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A friend of mine, Karmus, made a comment to my earlier, short, posting Happy Independence Day!, that I wanted to reply to.

His full comment goes:

“I congratulate the fact that the Americans actually managed to separate themselves from the UK back in the days, because they wanted to be FREE, but you forget that the U.S. is a country built upon the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (the Indian people). Therefore I see no reason to praise this terror regime murdering millions of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore it’s economic and imperialistic world policies are draining the global climate of the world. USA is a catastrophic (in Danish: ’sminket lig’) superpower, having the world’s second highest social inequalities between the rich and poor.”

As several points are made, I’m gonna do one at a time.

“I congratulate the fact that the Americans actually managed to separate themselves from the UK back in the days, because they wanted to be FREE, but you forget that the U.S. is a country built upon the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (the Indian people). Therefore I see no reason to praise this terror regime murdering millions of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

No, I actually have not forgotten that. I know that darn well. However, what do you want me to do? Bring them back to life, beside the fact that nobody in the world have the ability to do so? Also, if you reread my posting, you’ll notice that it’s actually not a praise of the US government, it’s me saying “Happy Independence Day!” to the Americans who might be reading this blog. If I said “Merry Christmas!” to a former classmate of mine, who’s a very religious Christian (Borderline fundamentalist), would I then be praising the murder of 90% of the Indian population in Mexico by the Spanish settlers? If I said “Happy Eid” to a friend of mine who’s a Muslim, would I be praising Iran’s regime? And lastly, this is my favorite actually, if I sent a greeting to some of my family members in Japan, on the occasion of National Foundation Day, which is “a national holiday in Japan celebrated annually on February 11. On this day, Japanese celebrate the founding of the nation and the imperial line by its mythical first emperor, Jimmu, who established his capital in Yamato” would I be praising Imperial Japan (1968 – 1945) and “forgetting” the atrocities it committed during World War II against more than 30 million people in Asia?

“Furthermore it’s economic and imperialistic world policies are draining the global climate of the world. USA is a catastrophic (in Danish: ’sminket lig’) superpower, having the world’s second highest social inequalities between the rich and poor.”

While I agree with some of what you’re saying, I refuse to demonize average people of a country for something their government is doing. What about all the people in Nazi Germany, who weren’t nazis? Are they just as evil as the people who poured Zyklon.B gas into the gas chambers of Auchswitz? You decide for yourself!

In light of the rescue of Íngrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate, last week on July 2nd, DR2 (A Danish TV channel) showed a documentary about her political campaigning and following kidnapping by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC as they are better known. FARC are notorious for their kidnapping of thousands of people, and holding them for random or prisoner exchange.

I have read off and on about FARC, and after watching this documentary, I looked through a few more details. What I can already conclude, is that what they are is a big farce!
Their full name, in English, is Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, OK, I got a big problem with the last part of this name. These guys are “a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization”, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FARC), which does fall under the umbrella of socialism. There’s a nice quote, and I apologize in advance to the person who came up with it that I can’t credit them for it (Because I don’t know his/her name), “All communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communists”, which I am glad to say that I could not agree more with!
The reason I identify myself with socialism, is because I believe a country is it’s people, and a government is obligated to listen to the people, and represent their best interests. I also believe, that socialism must go together with a true democracy (I think the democracy we have here in Denmark is one of the best in the world, certainly not perfect, but nonetheless one of the best ones) to fullfill this obligation. Any person who claims to be a socialist, who would reject this is nothing but a hypocrite if you ask me. What FARC represents, what FARC have done for decades now represents nothing but …. TERRORISM!!!
These guys have done nothing but promote violence, murder, kidnapping, and worst of all, tormented the people they ludicrously claim to represent (Their full name is enough reference for such a claim). This is high treason against the people, if you ask me!

In the words of Adam Beach, in the role of Ira Hayes in the movie Flags of Our Fathers, “You know, I think this whole damn thing is a farce, if you ask me.”

Before I say anything, let me warn you that while writing this, I am about to explode out of frustration and anger.

