The news and all the media stories are like ever changing cloud formations. If you lie on your back and your eyes are on the clouds, they barely seem to move. When you take your glance away and do not look for a while, the sky looks entirely different when you lift your face towards the sky again. A week or two of ailing made me notice trends in the news that I may have not seen if I followed it daily.
Our news media, just like the clouds in the sky, is an ever changing kaleidoscope of news items. Even the great disasters enter and fade out of our consciousness in a matter of days. Going beyond the surface of the stories is the job of documentary makers. But even they tend to choose the more visually fascinating topics, after all they are movies. So we have documentaries galore on 9/11, approaching it from different directions, some even subscribing to conspiracy theories, trying to prove that it was the American government itself that blew all those people to smithereens, just so they can go and have some fun in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Jokes aside, some topics get over-explored, others never catch anyone's fancy. One such largely ignored issue is Ahmadinejad's repeated public remarks regarding America, Israel, and generally the West. In his famous Open Letter to President Bush he claims ( = threatens) that Islam will replace democracy. People tend to laugh it off, considering him to be just an eccentric, half-educated small time teacher, who somehow ended up in his present position by mistake and porbably will not last long. I think this stance is wrong, we ought to monitor him more closely.
President Ahmadinajad did not get where he is by chance. He is the figure head of a larger organization, he was actually helped into the presidential seat. Therefor he is the mouthpiece of that organization, of their world view. Yet, in spite of the belligerent position of Iran, the media does not seem to be interested in that world view. Well, I am! That world view is shaped by religious fanaticism, a religious movement in Islam with apocalyptic tendencies. They fervently anticipate the arrival of the "Hidden Imam" who, they believe, will make the whole world accept Islam. For a while they even thought that the Ayatollah Khomeini might be the Promised One. In the above mentioned letter Ahmadinejad writes: "Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems." (bottom of the page). Doesn't that send shivers up your spine? It should!
If you look into this belief system you find some very interesting ( = alarming) ideas. One such idea is that one can bring the end of times, and the arrival of the Twelfth Imam (al-Muntazar), closer by creating cataclysmic events. Ahmadinejad seems to be among those who espoused this idea. So why do we brush it off? Why do world leader and the media not react to Ahmadinejad's remarks and threats?
There seem to be several factors. For one thing he manages to continually bullwinkle the West by insisting that Iran has the right to peaceful nuclear technology, and that it wants peace. At the same time he secures the (sometimes reluctant) support of the Arab world by constantly attacking (verbally, for the time being) the "Zionist entity", even promising its elimination. But the real problem for the Western media is the acceptance of the idea that it is actually the Muslim world that is the victim of bullying, the perpetrator being the agressor USA. Let's face it, we like to be on the side of the underdog ( = the strong is wrong and the weak is right).
Psychological warfare usually precedes the physical. Yet, with adequate response to such verbal sabre rattling one might be able to avert escalation of events. I believe that Ronald Reagan's courageous and articulate verbal war with the Soviet regime contributed greatly to the peaceful dissolution of communism. I believe that the world would be different today had world leaders stood up to Hitler's deceiving demagoguery instead of negotiating with him and making concessions to him. As today, the media then, too, "tried to be objective", instead of drawing world attention to the narcissistic mass hysteria of Nazism. Islamism is growing, and I have no intention here to discuss the growth of its influence in the Western world, I am only talking about countries like Syria, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia. If things go according to their plans, Hezbollah will overtake Lebanon soon. The number of Islamist regimes is growing step by step, just as European countries were gradually overtaken by fascist regimes, who then sided with Hitler and helped WWII come to happen. Shouldn't we at least pressure the present Iranian regime by increased media attention asking them to explain their stance, and then try to understand what is really behind the oddly disturbing statements?
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