Monday, August 29, 2011

Foremost on my Mind: Norway and Somalia

Two countries are in the news these days, for reasons that are quite terrifying. And funny enough, neither one ends with the letters "...-AN" or "...-STAN." There's enough bad news coming out of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but I'll Beck, Cooper, and Grace deal with it.

Can you spell N-O-R-W-A-Y and S-O-M-A-L-I-A?

One may be hard-pressed to find two more diverse nations on this poor planet. Let me count the ways: white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, versus black everything; cold, with a mountainous terrain, versus hot and a desert topography. I suppose I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

They were both catapulted into the news last week when a madman let loose his venom against immigrants—Muslim immigrants, to be be precise—who were invading Western Europe, and destroying its collective, centuries-old culture. Muslim immigrants from places like, rather ironically, Somalia.

And then there is Somalia: The land of the lawless fighter, the land of the reckless pirate—pirates who have dozens of ships under their control, as they await countries all over the world to pay a king's ransom (or would that be a sheik's?) for the people and the things they have stolen.

And now it is the land of one of the world's worst droughts in recent history. They say that thousands are dying every day because of a lack, well, of everything. Foreign aid is available, but those conducting the goods to the famine-stricken masses are being held up (literally) by the brigands of the sand.

On the one hand, a white-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed national goes berserk and murders scores (the count is still up in the air at the time of this column) of innocent, vulnerable youth. Youth that had come to a new land--and on that day, an island camp-- with their parents, from every war-torn country in the world, trying to get away from the chaos and craziness that marked countries like Somalia (before its current catastrophe)--only to get butchered by a misguided zealot for a lost cause.

On the other hand, if Somalia's past lunacy wasn't enough, the anarchists who helped perpetuate
Somalia's status as one of the world's poorest nation, are now forbidding Western countries from providing food and water for their people. The 2.2 million starving refugees are behind a human wall of fanatical Islamists.

The Nut of Norway decried the Muslims that have infiltrated Western Europe, so he murders their children as they played and chilled. He should be persecuted to the full extent of the law, no doubt about that. Yet in the same news briefs, we read about the fruit of Islam that he railed against, as it turns against its own people—innocent, vulnerable people (not unlike the kids at the island camp)—by forbidding the West from helping them.

I wonder if anyone can answer a couple of questions for me. One, why is it that so-called Christian countries, such as Britain, the USA, and Canada, come to the aid of Muslim countries, crises after crises? With all their wealth and power and goods, where are the fellow-Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, in this time of need? If the West is so full of godless infidels, why are they the first to show up in a time of national and international need?

The second question has to do with terminology, namely, Why was the word "Christian" linked with the Norway situation, yet not linked with the Somalia one? At one point, the young man was deemed a "Christian fundamentalist," though that has since been dropped. By his own admission, he claims to be a Darwinist, whatever that is.

So, where are the media reports about linking the Christian response (or, better, the non-Christian unresponse) to Somalia? As horrific as the Norway massacre was, there should be equal place for what is happening in Somalia. There's a greater link between these two nations than meets the eye. Among them, innocent, vulnerable people do not deserve to die, either by the hand of a mentally-deranged fanatic or by the hand of a, well, mentally-deranged fanatic.

If there is supposed to be a Christian connection, however, please place it in the right country.

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