who's the hypocrite, exactly?

While bloggers are still expressing outrage over a dude who threw a shoe I'd just like to point out that Iraq was ranked the deadliest country for press for the sixth year in a row by the Committee to Protect Journalists, though there was a dropoff in the alltime high number of fatalities of journalists working in the country in both 2006 and 2007, which is not surprising. The challenges they face was also the subject of this timely video from Alive in Baghdad. Meanwhile on the day of the actual incident Human Rights Watch released a damning report on the Iraqi criminal justice system. Yet on that day and almost two weeks later the detractors still complain that the world is obsessing over the wrong things as they write more and more posts analyzing to death that exact same thing.

Open democracy Podcast has interviews on the subject of Iraqi women refugees in Syria, with groups that try to meet their needs and refugee women discussing the problems they face. IRIN also reported last month that blocking some rice imports to the country meant that many Iraqis were getting reduced rations.

(For people interested in the subject the podcast is part of a series on interviews with activists trying to improve women's status in Syria and Lebanon, the rest here, here and here. Their definition of women's rights does not seem to include mailorder brides, BTW.)