In my opinion, the responsibility of a government is to insure it’s people’s well being, and to work in the people’s best interests. But look at what is happening out there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHar0wJn4VA.
This military junta in Burma is doing, what I would consider high treasonous against it’s people. It is not caring one bit about their lives and well being, and simple letting them die, by preventing aid from coming in as fast as possible. I consider this indirect genocide, because by not allowing aid to come in, they are letting people die. So it makes no difference that they aren’t killing people themselves, because the result is the same, oh and they actually were killing their own people only months ago!!
This has been going on since the cyclone happened at the beginning of this month.

We already know this government does not serve the people, it serves it’s own greed and corruption. We saw this during the pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks some months back. And for over a decade now, they have gone against the wishes of the people and prevented Aung San Suu Kyi‘s party, National League for Democracy, to form a government, despite the fact that they were elected by the people to govern. And for several decades they have repressed the people.

The military junta’s mouth-piece media outlet, is saying that they won’t allow American, British and French warships loaded with aid supplies to bring that to the people who need it, because that assisted “comes with strings attached”, in the form of an American invasion to take control of their oil resources etc. etc.

Alright, ENOUGH!!! of this nonsense! If they’re afraid of an invasion, that’s exactly what we, the international community, should give them! UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated that he is “frustrated” (Source: UN Chief Criticizes Burma’s ‘Slow’ Response to Cyclone) with the military junta’s unwillingness to let aid come in. The UN is obviously useless in this case, thanks to a hopelessly old and crusty system of decision making, because Russia and China is obviously gonna veto any proposal of military action against the military junta, that the US, UK or France might come up with.

The article I linked to above mentions that the US already have four warships stationed outside of Burma, with aid supplies and a thousand US marines. It also means that ships from Great Britain and France are also there. Well, I think the right thing to do right now is to bring in armed warships, and escort that aid to the devastated areas. Bring in fighter jets if needed to make sure the aid gets to the people who need it. If the military junta attempts to fight such efforts, I think they should be overthrown militarily, and the people responsible for the violent repression of the peaceful demonstrations a few months back, and the people responsible for blocking aid from coming in (These are like the same bastards) should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.

And to those of you who might say “Ohh no, if you do that this will turn into another Afghanistan!”, well, let’s lay the scenario than the UN or NATO takes military action, and successfully removes the military junta from power, and take control of their armed forces (And NOT disbanding it, which is what really made Iraq go down the gutter), at this point, I think Burma is a very different beast to deal with than Afghanistan. One, in my opinion, very good argument is that it’s a largely Buddhist country, okay. Theravada Buddhism (Which is what you find in Burma) advocates dialog and non-violence, so I don’t think you would have influential spiritual leaders saying “My follows go fight those evil crusaders!” or whatever. On top of that, remember the big-ass protests against the repressive military regime? There’s clearly resentment towards the military junta, but like Poland during the cold war, it’s next to impossible to get rid of such a regime, through violent means, when you’re surrounded by a large military. In Burma’s case, any rebellion would be up against, I mentioned it earlier, a military with over 500,000 available troops (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_Military), or in the example of Poland, the Solidarity movement in Poland (Which persued non-violent means to fight the Soviet regime) was surrounded by 200,000 Red Army troops armed to the teeth … yeah, good luck fighting against that with violence.
Also, another contrast to Afghanistan is that if you got rid of the military junta, there already are people, who are qualified and EVEN freaking elected by the people to govern!! Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won 392 out of 492 seats during the 1990 parliamentary elections (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_League_for_Democracy), yet the military junta never allowed them to form a government. This is a huge-ass contrast to Afghanistan, for which the operation itself was extremely poorly done, and it was non-obvious what to do after that. Of course, military action against the military junta in Burma could be poorly done as well, but if we can wait weeks not doing anything, I think it’s relatively trivial to get some aid in by escorting the carrying vessels by warships or fighter planes, and then spending sometime to potentially plan a fullscale invasion.

I always love when a big pissing match, over something related to religion comes up, because the reactions from governments, and the small, vocal amount of people who protest or do stupid things, just make such great comedy! Not that they’re directly funny, but they’re just so ridiculously stupid that it’s funny! The source for all the following statements by people from various governments, is this article, UN chief condemns anti-Islam film, on BBC News.

Get this for instance:

“Pakistan said it told the Dutch ambassador that it was incumbent on the Netherlands to prosecute Mr Wilders for defamation and deliberately hurting Muslim sentiments, the official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported.”

