News from Erehwon

Or, why Americans are both poorly served by their media and often ill-informed about what is happening around the world.

On the day Gazans buried the dead from the Israeli attack on a UN school, these were the 'Top Stories' on one of the major US Tv news networks, ABC:

• Obama Deficit May Dent Stimulus
• Power Lunch: Obama Meets With Former Living Presidents(It would be real news if he had lunched with a few dead ones, wouldn't it?)
• Federal Judge Faces More Sex Charges
• Obama's New Ride (the new Cadillac armoured personnel carrier, sorry, Presidential limousine)
  
• There Are Beetles in your Juice
• Joe the Plumber Turns War Correspondent (Well, not really, but you could say appropriately, he's going to that drain on American resources, Israel . . .
• Weatherman Wipes Out
• SUV Flies, Crashes Into Gas Station
• Cops Can't Stop Rap Music
• Travoltas Turn to Scientology
• Affleck's Little Lady
• Who's Having the Bad Hair Day? (Not Palestinians . . .)
  

There was a single news item on Gaza: Cease Fire Soon? Fighting Resumes in Gaza; but the list speaks for itself of the importance of this appalling war assumes in the thinking of a major American TV network, and what its audience is presumed to be interested in, not what they might deserve to know.

For further illumination on the news you really need to know if you are a citizen of the USA, take a look at the column below the weatherman wiping whatever it was he was caught wiping.

That night in an interview on British Channel 4 News an Israeli miltary spokeswoman first said there were "Hamas fighters in the vicinity" of the school and Israeli troops thought they were in danger and defended themselves. Pressed as to why the Israeli Army had been given the coordinates of their school by the UN and told it was a refuge for civilians but nonetheless attacked it and destroyed it, she then claimed Hamas militants had been firing at Israeli soldiers from the school. The UN insists there was no firing from anybody but the Israelis.