Some Actual News...

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. It's all about the little and random things floating around in my head that I happen to find interesting. Just so you know.

Since everyone in the news media is talking about Anna Nicole Smith for some reason, you've probably missed out on what is happening in the world today. I know that current events may be hard to understand, but really, is some dead ex-stripper who married a really rich man all that important? For me, if this fluff story trumps what's happening in Iraq or let alone next door...man...I dread to see what the US will be like in the future. Well, I just hope the generation that John Mayer sings about lives up to what he sings. If not, we are all screwed.

So, knowing that you all have busy schedules and might not have seen actual news of importance, I've decided to inform you about what you might have missed this weekend.

• The United States puts the pressure on Iran to change its evil ways. An aide to Vice President Cheney says that war may be a possibility and that 2007 is the "year of Iran." Not that G.W. Bush or Congress would declare an armed conflict with Iran or anything...
• North Korea has agreed to shut down a nuclear reactor and dismantle nuclear weapons...in exchange for some much-needed aid. Kim Il Jung will be able to get some fuel oil for his tanks. And in the process, ignore the agreement North Korea made, rebuild some weapons in secret, and go through this again.
• We're actually fighting four different wars in Iraq and in order to win, it may be necessary to lose one of them. This is not what G.W. Bush wanted when he said that victory is the goal. But I'm not even sure that he's sure what he means by that.
• According to the Department of Defense, as of February 13, 2007, 10AM E.S.T. the number of dead American GIs is 3122. The number of wounded is over 23,000.
• On Monday: 136 Iraqi civilians died; 3 American GIs died.
• On Sunday: 114 Iraqis, 2 GIs Killed
• On Saturday: 3 GIs, 87 Iraqis Killed

But that's not important. Not as news-worthy as Anna Nicole Smith. Some dead ex-stripper. Some woman who people called a gold digger. A woman who wasn't much a celebrity until people (the media) focused their attention on her. People now call her a tragic figure like Marilyn Monroe...and that is news.
Not as news-worthy and important as what's going on in Congress. Because these events really don't influence what's going on in our day-to-day lives.
Iraq? Not important. Iran? Not important. North Korea? Not important. Anna Nicole Smith died due to unknown reasons? Stop the presses! Front page news! Forget Iraq! We all know it's FUBAR and going like hell in a handbasket. Who cares if over 3,000 people died! It's ANNA NICOLE SMITH!
That's a shame. It's disgusting. We have instant access to news, 24 hours a day. We can go online and in less than a second, know what is happening across the world. We've got newspapers, TV, and the Internet providing information that took weeks, if not months to get to people. And what do we do with this great medium of knowledge? We use it to pump out swill like non-stop coverage of snow, of Anna Nicole Smith, of sensationalized, steaming piles of swill. People hundreds of years ago would die to get information like this. And we've degraded it down to this.


That's all for now.