“I ask our dear people to prepare themselves for a great struggle,”

and

” . . . he insisted that the country would continue its nuclear activities and urged Iranians to brace for tough times.”

It seems that North Korean posturing and phraseology is popular.
Kim Il Sung anyone?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Europe backs down and the US has to deal with Iran.

So one way to remove the governments ability to channel this rage is to take it away… wouldn’t a real patriot in time of war engage in restraint, even self-censorship, if it deprived not us but our enemies of a weapon?

I think republishing the cartoons is bad strategy. In a democracy’s soft power is often in the hands of private interests, like a newspaper. Unlike an authoritarian government, which controls all media, a democracy gives that power and responsibility to its citizens. Why not use the energy put into making the cartoons into something meant to strengthen solidarity between reasonable people on all continents, instead of focusing on the freaks?

I personally have been straining to hear the voices of the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims who have not stormed down a street or burned an embassy. Frankly I think they’re being ignored, because they’re clearly there. Here’s a set of translations of Arab bloggers on the cartoon row. And Slate has translated excerpts of Arab editorials from February 3, before the embassy burnings. And finally I recommend a piece in The Times by a British magazine (Punch) editor (Alan Coren) talking about choosing controversial cartoons in the 70s and 80s. One cartoon:

when we ran a cartoon of an SS Gruppenführer contemplating a shop window displaying rows of little black discs below a banner reading “Zeiss sun monocles, 50% off!”Â?, I was tickled by the complaint from one of our major advertisers that that was then and this is now, and anyway, they had only been carrying out orders. They did not, however, withdraw their advertising. They could take a joke, in Jena. I could mention the war.

Dan: I think their recent behavior shows that’s actually what they need =) Just another example of the fact that certain countries and cultures have to be forced to develop and modernize. Speak ill of empires, but the British brought modernity to much of it and as hackneyed of an excuse that is to some, there’s actually quite a bit of merit in it.

As for Syria, it is a big troublemaker in the Middle East. It sponsors the Islamic Jihad terrorists in Palestine. It supports the Hezbollah militant group in southern Lebanon. Many Syrians go to Iraq to fight the Americans.

America and Israel would like regime change in Syria, but the problem is that there isn’t a good alternative to the current government.

Regarding the cartoon furor, I read today that a newspaper in Iran wants to publish Holocaust cartoons.
“A prominent Iranian newspaper said it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.”