Well Planned Rioting Continues, Now With Death Toll

The cartoon intifada continues unabated, and this now a butchers' bill attached to the worldwide rioting:

Three people were killed when police in Afghanistan fired on protesters after a police station came under attack, a government spokesman said.

In Somalia, a 14-year-old boy was shot dead and several others were injured after protesters attacked the police.

And the rioting in places like Syria isn't some spontaneous act, but planned, coordinated, and with possible complicity from the local authorities. Captain Ed notes:

The police finally withdrew and allowed the crowd to burn down the Danish embassy. Although they set the building alight, they had time and the forethought to bring a large banner to place on the building before it burnt down, announcing that the protestors were ready to offer their children in sacrifice to Mohammed. (That is a strange expression of human sacrifice for a monotheistic religion, but a theme that has become much more pronounced in radical Islam since the rise of Islamofascism thirty years ago. It's almost as if Islam got the story of Abraham and Isaac but missed the ending entirely.) That message delivered, the mob then went into the most affluent Christian neighborhood and began vandalizing property all along the way, smashing windows and damaging vehicles.

Suddenly, the protest stopped. The police and Islamic clerics couldn't stop it -- but one of the leaders announced that the demonstration was over and that the crowd needed to go home. And it did; the streets were cleared within minutes, leaving the area back in police control and the residents of the area to clean up after the violence. The protestors went back to the buses that brought them into the area, similar to tourists trying to attend a cultural event.

Michael Totten had made that observation over the weekend - that the riots in Syria are likely due to agent-provocateurs being buses into Beirut to cause mischief and mayhem - most likely Hizbullah and Syrian sympathizers.

UPDATE:
ABC News reports that Danish troops in Iraq came under fire as they were responding to an auto accident and providing medical attention to some children:

Danish soldiers on patrol in southern Iraq came under attack but escaped unharmed, the Danish military headquarters said. Iraqis shot at the patrol on Sunday as the Danish soldiers gave first aid to a group of children injured in a traffic accident south of Al-Qurnah, it said. "They were shot at as they tried to help the children," Colonel Henrik Sommer said. The soldiers shot back, withdrew from the area and took several of the children to hospital, he said.
Around 530 Danish soldiers are stationed in Iraq as part of a multinational force there, operating under British command in Basra, 550 kilometres south of Baghdad.

This bears additional watching. The Danes may reconsider their involvment in Iraq because of the cartoon intifada. The Danes do not have unlimited resources and protecting their embassies around the world might strain their military. And if the Danes do curtail their involvment in Iraq, who wins? Certainly not the Iraqis who are benefitting from the Danish assistance. Certainly not the Danes themselves, who are dealing with a concerted and coordinated effort in attacks against their embassies and worldwide interests. That leaves the Islamists who are making an example out of one of the members of the infidel West. They're going to try and pick off the low hanging fruit since their strategy against the US has thus far failed to accomplish any of its goals - the US is firmly entrenched in the heart of the Middle East, killing terrorists at a regular clip, and liberated one bastion of Islamism (Afghanistan) and liberated a second (Iraq) which puts the center of the conflict squarely within the Middle East, not in the US.

The rioting and demonstrations are an attempt to open a second front - one that exposes all of Europe to the kind of rioting seen in France for a month this past November.

UPDATE:
Rioters are tossing firebombs at the Austrian embassy in Iran. Such a lovely state of affairs in the Muslim world. Again, in a country where the totalitarian government dominates and controls the media along with demonstrations, this is another manifestation of the coordinated and purposeful attacks against Western countries. The Axis of Evil is certainly doing its hardest to instigate a major response to their provocations.

Meanwhile, Iran has also cut economic ties with Denmark. Yet another reason to go support the Danes.

And Vodkapundit came across a new blog that sheds yet more light on how this supposed spontaneous worldwide demonstration against the Danish cartoons was actually spurred by the Saudis during the haj.

And while the deaths of these pilgrims was a mere blip on the traditional western media's radar, it was a huge story in the Muslim world. Most of the pilgrims who were killed came from poorer countries such as Pakistan, where the Hajj is a very big story. Even the most objective news stories were suddenly casting Saudi Arabia in a very bad light and they decided to do something about it.

Their plan was to go on a major offensive against the Danish cartoons. The 350 pilgrims were killed on January 12 and soon after, Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons. The Saudi government asked for a formal apology from Denmark. When that was not forthcoming, they began calling for world-wide protests. After two weeks of this, the Libyans decided to close their embassy in Denmark. Then there was an attack on the Danish embassy in Indonesia. And that was followed by attacks on the embassies in Syria and then Lebanon.

And additional attacks in Iran.

UPDATE:
Imagery of Mohammed through the ages - via Michelle Malkin.

UPDATE:
Others blogging the rioting and violence spurred by the cartoons include: Gina Cobb, Gateway Pundit, The Moderate Voice, Roger L. Simon (who wonders about Syria's complicity in the whole course of events, Outside the Beltway, PunditGuy, PeakTalk, Something Awful, MarkLevinFan, AJ Strata, and Mark Levin himself posted some of the vile cartoons (more here) that the Arab world routinely publishes demeaning Jews and Christians on a regular basis. You'll need a shower after seeing some of these things.


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