By Nadine Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: September 19, 2012
Finally, the iPhone 5 has arrived! Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 this week in all its glory. Pre-orders started September 14 with a September 21 release in select countries, including Canada. For $199 and a two-year calling-and-data plan, this magnificent work of art can be yours.
It’s made with Apple’s typical flare and care: it’s lighter, thinner, speedier, larger. The half-inch added to the screen allows five rows of apps instead of the previous and obviously-limited four rows; the “Retina Display” makes the screen nice to look at. And the headphones that come with it are that much cooler. Reviewers are raving. Michael Liedtke writes in the National Post, among other ravings, that “the iPhone is going to be a case of love at first touch.”
Elsewhere: a spree of executions, torture, and mass detentions in Iraq raise concerns over human rights as an “intentional state of terror” is inflicted on the Iraqi people, drawing our attention to the ongoing battle between Sunni and Shia leaders. According to Aljazeera, Amnesty International has voiced fears that Iraq’s government may be using state-sanctioned executions to eliminate political opponents held in prison.
Prisoners are being held in six-by-four-foot cells, with up to 120 cellmates. The cells are so crowded that prisoners are forced to sleep standing up. Prisoners are tortured while being forced to confess to crimes they did not commit.
I begin to wonder how it is that the iPhone 5 and other gadgetry of a similar nature impact our lives more than the “terrorist torture” occurring right now in Iraq. If we looked at the scene objectively, what conclusion would we come to? Possessions have become more important to us than human lives.
It shows in so many ways.
The statement seems dramatic, but when you look through the Facebook status updates, which topic comes up most often? A debate on whether you should ditch your Blackberry and get the new iPhone, or a concerned update about the goings on in the Middle East?
And even if there is a Facebook status … well, that person now has a clear conscious. After a shared activist page or a status of righteous anger, we can go back to the phones.
Perhaps we’ve become desensitized. Killings in the Middle East are old news. They happen, and often. These particular crimes against humanity will fade from memory and new, more gruesome deaths will replace them. Why even bother to keep up with all the atrocities? It’s interesting that by the time the iPhone 6 comes out, there will be another attack on human rights somewhere in the world that will replace the current one, unnoticed or dismissed by consumers.
The torture, the iPhone, why does any of it matter?
