According to the news source Reuters (Link: http://ca.today.reuters.com/ ), although the protests generated by the so-called offensive cartoons published in a Danish newspaper are steadily declining in prominence in the news in favor of other issues, such as the Cheney accident, protests are still happening every day, and people are still dying.
Interestingly enough, many of the current protests are occuring in areas that are less "obvious" locations than the previous attacks on embassies, such as Bengladesh and urban China.
Furthermore, Faisal Aziz, the writer for Reuters, notes that the protests "have taken on a distinctly anti-U.S. tone" and that actions have included "attacking U.S. fast-food outlets" and "burning President Bush in effigy."
Last week, I noted the danger that these protests, while entirely unrelated to the United States except insofar as we are interested in protecting the sanctity of the press and the principle of freedom of speech, would eventually turn on us wholly, and we are seeing the furtherance of that prediction. "Surely," thinks the average Muslim citizen abroad, whose daily news sources are even more suspect than our own, "the Great Satan, the United States, must be behind the actions of the Danish government." And in many cases, the people involved in these protests simply don't posess the information necessary to make informed decisions because their access to the global information flow is limited.
Their perpsective is further tainted by the fact that there are other areas where we, as a country, are obviously angering them (such as the conflict in Iraq), and, thus, they apply slippery slope logic to the situation to intuit that we must therefore be responsible for all perceived attacks on both the Middle Eastern people and their religion. This despite the fact that it is American people, such as Former President Clinton, who have spoken out very strongly against the publication of the cartoons!
To paraphrase the protagonist of the great 1996 indy political film "The Last Supper," ... "The world gets more and more complicated every day..."
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Relevant links to previous coverage (on my blog) include:
http://www.progressiveu.org/082543-the-cartoon-controversy-part-2-the-danish-embassy-is-set-ablaze-2/4/06
http://www.progressiveu.org/154430-anger-over-the-controversial-cartoons-directed-against-america
Excellent, sparks and gasoline. Mobs don't think, so once they get started they just run on available fuel.
News don't care abt the Danish cartoon anymore. All they care is Cheney. Don't you think so. I said it on my blog about it too. Seriously, I watched CNN's Situation Room spent 30 mins on Cheney and like 2 mins on Danish cartoon. How crazy is that?