What TIME WON'T TELL: the U.S. corporate media magazine names Malalai Joya one of 100 people "who most affect our world". But here's what TIME WON'T TELL you...

Here's the image TIME magazine DIDN'T use:

[this image is from here]

But maybe that one wasn't clear enough--or maybe it's too clear?

Okay, here's another image of Joya ALSO not used by TIME:

[this image is from here]

But that shows her being ACTIVE and OUTSPOKEN, OPPOSING THE U.S. WAR on Afghanistan. So...

Here's the one TIME did use:

Jonathan Evans / Eyevine

Note the rather glaring difference in stance and the muting of her message. I searched, but I couldn't find a more passive image of Malalai anywhere on the Internet. So they really had to search far and wide for that one.

Malalai Joya is a humanitarian, a human rights activist, a feminist, and a revolutionary. She and her people are not just fighting the Taliban. See, it's not just those woman-hating oppressors--the misogynistic men of the Taliban--who are oppressing women in her country. But don't take my word for it...

From the beginning of her autobiography, linked to right here.

For the thirty years I have been alive, my country has suffered from the constant scourge of war. Most Afghans my age and younger have only known bloodshed, displacement, and occupation. When I was a baby in my mother's arms, the Soviet Union invaded my country. When I was four years old, my family and I were forced to live as refugees in Iran and then Pakistan. Millions of Afghans were killed or exiled, like my family, during the battle-torn 1980s. When the Russians finally left and their puppet regime was overthrown, we faced a vicious civil war between fundamentalist warlords, followed by the rule of the depraved and medieval Taliban.

After the tragic day of September 11, 2001, many in Afghanistan thought that, finally, with the ensuing overthrow of the Taliban, they might finally see some light, some justice and progress. But it was not to be. The Afghan people have been betrayed once again by those who are claiming to to help them. More than seven years after the U.S. invasion, we are still faced with foreign occupation and a U.S.-backed government filled with warlords who are just like the Taliban. Instead of putting these ruthless murderers on trial for war crimes, the United States and its allies placed them in positions of power, where they continue to terrorize ordinary Afghans.

You may be shocked to hear this, because the truth about Afghanistan has been hidden behind a smoke screen of words and images carefully crafted by the United States and its NATO allies and repeated without question by the Western media.

You may have been led to believe that once the Taliban was driven from power, justice returned to my country. Afghan women like me, voting and running for office, have been held up as proof that the U.S. military has brought democracy and women's rights to Afghanistan.

But it is all a lie, dust in the eyes of the world.

-- Malalai Joya, pages 1 and 2, A Woman Among Warlords (2009)

This U.S. military-industrially invested and corporate-sponsored TIME WARNER way of honoring of Malalai Joya may be found *here*. Pay close attention to who they don't implicate in the violence against her people--which, as you know, includes violence against women. I mention this because one of the sleazier U.S. media manipulations and propaganda campaigns that has succeeded among people right to left, is to convince us that the Amerikkkan military needs to be occupying and bombing Afhanistan to support WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS. Last time I checked, and this news wasn't in TIME magazine either, KILLING WOMEN wasn't a form of supporting their human rights.

Does TIME require its reporters and writers to really know much about the people they honor, such as by, maybe, taking in the information on the first two pages of her autobiography? I get the sense that, yes, Hirsi Ali DID read her book, and can only ask her to reconsider what she knows to be true: the U.S. is many things to Afghanistan, but "an ally" isn't one of them. Watch how Kirsi Ali negotiates around her position about the U.S., as if the problem is all in her mind. As if, somehow, she's got it all wrong about who is causing the Afghan women and men around her to die young--life expectancy is to age 45. As if maybe she doesn't get that the terror the girls and boys in her country feel when U.S. bombs blow up their homes and families is really the U.S. being a good friend to those in need. If only she could see that! Read on...

The 2010 TIME 100

In our annual TIME 100 issue we name the people who most affect our world

• Heroes

Malalai Joya

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali Thursday, Apr. 29, 2010

To be a woman growing up in Afghanistan under the Taliban and to survive is in itself a major feat. To be so lucky as to become literate in a place where girls are shrouded and denied even fresh air is close to a miracle. To start underground schools and educate girls under the noses of turbaned, self-appointed defenders of virtue and forbidders of vice is truly extraordinary.

But to get a seat in parliament and refuse to be silent in the face of the Taliban and warlord zealots shows true fiber. When Malalai Joya did this, her opponents responded in the usual way: expulsion from parliament, warnings, intimidation and attempts to cut her life short. She has survived all of it.

Malalai, 31, is a leader. I hope in time she comes to see the U.S. and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country. The road to freedom is long and arduous and needs every hand.

Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, has a book, Nomad, out this month

*          *          *

Now, if TIME magazine wishes to REALLY honor her and all her very hard work, let them put on their cover a call to President Obama to withdraw all troops and work with nations around the world, not just the rich ones, to bring to an international war crimes trial ALL the warlords ruling her country--including those who are fully backed by the U.S. And include on THAT cover the "warlord zealots" named George W. Bush and Barack Obama, named as such.

I wonder: when will that be happening? Any TIME soon?

The U.S. media is like a self-righteous arrogant angry white man in a car in NYC traffic: he'll curse out everyone around him, and think he's never in the wrong.We're very comfortable calling the Taliban woman-oppressors, because they are. But wait... we're their oppressors too! Uh-oh. What to say about that? Let's try nothing, and, god forbid, she actually get those words out, about the U.S. "occupying" Afghanistan in a not-so-helpful way, rest assured, she'll be shut down and shut off. You can witness this happen below.

Below you can see for yourself just how much "freedom of the press" we really have here, on this land of the free! Is this a country where our press can speak out against its leaders in non-bickery Republicratic ways? No. Well then, can we at least let someone from a country we're bombing speak out about what she knows even better than President Obama and his generals? No, we can't have that kind of freedom here. So we don't. But Sandra Bullock secretly adopted a baby boy of color! THAT'S something you're going to hear all about--primarily from a white supremacist perspective.

TIME WARNER and other mega-media have the freedom to speak in favor of what their stockholders want them to say in order to drive up stock prices. That means, in practical terms, there's a lot that can't be said. We are not likely to be hearing a lot more in TIME or out of TIME, from Malalai Joya on U.S. patriarchal and racist corporate imperialism any time soon.

About this we can be sure: women of color do not own U.S. mass media. They just occasionally get honorably mentioned for doing things the U.S. press has no intention of reporting honestly about. Here's more proof.

From this website, antiwar.com, about CNN's interview with Malalai Joya. CNN, you know, is owned by TIME WARNER. All that follows to close this post is from antiwar.com. And with what follows, I say "Your honor, I rest my case."

Malalai Joya and the Tale of 2 CNNs

Eric Garris, October 28, 2009

“The Bravest Woman in Afghanistan,” Malalai Joya did two CNN interviews on Thursday. Joya is an elected member of the Afghanistan parliament who has been suspended for “insulting fellow members of parliament” in a television interview. She is articulate and firm in her position that the Western occupation is feeding the violence.

The first interview was broadcast on CNN (US). In the middle of the interview, as Joya made clear she opposed US occupation, interviewer Heidi Collins said “occupation would certainly be your word, a lot of people would take great issue with you calling the US presence in your country an ‘occupation’.” Joya went on to defend her position as Collins’ interrupted snidely. As Joya tried to respond to Collins, she was cut off.



The second interview took place on CNN International. Joya’s anti-occupation position was highlighted up front and the interviewer was polite and respectful.