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Posts Tagged ‘Sri Lanka’

Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder (OCID)

by Eliana ( 121 Comments › )
Filed under Gaza, India, Israel, Media, Palestinians at January 7th, 2010 - 7:00 am

It’s no secret that the media has an unhealthy obsession with Israel. The Free Middle East website has a video about this obsession:

Their Obsessive and Compulsive article explains the mental disorder / global disease:

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder that causes repeated unwanted and intrusive thoughts. An OCD sufferer will engage in repetitive behaviors (compulsions) aimed at reducing anxiety caused by these thoughts (obsessions). OCD is a chronic or long-term illness that can take over a person’s life, hurt relationships, and limit the ability to work or go to school.

Scientists have proven that OCD is caused by one part of the brain being unable to receive information from the other.

In the past 20 years the 24/7 cable news, internet and social networking sites have revolutionized the way we receive information. In the shadow of this information revolution lays a disease that has surprisingly not yet received an official diagnosis. The cause is also a restriction of information. The disease is called Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder or OCID.

For a country that is thousands of miles away, has a population of just 7 million and speaks a completely different language, the world is obsessively and compulsively focused on Israel.

From the same article, Obsessive and Compulsive:

In January 2009, when Israel launched operation Cast Lead, to root out rocket fire from the Gaza strip, the media covered every minute. There was no shortage of information that often presented Israel as the aggressor and perpetrator of all the violence in the region. Just like OCD stops the flow of information from one part of the brain to the other, OCID, stopped the flow of the rest of the important events going in the world.

While a tiny country was trying to secure its borders from rocket attack the world was going through major challenges.

  • * The Ethiopian military withdrew its troops from the Somalia civil war. This ongoing conflict has killed 300-400 thousand people since 1991.
  • * Indian Army continued to battle Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in the disputed Kashmir region. This ongoing conflict has seen countless civilian massacres and terror attacks.
  • * The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lanka terrorist group, launched major offensives around the northern part of the country including the bombing the state department of defense. 80 thousand people have been killed in the country’s civil war, including 8000 this year alone.

In another article on Free Middle East, they pose this question: Which is Googled More: Israel or Darfur? Take a look at the graph in this article. The answer isn’t surprising:

This graph shows the relative popularity of the search terms over the last twelve months of world-wide googling. Iran received 60% of the attention that Israel did, Iraq 40%, and AIDS little more than half.

Over the last few years 300,000 people have been killed in Sudan, yet over the last 12 months Darfur was googled a mere 4% as much as Israel!

Going back to Obsessive and Compulsive, this is the media’s problem:

While the media was predominantly reporting only on the conflict in the Gaza Strip as a prime example, the world was going through universal struggle. Their continual criticism and singling out of Israel is baseless in its logic vis a vis its abnormal media coverage. The larger worldly causes of global warming, hunger, aids and genocide have to take a back seat to feed a news aristocracy that clearly suffers from the sociological disease, Obsessive-Compulsive Israel Disorder.

China’s growing Empire

by Phantom Ace ( 16 Comments › )
Filed under China at May 22nd, 2009 - 9:52 am

China’s reach and influence continues to grow. The recent events in Sri Lanka showed how China backs its allies. The Sri Lankan government crushed  the Tamil rebels and the world didn’t say much. This was because China backed them and the media was kept out. China also will make sure that no Sri Lankan officials will be prosecuted for war crimes.

China’s accidental empire is a growing danger

A Victorian historian said that Britain “conquered… half the world in a fit of absence of mind”.

Chinese Communist Party leaders are not normally associated with absentmindedness, but rather with cool, calculated, long-term strategic thinking. Yet China might well now be building a mixture of influence and obligation – the modern version of an empire- in quite a British way, and one that promises to cause increasing tension with its giant neighbour and regional rival, India.

Events in Sri Lanka, as that nation finally brings an end to a quarter-century-long civil war, are the latest example of China’s growing overseas reach. The victory of the Sri Lankan Government was assisted by the supply of arms from China, especially fighter jets, as The Times revealed on May 2, while the Chinese are also building a spanking new port on the southern coast of the country, which the Chinese Navy will be able to use for refuelling and repairs.

As much as many here don’t like China, I must say I respect the. They defend their interests and allies. They don’t care about world opinion and allow their allies to do what they want. I wish America had China’s foreign policies. We back stab our allies to placate our enemies. Its really sad that a Fascist regime like China is a more reliable friend than America.

Lahore Cricket Atrocity

by Kafir ( 6 Comments › )
Filed under Islamists, Jihad, Pakistan, World at March 4th, 2009 - 6:11 am

Pakistan arrests up to 100 people after terror attack on Sri Lanka cricket team

Pakistani authorities have arrested up to 100 people in a wide-ranging terror clampdown after the Lahore cricket atrocity. The government has also offered a reward of $125,000 as it desperately searches for the 12 masked gunmen who carried out the horrifying attack yesterday.

They’re on it! Oh wait:

None of the attackers are believed to be among those detained.

The bloody incident yesterday carried grim echoes of the Mumbai attack. Video film again captured young men – who arrived on motorised rickshaws – carrying Kalashnikovs and rucksacks packed with grenades. They moved through the streets in pairs and traded shots with police bodyguards before melting away into Lahore’s back streets. Despite a huge manhunt, none of the attackers have been captured or killed. No one has claimed responsibility but the chief suspects will be Islamist militants with links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

See also:

Reuters Q&A: Who could it be now?
Pakistan needs to take responsiblity
Lankans home, thank bus driver

New Zealand all-rounder Jacob Oram expresses serious reservations on IPL

“Now reality has hit home and you know that you are in the sub-continent and things that we take for granted, like safety and freedom of doing what you want to do, aren’t so readily available over there.”

Indeed.

(thanks to InfidelsAreCool)

UN Staff Come Under Fire In Sri Lanka

by WrathofG-d ( 3 Comments › )
Filed under Terrorism, United Nations at January 28th, 2009 - 5:23 pm

Hundreds of civilians have been killed, thousands wounded, and the U.N. facilities were pounded by artillary fire in Sri Lanka. – and other things that will never make the front page!

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UN says staff came under artillery fire in ‘safe zone’ in northern Sri Lanka

tamil-tigers-flag(COLOMBO, Sri Lanka) Dozens of U.N. workers and their relatives spent a terrifying night huddling in hastily built bunkers as artillery fire pounded a civilian “safe zone” in Sri Lanka‘s war-wracked north, according to an internal U.N. memo.

The memo, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, said the artillery shells killed nine civilians in a nearby bunker and were apparently fired by government forces.

The military denied the charge and President Mahinda Rajapaksa renewed the government’s pledge not to launch attacks in the refuge as it fought to crush the Tamil Tiger rebels and end the country’s 25-year-old civil war.

As concern mounted for the estimated 250,000 civilians in the war zone, Dr. Thurairajah Varatharajah, the top health official in the area, said at least 1,140 civilians — 248 younger than 15 — were wounded in the fighting and brought to three local hospitals.

The death toll was difficult to calculate because many civilians had stopped bringing dead relatives to the hospital amid the heavy fighting, he told The Associated Press by telephone from the war zone.

“In my opinion, there are a lot of deaths. More than 250 to 300,” he said, adding his estimate was based on reports from residents who came to the hospitals.

(*Warning, Graphic* – Some of the Tamil Tigers’ Handiwork)

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-I guess not all civilian deaths, and attacks on U.N facilities are created equal to the Mainstream Media, and U.N. security council.