Outrage and Silence – New York Times
With the impending lock down of content at the New York Times (editorial section will require a subscription starting in September) I thought it was a decent time to make note of this and speak an opinion or forecast what I believe will be the outcome.
Two thoughts: obsolescence and class.
The New York Times Gets Greedy, Again
Newspapers struggle to avoid their own obit
Outrage and Silence – New York Times
It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantuanamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.
That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month – most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.
Yet these mass murders – this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims – have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.The Muslim world’s silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq – as well as the only workable strategy going forward.
The clear path to the future here, if you truly believe in spreading ideas, sharing knowledge, and changing the world is not to lock your thoughts away in your grandmother’s attic only to display the coin purse when asked your opinion. No, the path to enlightenment is free discourse which the New York Times is sadly against.