A roundup of the news you won't read about

Can you help me sort it out?

1) When TV news showed Chinese youths, and only youths, going berserk because of the island dispute with Japan – are those youths really interested in foreign policy or is it just rigged? If it’s not rigged, what amazing youths China has. And the 1,000 fishing boats heading for the islands: Is it genuine engagement from each of the captains and crews or is it just rigged? In all foreign disputes in recent years China has behaved in a childish manner – even reinforced by the way their foreign policy spokeswoman communicates to the media. Something with the setting feels wrong.

2) From the moment the red-shirt demonstrators brought weapons in they became the guilty ones in the April/May 2010 shootings. It’s not a question of who shot first, that’s irrelevant, because from the very moment the demonstrators brought weapons to the scene, they passed a limit and they were done! There is no place for weapons in a demonstration. Demonstrations with weapons, used or not used, have no credibility or legality and the state’s use of power in such a situation trumps all arguments – it was a demonstration, not a civil war! 

3) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s DNA is not found on “the broken condom”, not a word about this in the mainstream media, nor in Swedish media. Two Swedish labs didn’t find any trace of Assange’s DNA in the condom – the killer evidence. Is it true, I saw it on RT a few days ago?

4) “Pirate Bay” co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was arrested on August 30 in Cambodia. The same day a top Washington trade official landed in Phnom Penh, and a few days later three Swedish officials arrived to explain the Pirate Bay case to Cambodian officials. Two days later, Sweden’s ambassador to Cambodia signed a soft loan deal for Cambodia. A few days thereafter Svartholm Warg was on a plane out of Cambodia, despite there being no extradition agreement between the two countries. Sweden can send three men around half way round the globe with documents and arguments to resolve a case, but not take a short day trip to London for the same reasons in the Assange case. That these Swedish/US “coincidences” occurred during a short week in Phnom Penh shows Assange is right not to trust the Swedes and the Americans. There has been no mainstream media coverage of the coincidences in Phnom Penh, only coverage by the local English-language papers in the Cambodian capital. 

5) The US is starting to clean up its Agent Orange mess in Vietnam. Western media reported that and nothing more. Asian media showed documentaries with victims, both Vietnamese and American, as background information for the cleanup operation. Western media tends to sweep the subject under the carpet as soon as possible. Should we therefore forget about the Vietnam War? If yes, why do WWII and the Holocaust still get huge attention in media and in many other arenas? WWII ended 30 years prior to the end of the Vietnam War – some proportion problems here?

And, a thought, is it still appropriate and necessary to let young Germans be marred in the media because of wrongdoings executed by their grand- and great-grandfathers around 70 years ago?

Nordic Mind