Politics
Over the past week the political events in Iran have saturated the news. But the reality is that Pakistan still has an enormous refugee problem, right next door to Iran in fact. It's striking though that there is little news coverage of this at this moment, at the same time that the public and media's imagination has been captured by the shocking death of Neda Soltai, the young Iranian woman whose death was caught on video.
Below the fold are the number of tweets on #neda vs. #pakistan (currently the #pakistan hash-tag is concerned with a cricket win by their national team).
Comments
Neda was young, pretty, clean, female, and looks like she could have been our neighbor. The official bad guys in this soap opera killed her, therefore it is only necessary that everyone lionize her. Every revolution needs a martyr. Neda didn't volunteer. Thankfully, though, we have millions of Iranians and foreigners all the more willing to draft her essense as the symbol which will guide the galiant Iranian revolutinaries to victory.
Refugees are ugly, dirty, poor, and worst of all, depressing.
If refugees knew how to party, then maybe an NBC news crew would take the time to interview one or two. Right now the party is in Tehran.
It sucks being poor.
Posted by: Cody | June 22, 2009 5:09 AM
Here's a hypothetical....
Perhaps there is so much attention on Iran (rather than Pakistan) because the Government in the USA sees it in their interest to build up ill will towards the Government in Iran.[1]
Perhaps that ill will be used as an "excuse" by Government in the USA to later attack Iran (and murder Iranians).
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[1] Note, I am not suggesting that the Government in the USA planned all this. But they may have nudged things along and taken advantage of the situation and are trying to paint a certain picture.
Posted by: Charles Iliya Krempeaux | June 22, 2009 12:49 PM
Unfortunately people (and media) lose interest after a while. It would be more interesting to see if Pakistan tweeting peaked in mid-May when the refugee crisis hit.
Posted by: Zack | June 22, 2009 4:36 PM
pakistan makes a pretty strong showing here:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=sex+with+boys
Posted by: Obongo | June 23, 2009 12:36 AM
This child seems the real martyr of these Iranian protests.
Disturbing photo of baby shot in the back. Website is not in English. Some comments are in English.
http://taptaan.blogspot.com/2009/06/blog-post_4495.html
Posted by: sg | June 24, 2009 12:48 PM