Saturday, February 16, 2008

The Good News From Denmark

Our Danish correspondent TB sends the latest on the New Improved Motoon Crisis, including a couple of translated quotes from the Danish-language media:

Today the Danish Board of Foreign Policy Matters unanimously have cancelled a planned trip to Iran after the Iranian ambassador demanded an apology for the reprinting of the Mohammed cartoons. That is, every single member from the far right to the far left has collectively made it crystal clear to the Iranians that under no conditions will they try to interfere with the press, or even worse, make an apology. And since this is an ultimatum from the Iranians, the trip is cancelled!

As they say: “No one is going to tell us what to print in our own newspapers. If anyone should make an apology it should be the Iranians for all their repeated violations against human rights etc.”

I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this kind of collective spirit among Danish politicians.

An excerpt from an article in today’s Berlingske Tidende:

On behalf of the committee in Iran who was supposed to host the Danes, the Iranian ambassador in Denmark writes in a letter Saturday that the case would risk overshadowing the visit. The Iranians therefore ask for the Danes to condemn the fact that a whole range of newspapers [that is, ALL of them — TB] have republished one of the cartoons.

A quote from Villy Søvndal, the leader of the Socialist People’s Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti, SF), as reported by today’s Jyllands-Posten:
- - - - - - - - -
“We are not the ones who have a need for making apologies. If anyone has a reason to make an apology related to questions about freedom of speech, human rights, executions, and lack of democracy, it is the Iranians. And that was exactly the intention of the trip, that we could tell the government and others that there exist a whole range of conditions in Iran that we do not like,” says Søvndal to Ritzau.

I mean, this is the socialist leader speaking. I know they are supposed to see religion as an opiate of the people, but they have, for sure, had their problems recently with sticking to their own principles. Now all this has changed.

Søvndal was a man that I until recently happily would compare with the collaborators during WW2! Today…!?

Strange days indeed, Baron. And good they sure are!

We live in interesting times.

11 comments:

Cincinnatus said...

But if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified, will Denmark not cease to exist?

laine said...

Perhaps history will look back on this moment as the "worm turning", with the brave Danes in the lead.

Now if the rest of Western media outside Denmark would actually cover these events truthfully!

Homophobic Horse said...

I call for unilateral action. Build a gigantic laser and tatoo a Mo' toon on the moon.

laine said...

P.S. Where can I get a Danish flag, to wave from the ramparts, instead of burning?

John Van Laer said...

Western taxonomy--

Little Country = stand-up guy.

Big Country = abject coward.

How did this happen?

Anonymous said...

Sign of spine? How divine!

Henrik R Clausen said...

For the record, the representative from Dansk Folkeparti, Søren Krarup, took the lead on boycotting the Iranians. He quit the trip a few days before everyone else.

For the Lisbon Treaty, I'd like to caution against alarmism. Yes, it is a pile of supranational semifascist crap. But it is also utter undigestable for a lot of Europeans, once they understand what the forced unity and other crap material leads to.

I think the public ignorance about the treaty makes it insanely hard to trip it up. It's gonna pass.

And - while I generally hate sounding prophetic - this might bring about the eventual demise of the European Union itself. The amount of unfulfilled expectations and broken promises from the new Super-EU will, if publiziced, erode public confidence in the entire project.

I'm not media banned from writing this. Information, a leftwing newspaper, took a fairly rough letter on this subject :)

Tory Conservative said...

Good post. There needs to be more attention paid to the effort of Muslims to stamp out freedom of speech in the Western World.

And then there is this new group trying to restore the 1st amendment in the United States:

Speech Now

Zenster said...

If anyone should make an apology it should be the Iranians for all their repeated violations against human rights etc.

This is the corker. The West must begin to hoist Islam by its own petard. No amount of howling about Islamophobia must be allowed to change the simple perception that Islam itself is one massive ongoing crime against humanity.

Until Islam begins to clean its own house, the West is obliged to do nothing more than hold a nuclear club over the MME (Muslim Middle East) and tell it that time is very swiftly running out.

No accomodations, appeasement or sympathy must be shown. Only intransigent rejection of everything that Islam stands for and a demand that they set about ending over a MILLENNIA of predation against all bordering lands.

If they cannot, the West must begin a campaign of regime change with the explicit end of crushing Islam, its continued practice, all forms of shari'a law and the existence of all mosques, madrassahs or other Islamic institutions. Anything less will see countless millions of new victims swept up in Islam's withering embrace, Muslim and otherwise.

The time is now to declare Islam's moral authority as null and void. It is inhumane to its very core and has no redeeming features. It's long past tea for us to stop wondering if there's anything about Islam that is worth saving.

Laine: Where can I get a Danish flag, to wave from the ramparts

Here.

nikolai said...

I'm jealous. I wish it was Britain doing this.

Bravo the Danes.

TonyGuitar said...

Let us stand by the Danes.

We in Canada agree with their stand, their findings about Iran, so Let Denmark be congratulated in our [brave?] house of commons.

They can have Hans Island too. They just won title, in my view.= TG