...that I'd live to see (and, well...hear) the day that a news announcer said the words, "...the cartoon death toll is up to nine."

Only in an Islamist world.

[Wednesday morning update]

Judith Weiss says (yes, yes, I know...I was shocked, too) that these demonstrations are not spontaneous. And here's more from the WSJ.

While there are people bleeding and dying in Iraq, this is, more than anything, a propaganda war. And unfortunately, our own press is largely, knowingly or not, working on the side of the enemy.

[Another update about 8:30 AM EST]

The problem is spreading to the strife-torn Midwest. Iowahawk (who's been missing in action since Christmas) has the scoop:

...outside of the Dells and a handful of violent outposts near its western Mississippi River border, Wisconsin remained a relatively calm exception to the Midwestern maelstrom surrounding it -- a fact that experts attribute to subtle differences in culture and religion.

"Unlike the ultra-extreme, radical Lutheran sectarians of Iowa and Minnesota, most ethnic Wisconsinites belong to the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod," said Joseph Killian, a Midwestern Studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "And if you add in three Super Bowl titles, easier access to beer, and walleye fishing, and you're going to have a much calmer and more stable culture."

All that would change in November with the publication of four cartoons in a Texas office newsletter -- cartoons that today have brought this once happily beer-goggled society to the precipice of all-out culture war.

[One more update]

Amir Tehari writes about the bonfire of the pieties.

[Update late morning]

Meryl Yourish notes some rhetorical slight of hand and subject changing at AP:

Notice how the AP explains why the cartoons are offensive to Muslims. They do not bother to explain a similarly important fact — the one that Jews had absolutely nothing to do with the publication of the cartoons. The fact that the Iranians plan to hold a Holocaust cartoon contest is utterly irrelevant to the issues at hand. But not to the AP, which will turn itself into pretzels trying to explain how the issues are similar.

They use the phrase “in a new turn” to describe this ridiculous notion. This is not a new turn to the story, it is an attempt by the Iranians to turn Muslim protests of the Western values of freedom of speech into something hateful about Jews.

Jason Fox was the latest victim in the Cartoon War. Dilbert lamented the loss of such a promising future engineer to senseless cartoonish violets(obscure Bullwinkle reference).

Let's buy some Danish cookies. Philly Inquirer has picked up the cartoons.

The Iranians blame the Jews because we westerners all dance to a Klezmer tune. The western world is run by and controlled by the Jews.

I question, however, the accuracy of their thinking. If the seat of world power is actually Isreal, why aren't downtown Tehran, downtown Bahgdad, downtown Damascus or downtown Cairo just radiating, flattened, smoking rubble?

Every dictatorshup needs a bad guy and a cause. The islamofascists use "jews" and "the west". If Bin Laden believed his own rhetoric, he'd have written down his orders, handed them off and strapped a bomb to his own rangy arse, instead of getting 14 year olds to do it. Ditto the imams-o-facism.

These guys are the new Nazis, new Japanese Imperialists, new Communists / Socialists, new enemies of personal freedom. So long as there is freedom there will people it makes mad. And we will keep defending ourselves by kiling them. Death for their cause is the ony thing they actually understand.

When did Jimmy Carter become President of the EU or Denmark? A paper prints a few cartoons, and the EU's member nations think it is a reasonable response for Muslims to destory diplomatic missions? This is not just holding people hostage, these buildings are being destroyed and the residents being threatened.

Rand,
I wasn't surprised to hear"...the cartoon death toll is up to nine."

I just always expected it would be followed by a resounding, "DOH!!"

I've always thought the responsibility not to offend is a two way street but mostly lies with people not to take offense. The thing that really bothers me is the apparent confusion in the meaning of muslim and islam. Muslims are people, with the exception of those cheering in the streets when terrorists strike, that desire a peaceful life like any other humans. Islam is terrorisms and the Koran is it's terrorist instruction manual. Mohammed's relatives knew he was a power hungry meglomaniac so he had them killed. Why does anybody dance around these facts? Offending terrorists is not a problem. Killing them is the problem and we need to get very good at it because they intend to do it first.

There are many faiths in the world and people are free to agree or disagree with them. Some beliefs however are not tolerable. Islam is an institutional belief in killing or enslaving the infidel. This is not a tolerable faith.

To any sincere Islamic I would ask them to read the Koran and honestly tell us how it allows for live and let live. It doesn't.

To any sincere Islamic I would ask them to read the Koran and honestly tell us how it allows for live and let live. It doesn't.

Religions are memetic parasites, exploiting the open channel into young human minds over which cultural information is transmitted.

Like any parasites, they have caused compensating adaptations in their hosts. The major adaptation is hypocrisy. This enables hosts to present the signs that they are infected -- so the others around them do not apply the meme's social sanctions -- but still maximize their own benefits, not those of the parasite.

Hey anon,

You may be right. Even the bible calls religion a scam. I personally don't believe in any of them. I believe in the creator and truth, not that I'm always able to discern the truth...