Education Demands

Among Muslims in southern Thailand, there is a belief that the central government ignores them, mistreats them and generally doesn't like them. Thus the best hope for the beleagured Muslims is to succceed from Thailand and form a country governed by the righteous justice of the Koran and Sunna: a southern Thai-style Taliban, but with more curry and less facial hair.

While this feeling may not be wholly accurate, the central government there has hardly inspired confidence in its ability to get its message across to the Muslims there (witness the government's ill-fated attempt to drop 100,000 paper birds of peace on its southern-most province, a paper-cut nightmare for anyone unlucky enough to be under the C-130 when it flew overhead). In any case, it is strange that now, presumably for the world-wide attention such acts bring, some Muslim fanatics (crazy sons a'bitches in the vernacular of my youth) are cutting off people's heads to protest the lack of the Thai government's attention on the Muslims' education demands.

In the latest attack, a clothes salesman from northern Thailand was sitting in a coffee shop in the south of the country when some disgruntled Muslims (who probably have low self-esteem, according to Oprah and the latest CNN-USA TODAY-GALLUP poll of adults who give a damn about these things) came in, shot him twice, then cut off his head in front of the other coffee imbibers [Check please! -- ed]. They drove off on a motorcycle -- still clutching the head -- before chucking it on the side of the road some distance away from the crime scene.

If cutting off the heads of innocent people doesn't show the government that you are serious about education reform, that no child should be left behind, then I don't know what does. 

Oh, and last week in Brazil, during a prison riot, some inmates cut off the heads of five of their erstwhile brethren, before hiking them up on pikes over the wall for the onlookers to see. What in the name of Zawahiri is going on here? Is decapitation the new Black?