Monday, September 25, 2006
Lie To Us, We're Americans
Ganked from Shakes.
It's officially gotten to the point where the powers that be of American media believe that the American public are ill-suited to be directly presented with stories that they think the rest of the world can handle. Case in point: here is the cover story you might find if you picked up the latest issue of Newsweek in Europe, Asia, or Latin America: a piece on how the Taliban are coming back years after we should have reduced them to their base elements. The opening section of said story:
Oct. 2, 2006 issue - You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban. In Ghazni province's Andar district, just over a two-hour trip from the capital on the main southern highway, a thin young man, dressed in brown and wearing a white prayer cap, stands by the roadside waiting for two NEWSWEEK correspondents. It is midday on the central Afghan plains, far from the jihadist-infested mountains to the east and west. Without speaking, the sentinel guides his visitors along a sandy horse trail toward a mud-brick village within sight of the highway. As they get closer a young Taliban fighter carrying a walkie-talkie and an AK-47 rifle pops out from behind a tree. He is manning an improvised explosive device, he explains, in case Afghan or U.S. troops try to enter the village.
Meanwhile, on the US cover, we're presented with a piece on... the life and times of Annie Liebovitz. Oh, the article on Afghanistan's still in there, but somehow, it's been decided that Americans would much rather find out about the life of one of America's preeminent photographers rather than how a nation we have supposedly "liberated" and "improved" may be sliding back into religious fundamentalism at the hands of the very bastards we should have obliterated in the first place. This is how much the need for the truth amongst the American people is valued by those we trust to provide us with the news. Frightening.
It's officially gotten to the point where the powers that be of American media believe that the American public are ill-suited to be directly presented with stories that they think the rest of the world can handle. Case in point: here is the cover story you might find if you picked up the latest issue of Newsweek in Europe, Asia, or Latin America: a piece on how the Taliban are coming back years after we should have reduced them to their base elements. The opening section of said story:
Oct. 2, 2006 issue - You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban. In Ghazni province's Andar district, just over a two-hour trip from the capital on the main southern highway, a thin young man, dressed in brown and wearing a white prayer cap, stands by the roadside waiting for two NEWSWEEK correspondents. It is midday on the central Afghan plains, far from the jihadist-infested mountains to the east and west. Without speaking, the sentinel guides his visitors along a sandy horse trail toward a mud-brick village within sight of the highway. As they get closer a young Taliban fighter carrying a walkie-talkie and an AK-47 rifle pops out from behind a tree. He is manning an improvised explosive device, he explains, in case Afghan or U.S. troops try to enter the village.
Meanwhile, on the US cover, we're presented with a piece on... the life and times of Annie Liebovitz. Oh, the article on Afghanistan's still in there, but somehow, it's been decided that Americans would much rather find out about the life of one of America's preeminent photographers rather than how a nation we have supposedly "liberated" and "improved" may be sliding back into religious fundamentalism at the hands of the very bastards we should have obliterated in the first place. This is how much the need for the truth amongst the American people is valued by those we trust to provide us with the news. Frightening.
