[954] in peace2
Re: Give Peace A Chance
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Donovan)
Wed Sep 12 15:14:32 2001
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Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 20:14:00 +0100
From: Alan Donovan <adonovan@lcs.mit.edu>
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I think it's alarming how quickly the major media are mixing facts
of the day's events with speculation about what is going on in Kabul
as if it's a "fait accompli" that the two are related.
I guess I can understand the emotion of people in Palestine or
Serbia or Afghanistan (who have been living in war zones for decades,
and may identify the US as partly responsible) that for the first
time people in the US are getting a glimpse of what it must be like
to experience that. I don't think that's the same thing as saying
that they "welcome" the attacks, which seems to be the way the
headlines represent it.
And I'm sure that in the gulf war it would have been easy for the
Iraqi press to find plenty of people in the US (or UK) who would
"welcome" the bombing of a hotel in Baghdad, but it doesn't make
it representative of the population.
It also brings home the difference between media reports about
"disasters" of massive proportions in faraway places, that have
already slipped off the front page of the paper by day three, and
events affecting people that you know and care about.
We will hear trotted out again the whole anti-Islamic thing about
"indoctrination", "fundamentalism", "Jihad", etc, but if you hear
the way western governments bandy around phrases like "evil", "the
forces of darkness", and the most abused word of them all,
"democracy", the distinction between the two sides is increasingly
hard to pin down.
We should be ready to react to the xenophobia, military attacks,
increased militarism, lynch-mob mentality, infringements of civil
liberties, etc that will no doubt arise from these terrible events.
alan
(I'm sorry if this is off-topic here; if so, please let me know.
I just had to get that off my chest).
--
Alan Donovan, MIT Lab. for Computer Science | adonovan@lcs.mit.edu
