PROMPT: Sometimes we have to close our eyes/minds to reality if we want to avoid conflict.

CONTENTION: The major conflicts that we care about are the ones we hear about. Indisputably one of the biggest stories in the media this week has been the conflict in Syria. You know the details civil war since 2011, the will of the people to depose their autocratic leader Bashar al-Assad, chemical attacks by the regime on its own people. Now, the US government is threatening an airstrike on Syria as a deterrent to the regime, and has been attempting to convince its allies (particularly the UK and Australia) to follow suit. This has been controversial, to say the least the citizens of these countries have been exemplifying democracy and protesting night and day in Trafalgar Square, outside the White House and out the front of Parliament House to convince their government to rescind their intentions. The biggest question that stands, though, is why do we care so much about Syria? Why specifically Syria, which gassed around 1,300 of its own people a tragedy, for sure, but insignificant in relative terms? Why has there been no public outrage on, for example, the North Korean system of gulags, where officially 400,000 prisoners have died over the last half-century from torture, starvation, disease or execution? The answer because the Syrian conflict is the one weve been hearing about, and so thats the major conflict we care about the most at the moment. The North Korean atrocities are rarely (if ever) reported in the media, and although many people know about the existence of the gulags, few people know about their extent and consequently are not concerned with them at the moment. 200,000 prisoners are currently held across 25 camps, which each cover hundreds of square kilometres. Again, while the official death count from these camps numbers 400,000, other estimates put the figure closer to 2.5 million, which would mean that the starvation of North Koreas people constitutes the worlds most significant atrocity since the end of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. There are countless other ongoing conflicts in the world today such as the well-known and well-reported War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Somali civil war, ongoing since 1991, has taken the lives of over 500,000 people. The autobiography of Canadian aspiring journalist Amanda Lindhout will be released this week, detailing her being held as a hostage there for 15 months, tortured, starved, gang-raped and forced to bear children all disturbingly common in Somalia, but these atrocities continue to go unreported in the mass media. The War in Darfur, Sudan, is infamous and has been reported in the media numerous times in the past, but is ongoing with an unknown number of deaths (possibly over 400,000 civilian deaths alone) and 2.5 million internally displaced persons. Joseph Konys LRA continues to wage a guerrilla campaign in Uganda, South Sudan, DR Congo and the Central African Republic, with mutilation, torture, slavery, rape, the abductions of civilians and the use of child soldiers being common and widespread. The insurgency began in 1987 and was only broadcast to the majority of the world with the creation of the Kony 2012 viral video last year (remember that?). And it still goes largely unreported in the media. These statistics make you wonder why the worlds governments are focusing on one nation. The deaths of 1,300 people are tragic, of course, and the use of chemical weapons from a signatory country to the Geneva Convention is simply despicable, but other brutalities occur on a daily basis throughout the world that result in far more casualties, and yet we dont know about them. Why arent we intervening in North Korea? Because few people know the extent of those atrocities, and so most people see no reason why we should. Why not in Somalia? Because a) if you ask someone to point out Somalia on a map, 80% of people wont be able to, and b) even fewer people are aware of the prevalence of rape and torture which has virtually led to an ingrained rape culture in the country. If there was even one Australian death in any of these places, the media would on it like a parasite. So when there are hundreds of Korean, Somali, Sudanese or Ugandan deaths every day, why is there not public outrage, and protests in front of government buildings? Is it Western arrogance, and an attitude of these people got themselves into their war, they can get themselves out? Or is the reason behind our nonchalance simply that we dont know what goes on, because nobody has told us?

Beau Nieuwveld