Flipping through the news channels yesterday (because I secretly hate myself) made me feel all warm and comfortable because we’re now back to covering the missing (and assuredly dead) girl in Aruba. I think we’re up to day 50 or something like that. We should call this our Missing Girl Death Watch.

Talk about vapidity. The overdone coverage of the bombings in London (hey, anybody remember this much yakking over 3/11?) has proven to be a bore, and nobody wants to talk about Iraq because it’s such a success, so it’s back to the missing white girl. After so many days, what exactly is there to talk about? But that question explains why I am not a television producer because there’s apparently an endless supply of milk to be made from this story. So let’s dispatch more talking idiots to the scene offering their droll opinions about the investigation, and let’s make sure to do it for at least an hour, so we can repeat ourselves in case anybody has just tuned in.

I am tired of the attention being paid to this story, and it smacks of racism. Missing black people are boring, non-stories, but we can speculate endlessly about this pretty, blond-haired, blue-eyed girl from the South who was abducted by darkies in a foreign land. It’s almost like a bizarre rehash of the Jessica Lynch story, wherein the all-American girl (and her white sexuality) is threatened but survives with it all intact. In the case of the missing girl, well, we can assume that she is dead (or escaped to Martinique) but we can still cover the story because she is white and pure and presumably, a good Christian girl.

Unless we’re going to start giving as much attention to missing non-white people, I say enough. Let this investigation take its plodding course and let the family deal with the nightmare of it all. We’re certainly not helping with the lurid talking about it, and at this point, I just don’t give a damn anymore.

I read this story linked in from God knows where and the only thing that comes to mind is: what the fuck?

Are the Iranians just like the religious right in America? There’s war, terrorism and general injustice in the world but let’s go kill the homos, because they pose the biggest threat to society since, oh, I don’t know, the development of nuclear weapons?

These two kids -- and let’s face it, people they are not adults -- had their lives snuffed out because they’re gay. Or, if you believe some other media outlets, because the official story is they were raping young boys. It’s like listening to GOP talking points about homosexuality: deviants who prey on our innocent children. So, not only did these two young men have to live with the already insane atmosphere that is Iranian society, they had to deal with their own identity and keep it all a secret. Only it didn’t work out that way because they were caught, tried and found guilty and sent to the hereafter. They won’t be coming back. They won’t ever have a chance to figure out who they are or enjoy their lives in some measure.

They’re just plain dead. I feel so much better now that civilization has been saved.

I admit that I don’t care for the British, who in many ways, more arrogant than Americans or the French when it comes to a vaunted sense of self-importance. And while I have sympathy for the victims of the July 7 bombings (and the anxiety felt because of the copycat crimes just last week), I am not surprised there is now a shoot-to-kill policy for any and all brown people.

A Brazilian immigrant gets shot because at first report, he looked Asian, didn’t speak English and therefore disobeyed an order to either halt, put his hands on his head or break into “God Save the Queen.” Then it turns out he’s a brown guy of a different nature, all the way from Brazil. The reaction of Scotland Yard has been a big “oops” but there’s no apology or immediate explanation, unless of course, you believed that the shooting was indeed related to the bombings, an statement that turned out to be false.

I’ve always thought that Britain felt uneasy about brown people in its midst. After all, they’re much more exotic (and controllable, to a degree) when the natives are in their own element, not walking down the streets of London with a British accent and trying to assimilate into the culture. While England, like the other imperial powers of Europe, certainly believed in the myth of its so-called “civilizing” mission, it didn’t seem to have a backup plan for when the brownies would want to actually live in the heart of the imperial beast. Or that these people with their funny-sounding names, weird religions and swarthy ways would want to set roots there and send their children off to boarding schools and learn to be a proper Englishman. And since other brown people have committed crimes, all brown people are under surveillance. After all, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

I hope somebody will remember Jean Charles de Menezes, the young electrician shot five times in the head. There’s probably going to be more sharing his unlucky fate in the war on terror.

