Q: What do you call 11 dead Libyan rioters?

A: A good start.

Sorry. Had to say it. There were about 1000 rioters, police shot and killed 11. About 90 more times, and the problem is solved. The actual number may vary, because the some new people wishing to enter paradise would join the riots, whereas the more sensible of the current ones would leave on their own. In any case, the evolution would win.

The reason? Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli put on a t-shirt with the Muhammed cartoons.

Bugger all. If tomorrow some fuckers in Libya or Pakistan or any other similar stronghold of peace and tolerance tell me that they will start killing each other, for example, if I wear my green blouse because it's the color of Islam, all I can tell them is "go for it". Hell, if they promise to kill 11 of each other (as opposed to, say, some poor bugger who just happened to be there selling falafel) we can organize a whole demonstration of people in green shirts.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, along with a number of other politicians, asked Calderoli to resign, which he did in the end.

The whole thing is starting to get embarassing in addition to being surreal. Western "voices of moderation" keep saying "let's not provoke them" in a tone that strongly reminds me of lectures on proper handling of pit bulls. And it's not that I am in any way against Realpolitik - I just don't really trust any Realpolitik that comes from the kind of people who only two or three weeks ago were telling us with a straight face that Islam is a religion of peace. "Of course I am all for the freedom of speech but one definitely should not publish things like that, because we respect all the religions and so do all our citizens, and by the way we should not provoke them because they will burn our consulates and kill each other." Please.

Anybody who has ever fought with bullies on a school playground has developed at least some sense of when one should try to fight and when one should try to appease. Those who haven't became politicians.

There are moments when you just cannot give in. If you give in to the kind of people who riot over your cartoons and your t-shirts while being halfway across the globe, what do you think they are going to do? Are they going to say "wow, now the West respects us! Let's respect then too!" or are they going to say "now let's demand that the West gives the Muslim communities some self-determination and freedom to install Sharia laws"? Take a wild fucking guess.

From the events of the last ten years or so I came to the conclusion that any positive gestures from the West towards the Islamic world are absolutely worthless as far as the relations between the West and the Islamic world in general are concerned. Some of them should still be done for humanitarian reasons, but don't expect the Islamic world to be grateful. They never are. Sure, the actual recipients of Western help - like the victims of tsunami in Aceh and of the earthquakes in Pakistan - are grateful for the help, and should be helped, but just don't expect the general public opinion of us in the Muslim countries to rise much. When you help some Muslims, the rest of them disregard it (as they probably should, no reason in principle for people to get all excited just because you are helping someone of the same religion), but when you insult some Muslims (in this case a bunch of Danish mullahs) there are suddenly riots all over the Islamic world, and rioters scream "death to whatever-country" even if this particular country has nothing to do with this particular insult, and anything good this or any other country has done has been long forgotten. And when you apologize they say that an apology is not enough, because they want you to make laws that would make sure that this won't happen again.

When you give in to bullies and thugs rather than fight them, all you get is a worse fight later on. At this point, those thugs can still be fought verbally (or at least be left to themselves to fight physically among each other). Let's keep it this way.