Paxil for the Lot of You: Cartoons Don’t Kill, Idiocy Does

[Updated] Not a good week for the idea of peaceful coexistence with the undiagnosed and insane. It may be time to revisit the subject of secretly medicating city water supplies.

“We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews.” Fortunately, my blood is only half delicious.

“Riots in Pakistan spurred by the publication in Europe of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad spilled over to a South Korean transportation company in Peshawar on Wednesday. Protesters burned 17 buses belonging to Sammi Daewoo, injuring four company employees.” I’m sorry. I fail to see how Koreans have anything to do with what Danish newspapers print.

All over some cartoons.

Update 2/17: “A Pakistani cleric announced Friday a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew Prophet Muhammad, as thousands joined street protests and Denmark temporarily closed its embassy and advised its citizens to leave the country.” I’ll give a hundred bucks to the first person who smears a Pakistani cleric with lard and publishes the photos on the Internet. (I think this is my first fatwa, and I must say it’s a feeling of power that almost makes my existence seem consequential! How exciting!)

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Ziggy Freud says:

February 17, 2006 at 12:57 am

I’m sorry. I fail to see how Koreans have anything to do with what Danish newspapers print.

Um, well, you aren’t actually trying to find a rational explanation for near random animal-like behavior, are you?

Korean interests were attacked for no other reason than the fact that they were there, defiling the still-neolithic-and-proud-of-it Muslim homelands.

Hell, the whole region operates under the motto: “Bringing the Stone Age into the 21st Century!”

Any nation that lifts a finger to bring the light of civilization to the benighted devotees of the great Religion of Peace will be violently attacked eventually. Today was just Korea’s turn.

Kudos to the industrious Koreans for being there though, even if for no other reason than to turn a profit. Making money and being creative [rather than destructive] are important parts of the civilizing process that these folks need to learn. And I hope Korea makes a fine profit given the risks they are taking. God speed and get home soon.

I only wish Korea would learn to give the same sort of respect for foreign investors in Korea that they expect for themselves in other countries.

Burning a handful of busses is pretty minor in comparison to Korea’s unfair DFI taxation practices, anti-FTA self-immolations, and the ransacking the Seoul headquarters of the American Chamber of Commerce.
Mi-Hwa says:

February 17, 2006 at 7:14 am

The “blood of Jews” comment came from the Hamas website. The election victory of Hamas shows how President Bush’s plan to spread democracy in the Middle East is turning into a fiasco. Promoting democracy in the Middle East may end up promoting terrorism.
slim says:

February 17, 2006 at 8:15 am

Promoting democracy in the ROK helped bring about things like the Hankyoreh Sinmun and the Democratic Labor Party and even Mi-Hwa being able to expound her ideas or regurgitate those of others. There will always be a downside to challenging the status quo.
James J. Na says:

February 17, 2006 at 9:45 am

Democracy is only the means, not the end. Liberty is the end (see here).

As for this notion that bringing democracy to the Middle East will result in Islamization, perhaps this will help:

Some regional experts say that allowing “democracy” (or at least some semblance of popular election) will lead to empowering Islamists and thus create an unwelcome unintended consequence. That is not necessarily true. Such an outcome is a result of the U.S. and the West tacitly supporting non-Islamist “allied regimes” that are dictatorial and corrupt, leaving Islamists as the only “viable” electoral choice. As I wrote before in a column:

Before the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the two dominant governing ideologies in the Middle East were corrupt monarchism (Saudi Arabia and Iran) and repressive, socialist dictatorships (Iraq and Syria). Given the absence of any attractive ideology in the region, the appeal of religious purism harnessed to extremism turned out to be irresistible to the many disaffected, including those from privileged backgrounds.

Thus, success — or failure — in this war will not depend on whether we can conduct better passenger searches or kill terrorist bands. It will depend on whether we can help to establish a competing ideology — of democratic capitalism with Islamic characteristics — in the Middle East.

Indeed, if we could foster a clean, secular-democratic alternative, even at the expense of termporary diplomatic disadvantages, then the equation of “free elections = Islamist victory” in the Middle East would no longer hold. On the other hand, if we are to heed the advice of “paleo-cons” and continue to support nominally secular, anti-Islamist, but oppressive “allies” (“Who cares what they do to their own people? They are incapable of democracy anyway”) we will live the self-fulfilling prophesy of that equation, again and again.

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