Al-Jazeera is now reporting a fire in the Danish consulate in Beirut.  They have video of smoke rising from the building.  They are definitely saying consulate, not embassy, I'm not sure if Denmark has both there.

All the bystanders Al-Jazeera is interviewing at the scene, including a Muslim cleric, are calling for calm and saying that it is against Islam to attack and burn, that the Prophet Muhammed would not approve of this violence.

http://ekstrabladet.dk/grafik/nettet/tegninger40.jpg
http://ekstrabladet.dk/grafik/nettet/tegninger38.jpg
http://ekstrabladet.dk/grafik/nettet/tegninger39.jpg

The source is the Gateway Pundit, but as it quotes only people like Michelle Malkin, the Belmont Club and other well-known hard right types, I don't know what to make of it. The Brussels Journal has more detail, but it is also a hard right site.

Any additional info (especially analysis of this: http://www.ekstrabladet.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=329877) would be helpful.

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

In addition, the philosopher Huntington wrote a prophetic book called "I told you so".

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

Knight Ridder: At least 30 injured in protest as outrage over cartoons spreads

In Damascus, Syrians burned a building that houses the Danish, Swedish and Chilean embassies after receiving text messages calling on them to defend their prophet. The crowds were stopped en route to the French embassy.

"I don't like that it resulted in a fire - that's not a part of our religion and our prophet. But we also have to admit to the fact that we are under so much pressure," said Fouad Tarabeine, a Syrian businessman. "The political situation, the pressure we have from the state. So, this was a kind of release. This was the straw that broke the camel's back."

The violence in Beirut started when thousands of Muslims gathered near the Danish embassy, which is located in the Christian area of Ashrafieh. A small group of demonstrators pushed through cordons and set fire to the embassy, overturned cars and broke the windows of a Maronite Catholic church. Lebanese forces used tear gas and water cannons to beat back the crowds.

The event quickly took on ugly sectarian undertones in a capital still scarred by Lebanon's bloody, 15-year civil war. Unknown Christian militants sent text messages to cell phones that read, "Launch the Christian nation of Lebanon. It is never going to end unless you prepare your weapons." Muslims, meanwhile, rolled out their prayer carpets on the streets of the mostly Christian neighborhood in an act viewed as a provocation.

"There were infiltrators among the demonstrators who do not express the opinions of the thousands of Muslims who participated in the peaceful protest to slam the Danish cartoons," said Asaad Harmoush, the head of an Islamic group that organized the demonstration in Beirut.

The Lebanese government called an emergency cabinet meeting Sunday night, while both Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders condemned the violence. Senior Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah issued a religious order banning flag burnings and attacks on embassies, and urged Muslims to show their outrage by joining the boycott of Danish exports.

"They are free to print what they want to print, but we are also free to believe what we want to believe," said Khaled Mustafa, an Egyptian pursuing his doctorate at a university in Belgium, where a petition circulated against the cartoons. "Now is not the time for something like this. The media is already focused on the troubles of the Muslim world. All we see on TV is Iraq and Palestine. I don't feel we need this kind of trouble now."

The Lebanese interior minister has resigned after failing to contain the riots.

As Migeru and I discussed elsewhere, failing to protect foreign embassies is a violation of the Vienna Convention and could have diplomatic consequences for Lebanon and Syria.

Denmark and Norway have lost their embassies.  So have Sweden and Chile, who had nothing to do with this fight at all.

But the cost of this violence is so much greater than mere damaged diplomacy.  

In Lebanon, which has suffered so much sectarian strife over most of my lifetime, the crisis has merged with Lebanon's domestic troubles and inflamed the sectarian tensions at a critical time.

And lest we forget, these are people we're talking about.

I spent part of the day in electronic conversation with friends, via e-mail and text messages.  I've never actually been to Lebanon (supposed to go this week, though) but I have a fairly large number of Lebanese or Lebanese-American (or Lebanese-Australian) friends, and a few other friends who live in Beirut or happened to be there today.

The consensus was horror.  And fear.  (And also the firm believe that Syria and Hizballah are behind it, but that's for another post....)

I don't want to quote them directly, because I haven't asked any of them if I can.

A Lebanese-American friend who lived in Beirut for years was appalled, horrified, and embarrassed that all Lebanese will now be painted with this brush.  She said the rioters were behaving like hiwan, or animals.

She forwarded me an e-mail from one of her friends in Beirut, who painted such a terrifying and sad picture.  She lives in Ashrafiya, the neighborhood where the Danish consulate was.

She said once the rioters were chased away from the consulate, they ran amok through the neighborhood, trashing everything they could find.  They smashed shop  windows and cars.  They attacked a church.

She said the protesters ran down her street, trashed a car and stoned several buildings.  She said they tried unsuccessfully to storm the Swiss ambassador's residence, which is on the same street.

(At this point I find myself thinking, the Swiss ambassador?  What the hell do the Swiss have to do with this?)

She shut all the windows and sat inside, scared.

Other friends were terrified for a different reason -- their young daughter was trapped at school, and it was quite some time before they were able to work their way there to retrieve her.

I post this to remind everyone that Europeans (and Chilean diplomats) are not the only ones suffering from this outbreak of violence.  The rioters may have numbered in their thousands, but Beirut is a city of two million, and many if not most of those people are every bit as appalled at the violence as you are.  And more afraid of it, because it's closer.

Schweiz:

Dänemark:

"The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819

England:

"The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819

We Are Sorry

In the middle of all the mayhem surrounding the Danish cartoons controversy, a group of Arab and Muslim youth have set up this website to express their honest opinion, as a small attempt to show the world that the images shown of Arab and Muslim anger around the world are not representative of the opinions of all Arabs.  We whole-heartedly apologize to the people of Denmark, Norway and all the European Union over the actions of a few, and we completely condemn all forms of vandalism and incitement to violence that the Arab and Muslim world have witnessed.  We hope that this sad episode will not tarnish the great friendship that our peoples have fostered over decades....

Vi Beklager     Undskyld      We Are Sorry

More here.  H/T: Egyptian Sandmonkey

(music: She'll be coming 'round the mountain,
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/mountain.htm)

We'll be drawing old Muhammad on the wall,
We'll be drawing old Muhammad on the wall,
For even Muslims must admit it,
You don't need a special permit,
To be drawing old Muhammad on the wall.

We'll be spraying old Muhammad on the wall,
We'll be spraying old Muhammad on the wall,
With graffiti that's persisting,
We will show that we're insisting,
On our right to spray the Prophet on the wall.

We'll be painting old Muhammad on the wall,
We'll be painting old Muhammad on the wall,
Now some claim that He's angelic,
So we'll paint Him psychedelic,
We sure hope He likes His pictures on the wall.

We'll be etching old Muhammad on the wall,
We'll be etching old Muhammad on the wall,
The time has come to make our stand
Or our rights they will get banned,
And we'll find ourselves lined up against the wall.

(If you like this, please re-post it elsewhere on the Internet.)