I was driving in my car yesterday as this interview started - this is the main radio news show in the UK. It’s an interview with a NHS surgeon based in London who works in his holidays for the International Red Cross.
We hear so much about ISIS now and part of that is becasue it is not safe to go to the east of Syria - that’s intentional; it seems Assad doesn’t want the world to know of the genocide.
I wept a little in my car. If you have time, you might want to try and listen to at least some of this, to see how this Christmas will be for those less fortunate. It is a very hard listen:
Thanks for the interview. It’s eye-opening. The lack of media access to these areas is a huge problem, as is the reluctance of politicians to take interest. It’s just . . . so horrible. Really, really horrible, the kind of horrible that can’t be communicated with words, that one human can’t fully absorb.
Nott’s right - something desperately needs to be done, and it won’t be. The ones who are affected are innocent children. I don’t even want to put an emoticon or whatever here, because it just seems so . . . inadequate. We look at events like the Holocaust and other historical massacres and talk about “never again” and “learn from the past” - and it’s happening right under our noses. People like Dr. Nott, IMO, are the true heroes in this world. And for their brave actions, their lives are put in constant danger and they’re frequently killed.
As well as what Nott says about Aleppo, I guess this is also a reminder that our knowledege and preceptions of world events are almost entirely controlled by one force or another: Two months ago Putin/Ukraine, last month ISIS, this month North Korea … all the while Aleppo. None of those went away, and others never existed.
It makes me wonder what purposes ‘news’ best serves.
Considering all reporters in the region are captured and then executed, it’s not surprising very little news of the conditions people are experiencing at the hands of ISIS is limited. Negotiation with these people is not really an option. When Iran and the rest of the Western world are both at odds with the same enemy that should say something.