warped by the amount of media coverage we in the West demand of it to the detriment of other conflicts and problems? We demand it because the West and the Mideast is involved, American soldiers are there, oil is there, and Islamic terrorism is there.  When coverage like the following:

Uganda's daily rate of violent deaths is three times Iraq's, says report
By Katy Pownall in Kampala, published March 30 in The Independent

....The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq and the 20-year insurgency has cost $1.7bn (£980m), according to a report by 50 international and local agencies released today.

The violent death rate for northern Uganda is 146 deaths a week or 0.17 violent deaths per 10,000 people per day. This is three times higher than in Iraq, where the incidence of violent death was 0.052 per 10,000 people per day, says the report....

(more from Catherine Maddox at Voice of America, March 30)

finally manages to get a little play, by purposely pushing P.R. through a organized report effort, I am always reminded of the "most in the West don't care about brown people" argument that some on the left use.  I think: you bet we don't, and it includes everyone, so cut the holier-than-thou stuff about people who don't pay attention to world news. How much outrage and interest do you see about African conflicts and problems in the lefty blogosphere, how many cries that media coverage is imbalanced in preference for Iraq or other Mideast stories?

People worldwide are selfishly interested in the personal equivalent of "national interest" in geo-politics (i.e.: the majority of Chinese are not clamoring for more coverage of Iraq; if you have a child with cancer, cancer treatment news may be the most important story to you and Iraq is far away and not such a big deal.) Perspectives are warped by how important you think a story is and how much you spend time on it, how driven you are by political activism and similar considerations.

This happens to be why I think Josh Marshall's "Like a Newspaper" post about layout broached a far more important topic than it might seem at first.  Suggestion for fellow blog forum junkies like me: next time you're thinking of looking down on the viewing masses who feed the ratings for crime stories about missing white girls in the Carribean, think about your own preferences and tastes in news and whether they also have built-in prejudices and imbalances. Think about whether relying more and more on like-minded blog communities, or even just personal "googling" really means being truly "informed" enough to make rational judgments about international policy. Think about whether in the future more news coverage dollars will be more and more forced towards certain topics via "vox populi" demand, and that the result may not be as reality-based as one might think.

March 15 op-ed by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist
Distributed through BlackPR.com and BlackNews.com:

....The jail violence between blacks and Latinos that has torn L.A. County jails has roots that go far beyond the jails. The painful truth is relations between blacks and Latinos are rife with cultural, racial and economic myths and misconceptions. Since the civil rights era, the popular fiction was that blacks and Latinos are an oppressed people of color with a history of racial discrimination and poverty, so their struggle is the same....

....Through massive immigration and higher birth rates, the Latino population has soared. Latinos have displaced blacks as the largest nonwhite minority in America. Latinos demand that political and social issues no longer be framed solely in black and white.

The clash has been especially fierce on the hot button issues of immigration and jobs, political representation and street turf control....

somehow spin this story as all Israel's fault:

Once Protected by Hussein, Palestinians Suffer Backlash
By Kirk Semple, with Hosham Hussein and two Iraqi employees of The New York Times,
published March 24 from Baghdad:

The bill of death appeared overnight on Thursday, addressed to "the Palestinian traitors," and the killers were specific in their intent.

"We warn you that we will eliminate you all if you don't leave the area for good within 10 days," the leaflet said. It was signed by a group calling itself the Judgment Day Battalion, and it was scattered in front of the homes of Palestinians in Al Hurriya, a northern Baghdad neighborhood.

"We are ready to leave Iraq — if we have the chance," a Palestinian resident of Al Hurriya said today, declining to provide his name for fear of retribution. "This is the opinion of everyone here."......

The Neo-Cons really got more than they bargained for in hitting this hornet's nest.  I doubt that they were gunning for  igniting decades of Sunni v. Shiite "war" allover the Mideast, but I think that only because they were incredible stupid about this all; had they had the knowledge, I wouldn't put it beyond them to advocate it as a "let's have all the religious troublemakers kill each other" solution.