"Going Home": Aaron Brown's 'CNN Newsnight' segment on Jews in Baghdad

[AirAmFan]

Anybody see it? Brown's producer Laura Brown and a small group of volunteers went to Baghdad with a list of three dozen elderly Jews living in squalor and isolation in Baghdad. She was funded to find them and fly them "home" to Israel, where some of them had long-lost relatives.

I haven't seen such unusually moving TV in YEARS! This fifteen-minute segment reminded me of the extraordinary WASTE of TV's potential in our culture--what Newton Minow called, "The Vast Wasteland".

How did it strike you?

[Submariner]

1. delete

[skylarmae]

2. I'm still drying my eyes. It is at times like this I try to appreciate

those I love and the Country I live in.

[TrustingDog]

3. "I haven't seen such unusually moving TV in YEARS!"

?? haven't you seen pictures of the Iraqi war and the children that are being ripped apart, the rubble that these people once called their home and town that is now owned by Bush and his criminal gang?

where have you been?

[AirAmFan]

4. I don't call grotesque violence "moving". You can always see that any day,

even when there's no "war". Just tune into any Quentin Tarentino movie.

I'm moved by and seek out images of families being reunited; I turn off images of people being blown up, cut in half, or crushed by tanks pretty quickly.

Do you see lonely old people being sought out and families being reunited on TV everywhere? That's what I meant by the "potential" of TV. Who is ennobled by images of violence?

[ladybugg33]

5. Was Saddam cruel to these Jews. I thought they were ok under Saddam?

They were living in squalor and isolation? As a result of Desert Storm or as a result of Saddam or the Iraqis? I thought I saw a documentary on them some time ago that alleged that they lived peacefully in Iraq.
Squalor? Has anyone seen the "squalor" of living under Israeli occupation? It was a very moving story, however.

[AirAmFan]

6. I really don't know whether Saddam was an equal-opportunity oppressor

Probably the most important force in Iraqi society since the 90s has been US-imposted sanctions, Even more than large-scale application of military might over weeks or months, years of sanctions resulted in disease hunger and death for millions.

Most of the real news about Iraq I saw until the last couple of years was on Ramsey Clarke's website--I don't recall the URL just now.