These past months I have switched to getting my daily dose
of news stories later in the evening. I settle down on my papasan chair with my
shiny new ipadmini and trawl the internet for stories from all over the world.
Needless to say, Iraq pretty much dominated the scene this week. There is the
usual punditry – its Bush’s mistake, its Clinton’s mistake [or was that
Crimea?], it’s Iran, it’s the Iraq government… But fundamentally the pictures
and repeated coverage desensitize and dehumanize the stories. It seems like we are stuck in a time-warp. Though
one could argue its just tools, no one talks about the military-industrial
complex or the easy access and mass production of the weapons.
Those stories I read as a young girl starting with the time
immemorial phrase – ‘In the town of Baghdad’ were much simpler. They didn’t say
whether Aladdin was a Shia or a Kurd.
