I noticed that there's no concern over the last suicide bombing & the fact that Powell may now cancel his meeting with Arafat tomorrow.
I think there is good, or at least logical, reason for the lack of concern. The media keeps harping about the "crisis" in the Middle East, but I think the American people just don't buy it.
By the media's definition, a "crisis" is any violent situation which will give good ratings. By this definition, the entire Middle East has been "in crisis" since the end of WWII.
The ME was "in crisis" during the Berlin Airlift, the Korean Conflict, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights struggles of the fifties, the Czech and Hungarian uprisings against the Soviets, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the USSR, etc., ad nauseum...
In short, the ME has been "in crisis" for an awfully long time.
Or has it really?
Unlike the media, the dictionary defines a crisis as an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending. m-w.com
Personally, I don't think that a "decisive change" can remain "impending" for 57 years -- it's just not logical. So, IMHO, what the American people see in the ME is not a "crisis," but simply a continuation of the violent status quo.
augieboo
p.s. If this post has strayed too close to "politics" I apologize. I'm not trying to be political, I'm simply trying to give a cold-blooded analysis as to why the markets have started to ignore what's going on in the ME. |
