Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update

* today's news that Swedish authorities arrested four potential terrorists on Saturday is compelling from a Danish Cartoons standpoint for the absolute certainty with which is conveyed a direct line from the cartoons to Lars Vilks' Muhammed-on-head-of-dog drawing to raised concerns to actual terrorism.

* strange bedfellows department: the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan, widely believed to have been directly related to the publication of the original cartoons and Denmark becoming a cultural target in the months after that, led to Denmark authorities to exchange information with those in Libya.

* this brief profile of Denmark as a potential target for terrorism focuses on the Jyllands-Posten newspaper where the Danish cartoons first appeared but also provides some nuggets of context for how the country has dealt with some of the surrounding issues.

* here's a long, general article about the chilling effect the Cartoons Controversy may have had on free speech. They rope Jytte Klausen into the conversation, accessing the information she compiled putting together her book on the affair and also the fact that she and her publishers allowed the image of the original cartoons to be excised from that book. I don't think there's as much room for debate on that one as some people seem to suggest. I consider the original publication of the images much more of a small-p political stunt than an exercise of free speech rights, but when those images and what they looked like became a key component in an international news story with lives and money at stake, I think any serious news-gathering or scholarly enterprise had to publish them or otherwise make them available to readers in order to fulfill the basics of their chosen mission. This includes Klausen's book.
 
posted 7:00 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives