SRINAGAR: Gunmen shot dead a grandmother, mother and her infant daughter after the child's father, a former Kashmiri separatist rebel, surrendered to Indian security forces, police said on Sunday. They then set the house on fire before fleeing, a police spokesman said. Militants often attack families of police and army informers in the India-held Jammu and Kashmir, where separatists have waged a revolt against Indian rule since 1989. Police had no further details on the killings of the three, which happened in Udhampur district, in the south of the state.-- Pakistan Times

The McCartney horror is not, as the word now has it on the streets of New York and Boston, some startling revelation of the way these men behave, not some grisly departure from the honorable Irish fight for freedom. It merely confirms what most decent Irish have known about the IRA for years.-- Times (London)

Internal violence has also resulted in aggression against members of the press, in an attempt to silence free speech and critique of the Palestinian condition. Journalists critical of the PA and its policies, such as Seifeddin Shahin (al-Arabiya Satellite Channel), have been continually subjected to violence, either at the hands of PA officials or by unknowns affiliated with a political splinter group. In March this year, Arafat confidante and editor Khalil al-Zebin was sprayed with bullets by unidentified assailants. His death is just the latest in a string of increasingly violent attacks on the press and free speech.-- Arab Media Internet Network

What do these three stories have in common? They all deal with fear societies that were created not by official governments but by self appointed “Freedom Fighters” or “Insurgents” claiming to represent their “oppressed peoples’ fight for Justice.” They also enjoy almost complete immunity from media scrutiny. Why? Because those who failed to support the “militants” are labeled 'collaborators' and their “execution” is not considered worth reporting for both ideological and practical reasons.

I have recently heard Michael Crichton remark that he is coming to the conclusion that most people would prefer to live under a totalitarian government. I suspect by that he means Western elites including the media who are often contemptuous of the compromises necessary to govern a democracy. Their heroes are “revolutionaries” like Castro and Che Guevara, men of action who “fight for the right” against unfair odds. If they need “to break some eggs” (i.e., kill those who stand in their way), it is not the media’s role to expose them. On the contrary, it is the reporters’ role to help make the proverbial omelet faster by focusing on the transgressions of their enemies. Not until that “right” is seriously questioned will the media reluctantly begin to focus on the culture of fear these “heroes” use to control those for whose rights they profess to fight. Thus, “everybody knew” that the IRA was terrorizing the Northern Irish Catholic community. Almost nobody wrote about it until the McCartney sisters risked their lives, stood up and exposed the culture of fear that grips many of their neighborhoods. When they did, it was the Irish Prime Minister and the American president who stood with them, not investigative reporters. The same, of course, is true about the Muslims of Kashmir and the residents of the Palestinian Authority.

But there are also the practical considerations of access and safety. In other words, “revolutionaries” are enjoying the same advantages that official tyrants do. Reporters worried about their safety and anxious to have scoops and access prefer not to expose the atrocities committed by their subjects. The wide use of local stringers merely makes this problem more acute. After all, local stringers have vulnerable families.

It is difficult to exaggerate the harm done by this systematic and widespread cover up. First, the local population is left to the less than tender mercies of self-righteous terrorists. Second, idealistic youth are led to believe that these bullies are preferable to their own imperfect democratic politicians. Third, much of the world is surprised when men presented as idealistic “freedom fighters” come to power and turn out to be nothing but tin pot dictators, if not mass murderers. Indeed, for decades fear of another Pol Pot has been stifling Western enthusiasm for Third World democratization. Since as Churchill so aptly stated, democracies may be the worse system of government with the exclusion of all others, its time for the Western media to stop enabling every thug who promises to come up with a better system. Their failure to do so holds hostage the very people they claim to support and makes the price of getting rid of those “revolutionary” crime syndicates higher than absolutely necessary.