Ah, great one to start out with! If they had said that to me (And they essentially did two years ago with the pissing match over the drawings of the prophet Muhammed), my reactions would be something along the lines of: Ummmm, OK? Dude, have you heard about this small concept, which be very alien to you, called freedom of expression? It’s a small concept that we in the west advocate. Anyway, anything else? OK good, then stick it in your asses!

Here’s another one that is less stupid-funny, but just simply stupid:

“The world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, also condemned the film, saying it was “misleading and full of racism”.”

OK guys, in case you folks in Indonesia skipped out on school, “racism” means:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

Source: Britannica Online Encyclopedia – Definition of racism.

I have watched Geert Wilders film (If you want to see it, here’s you go: Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders’ film about the Quran (English) ), and going by the above definition, I can find absolutely no traces of racism in it. So to the folks in Indonesia who see “racism” in it, get a dictionary, go to school and get a life!

Here’s one that I think is self-defeating:

“The foreign ministry in Bangladesh issued a statement calling the film “unwarranted” and “mindless”.”

Dudes, if you think something is mindless, please just keep quiet and ignore it, the fact that you bother saying that you think the film is mindless, is mindless!.

And to wrap up, here’s the usual, inevitable and retarded statement from Iran (They must have a book full of these by now …):

“Iran said it was blasphemous, anti-Islamic and heinous – a sign it said of deep hatred felt by Westerners towards Muslims.”

HA! What a surprise, Iran calling something critic of their religion, … blasphemous! … of all the words in the world! Can’t you losers be more creative! Come on!
You know, I think a staunch, zealot lesbian (I have nothing against homosexuality, yeah, I said it, damn it!) would see my dick as blasphemous against her beloved womanhood!

Oh, and Mr. Ahmadinejad … regarding Westerners hating Muslims, please cut the fucking shit! We don’t hate Muslims (In fact a person I consider a true friend is a Muslim, so there!), we just don’t like fundamentalist, facist extremists like you sir.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders, released his Islam-critic short-film Fitna, on the Internet earlier today. I finished watching it about an hour ago, and I just watched a TV debate about the film. One of the people on there, essentially called it a very very mediocre clip show. I won’t go so far as to call it very very mediocre, but it’s definitely a clipshow and not that great a clipshow.

OK, so I’ve seen the film, watched some debates, and thought a little bit about it. So what do I think?

People will probably accuse Geert Wilders for inciting hate or racism (You’re an idiot if you see racism in what he says!), however I don’t quite agree. Based on interviews with him that i have watched, I’d say he simply demonstrates how dangerous the Islamic ideology is, when it’s interpreted literally, which a fairly vocal minority seems to do. An argument against the film, which I heard on TV, was that the verse of the Quran being show are taken out of context. But you know, THAT is irrelevant, the fact that hateful words are in there, makes it dangerous, I have read other sources for awful verses in the Quran, so Geert Wilders is not making this up. I don’t really care whether Geert Wilders is taking things out of context, because saying that you should kill an enemy, is definitely violent words no matter how you shape it. So I agree with Wilders that the Quran is a dangerous book, because it does have violent messages that can interpreted, and ARE being interpreted as to “I should do something violent, against XYTZ person, if they do ABC, because the Quran tells me to!”. When you interpret the Quran like that, well you almost certainly become a an extremist terrorist.

So do I think the Quran is a dangerous book? Yes! Should it be banned? No. I don’t support limiting freedom of speech and expression in ether way, unless specific death threats are directly being made.

Now, I don’t want this to sound like I am speaking against Islam, but I am not really (You can apply everything I have said here to the bible of Judaism and Christianity as well), what I’m speaking against is violence in religions.

I am a fairly staunch atheist, and I believe the bible is very bad as well. One of my classmates, who once stated that he himself would probably be classified as Christian fundamentalist (Which I could only shake my head about), argued that that was just the Old Testament. But that’s really bullshit argument, because if the Old Testament is irrelevant, the why the fuck is it included in that darn book!?!?! People would say that Genesis, as described in the Old Testament needs to be taken literally (Even though the bible itself contains two different versions of it), but then turn around and say that other parts of the Old Testament are irrelevant, are being extremely hypocritical in my opinion.