here is something i can't understand

i've spent the past four weeks or so here studying violence and i'm still at the point encapsulated in cypress hill's lyrics:

"here is something you can't understand:
how i could just kill a man."

a case in point is a murder on sunday in downtown dili. it made the international news as a beheading, but based on the grainy photo of the corpse on the front page of timor post, that isn't quite true. it was a brutal, nasty murder but technically not quite a beheading.

asking around, it seems that it was either a gangland revenge murder and/or had something to do with a girl. having looked at the gangs here for my research, both seem quite plausible reasons. which is where i come to my "disconnect point:" i just don't see the connection between the reason (heartache) and the deed (attempting to chop someone's head off). or burning your neighbours house when there is no rice in the shop, as was happening during the rice crisis earlier this year. or attempting to chop someone's leg off because someone from his posse apparently disrespected someone from your posse in the neighbouring country 3 weeks ago as happened in baucau last week.

of course, irrational violence is an issue the world over, not just in timor. half of rome goes up in flames because of a game in which 22 millionaires in shorts kick a ball on a grass field and even finland has had its own high-school massacre...