Anyway, the same regimes -- now so tough on Denmark -- have rolled over for the US _government_. In Denmark, one publisher, not particularly reflective of Danish govt policy, no matter it's conservative orientation. Truly wondrous!
Yet, if the NYT report is accurate, and the boycott on Danish goods has been as total as that, this might well be a first in those countries -- does anyone know whether it is a first? Never mind that there are indications that the protests have been partially pushed by the regimes; the boycott needs popular participation to work. So the cartoons -- most of which I thought not particularly offensive (although free speech defences are a bit empty, exemplified most clearly by the discomfort the BBC Newsnight presenter generated in the Die Welt editor when she asked whether they would re-print anti-semitic cartoons in defence of free speech -- bit below the belt that one, but well-placed), and much less so than the ones that appeared subsequently, or the earlier ones put out by some Dutch cartoonist(s) -- may have triggered all this off. But the act of boycotting may ramify. And the regimes may yet come to rue their role in all this: we'll see what happens when they accept the Danish PM's apology -- a bit of stupidity on his part to refuse to meet with the ambassadors two weeks back. Does the boycott then end? If it doesn't...
kj khoo