I've always noted when Arab leaders come to Paris that they are outraged (or pretend to be) because there is wine on the dinner table and it is incompatible with, or even insulting to, their faith.

I understand them not offering wine in their countries, if that's the rules they live by, but imposing these rules elsewhere as well? Don't drink the fucking wine if you're invited to dinner and shut the fuck up about it.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

However, this condition is historically and geographically quite a rarity, even exotic. It may well prove out to be a transient paranthesis. Judging by the debate up here, surprisingly and chillingly many are prepared to sell it down the river by issuing an official apology from the gov't for what a private magazine has printed.

WTF? If European civilization has a founding father, it's either Jesus or Socrates, depending on your point of view. Both were executed by the state for subversive blasphemy. In the meantime we have had the so-called Middle Ages, the Reneissance, and the Enlightenment, followed by renewed onslaughts of oppression, and finally, the freedom we enjoy today. Surely we haven't come all this way just to sell out the saving grace of European culture for temporary convenience and the privilege of selling dairy products to despicable dictatorships.

Sorry if I sound high-strung.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

So, we know what the rules of the house are. What are the rules of the village?

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper