book critical Islam—not for respect of Islam, but for fear of reprisals. This struck me as inconsistent with the usual bravado we hear from western civ's free-speech warriors. I expressed my hope that American artists wouldn't buckle under quite so readily.

Now there's this from England:

The Tate Britain museum has made an unprecedented decision to pull a work of religious art from an exhibition over fears that it might offend Muslims.

Artist John Latham's "God is Great" features copies of the Koran, Bible and Judaic Talmud that have been cut apart and embedded in thick glass.

According to a spokeswoman for the museum, "the particular circumstances we find ourselves in post-7 July make it difficult for this work to be viewed as the artist had intended — as a commentary on the evolution of religious thought from an original state of nothingness — but instead as an overtly political act."

At least John Latham, the artist, is not backing down:

Tate Britain have shown cowardice over this. I think it's a daft thing to do because, if they want to help the militants, this is the way to do it. It's not even a gesture as strong as censorship. It's just a loss of nerve on the part of the administration.

Exactly. And what is the message we're sending Christians and Jews with these kinds of decisions? "We respect the sacred Koran, but (sometimes literally) piss all over your lousy testaments?"

If this kind of Weenie-ism can rear its head in staunch old England, I suppose it's only a matter of time before it shows up in America.

Sigh.

I just know some ballsy American artist is going to sculpt a statue of Mohammed out of elephant dung any day now—you know, to illustrate the earthy character of Mohammed and his divine connection to the natural world—and one of those ballsy American museums is going to make it the centerpiece of a show. Because American artists have made it perfectly clear for decades that they don't take no guff from no one and they will not be intimidated!

Maybe the Islamic radicals are right. Maybe western culture really has passed some kind of tipping point into gilded decadence. Maybe we really are too weak to defend ourselves. Sure, we've got missiles and tanks and the 101st Airborne and the Sixth Fleet and a great big nuclear arsenal, but if we're just going to roll over and play dead on something as central to our culture as freedom of expression... well, what's the point?

On the other hand, the evidence is very thin. The two stories I've mentioned involve a handful of Danish artists and a single British museum. Surely all this fuss is being overdone. If such artistic cowardice was the norm rather than the exception, it wouldn't be news, would it?

So probably we're still living in the best of all possible worlds. Thank goodness. I can go enjoy my weekend now.

[Thanks to everyone for their supportive words on the passing of the Moron's Almanac. If I get some time this fall I may indeed set up a static website of almanac-only material.]

Done

2005-09-26T09:47:00.000+02:00

The last Moron's Almanac has been posted.

This blog will remain, but I make no guarantees as to the probable frequency of posts. It could go either way.

We'll see.

Third Rail Comments

2005-09-22T17:37:00.000+02:00

Politiken is publishing readers' comments on the inequality remarks referred to in the previous post. After a very cursory review, my favorite comment so far is this:

Er det ikke bedre at en har 4kr og en anden 5kr end hvis begge havde 2kr? Sig nej til misundelse og jantelov!

(Isn't it better that one should have four crowns and another five, than if they both had two? Say no to envy and Jantelov!)

—Jens R., Faaborg

There's more support for inequality than I would have expected... but I wasn't disappointed by the number of comments like this one from Bjarne Frederiksen: "This shows the citizen Denmark's true face! Inequality the world over has always been the root cause of revolutions. Fogh's election victory was based on voter delusion. Read history."

The Third Rail of Danish Politics

2005-09-22T11:39:00.000+02:00

The happy little fairy-tale kingdom of Denmark is a lot like Lake Wobegon, where "the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all of the children are above average." At least, that's the way Denmark likes to see itself.

What Garrison Keillor intended as irony, however, seems to have become a fixture of Danish politics: never mind the children, all Danes are above average.

And equally so.

Egalitarianism isn't an idea in Denmark: it's an assumption. No one is better than anyone else. No one deserves more than anyone else. No one should feel badly about themselves. (This mindset is one of the reasons I find the fawning over the royal family so inexplicable. Crown Princess Mary almost went into premature labor last week, six weeks ahead of her due date. The media went into full crisis coverage mode. My own daughter was born seven weeks before her own due date and didn't even make it into the sleaziest tabloids!)

So you can imagine the unholy noise when the Liberal Social Minister Eva Kjær Hansen declared in a newspaper interview on Sunday that a little social inequality isn't such a big deal.

