Ape Fight
Interesting choice of imagery for your little detournement there: self-defense illustrations rather than the actual military action that these children are simultaneously protesting and know nothing of. Of course a German student wouldn't see the need for scrapping in the Middle East. Why don't our Arabic brothers just chill, go to Treptower Park, split a bag of bud and play some frisbee? Settle your differences while it's still summer, dudes!
Well, we can add the unending heat wave from Gaza across the Arabian peninsula to the many, many needs that we all have to fight about. As apes with a veneer of intelligence, we show our true colors whenever possible, and even the genteel welfare apes of the zoo fight, given half a chance. Fight videos have always been popular on the 'net -- you can find this variant of snuff film in every superuser's bin, or: why not just try a Youtube search?
The part of us that wanted to see footage of the Pearl beheading, for example, shall never be completely eliminated or ignored, and there's no virtue in detesting it -- you're probably just squeamish. Or afraid of the reality in which people market footage of teenagers beating the shit out of each other. We saw it in the whole bumfight debacle, and it's arguable that this is far, far, worse, but it's par for the course when kids don't get enough love.
"It's almost like the kids have created a completely different world we don't have access to and don't understand." Yeah, I've read Lunar Park too. But the you don't have to have read or seen anything to grasp this effect -- it is the fundamental disconnect between parents and their kids, extending from the moment that parents know their children trust some shadowy cabal of their peers more than them. In fact, please do this for me: read the sidebar, or should I say "anxietybar," especially for parents, on the left. Why would you respond to this sensationalist piece by doing the alarmist, way-in-over-your-head things they advise? But I'm getting ahead of myself here. People making money of the collective youth id is nothing new -- checked out MTV, target demographic 12-14, lately?
We've seen dog and bare-knuckle fights in Berlin, and a lot of impromptu boxing matches with kid participants back home. This is natural. Kids are constricted and enraged. Given an outlet, they will either fight, or follow the fight. But are adults any different? We've just emotionally crippled ourselves to a point where we're quite content to watch. Let the bums and immigrants sort it out.