Christians slaughtered in Turkey? "Ho hum" sez our Oregonian newspaper

Sorry, you Darwin despisers. This one is about torture and murder on the other side of the world. Back to Sir Charles D. at some other time.

If you know much about the history of the Armenians and Turks about a century ago, you will know of the systematic and thorough ethnic cleansing (most generally by murder rather than by exile) resulting in deaths of millions of Christians who refused to convert to Islam and hence were executed "Daniel Perl" style. My good friend here in Portland, today chief auditor of a major Oregon firm, is grandson of one brave Armenian woman who refused to recant faith in Jesus and lost her head in a public execution.

So that was 100 years ago - a long time ago - and all that is past. Right?

Wrong. On April 18, 2007, three Christian leaders were viciously tortured for several hours and murdered in Malatya, Turkey. Shortly after, I wrote to the Oregonian newspaper and asked why no coverage. Their answer?

.... Of course that doesn't mean we don't include national and international stories. Our A section is, for the most part, devoted to them. However, if none of our wire services had the story you refer to, it likely won't appear in The Oregonian. If you'd like, you are welcome to complain to the Associated Press at http://www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact.html.

Can you imagine? The august Oregonian - our reliable and dependable family friend - publishes "all the news that matters to Oregonians" and yet asked me to do their job and encourage their news service to do a better job of providing relevant news!

This morning I Googled "Christians murderd Malatya Turkey" and got 901 hits. Reuters had it. Yahoo News had it. CNN had it. Spiegel even translated into English for us.

You can do the same Google and get the scoop. So who needs the Oregonian?

It all reminds me of the bumper sticker I saw on a dump truck shortly after Oregon's Senator Packwood was outed by the Washington Post for groping ladies who had the misfortune to be seated next to him at fancy dinners with long overhanging tablecloths:
"If it matters to Oregonians, it is in the Washington Post."

If you Google as I did, you can pick up a number of news sources to add to your favorites list. If the Oregonian wants to continue to slide into irrrelevancy, I guess so be it. Let 'em go.

For my favorites list, I added:
http://www.christiannewswire.com/

I will post the complete (translated) text of a letter from a Christian in Malatya in a separate post. In the meantime, the list of victims of the "religion of peace" (according to President Bush) continues to grow. Keep your eyes open, 'cause it seems a lot of folks are not going to be watching for us.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.