Wind

Syria’s security forces are shooting at demonstrators. People killed. The Yemeni president is throwing new offers on the table to calm his people’s fury. People killed. Bahrain is still clamping down on any dissent. People jailed. Citizens in Egypt are back on the street asking for harsh punishment for former president Mubarak. Fresh protests in Tunisia to demand faster reform after the Tunisians toppled their president some months ago. Frustrations growing in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Diplomatic and military stalemate in Libya, while Gadaffi uses cluster bombs in the town of Misrata. Death toll mounting. The wind of change is still blowing across the Middle East.

Meanwhile soldiers in Africa’s tiny nation of Burkina Faso are on the rampage. They want more money. Uganda’s opposition leader arrested three times in one week. Mad Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe utters new insanity towards the West. The stalemate in Ivory Coast is broken but the body count keeps rising. Religious-inspired riots in Nigeria after the elections. Arrests and killings. South African police shoots from close range at an unarmed protestor and then beat him to dead. In front of the TV cameras. The man was part of a group of citizens demanding clean water and electricity.

More aftershocks in Japan. The misery never ends.

The world seems angry and in turmoil. Human behaviour is the match on the powder line.

Meanwhile it seems that trying to land somewhere at an airport across the USA after hours has become a dangerous mission. More and more reports of traffic controllers deeply asleep on the job. Or occupied with entertaining themselves instead of keeping the sky safe. One guy told a pilot to keep circling for a bit cause he was watching a Samuel L. Jackson movie. Kick that!

Taking a plane in the US might be risky business, but being a small kid and going to school seems also pretty dangerous territory. Three kids at a school in Texas were injured when a handgun went of accidentally. Shit happens. But what is really alarming is that the gun was brought to school by a 6-year old! Kick that. How does a 6-year old get hold of a gun?

It’s a crazy world out there. Maybe the kid wanted to keep up the reputation of Texas as a gun loving state.

Human behaviour is a finger on the trigger.

Back to the sandpits. Syria lifted its 50-year old state of emergency. What ongoing and growing public rage can do! The revolution will be televised. The family-dictatorship in Damascus kept the terror reign going for too long. And a state of emergency is the perfect trick from the mad ruler’s handbook to keep opponents in jail (and rot away in silence); media under tight control; keep the army generals happy through slash funds and stolen tax money; and install a general system of fear to keep the people silent and oppressed.

The winds of rage across the Middle east - started by the suicide of the Tunisian vegetable seller - have not left Syria untouched. Many dictators are so arrogant and so far away from reality that they think ‘it’ will not happen in their country. Till the wind picks up and the anger boils over. The Tunisian uprising have shown the people living under dictators’ boots that enough is enough and people power can achieve change. Rage against the machine of state control and state terror.

Not that all change will be positive and a direct path to solid democracy and all out freedom. The revolution has many pitfalls and booby traps. But it has to start somewhere one day to make at least change possible. The dictators and the looters of the state coffers must just recognize and realise that it can happen in their country too.

Living in decadent luxury, behind high walls and surrounded by men armed to the teeth. Hookers deluxe and cases of Johnny Walker Blue Label. Swiss bank accounts and holiday homes in France and Beverly Hills. Shopping sprees in Dubai and London. Ferraris and Masseratis. Fat as overweight pigs. But now realizing that the end of all this could just be around the corner. Be aware!

Burn the palace down. Raise it to the ground. Justice for their crimes. Recover stolen state funds. Resist. Revolt.

Listen for the wind and hear the roaming anger.

Human behaviour can be caged for long but nor for an eternity.

Another revolution is happening. More silent. Less deadly. Another one that some leaders many years ago thought would never happen. They were so confident back then that their chosen path was the right one and the one till eternity.

But winds blow and things change. And monuments come crumbling down. Stone by stone.
Fidel Castro has fully retired. Democracy is still a dream in Cuba as his brother took over the reins. But the communist dogma is crumbling. Step by step. Private ownership is soon possible in Cuba. Kick that. The ultimate sin of capitalism. Ownership! Have a rum and a cigar to celebrate that...

Throw out. The Foo Fighters have done it again. “Wasting Light” is their newest album and rocks it hard as we are used from the foos. And for the track “White Limo” the band made a video with a cameo appearance by Lemmy from Motorhead. That’s serious. And to keep supporting (struggling) local record stores Foo Fighters also just released “Medium Rare”, an album with covers. A special edition to mark worldwide record store day (just passed). So the foos ain’t standing still....

C -Ya

collateral – April 2011