I know that the nomination of a Supreme Court justice is big news, especially nowadays, what with the creeping fascism of the country in general and the “tilt” of conversative poltics in particular. But the lickspittle media was going into overtime into this announcement as if it were the secular equivalent of a papal conclave.

And what perfect timing as well, as the investigation into who named the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak was gaining some media attention (finally! These fuckers tried their best to bury the news but it’s probably the blogosphere that kept up the momentum). Now we can get all distracted over the nomination of yet another white guy to further the right wing’s plan to control all three branches of government. Not even that missing girl in Aruba could preempt How Important This Nomination Is. The Plame case is one of extreme importance, and not just because there’s the prospect of Karl Rove (Lee Atwater’s reincarnation) getting in some form of trouble...wait a minute, what am I saying? How the fuck could anyone in this Administration ever get in trouble? Nobody’s gotten in trouble for the shitload of bad stuff in the past four years, how can any sane person believe that a person like Karl Rove is going to get his comeuppance? People like him don’t get comeuppances: they get promotions, protection, book deals and all sorts of rewards for their behavior.

Besides, former CIA chief George Tenet never got in trouble for his monumental failure to get even a whiff of September 11. He got a presidential award.

What a rotten time to be a Muslim: everywhere you turn, eyes are watching you, tongues are wagging and the hate is building. Muslims are so associated with suicide bombings that even the most ignorant person will walk away thinking such an act is a tenet of the faith.

Problem with fundamentalists is that they don’t often care what other people think. They’re too busy enraptured with the idea that the only audience is God to wonder about what they leave behind. Striving in the path of God doesn’t compare to polls or fretting about how you mother is going to explain to the neighbors that she raised someone who blew himself up and took a lot of people with him the process.

The London bombings (replete with the Western world licking its own wounds) have again thrust Muslims back into the spotlight. Once again, Islam is equated with suicide, death and destruction. Muslim communities have the unenviable task of needing to do as much damage control as possible, with statements and condemnations, all followed up with reassuring messages from heads of states that they know the good Muslim aren’t to blame, just the few bad ones.

Aside from the carnage and the broken lives, suicide bombers put their own communities into a form of hell. Why should anyone trust Muslims? How can a Muslim community in Europe function as members of their societies without the further taint of suspicion? All mosques are now targets; all imams and other clerics are monitored. And the image of the Muslim terrorist is further sunk into the minds of those who know nothing of Islam. I now have to explain my religion to ears that don’t want to hear, comport myself before eyes that squint and glare with mistrust.

Mission accomplished, you assholes.

Well, what exactly do you write about when there’s even more carnage in Iraq than before? Scores of suicide bombings and endless death tolls. I imagine that the media breathed a sigh of relief at the London bombings because it took the attention off Baghdad.

Not that the disparity of the coverage hadn’t told you as much. The Western world is just wringing its hands over this act, while they aren’t moved in similar fashion over the destruction in Iraq. How many civilians have been killed in the last two months alone? Do the leaders of the West stand at microphones with all their phony gravitas and intone that Iraq shall not kowtow to terrorism? Where are the eloquent speeches about the "Iraqi way of life?"

In the face of the terrorist attacks in London, the notion that “we won’t let the terrorists win” is inevitably trotted out. That plays well in London and the United States, but who speaks for the Iraqis? From my point of view, the “insurgents” are winning because they blow up scores of people on an almost daily basis. It’s terribly difficult to reconcile the Western response when tragedy happens on their doorstop as opposed to the never ending agony that ordinary Iraqis face each day. Their lives have been shattered again and again, but I find no soul searching on the part of the West. “That’s war,” is the standard (unspoken) response.

I’m sure that brings a lot of comfort to the Iraqis, who did not ask for this bogus war, no matter how bad Saddam and his entire regime was. If the governments of the West didn’t give a shit enough to prevent the launching of our Iraqi Expedition, why should they be so deeply upset over a few dozen blown up people in Baghdad?