hamfisted political mutterings

"But the cartoons aren't the problem. They're a symptom of the problem." -douglas holgate

So what is the problem - why can't we get along?

It really rankles, no fuckit, it really insults me when bush, blair, howard - every blue suited red tied politician says its because 'they hate freedom' - they being 'terrorists'. That sounds like so much bullshit. Why would the average joe in the Middle East give a flying fuck about the political process of another country? It may because i'm pretty much apolitical - but i don't really - except in one case, when they are making decisions that impact on my way of life.
That's pretty much the same for everyone - people generally fight back when they or their loved ones get put into a situation where their lives are harmed.
So why are the people of the middle east pissed at us (us being western society)?

Well to me, - there was the crusades, then the monguls had a go, the british thought carving the place up into countries may be a bit of alright and now the americans aggresive expansionist foriegn policy are sticking their fat fingers into the oil rich pie. For a really long time Arabs haven't had a chance to dictate their own terms or lives without interference from outside forces. When they did, they were a really progressive advanced culture. Even with the recent sunni vs shiite conflict, it doesn't seem like its a reflection of Islam because many African countries have the same amount of turmoil and strife. Of course in both cases, it doesn't help that both cultures (yeah its abit simplistic to say african or arab culture but - me making point, you give me slack) are tribalised and can be manipulated to start shit.
So I'm not surprised that the US' support of Israel leads so much trouble. You have a large Superpower supporting a brutal country on land that was essentially stolen from others.
Not only politically but since WW2 the West has been culturally dominant around the world - which like in the case of the Danish cartoons can cause some hostility. I'm not a religious scholar but it seems the the religion of Islam boils down to 2 aspects; modesty and duty. Modesty can be seen in the way Muslim's look after invited guests, the hajib essentially stops vanity and women being viewed as sexual objects and men trimming their beards kind of distracts guys caring about their appearance and allows people to get on with important things. Duty is stuff like praying 5 times and day, fasting during ramadan and travelling to Mecca. Muslims are compelled to do these things and its a Hardcore undertaking.
Western culture is anything but modest nor does it really adhere to much duty. Especially with baby boomers its all about 'me' and leisure and sex and money. I don't have anything against that, but i'm not muslim. Beyonce selling pepsi doesn't offend me, listening to 50 cent asking for a blow job makes me wanna dance, i accept advertsing and i wanna make money. But that's not the aim of everyone and forcing it on other people by playing on people's greed (in the case of middle eastern businesses and media) is going to piss people off. When you offend people you make them angry.

it would be simpler if US business and government stopped trying to expand markets into places who aren't willing or ready to accept the products and inherent values they are trying to sell. And fuck don't get me started about the whole yahoo/google pandering to chinese business/government because that's grossly immoral.

The idea that democracy can be forced on a people is just dumb.