Rage, rage, everywhere..

Rage is rampant. Rage by Muslims at certain YouTube videos, rage by Americans at a certain presidential candidates, rage by IB students at certain pieces of work called the Extended Essay.

For those who haven’t been completely into it for the last week (including me, I had to do some quick, nifty research for this article), here’s a fast run-down of a few things you should be somewhat aware of:

MUSLIM RAGE

Quick overview: Some guy in America made a movie called “Innocence of Muslims”, which was only showed to an American audience of less than 10 ages ago (or last year or something). This July, clips of approximately 14 minutes each were uploaded onto YouTube under the titles “The Real Life of Muhammad” and “Muhammad Movie Trailer”. I tried watching the videos for the sake of accurate reporting but couldn’t get through the first five minutes. They’re so incredibly badly made (and I’m not just talking script-wise here), it’s a wonder anybody at all is taking them seriously. Ryan Higa’s spoofs are better made and far more intelligent (especially this particular one of The Avengers). Muhammad is portrayed as “a womanizer, homosexual and child abuser”, and special mention for the donkey that was portrayed as “the first Muslim animal”. What amuses me even more is that newspapers have actually bothered passing reviews on the damned thing. I’ve already googled them, and I would highly recommend that you do not. Apparently the actors in the film were told they were shooting for some Egyptian movie set 2,000 years ago called “Desert Warrior”, and that the offensive dialogues were dubbed afterwards. My question is how they even took their movie seriously after seeing the (original) finished product. What’s been happening now, though, is that some Muslims have gotten wind of the video after it was aired on an Egyptian television channel. Most of the Arab world is in uproar and protests (both violent and peaceful) have been carried out everywhere. Here are a couple of “fun facts” regarding the recently dubbed ‘Arab Uprising’:

• Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, Iran, has increased the reward to $3.3 million for anyone who kills Salman Rushdie (who, by the way, has literally nothing to do with the video- he condemned it almost immediately).

• Protestors torched a KFC in Lebanon (everyone knows how KFC is the ultimate representation of those American capitalist scumbags)

• Protests held outside McDonalds in Saudi Arabia

On a more serious note, the video has been blocked in several countries and flags (American, of course) have been burnt everywhere. The obvious issue with this is the more violence that is sparked because of the video, the more the maker of the video feels justified by his actions. The media’s been absolutely feeding on this “Muslim Rage” (infamously coined by an article by Newsweek featuring, wait for it, angry Muslims- this was subsequently converted into an online joke that went viral). Some countries, as usual, aren’t helping one bit- Dutch politician Geert Wilders, for one, linked the video to his website, stating staunchly that “defending freedom of expression is the greatest good”. While his point about “violence not working” is fair enough, there are better ways to get across a point than linking the video to his website. On a lighter note, here are a couple of tweets that caught my eye #muslimrage

AMERICAN RAGE

Will a comment about 47% of Americans make Mitt Romney a 100% unsuitable to preside over the country? In a covertly recorded video published last Monday, Mitt Romney was heard saying 47% of Americans would “back Obama, no matter what” and that it wasn’t his job to worry about them- these are, apparently, the 47% that don’t pay income taxes. What does the media love as much as #muslimrage? #americanrage, apparently. There have been drastic claims that this will cost Romney the presidential race, he’s proved himself unworthy, he’s sealed his reputation as #1 moron, etc. etc. I’m no Romney fan- but sorry, no he hasn’t. This video doesn’t reveal anything spectacularly new about him. He’ll still probably lose to Obama, but not because of this video. This is because- and are you ready for it- most Americans don’t care about politics. Sure, there are two types of people in this world- democrats and republicans- but in America itself most (if not all) people know who they’re voting for. If anything, this video sealed the vote of the elderly whites who now see themselves as a class apart from the 47%. Maybe they should start a movement- we are the 53%. It’s okay though, as long as the media is getting their stories and Obama’s at talk shows denouncing the idiot that is Romney for his latest blunder (in his very, very long list of blunders), at least we got something entertaining out of this.

IB RAGE

Nothing much on this end from my side- hang in there, get off Facebook, start editing those Extended Essays. We’re almost through.

 -Lassie