A goat song for the South

I note that a certain Ness U. Patria, claiming to represent the Voice from the South, was last week promoting the claims of his primitive Zorbas Region against the progressive North. He failed, evidently. The facts are against him.

Since the Second World War the countries of the North have successfully demonstrated the correct way to solve geo-political problems. This is without excessive fuss or noise, or even those infuriating little keys that come with IKEA beds and then fall through the gaps in the floorboards.

It’s not rocket science, after all, being constructive with the neighbours. After the fall of the Soviet Union even the Baltic states, who never exactly loved each other, managed to put their houses in order.

As for Finland, after two major wars against the Russians, it granteditself the independence it had earnt. The Swedes settled down to designing forks, being right about everything and a fur-lined political rut they insist on calling ‘neutrality’.

The implication that we are generally a cold, wussy lot up north is a slur. For example, there is a probably true story about a Finn in Alaska who was invited to prove his manhood by killing a polar bear and seducing an Indian squaw. Out he went, returning an hour later, badly mauled. "Isn’t that enough?" he asked. "Do I really have to kill the girl now?"

Denmark and Norway both did their stuff under Nazi occupation andchecked in with NATO at the first opportunity after the war. The Baltic lot did the same once Gorbachev came on the scene.

My dear Ness, let’s talk Turkey, as they say. The cultural diversity and richly complicated identity problems of the Balkans are, as far as I can see, a cover for nothing more than unresolved tribal wars and or endemic alcoholism, or both.

Isn’t that why you have needed constant visits from grown-up firemen? NATO ten years ago and now the UN and the EU, training the hoses on your home-made disaster zones? Is it a coincidence, as the communists used to ask, that the chief fire officers patrolling the ruins are Finnish, Martti Ahtisaari, based in Vienna, and Commissioner Olli Rehn in Brussels?

Nor does one see too many souther-ners being chosen by international organisations to cool down the world’s more violent stupidos.

I ask this question in a spirit of friendly enquiry. Why, dear Ness, spend so much time on antique territorial demands and more or less fraudulent claims to being descended from Alexander the Great? Is 1,000 years or so of civilisation not long enough to learn a few ground-rules about how to get on? Tolerance, for example?

I suppose it’s the heat that gets to your heads. Or is it a deep-seated need for cruelty and muddle? I remember being taught at school that tragedy is derived from the Greek trag(o)-aoidiâ, meaning ‘goat song’. It’s only now that this is starting to make sense to me.

I note that a certain Ness U. Patria, claiming to represent the Voice from the South, was last week promoting the claims of his primitive Zorbas Region against the progressive North. He failed, evidently. The facts are against him.

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