Oh My A***h!

Holy crap. I mean I'm all about seeing through another man's eyes, walking a mile in his shoes, etc, but this is pretty freaking retarded.

The Beeb reports that a British woman teaching at a school in Sudan has been arrested. No, she didn't sleep with a student. No, she didn't draw a cartoon of Muhammed/Mohammed/wossisname taking it in the pooper, or even picking a flower. She didn't try to convert people to another religion. She, um, named a teddy bear. No... WAIT! She didn't even do that. She allowed her students, 6 and 7 year old children, to name a teddy bear after the great prophet. No... WAIT! She didn't even do that. She allowed them to name it Mu/Mo/Me/Mi/Mahommed... reportedly a popular name in them thare parts. So she's possibly going to be sentenced to lashes or six months in jail or a fine.

Holy crap that is dumb. I hate to be culturally insensitive, but COME ON! I mean, the word is out on that alleged harlot over there in the land of oil (trans: Saudi Arabia), that she was having an affair and all that. So, lashes for infidelity works for me more than lashes for being-with-a-non-familial-male. It wouldn't be my punishment of choice, but I identify with a punishment being... well... you know... being deserved. That's a personal call on my part--others are more tolerant of infidelity and all that jazz, as is their right. I'll side with, you know, the rest of the world and all them, by saying that lashes are a little bit excessive. But I digress.

Cultural insensitivity: my thoughts range from nuke-them-all-to-hell to live-and-let-live. You will find conspicuously absent from that list the live-and-let-them-nuke-us-all-to-hell mindset. The contest of global domination that is raging and/or sputtering on between religions, sects, denominations, et. al. is kind of sickening. Well, the raging part is. The sputtering is more my flavor. I personally do not care to tell you what my specific beliefs are, as is my right. It's a right I wish a lot more people would exercise these days. There's be a lot less of that raging crap. I'm insensitive to cultures that are insensitive to me. If there's not at least a good chunk of the live-and-let-live ideal in a cultural identity, well then it can just go rot.

There has to be tolerance. We DO all have to get along, to one degree or another. Right now in the great ol' United States of America we're getting along to the tune of the $$$ we see. There are cultural blocs, but they have fuzzy edges and overlap with a great many other blocs. One can't ignore the fact that we draw unity from those overlaps as well. Post September 11th we (mostly) all fit into the 'God, Bless the USA and Damn the Terrorists' bloc so we (mostly) all got along really (mostly) well. That bloc isn't as big as it used to be, by a long shot, and has fragmented into the unconditional and a million different degrees of conditional. But still, whether you hate Hilary or Rudy, the donkey or the elephant, you're still (mostly) American.

Nobody's got it perfect. The UN's Declaration of Human Rights is noble enough, but doesn't see enough practice these days, at home or abroad. The UN OFFICIALLY supports tolerance and all that jazz, but it finds itself busy with genocide and a plethora of other crimes against humanity. The more fanatical of God's followers out there are working hard to ensure there's more bedlam around the corner to consume the time and resources of the would-be good guys of the particular moment.
On top of that, as long as there's oil in southwest Asia (and in Russia), and cheap labor and a hunger for raw materials in China there will be too many nefarious types tying the hands of the same erstwhile do-gooders, preventing them from trying to better the human condition on a global scale. It's hopeless and there's hope. Depends on which side of the coffee mug you drink from. As long as your coffee mug doesn't have a teddy bear with any possibly remotely offensive name on it.

I always liked Paddington. Does that translate into Arabic?

-S.W. America