Her exact words in English, as translated by Jyllands Posten: "It's okay for inequality to increase, as that creates dynamism in society. We shouldn't be using our energy to fight affluence and to level the differences between the richest and the poorest. Let the rich get richer. I don't see a problem with inequality in and of itself."

Despite support from her party, the beleaguered Minister had to retract her statement within just 24 hours of declaring that she stood by it:

In spite of more and more senior Liberal MPs having expressed support for her comments, yesterday Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave the Minister an official dressing down. He told reporters that her views were not official government policy.

Although yesterday she said she stood firm by her statements, the Minister has now announced that she has withdrawn them because they have created misunderstandings about the government's policy and her own opinions.

"There must be no doubt that, as Social Affairs Minister, I will fight against social inequality," she said.

Although that's not really a retraction, is it? Social inequality and economic inequality aren't entirely the same thing. In fact, if you happen to be a particularly ornery and politically ham-handed capitalist, you could make the case that economic inequality supports social equality.

But I doubt we'll be hearing that from Eva Kjær Hansen any time soon, even though the debate continues. According to B.T., "Many Liberals think that [she] would have lost her ministerial post if she hadn't retracted her comments about social inequality."

It's bewildering to many Liberals that Anders Fogh Rasmussen should have cracked down on her so hard for saying something so many Liberals believe... but it probably just one more reason why he's Prime Minister and I'm not.

More—possibly much more—as this story continues to develop...

Are Danish Artists Cowards, or Have American Artists Got It Too Easy?

2005-09-21T13:23:00.000+02:00

There were a couple of funny things I wanted to blog about just now, but they've been pre-empted. (Or at least demoted: if you're interested, the gist of it is that just as Denmark and Canada are agreeing to disagree about a territorial dispute, thereby averting a border war, Denmark and the U.K. are facing off in a tiff over off-shore semen. You probably think that's a typo, but I'm not talking about seamen. I'm talking about semen. Seriously. I also wanted to bring this bit of Lars von Trier derangement to your attention.)

No, wait. The von Trier stuff is too good to let slip. Try some of these:

On Hans Christian Andersen (alienating Danes and homosexuals)
"I can't stand H.C. Andersen. His stories are the worst faggot bullshit that exists. I hate that sort of thing. I hate all that fairytale atmosphere."

On the General Public (alienating 80% of the public)
"I make films for the public that I am. I don't respect the public. Eighty percent is too stupid to be my public."

On his Film "Breaking the Waves" (alienating fans of his own movie)
"I decided to create a story that was so unlikely and filled with clichés that no one would fall for it. And of course, everybody fell for it. You just have to do something stupid enough, and then you'll do fine."

(Aside to all my friends who mocked me for disliking the movie: so there!)

On Björk (coals to Newcastle)
"Björk isn't a woman, she's a little troll. She's an evil bitch, who tried to ruin the film [Dancer in the Dark] from the beginning. She walked in the first day thinking: 'Here I come, and you're going bankrupt.'"

On Democracy (alienating "people")
"The problem with democracy is that people are too stupid. They elect the wrong people to parliament."

On Danish Films (alienating his peers)
"Shit without content."

The genius fairly leaps off the page, doesn't it? (The Danish word for megalomania is storhedsvanvid, which is literally "greatness craziness.")

But forget all that. I'm doing laundry now (which is why I've allowed myself time to blog between batches), and I came across an old (Saturday) copy of Berglingske Tidende at the laundromat. A little blurb in the lower right corner of the front page caught my eye. I translate loosely but accurately:

Islam Frightens Artists
Danish artists have said no to illustrate Kåre Bluitgens new book about the prophet Mohammed. They fear repercussions from radical Muslims. A prominent publisher, who's publishing the critical book on Islam himself, thinks they're seeing ghosts.

The full story, alas, is only available to subscribers on the paper's website. I'm not a subscriber. But I don't feel like I need one to make the salient observation, which is that the Danish artists in question are quivering ninnies.

After slogging around the net, I found a similar article on DR: "Danish Artists Scared of Islam."

The whole thing is nonsense. It's insulting to suggest that criticism of Islam would put any Danish artist in harm's way. Their cowardice creates a terrible chilling effect on freedom of expression.

