My Last Word...

...on the Mohammed cartoons. I hope. If you haven't read this yet, please do. I'm not a big conspiracy-theorist, but the logic in the article stands up to my BS-meter, which has become pretty sensitive over time. Here’s a graf:

The Danish cartoon, regardless of their content and of the debate itself, were published in September 2005. Why did it take five months for what Western media dubbed “instant reactions to the insult” to materialize?” One hundred and fifty days and nights are too long of a period for a mass reaction to be described as “instant.” That assessment alone can make and break the strategic reading of the cartoons affaire. The leaders of the Muslim community in Denmark said they attempted to resolve the matter locally by asking the newspaper to apologize or the Government to apologize for it: We all know what the Danish position was: a matter of principle. But the question remains open: Why did it take few months before al Jazeera gets hold of it, the web sites to disseminate it, and thousands of militants to wage a systematic campaign of embassies burning and products boycott, all taking place back to back with a chilling reminder of the French precedents of the scarf affaire?

There’s some pretty detailed analysis in this article concerning the who-what-where-why of the Arab Street’s outrage. Makes sense to me. YMMV.