God, it Just Gets Easier

To find subjects to write about I sometimes peruse the foreign press. Amazingly, I find great numbers of news stories that cease to be news once they cross the borders of the good old U.S.A. Perhaps it is our obsession with ourselves a sort of a whole nation contemplating their navel. After all between American Idol, drunken starlets and missing and murdered white women not every thing can make the front page. I find in the Japanese and Chinese newspapers have a greater interest in the scientific subjects such as space exploration and ditto that for Arab newspapers.

European newspapers are diverse from The Financial Times to the Sun they rival the American papers from the Wall Street Journal to the National Enquirer. Germany’s Deutsche Welle is very Spartan the news, just the news but I find many times the stories are too short to give more than just the snapshot of the story. I have yet to find a French newspaper in English yet, maybe they assume if you can’t read in French who cares if you read their paper. The only newspapers I have found more conservative than American newspapers are in South Korea and Israel.

I read a horror story in The Seoul Times of a Korean exchange student placed with an American Pentecostal family who forced the child to attend a snake-handling church services. Americans were portrayed as barbarian, back woods, buck toothed, bloodthirsty hillbillies. Strangely as the Korean papers wasted no time describing the American tribal absurdities they also question evolutionary theory and agree with the snake handling brethren that global warming like Darwinism are the rantings of extremists.

The Israeli papers are right wing, way way ring wing John McCain is a liberal Jimmy Carter is the devil incarnate. The only good Arab is a dead Arab and George Bushes only failing was in not going far enough. While I credit their having message boards in the Israeli papers not found in Chinese papers I find them the most heavily moderated in the world. The Chinese don’t care if you have an opinion or if you do they don’t want to hear about it the Israeli’s welcome the full range of comments from A to B from those who only 90% agree right up to those who 100% agree.

So I look through the world’s newspapers trying to find stories of unusual or intrinsic in caliber not found everywhere else and some times it’s easy and sometimes hard. This morning I logged on to the Afghan Daily the first headline, “Bush Pledges to Reduce Afghan Casualties” reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald then underneath that “Bush Calls for More NATO Troops in Afghanistan” from The Washington Post. Then below that, “Iran Expels 70,000 Afghans” from News24 then, “NATO Should Share Afghan Burden from the BBC. “Guantanamo Detainee Vows Another Suicide Attempt” from Khaleej Times, “Afghan Suicide Blast Kills 10” from CNN, “Harry Could Go To Afghanistan” from News24, “Pakistan Need Not Suspect US Ties With India” from Dawn, “Iraq a Big Money Maker for Al Quidia, says CIA” from the Seattle Times and finally “6 Killed, 35 Hurt in Afghan Blast from CNN.”

It speaks for its self, what could I add to make it any clearer? The only headline from a government controlled newspaper that didn’t imply imminent disaster of a situation out of control was, “Harry Could Go To Afghanistan” maybe he could go provided the Queen doesn’t read the Afghan Daily. The irony of conflicting headlines, “Bush Pledges to Reduce Afghan Casualties” and then directly underneath, “Bush Calls for More NATO Troops in Afghanistan” it literally takes the pen from my hand. What pundit, spokesman, analyst, expert or Tony Snowman could explain away these Orwellian headlines? Each headline tied directly to the feet of George Bush.

Perhaps the spin machine is worn down from over use; perhaps they are just so overwhelmed by the Herculean task. The difficulty of making insanity look credible and stupidity pass for foreign policy that they just don’t care anymore. But when you don’t even need to read the articles anymore because the headlines speak for themselves it means hard times in fantasyland. But for myself who has taken on the personal quest of depicting the follies foibles and felonies of the Bush administration and their media accomplices it just doesn’t get any easier.