Ban Ki-moon apparently denounces Geert Wilders' film about how the Quran is a recipe for TERRORFASCISTONAZISM (pulled by Network Solutions, then pulled from LiveLeak, now hosted on Google Video).

It really is little more than a PowerPoint presentation with video clips in it, really. There's also little to distinguish it from your average piece of internet paranoia: It's remarkable mostly for the sheer amount of shit it's managed to stir up, being protested by entities as diverse as the UN Secretary-General, Afghanistan, the World Council of Churches and Slovenia. There's also this report of a cute campaign to "smother it in apologies."

The backlash against all this makes supporting the video the internet-hip thing to do. This should be good news, if it means that blasphemy becomes a thing to be cherished and protected: Unfortunately, you can always count on people's exceptionalism to make them think that it's only okay to blaspheme against that one religion with the scary towelheads in it. After all, Jesus is such a universally good guy, it's not like anyone would ever even need to blaspheme against him. Me, I can only hope this will usher in an age of comprehensively desecrating all that's holy; given enough blasphemers, threats become futile.

Lastly, let's not forget who wears the pants in this relationship: If the question of insulting Islam became big enough, OPEC would only have to threaten to cut everyone off and there would be no shortage of Western governments willing to hand over the blasphemer's head on a silver platter. And don't get me started on the several thousand volunteer hostages we've placed in Central Asia for easy access.