DANES MARCH FOR PEACE AND LOVE: And a Muslim leader is interviewed. Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

THE SOUTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT: Covering for North Korea? When North Korea falls, I predict we’ll discover that an astonishing number of people in the South were on the take, or being blackmailed.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY: “Increasingly, Hollywood is making films that Hollywood wants to consume, not necessarily what the rest of America does. Hollywood needs to decide whether it wants to be a political party or whether it wants to entertain. They can continue to entertain themselves, but then they will continue to lose audience. There are simply too many other options vying for the attention of the people that Hollywood shuns.” Read the whole thing.

CHINA LEAPS FORWARD on nuclear power. My TCS Daily column will look at this.

SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS on blogger ethics from Matt Stoller, in response to Daniel Glover.

UPDATE: More from Joe Gandelman. And read this post by Steve Clemons, too.

A DOUBLE STANDARD ON PROTESTS in Britain?

Once again, the message is that if you blow things up, or even look as if you might, we’ll be nice to you. And once again, I note that this is a very unwise message to send.

I should note, by the way, that last night I spent some time reading an advance copy of Claire Berlinski’s new book, Menace in Europe : Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too. It looks very good, and I hope it finds a wide readership. The timing is certainly right.

UPDATE: Berlinski emails from Istanbul:

Evidently there were “hundreds of demonstrators” at the Danish consulate here today. (I missed it; I was happily oblivious until I read the news.) Now, “hundreds of protestors” never congregate in Istanbul without government sanction. There is no such thing as freedom of assembly here; if you’re out protesting, it’s because the government authorized it, period. So Denmark and Turkey are going to be part of one big happy EU family? Sure thing. Tell that to the Danish diplomats cowering in their consulate in Istanbul and nervously reviewing the fire escape plans.

Oh, and someone shot a Catholic priest in Ankara today, too. Not clear yet whether it was related.

That said, “hundreds of protestors” isn’t that much in a city of 10 million, and when I went out today everyone seemed to be their normal friendly selves, including the Islamist grocers down the street, who have never been anything but pleasant to me. So don’t be put off if you’re thinking of visiting, Istanbul is still great, and very safe. (Almost certainly safer than London: I have no doubt that if the protestors get too frisky here, the government will mow them down like dogs.)

Jim Geraghty, also in Istanbul, has a report, too. “The Syrian reaction is intolerable. But the Turkish reaction is honorable. I hope the world can see the difference.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Berlinski — perhaps my most devoted reader in Istanbul today — sends this followup in response to Jim’s post:

Jim Geraghty is absolutely right, everyone should have the right to protest peacefully if they so wish. If you’ve got your panties in a wad over some cartoons, by all means, you should be perfectly free to say so. My point is that people here don’t enjoy the freedom to protest–just ask the mothers of Kurds who have disappeared in Turkish prisons–so when they do, unimpeded, it has a certain significance. He’s right, there’s a world of difference between the Turkish reaction and the Syrian reaction. But Syria’s not applying for EU membership.

Indeed.

MORE: Michael Totten reports on Islamist violence in Beirut and observes: “I strongly suggest the civilized people of Lebanon, Muslim and Christian alike, stage a counter-demonstration downtown where flags are not burned and where buildings are not set on fire.”

MORE STILL: Iraqpundit:

Anyway, since when did stupid, tasteless cartoons start stirring such passions among the Muslims? Arabic language newspapers and magazines regularly run cartoons that offend all sorts of communities. It would be easier to respect all this rage if these angry people applied the same standards all around.

You know, in 2002, 15 Saudi schoolgirls burned to death when Saudi religious police wouldn’t let them escape their building because they were not in hijab.

Waiting for my fellow Muslims to react to that kind of criminality with the same impassioned outrage they save for offensive newspaper cartoons has been rather like waiting for a desert-blown Godot. Our community leaders, as always, fail us.

Indeed.

AND YET MORE: Jim Geraghty sends a correction:

I’m in Ankara, not Istanbul, and the shooting of the priest was in Trabzon, not Ankara. As of 4 a.m. local time, the U.S. Embassy didn’t have any information on motive. The wires ( Link) are reporting the kid was shouting “God is great” as he ran from the shooting scene; if accurate, this would appear to be Islamist terrorism.

