Support Free Speech in Denmark: Buy Danish
This is getting ridiculous. Denmark is facing a nasty economic boycott in the Muslim world because of the much-blogged-about cartoon jihad. In a nod to Salman Rushdie, ought we to call them the "Satanic Doodles"? See them all here.
Need some background information? Brussels Journal has been writing multiple posts on the free speech at issue in Denmark. Meanwhile, the sale of Danish goods in the Middle East have ground to a halt and people are burning Danish flags in Gaza, where masked gunmen stormed an EU office and demanded apologies from the Danes. Doesn't this seem a little . . . all right, crazy?
Support Danish free speech! Butter cookies and Havarti cheese for freedom! OK, so I couldn't help being a little silly. But why not buy Danish? Everything from cheese to coffee to cookies. Since I am a grad student who operates on coffee, I think I'll go look for some Danish coffee . . .
As for what's really at the heart of things, I give you a quote by Carsten Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper which a few months ago printed several cartoons of Muhammad which started this entire mess: “We believe that if we would go out and apologize [for the publication] then the dictators in the Middle East would decide what we should publish in our newspaper. That is of course totally unacceptable,” Juste told the Danish news agency Ritzau. What is the world coming to? Danish press freedom is under threat by clearly intolerant, fanatical elements that are not afraid to use violence and intimidation to crush voices they do not like. But Denmark is standing firm. It has admirable strength of will, as does its prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Denmark, your friends stand with you for the cause of free speech and press freedom, even if a certain American ex-president won't. (Or maybe all this is an excuse to make me feel better about eating piles of Danish butter cookies, which I have always loved. *grin*)
UPDATE 1: I just found Denmark's official export directory -- DanishExporters.dk -- and it has much more information on Danish goods and products.
UPDATE 2: While we're at it, why not visit Denmark? Or at least learn more about it. I've wanted to visit Copenhagen ever since a visiting Danish professor told me about it and its museum some years ago. . .