international students
Oct. 8th, 2003 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angledgeI just had a very long conversation with a Syrian woman who lives on my floor named Aliaa. Naturally, we talked politics.
I find it very difficult to discuss politics with people who are from the Middle East. First of all, I'm almost overwhelmed with some diluted feeling of guilt - I feel like saying, "I'm SO SORRY for what my government is doing ..." But another problem is that often I feel like we're dealing with two completely different sets of information, & both of us consider our set of information to be "the Facts". Aliaa doesn't believe any Arabs were involved in the 9/11 attacks: "I've met Arab religious fanatics. Believe me, they aren't organized enough to do something like this." I asked her why Palestinians were happy to hear about 9/11; she said they weren't. I said, "But CNN showed celebrations on the West Bank the day the news was received." She said the video of celebrating Palestinians was actually a year old, & that Fox News had issued an apology for showing it. I don't know if this is true or untrue. She also told me that American soldiers in Iraq are committing suicide in large numbers. I have heard NOTHING about this (hollyinpa, did your brother say anything about this??).
So - I'm not enough of a news junkie to have hard data at my fingertips to refute things she says, but even if I did, I sense that her reply would be, "The American media is not presenting all of the truth" or somesuch.
As a counterpoint, Ingrid & I met an Iraqi man in London who told us that we should be extremely proud of our nation's actions & that the overthrow of Saddam was the best thing that could've ever happened to Iraq.
Anybody have some insight/advice here? Please, serious comments only (this means you, Hiveboys).
I find it very difficult to discuss politics with people who are from the Middle East. First of all, I'm almost overwhelmed with some diluted feeling of guilt - I feel like saying, "I'm SO SORRY for what my government is doing ..." But another problem is that often I feel like we're dealing with two completely different sets of information, & both of us consider our set of information to be "the Facts". Aliaa doesn't believe any Arabs were involved in the 9/11 attacks: "I've met Arab religious fanatics. Believe me, they aren't organized enough to do something like this." I asked her why Palestinians were happy to hear about 9/11; she said they weren't. I said, "But CNN showed celebrations on the West Bank the day the news was received." She said the video of celebrating Palestinians was actually a year old, & that Fox News had issued an apology for showing it. I don't know if this is true or untrue. She also told me that American soldiers in Iraq are committing suicide in large numbers. I have heard NOTHING about this (
hollyinpa, did your brother say anything about this??). So - I'm not enough of a news junkie to have hard data at my fingertips to refute things she says, but even if I did, I sense that her reply would be, "The American media is not presenting all of the truth" or somesuch.
As a counterpoint, Ingrid & I met an Iraqi man in London who told us that we should be extremely proud of our nation's actions & that the overthrow of Saddam was the best thing that could've ever happened to Iraq.
Anybody have some insight/advice here? Please, serious comments only (this means you, Hiveboys).
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Date: 2003-10-08 03:03 pm (UTC)I think the truth is somewhere inbetween, but I'd like to think that the American media is a bit closer to it because it's not essentially owned by the government. On the other hand, having worked for a press dept at a non-profit, I've seen press releases go essentially straight from out offices into newspapers, line for line. Of course, I believed my organization had the facts and was presenting them honestly, so that doesn't bother me in that case, but who knows how much also goes straight in from what I'd consider less trustworthy sources?
Part of the problem with the American news media is that they are, for the most part, corporations. They exist by selling news, and that means printing sexy stories. A billion "uninteresting" but important things are going on every day, but the ones that land on the cover of the paper are often the most entertaining and not the most life-altering. In an organization's press department, your goal is to make your dry story/science/whatever sound exciting and scandalous so you'll get coverage, and sometimes you're just SOL because something else is going on (like the CA recall, 2000 presidential election fiasco, OJ Simpson trial, whatever) that's sexier.
I don't know whether or not soldiers are killing themselves in droves, but I have heard something about many troops geing required to get therapy for depression and whatnot. I know a lot of female troops are being sent home preggers too. Of course, I can't find any of the articles about this right now, and I have to go home, but I'll look more later.