Dang.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE has a big Cartoon War roundup.

MAARTEN SCHENK:

An interesting side-effect of the Danish cartoon affair might be the invasion of Syria by U.S. forces. As you can read in this CNN article, the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Damascus were burned down by angry mobs on Sunday.

Now, depending on the level of (passive) involvement by the Syrian regime, one could make the case this is an act of war. And since Norway and Denmark are both NATO members, Bush can invoke article V of the NATO charter that says an attack on one member state is an attack against all of them…

Presto! Legal casus belli… and no need to find further justifications in hidden WMD’s, terror sponsoring or the need for ‘regime change’. Just point the tanks in Baghdad to Damascus and start driving…

Jeez, he’s starting to sound as bellicose as Duncan Black!

YOU CAN NOW SUBSCRIBE to the Glenn and Helen show via Podcast Alley as well as via iTunes.

HERE’S A GALLERY CONTAINING IMAGES OF MOHAMMED throughout Islamic history. Apparently, portraying the Prophet isn’t quite as much a no-no as some have claimed.

MARK STEYN ON SENSITIVITY:

NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom “Will & Grace,” in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes — “Cruci-fixin’s.” On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of “respect” for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president’s home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Jyllands-Posten wasn’t being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point — or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of “self-censorship” — i.e., a climate in which there’s no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it’s better not to.

That’s the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Charles Johnson notes a CNN double standard.

ANOTHER DAY, another embassy torched.

ATRIOS FOR SECRETARY OF STATE:

Certainly an Iran-with-nukes could blow the hell out of a city or two, but an Iran that did such a thing would pretty much cease to exist. It isn’t mutually assured destruction, it’s you fuck with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!

Perhaps we could put this in a demarche?

JUST SAY NO TO MULLAHS: Tim Blair is refusing to follow orders.

PERRY DEHAVILLAND wonders why Iran is threatening to put economic sanctions in place against itself.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN looks at Identity Politics, Free Speech, and the Future of Worldwide Liberalism.

UPDATE: Interesting email from reader Edward Tabakin, with an (unfortunate) “Army of Davids” angle. Well, as I say in the book, technology empowers bad people, as well as good ones. Click “read more” to read it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Backlash?

(more…)

EUGENE VOLOKH has more on The Boston Globe’s double standard regarding religiously-offensive speech.

Meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens argues in favor of mocking religion.

N.Z. BEAR is updating the PorkBusters page.

AUSTIN BAY WRITES on Syrian cynicism in the Cartoon War.

UPDATE: Tim Cavanaugh looks at the bright side:

But a closer look at those “Anger growing over cartoons” headlines reveals something more encouraging than just another story of the perpetually hurt feelings of Muslim community leaders. The actions of inflamed Muslims have been producing consistent reactions from their targets. The Jyllands-Posten cartoons have been reprinted by newspapers in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Hungary and Jordan, and on countless blogs. The longer the protests continue the more widely the cartoons get distributed. The issue will almost certainly lead to a revisiting of the lamentable laws against “hate speech” in Europe, and with any luck to a debate on whether these laws are more likely to destroy public harmony than encourage it. Muslim activists are finding out why getting into a negative-publicity fight is as inadvisable as wrestling with a pig: You get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

Heh.

AMAZON is getting bloggier.

THE ONLY WINNER out of all this Islamist stuff in Europe is Claire Berlinski, whose book Menace in Europe : Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too is coming out later this month. We’re planning a podcast interview with her.

Meanwhile, here’s a Dane who feels betrayed by the U.S. State Department. “The world’s gone topsy-turvy: Germany and France show common sense, backbone and true loyalty.”

To be fair, as Eugene Volokh points out, the State Department’s statement was far more supportive of free speech than press reports suggested. But this was not a time for nuance.

