This Is Missing

(This post was moved from Berri Berriak/Bitxikeriak)

Thanks for the answers to the previous post "What's Missing?".

This is what is missing.

The picture I posted says: "Children play next to graffitti writen in Basque..."

Now, picture one says: "Ethnic Hmong refugee children walk through the remains..."

While picture two says: "An ethnic Albanian farmer works on his land..."

So, what the heck are the children in the picture I posted here?

Japanese?

Nope, they are Basque.

And that is the quid of the question, our wonderfully balanced media tailors the information it provides to meet its own objectives, whatever those objectives are.

If you ask me, their goal is to manipulate the international community's perception of what goes on in certain part of the world. I can tell you one more thing, they do not do that for free, oh no sir, their pockets are conveniently lined.

If they were to say that the children in the picture are "ethnic Basque children" there would be acknowledging that in fact, the Basques are not Spaniards. Just like the Albanians are not Serbians. Spain spends a lot of moolah in trying to convince people that the Basques are in fact disenchanted Spaniards, but Spaniards nevertheless.

So, this way is easier for those easy to manipulate to think something in the lines of "those Basques are crazy, it they are Spaniards, why do they want to be separated from the rest of Spain?".

The media then makes sure that the readers, who would usually root for the underdog, get all confused about what to think.

Enter the word ethnic, and images of holocausts and genocides come into place. Poor ethnic groups, always persecuted by the big bad villains. We must stop those tyrants from erasing the defenseless ethnic groups from the face of the Earth.

So we think, look at Laos, mistreating their poor ethnic Hmongs.

Or look at Serbia, bent on killing off every single ethnic Albanian.

And look at Spain, dealing with those Spaniards ...oh wait, well, that's fine.

So, on the Hmong and the Albanian issues, the media takes the side of the perceived underdog, but not on the Basque issue.

Unique, indeed.

If you don't believe, follow this links to News Photos at Yahoo, for the first one I typed Albanian, for the second one I typed Basque, check out the footnotes and start two columns where you can place a little "x" each time you see the word ethnic. See how many you get on each column.

Those are two European ethnic groups, guess which one has a country to call home, guess which one doesn't.

The irony of this all is that, as Angie can tell you, my roommate is Albanian.

.... ... .