Like I said, some offenses are obvious to all and, as a matter of fact, as you have pointed out, a number of them are illegal in many countries of Europe. These cases are best dealt with by the legal system if the authors insist on publishing.

Then we enter the realm of the subjective - precisely things like these cartoons, which I find unremarkable, and that many Muslims obviously find insulting. There is no legal recourse, but there is a first the recours of asking politely. It's not clear if that was done or not, but if it was, it was not successful, leading to more activist protests. At various stages, it might have been defused (whether by the paper publishing a muslim view point, or by Rasmussen talking to the ambassadors) - or it might not. We were still in that grey area.

But now we are outside that area, with muslims (at least those we hear) saying that these cartoons are a scandal, should not be published tolerated, and retaliating with violence. These people are out of line, do not understand how our system works, and I don't see why we should move in any way to accomodate their extremist and invasive demands.

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

If Jerome thinks that all the anti-semitic cartoons in the Middle East are fair and square because  "what is the religion of those israeli pilots and army forcing the occupation of palestinian land" or "what is the religion of the racial jew settlers after all" then I see that he is not discriminating according to his racial references, just advocating a point about free speech (which I would deeply disagree).

It would be consistent to think that those cartoons have some kind of "relation" with reality and all the jews should live with the fact that they can be put in the same basket. So Jerome wil be advocating for free speech for any attack on any race or religion just becasue one or some of its members behave wrongly. He will defend the right to attack any evangelist or christian just because of the KKK. And of course any atheist for the multiple crimes comitted in the name of atheism.

I am not sure if in this last case he would be crossing the line. He will merely advocate a "religious fervor" for free speech. It is a controversial statement in any case but not a racist one.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

• As I wrote before, there are offenses that are obvious to all, and then there is a grey area of ambiguity, which one can abuse or not. I am saying that we are definitely in the grey area, and saying that only one side of the debate has the right to say which way to lean from there is silly. It's like letting George Bush define what a patriot is, it's unilateral disarmament in that debate;

• Well Americans are being caricatured as bombing civilians. I myself posted such a caricature by Plantu (I cannot find the link right now) of US war planes bombing Iraq and asking "can't they be grateful?" - and if anybody sees some one in a plane bombing civilians, s/he is likely to think they are Americans. Similarly, the only thing most people hear about the Arab world is yet another suicide bombing somewhere. Sure, it only reflects our ignorance, but it's a fact, and the caricature of someone with a bomb immediately brings to mind Palestinian or Iraqi suicide bombers and not Danes or sub-saharan Africans.