I don't know the identity of the artists in question, or the content of Ms. Bluitgen's new book. But I've seen how bravely American artists react to any hint of religiously-inspired resistance to their ideas. Such cowardice would be unthinkable to them.

Wouldn't it?

I mean, remember this? I'm sure all the same people that opened that rhetorical can of whupass on Mayor Giuliani wouldn't falter in the face of a few physical threats, would they?

Autumnal Production

2005-09-21T10:21:00.000+02:00

It's fall (almost) and Molli Malou is firmly established in daycare, so I'm finally getting the time I need to post Almanacs on a regular basis again (though I may take tomorrow off). Tuesday's was all about a decided little lady and today's is about the anxiety of Danes.

Midnight Football

2005-09-09T04:15:00.000+02:00

I woke up at 2:50am to do what I'm doing right now: mainlining coffee and watching the Patriots and Raiders and loving every minute of it. But I can also safely say that this is one part of my life here that I will emphatically not miss whenever I return to the states.

Both teams look like they're going to be a lot of fun this year. It's still the first half, and at this point it looks like it's going to go back and forth until one of these defenses lays down the law. (Which would have opened up the possibility for a whole lot of puns when the Pats still had Ty Law and Lawyer Milloy.)

Molli's been waking up around 6:30 lately, so if this game drags out I'm actually going to have to watch the final moments while giving my daughter breakfast.

Ugh.

On the other hand, she's gonna have to start getting used to watching the Pats with her old man eventually. Best to get these habits started young.

Show Me the Clowns

2005-09-07T22:07:00.000+02:00

Why are there no pictures accompanything this story?

They've got some pictures in Politiken, but no clowns.

BT has the clowns, but no cops.

Berlingske Tidende wants me to register and I hate that.

Dammit, if you're gonna have police in riot gear messing with clowns in clown gear, get it on film!

(My persistence pays off in the end, though: the clowns have the pix!)

The Night the Lights Went Out for Georgia

2005-09-07T21:53:00.000+02:00

Denmark just drubbed Georgia 6-1 in their World Cup qualifier. It was an utter rout from start to finish—the Georgians never had a chance. They weren't defeated so much as humiliated.

The Danish national team has been playing very well lately (their impressive if "friendly" bitch-slapping of England won't soon be forgotten), but even if they manage to upset the defending champions (Greece), they still need Turkey to lose to Albania to qualify for the finals.

The U.S. team has already qualified.

I like international soccer, but the real action for me begins tomorrow night. I'll be setting my alarm for 3am Friday morning to watch my two favorite NFL teams, the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and the Oakland Raiders, kick off the season.

Stakkels Lille Danmark

2005-09-06T08:48:00.000+02:00

Poor little Denmark. It's like the Rodney Dangerfield of Europe: no respect at all. Respect? It doesn't even get noticed.

At least, that's the thrust of this article in today's Politiken.

Most foreigners, according to the article, "have an idealized picture of Denmark as a country of fairy tales, healthy citizens, and badminton stars."

The source of the data is interesting: it's from a survey of 67 Danes living abroad in over 40 countries, most of them sent out by the foreign ministry or large corporations. The respondents have lived in these other countries for five to ten years. The survey was conducted by the Danish "A4 Weekly." (Their presentation of the data is here.)

So it's actually a survey of Danish expats' personal interpretations of the attitudes of the natives around them. Any surprise that nine out of ten foreigners have a positive impression of Denmark?

According to one such expat in America, not many Americans can say anything conrete about Denmark. "The normal American knows that Denmark's in northern Europe, but it's very often confused with Holland." (It's also frequently confused with the Netherlands.)

The Chinese reportedly think Denmark has a fantastic climate because Danes look so healthy and fit.

According to the expats, nearly half of the normal citizens in the countries in which they're living don't know where Denmark lies on a map of the world.

Politiken seems nevertheless surprised that the increasingly restrictive Danish laws on foreign immigration "haven't set us on the world map in foreigners' consciousness," observing that "it hasn't set Denmark in a bad light, as many had otherwise feared." (Not least, I would assume, the Politiken editorial board.)

The article concludes with a note of self-criticism, quoting a Dane who's been living in Vietnam: "There's a damaging smugness in Denmark. Danes have to be a little more aware that we live in a global culture and that one has to be open to foreign impulses."

Danes are very hard on themselves. It's part of their charm—although they sometimes protest too much. One gets very quickly accustomed to the phrase, "We're just a little country, but..."

Yes, it's a little country of very big Buts.

An Hour of Her Own

2005-09-05T13:25:00.000+02:00

Trine did allow me to go in a moment or two ahead of her to pick Molli up (see previous post if this makes no sense to you). The kids had recently finished lunch and were playing throughout the room. I didn't even see Molli at first. One of the teachers had to point her out to me: she was at the far end of the room, her back to us, playing with a little toy stove—opening the oven door, then closing it. (Opening it, then closing it. Opening it, then closing it. What could be more fun? How could it ever get dull?)

I called out to Molli. She turned around, smiled brightly at me for a few seconds, then turned right back around and resumed her engrossing doorplay. She did more or less the same thing when Trine arrived.

We were informed she hadn't cried at all in my absence. She'd been very happy for the whole hour. She'd had a big, full meal and enjoyed it.

We all three stayed another ten minutes or so. Molli whined and pouted and very nearly cried when we took her away. She fell asleep on the way home and she's still sleeping. We'll go through the same routine tomorrow, only she'll stay there longer.

Vuggestue, Round 1

2005-09-05T10:54:00.000+02:00

It's a little before eleven Monday morning. Half an hour ago I left Molli at vuggestue. I tried to do it the way they tell you to:

I picked her up in my arms. I held her so her face was close to mine. I looked in her eyes and said, "I know you don't understand this, but when I say farvel I'm going to leave you. It's very safe here and you're going to have lots of fun and I'm going to be back in one hour. I love you. Farvel."

Then I set her back down in the playground, turned my back to her, and walked away.

It was a pretty long walk to the door leading out of the enclosed vuggestue playground. I couldn't help turning around. I expected (and hoped?) to see Molli playing happily or babbling with a teacher. Instead she was squatting in the sandbox, staring after me with confusion or incredulity or god knows what sad and frightened emotions all over her face.

I felt like a monster going through that door and closing it behind me.

I'm leaving in fifteen minutes to pick her up again. Trine's going to come with me. Now that I think of it, though, I'm going to ask Trine to wait outside the gate for a moment while I go in to Molli, because I don't want Molli to think I'm the awful parent who takes her places and leaves her there whereas mommy is the wonderful parent who comes and saves her from whatever awful situations daddy has put her in. For some reason I think it's important for Molli to have some continuity with pickups and dropoffs, at least the first couple of times. Is that too silly?

Probably it is.

I don't know what I'm more afraid of when I go back: a Molli who was sad and miserable the whole time of my absence but lights up at my arrival, or a happy little girl who's been having great fun and hardly even notices my return.

Three Wishes

2005-09-02T21:29:00.000+02:00

I wish I were diligent enough to post links to all the various European media that have outraged me today, and to transcribe the most appalling of the comments I heard on television.

I wish I were patient enough to take the time necessary to address, one at a time, the absurdity and hypocrisy of each disgusting generalization being made about America at a time when all it needs is some help and goodwill.

I wish had the recklessness to publicly say what I'm privately muttering.

Royal Referendum

2005-09-01T13:19:00.000+02:00

I should have mentioned the other day that it looks as though there will be a referendum on changing the Danish laws of succession such that the eldest child will inherit the throne regardless of gender. That is, if Mary gives birth to a girl this fall then the girl will be crown princess regardless of any subsequent brothers.

"I'm very pleased that there's broad support in parliament for the proposal to alter the laws of succession," says siger Anders Fogh Rasmussen to Ritzau [news service].

If the alteration passes, it means that Crown Princess Mary's first-born will end up as monarch—regardless of whether it's a boy or a girl.

It's a very egalitarian approach. There will be no sexism in the monarchy!

It's good to see the characteristic Danish flair for egalitarianism applied to the laws of royal succession, but it's damned curious to see this obsession over equality being applied to an institution—monarchy—that hasn't historically had much to do with such niceties.

"Some pigs are more equal than others," the new law would say, "but those piglets born to the 'more equal' pigs will be equal to one another in terms of their superiority to the less equal pigs, regardless of gender."

Hooray for equality!

The law will have to pass parliament and then be supported by 40% of eligible Danish voters in a public referendum to take effect.