UPDATE: Reader Shivan V. Mahendrarajah emails:

While I agree that the State Dept. was wrong to be nuanced in their response re the cartoons of the Prophet and the ensuing brouhaha, in a Machiavellian way, I think it brilliant (though unintentionally so, otherwise that would be giving the State Dept. way too much credit). Here’s why:

1. U.S. Embassies worldwide have not been stormed, attacked or burned, and if they had been, Marines would have to disperse the crowds to prevent another Teheran, even shoot to kill (one of my former Army Drill Sergeants was in that sort of a situation in Baghdad – very unpleasant), and shootings by Marines would exacerbate the anti-Americanism that currently prevails and take the focus off the Muslim v. Europe fight as it currently stands;

2. Maybe now the Euroweenies will wake up and see what we “imperialist” Amerikaners have seen. . . .

One hopes that this will serve as a wakeup call in some quarters.

DANISH EMBASSY BURNED in Syria. Gateway Pundit has a roundup. This really is a case of civilization against the barbarians. The good news is that moderate Muslims are standing up for civilization:

The Danish press has also paid very little attention to the representatives of a group of 80 immigrants who have expressed their support of Jyllands-Posten. A statement by the group placed on the internet carries the caption “We must condemn Islamist threats against free speech.” It goes on to accuse the Islamists of “viewing any criticism or any making fun of the Islamic religion as an affront and an insult to Muslims. In this way they want to prevent any human being from questioning the Islamic religion and its holy book and the prophet Muhammad. … With the same argument Islamic regimes and other forces in the Middle Eastern and Arabic countries have killed thousands of people and issued fatwas against authors, journalists and artists.”

The bad news is that the Boston Globe is siding with the barbarians, comparing the Danish cartoonists to Nazis. Just look at the photo and decide who really deserves that comparison. Michael Graham is unhappy with the Globe, too.

The funny thing is that the Globe views fundamentalist Christians as a god-besotted threat to liberty, but makes excuses for people like this.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has more thoughts. And Michelle Malkin has a must-see video presentation. And a reader points out that the Boston Globe was defending “Piss Christ” artist Andres Serrano’s right to federal funding back in 1990. Apparently, standards of decency have “evolved” at the Globe, or perhaps it’s just a measure of who they’re actually afraid of.

David Bernstein has more on double standards.

MORE: Ashish Hanwadikar says the Europeans are hypocritical in a different way.

And Ed Driscoll has much more, including a look at Serrano’s more recent employment.

Plus, Tigerhawk looks at appeasement and wonders why it remains so popular. “This has been a long time coming — after the Rushdie fatwa, the West cannot claim that it isn’t on notice. It will be a long time in the undoing, too.”

STILL MORE: A Jordanian newspaper is braver than the Globe:

Meanwhile, a Jordanian gossip tabloid on defiantly published three of the cartoons that have triggered outrage in the Arab and Muslim world.

“Muslims of the world, be reasonable,” said the editor-in-chief of the weekly independent newspaper Al-Shihan in an editorial alongside the cartoons, including the one showing the Muslim religion’s founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

(Via All Things Beautiful).

Much more here.

EVEN MORE: Of course, the brave Jordanian editor has been arrested:

A Jordanian newspaper editor sacked after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has been arrested.

Jihad Momani is accused of insulting religion under Jordan’s press and publications law.

The newspaper had fired him after he decided to reproduce the cartoons – originally printed in Denmark – which have caused a global storm of protest.

Pathetic.

AND MORE STILL: Reader Kathleen St. Onge emails: “Unsurprisingly, I didn’t see any protest babes in the photo you posted. As such, I have to conclude that this is a movement of losers.”

Yes. Angry, bitter losers. But potentially dangerous ones.

AUSTIN BAY notes that the Egyptian ferry disaster is recapitulating Lord Jim.

HUGH HEWITT:

The American Spectator’s Jed Babbin was on John Batchelor’s radio show yesterday, and stated that the intelligence community believes West Virignia Senator Jay Rockefeller is the leaker who illegally supplied the New York Times with the details of the NSA program.

Given that the CIA’s Porter J. Goss stated emphatically that the leak had done very serious damage to the United States, if Rockefeller is a suspect, he should be hauled before a Grand Jury asap. When the crime was bribery (Abscam)no one protested that a sitting U.S. Senator ought not to be a target.

If the crime is much more serious –and this is– purported good intentions should not shield the suspect.

Has any member of the press asked Rockefeller point blank if he’s the law breaker yet?

No doubt the New York Times will be calling for a criminal investigation, as it did in the Plame matter.