Sweden just witnessed its first suicide bombing just a few days ago. Luckily the damage was minimal, as was the loss of life. Of course an event like this have scared people and there’s a lot of debate going on — and of course it has fuelled the fire for ‘nationalistic’ (read: racist) party the Sweden Democrats and their ‘nationalistic’ (read: racist) members and supporters as well as other people opposed to immigration in Sweden.
A friend of mine posed some statistics on her Facebook profile, not sure where the numbers come from so I won’t vouch for their complete accuracy. Either way, these numbers show something else than what the racist, anti-islamist and immigration-unfriendly people want us to believe.
According to Europol’s statistics over terroristic acts from 2006 – 2009, Islamic groups account for 0.34% of incidents and Right Wing, Ethno-Nationalist and Separatist account for 90.17% of attacks.
That’s interesting! Sweden Democrats! There you have it, you are right wing — and therefore part of the group that are more of a threat to European society than islamist groups. More reading here.
I think that most people who know me knows that I love music of many kinds. I like listening to music and I did actually use to play music in my teens (although I was never anywhere close to being a virtuoso by any means). With that said, I usually don’t delve that deep into the structure and composition of the music or philosophise about / analyse the meaning of the lyrics that much. I can fully appreciate that doing so may increase the whole experience for some, but it’s just something that I don’t do very often.
One of the music genres that I have been into, of varying degree, since my early teens is Death Metal. I know that it’s definitely a genre that is not for everyone. However, I do think it is sad that the whole genre (and variations thereof) is discounted by so many as being “just growling and mindless noise” and that the genre is solely based on “evil” and shock value. On the whole though, a significant number of artists in this genre of music are excellent musicians and lyricists. Many of them are probably even better musicians than some classically trained orchestra musicians. The lyrics, in many cases, are actually deep and full of meaning. It’s not just gore and killing, but of course I’m not denying that gore and violence is a very common topic in the genre.
I would probably be the worst music critic of all time, because I find it hard to put a finger on why I like and don’t like certain genres, songs or artists. I either like it, or I don’t — I almost never have a way of motivating the reason for my liking or disliking. As with most things, there are exceptions of course… which leads me to what prompted me to ramble on about this subject…
One Death Metal act that I have liked ever since I listened to them for the first time is the band Death (yup, for those not in the know — that is the name of the band). Sadly enough, these dudes are not around anymore, other than in the record collections of their fans, since the singer, guitarist and general backbone of the band passed away a few years back.
A song that perfectly highlights what I mean by death metal, as a genre, actually not being devoid from substance or meaning is the song ‘Spiritual Healing’ from the album of the same name. The lyrics rather perfectly pinpoints some of my feelings towards religion in general.
Always locking the doors to your mind Escaping the reality that surrounds you Using faith as an excuse to kill A sick way of life is now revealed
All the prayers in the world can’t help you now A killer, a taker of life is what you are
Speak no more lies It’s your turn to die
Preach the good word Speak no more, prepare to burn A justified torture? From this may others learn
The life you took, a holy death, a grave mistake No changing your mind, your life you should pay
Practice what you preach Your loved one is now deceased Knowledge is at our hands Never to understand
Spiritual Healing
Blinded by the twisted ways you live Kill for religion, will the lord forgive? Idiocy has stricken your mind A real life hell you will find
So, I walked down Swan Street today and noticed a dude laying on the ground. 10+ people just walked straight past, they didn’t even glance at him. As I approached the poor fella I noticed that the dude was bleeding from his face and seemed to not be in the best shape, so I stopped to ask if he was all right and if I could help somehow.
Turns out the dude had fallen/been hit by a car and had severe pain in his right leg and down the side of his body. Granted the dude seemed intoxicated by something, probably alcohol, but what the fuck does that matter? How fucking hard is it to show some compassion and just stop to see if a person needs help.
As soon as I had stopped to show him some attention, of course other people came swarming in. Pathetic!
I’m glad I stopped and I’m glad I’m the kind of person who don’t just ignore people in need of help. And I’m definitely glad that I dialled 000 to get an ambulance to the scene.
Be a human being. Look after the people around you.
The latest in line for a website overhaul is Focalpoint. No time to write a lot at the moment, so head on over to the FP site instead. There is always new content there!
I just saw some shots on BMXunion of the stuff Tempered Bikes is showing off at Interbike in Vegas. Mat and Tempered has a nice spot in the Sparky’s Distribution booth. Let’s hope it’s a solid launch for Tempered in the US!
[Photo borrowed from here. Click the photo for more from the source.]
Ja, så har det Svenska valet passerat. Tyvärr var jag själv inte vaken nog att styra upp hela grejen med att poströsta från utlandet, så jag är en sån där fördjävlig röstskolkare.
Känns ju jävligt risigt nu när det visat sig att en stor andel svenskar varit dumma nog att lägga sin röst på Sverigedemokraterna.
De trångsynta människor som är aktiva inom det partiet och de stackarna som inte vetat bättre än att ge sitt stöd till SD är de som egentligen borde skickas ut ur Sverige.
Om det här är vad vi har att vänta oss av Sveriges befolkning i framtida val så känner jag verkligen inget större behov av att flytta tillbaks dit. Visst, det är “bara” strax under 6% som röstat på SD, men det är tyvärr tillräckligt många för att få mig att tappa tron på svenskars tolerans och medmänsklighet.
Är mycket tacksam över att ha kunnat bli mottagen med öppna armar och finna min plats i ett land som verkligen anammar sin stora mångfald.
Travis has been hard at work creating an updated interface for the Simple Bikes website. It’s still got basically the same layout, but instead of side scrolling between posts, now they are displayed in a vertically scrolling fashion.
It’s now also possible to search via tags attached to each post (welcome to the modern world of website browsing).
