It's not like me to get all political - but stories about basic human freedoms and murders of children hit a spot in me that I think my friends in the hobby - who in my experience are overwhelmingly open to the crimes of senseless injustice..should be shared a perspective on this, as one of many ongoing examples ...
To read today's news...one would think there is a general mild disturbance in Iran as college students protest the current Regime.."campuses are being closed .. final exams postponed -- gatherings canceled" Sounds pretty innocuous. What is happening there, right now, is that children - college students - are being thrown off the tops of buildings - hauled off in mass, and executed without trial. Don't believe me? Ask a Persian friend who has any contact there right now.
The two twins, tragic as it seems - get front page - while thousands of other young people's deaths are virtually unreported. Does one have to be conjoined to matter?
I do not think anybody is afraid of the truth, it is just that the surgery is something that has not happened in the recent past (In fact in a long time), but things like people getting killed in the name of political issues, and people protesting governments are happening all the time.
The News reports things that happen, but focuses on things that have not happened before. A great example in my mind is whenever a plane crashes. Many people lose their lives, but in an average day, over 400 people die in automobile accidents. Does this mean that automobile accidents should be reported as front page news? News is News when it is something that people can relate to, and something that they have not heard about before. The twins surgery is interesting to the general public simple because it is something that involved two people who people could relate to.
Certainly - and the reference and example of the twins surgery was simply meant as a contrasting point. Certainly the newness and medical significane of that "news" is what makes it interesting. My point is though, this revolution in Iran is not going unreported...it is being specifically and consciously misreported - and it is the fact that we allow ourselves to be numb to this - that continues to allow it to happen. From German Concentration camps - to the atrocities committed in Irag hightlighted after the war started...we know these things...but we choose to resist looking at them, their particulars so specifically misreported and downplayed that they become ignorable, and the story un-newsworthy. I find it personally hard to swallow that we, as humans, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers might ever find the deaths in mass of children to be seen as everyday occurances to sweep under the carpet. If we have...WHAT have we become?
the "little" tragedy of the twins is more digestible for the masses, most of whom don't even know how to pronounce Iran ("eye-ran"!) let alone care about the systematic torture and oppression of its anti-Islamic dissidents
did you all know that there are more journalists imprisoned in Iran than in any other country in the world?
did you all know that the broadcast "voice" of the new Iranian revolution (televised from LA by expatriot dissidents) is being "jammed" at the source in North America?
did you all know a prominent member of the British Parliament was quoted openly as saying "we don't want regime change in Iran, we have too much invested in the current one" ?
did you all know the current Islamic Regime in Iran has powerful lobbies in Capitol Hill with deep pockets who constantly push back any plan of US aid to the students?
did you all know that the WMDs that we seem unable to find in Iraq are just right next door in Iran? and that the Iranian Shi'ite fundamentalists are the ones behind all the anti-American guerilla warfare in post-war Iraq?
my Persian friends tell me tales of horror and oppression by the clerics in Iran that are so extreme that they make Saddam's Iraq seem like the Disneyland of totalitarian states by comparison.
Not to be too cynical, but I'm afraid the reality is that the truth does not sell newspapers or attract viewers. The mantra of too many media outlets is "If it bleeds it leads". Unfortunately, that seems to be an accurate reflection of what attracts the public's interest. JMHO
Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided only that they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat.
-Iris Chang - The Rape of Nanking
M.
Sadly, what's going on in Iran is going unreported because the established media have become too full of themselves in believing they set the agenda for public discourse. A good proportion of them still obsess over the 2000 election, and spin everything in that light.
I myself have given up on them, and switched to bloggers. Just like during the Russian coup attempt that brought Yeltsin to prominence, when the true story could only be found on Usenet (straight from the unedited posts of Russians), the true story can be seen in the Persian blogs.
Write your Senator and Congressman; send letters to the editorial pages of your local rag; just do anything to support the general strike tomorrow in Iran wherein the people may finally begin to oust the illegitimate mullahs. Show solidarity with those who yearn for liberty in Iran.
Add to that the established media's desire to be politically correct and not upset Muslims here and abroad.
Like it or not this tyranny is the face of Islam in the majority of the world. Like it or not what those militant Mullahs respect it strength, and since the US is the only country on the planet who has the balls to flex our muscles, its going to have to be us or the situation will spread and get much worse. Most likely impossible to stop.
The Europeans are mired in their self enduced no growth economy and their policies are self serviing and myopic! They have a long history of this insanity and the 20th century is testament to their idiotic thinking and policy.
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