20060207,01

Get It Try It

The face of insanity.



Once upon a time it was fourteen year old kings that caused the most trouble. Then Lenin came along and said working class people had no reason to fight their own kind. Then Hitler came along and turned everything upside down for a while. Then General Dow Jones started the Cold War and Mikail Gorbachev had to end it.

Then we got the terrorists.

The current furore in the middle east is ostensibly not government sponsored. The Lebanese police are hard at it, arresting idiots by the truckload. In other middle east countries the same thing is happening. Government representatives resign from office after their failure to stop the bloodshed and destruction.

This isn't a 'powers that be' war. This is people. That's the worst kind.

Curious that all the posters the demonstrators are carrying are all identical and properly printed. Quite the expense in these poverty stricken countries. Maybe they have a phone number you can call to order one. Maybe the whole thing was carefully organised. Wouldn't that be something. DUH.

This one is between governments everywhere - including those in the middle east - and people stirred out of control. Innocent people are getting hurt - mostly those in the middle east for now. The suspicion is that Syria's dictator Bashar Assad is behind most of it, but the fact remains these people could be so stirred so easily.

It's actually acts of aggression, one middle east country against the other. Buses of Syrians were transported to Lebanon where they destroyed Lebanese property. It's tantamount to an act of war, an aggressive act by one country against another.

The secular but dictatorial government of Syria is in a crisis. They've occupied Lebanon for over a quarter of a century and had to finally pull out last year. It's not good times to be Bashar Assad. So all fingers point in his direction. Yet if he caused this mess, he didn't do it alone.

Fanaticism: what an exciting lifestyle. Beats made for television movies any day. Especially when you don't have a lot of made for television movies.

A man in Århus Denmark has filed a police complaint against the newspaper who published the Mohammed cartoons. They've caused this whole mess, stated Jörgen Hansen. This is true, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the middle east is bursting at the seams with violence hungry psycho-weirdos. And it doesn's matter either that JP were trying to make a point which is now proven in the classic 'QED' manner - that violence is in fact the only language some people understand.

It's one thing to cause someone to be offended; it's another to cause those who perpetrate fanaticism and violence to be criticised; it's quite another how those offended react. JP caused no bloodshed - they were protesting it. The Danes didn't line their streets, burn flags, and storm embassies, throwing fire bombs through the windows. They had every reason to feel angry enough, but that isn't the Danish way. Cartoons and editorials is the way they choose. A civilised secular way.

Art and criticism on the one hand, violence and more violence on the other. Tough decision. And do we learn anything we can use in our ongoing study of comparative cultures through this? There's a head scratcher if there ever was one. DUH.

And they weren't cartoons anyway. The press are calling them cartoons but they weren't. They were caricatures. A caricature is a critical cartoon. Those responsible for expressing their political opinions through caricatures obviously should be blown into a million pieces. We can't have such liberal attitudes in our societies. Burn their embassies. Let's have fun. Let's use this opportunity for all it's worth. Let's go nuts for a while - in our culture it's necessary sociological hygiene to do so from time to time - and kill and destroy. It clears the desert air.

Next week we'll finally get cable and we can watch all those Baywatch reruns, so we'd better hurry. Let's work up an appetite and get down to McDonalds and buy some super-sizers and take home to the telly.

Expressen's Mats Larsson says:

'Nothing should be more sacred than life itself. Both islam and christianity are religions that accent the importance of forgiveness. It's high time we saw a little more of that commodity.'

Rose coloured glasses are a big thing up there in the north of Europe.