'Tell me, Lord, why was I born with this dark skin?'
And God answers:
'Because, child, the harsh sun of Africa would burn weak fair skin.'
The man asks again:
'Tell me, Lord, why was I born with this rough, wiry hair?'
'Because, child, the harsh sun of Africa would burn weak soft hair.'
And the man finally asks:
'Tell me, Lord, if that is the case, why was I born in Minnesota?'
The Finnish Muslim party (the what now?) has apparently posted an open letter on their website (designed circa 1998), addressed to the Estonian embassy. They are, apparently, quite angry about Estonia's presence in Iraq. (Nevermind that Estonia was not part of the conquering force, and only sent troops once the UN mandate came through, based on the invitation of the Iraqi government, to help out with peacekeeping.) They call it an affront to the Muslim world and, presumably, threaten vengeance. I don't know enough Finnish to read the website myself - anyone care to comment? Stockholm_slender?
Now, I've said it before and I will easily say it again: there is no great moral reason for Estonian troops to be in Iraq. War zone deployments cannot include conscripts, only volunteering contract soldiers; and at the end of the day we kept a platoon in Iraq for all these years in exchange for inclusion in the US visa waiver program - which the Bush administration has seemingly pulled off in its dying hours. (As much as I hate the Bush clique, they have managed to get one or two things done in foreign policy. I'm told Bush is genuinely, deservedly well-liked in Africa, for the massive amounts of aid the US has pumped into it. Well, maybe not Somalia.) We may as well pull out on November 8th.
However, the Finnish Muslim party can sit and spin. I realize full well that it's a terribly minor fringe group that does not deserve the publicity they're getting from getting their preposterous statements in the mainstream press, or whatever additional exposure they get from me talking about them; but I believe it is my duty, as a citizen and as a blogger, to take the piss out of these people. Finland has had its share of tragedy, but a militant Muslim cell in Espoo is a joke. We are a sovereign nation, we have repeatedly re-elected parties that have chosen to keep soldiers in Iraq, it has never been a serious issue (even for the bleeding-heart club of the Social Democrats and Strandberg), and we do not give a flying fuck about the opinion of a bunch of moose-herding geeks so bludgeoned by their nation's safety net that they have lost all capacity for independent thought or action. Sod off.
Bonus image: Mullah Tammi, the leader of the Finnish Muslim Party. With the best beard in the world, he'll still be a Jukka.
5 comments:
I love how the authors of this piece seem to see the Iraq War as a NATO operation. That's ... not quite the way I remember it.
Weirdos...
Objection! As hard to accept as it is, Bush has been dismal without redemption. Don't be taken in by the recent cynical ploy to try to shift the focus to Africa.
On the face of it, yes, aid to Africa has quadrupled. I don't know what programmes has been cut to provide the aid, and why Americans aren't getting universal health care, but let's leave that aside for now.
A lot of the aid is food aid, and even this is not exactly based on altruism. There is a requirement (true, from way before Bush) that American food aid be produced and delivered by the US, instead of buying it from, say, local farmers in Africa and relying on a nutritious cheap fortified peanut paste that is used by Medecins sans Frontieres.
If US farmers and shipping companies don't get the terms they demand, Mpho doesn't eat.
As far as the much of the rest of the aid goes, there are the usual Bushie strings attached -- faith-based groups get favoured, small print allows American companies to control public utilities and natural resources.
Ingrained in Bush's "soft power in Africa" is the same kind of hamhanded misreading of traditional cultures and lifestyles that made Iraq such a disaster.
I'm not even going to get into the AIDS prevention programme, which teaches that abstinence is the (only) way.
As weird as they are, I would gladly have Bush award the Africa programmes contract to the Muslim party of Finland. It would probably be an improvement.
Oh dear. They are quite a new thing and have not participated in any elections yet. I could not see much anything besides the call to boycott Estonian products. I don't think the market for Viru Valge will collapse though. The programme seems to oppose any progress that has happened in Finland this side of the Middle Ages. What next one wonders...
Heh, you've got to love those guys. The Finnish Muslim party is a collection of about ten Finnish converts to Islam who apparently found all available Christian fundamentalists too liberal for their tastes, so they started their own thing. They've been pretty vocal, which is of course not a reason to pay any attention to them, but they are carrying on our proud tradition of whack jobs, filling the void left by the passing away of the leader of the Finnish National Socialist Party and Satanist Pekka Siitoin. Needless to say both the traditional Finnish Muslim community (mostly Tatars whose ancestors emigrated from Russia during the 19th century), as well as those of the more recent arrivals, do not want to have anything to do with these idiots.
-alip
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