I actually used to employ one of the guys in Gatas Parliament about ten years ago, initially as work placement from school.

They're self confessed revolutionaries with links to a Norwegian Marxist youth organisation and have always tried to be extremely provocative - including swearing at the Norwegian Crown Prince from the stage at a concert he was attending.

Personally I wouldn't call them anti-American. But like a large section of the European public they are deeply opposed to the US government (and given their political affiliations also against the US economic and political system), and contrary to a lot of people they are perfectly happy to make a big deal of it in ways that may get them in trouble.

Ironically enough, Mr. Casey Kasem is of
Middle Eastern descent.Lebanese to exact
kids.

It IS a pretty good video.

Maybe if we here in the States would stop having tantrums and/or sticking our collective head in the sand every time someone spoke out against us, we could eliminate some of the reasons for things like this.

Not foisting our policies and ideals on other countries might be a good place to start. But hey, why deal when you can ban?

>>Personally I wouldn't call them anti-American. But like a large section of the European public they are deeply opposed to the US government (and given their political affiliations also against the US economic and political system), and contrary to a lot of people they are perfectly happy to make a big deal of it in ways that may get them in trouble.<<

So basically they are loudmouthed losers who subscribed to a failed economic and political movement and have nothing meaningful to contribute to society.

Dave

Interesting stuff, Vidar. After posting, I regretted a bit stressing the Anti-American stuff as much as I did. It seems more that they are against much of America's foreign policy and the government more than against the country itself.

I suspect--I hope, anyway--that that's the attitude of many in Europe, as you say. Think what you want of our government, but as a people, I think we're a pretty damn good country.

LegendaryMonkey--if the government really did involve themselves to get this banned, which wouldn't really surprise me, then I do think it's silly based on the video itself. Like I said, there isn't any explicit directive to kill Bush, it really just plays more as a skit.

politicians and other people who have made a conscious decision to put themselves on a public stage are a bit more fair game

?!?!

So it's okay to advocate (maybe even carry out) assassination because politicians are public figures? How about political candidates?

How about Simon from American Idol, would it be okay for me to call for his killing?

While we get a cuddly with "it's just a video" let's use some common sense here, too. Substitute the face of your favorite public figure for W, and ask if you'd be as sanguine about it then.

There is still a lot of issues about the American foreign policies that a lot of people still don't know about. it its good that there are musician voicing out their opinion, and yes i believe the video is fictional but how many kids have died in Iraq? there were never any weapons of mass belief we all knew that there is no threat, but the goverment lied to us. The only reasons for war were oil and the expansion of American colonialism and just like any war innocent lives are taken

check out this band called weapons of mass belief

The Norwegian government didn't actually ban the video as far as i know. What happened was that the American embassy in Oslo pressed police charges against the Killhim.nu website, which in turn caused more publicity about their point of view then they could have ever managed on their own. The police never did anything to persue the case, other then sending a letter telling them to remove the content of the website.

The video is actually pretty good if you undersand Norwegian, the translated subtitles are somewhere between inaccurate and plain wrong.