[thechat] Terrorists attack Indian parliament

[Erika Meyer]

Hey Madhu, that's shocking.  Is there any news about who and why?

You think India will indeed emulate US & Israel and bomb someone now?

http://madman.weblogs.com/2001/12/13
<quote>
>The morons at CNN, of course, don't consider it very newsworthy and 
>have buried the news both on their main site as well as the Asian 
>site (Bin Laden hogs the spotlight on both). It didn't happen in 
>USA, you see
</quote>

CNN:

I think it is a f&cking shame that it is not understood, particularly 
in this country, that we live in a global world, and it doesn't 
matter where a person comes from... every person who suffers from 
conflict, every life that is lost needs to be mourned.

We recognize only the Americans who die in conflict.  Everyone else 
is a footnote.

For example, we've devoted pages of news to the Americans dead in the 
Afghan war... and major newspapers have given at least a small 
personal obit to every person dead in the initial terrorist attacks.

Yet I haven't seen any official recognition of Afghan civilian deaths 
at American hands, not to mention a personal obituary of anyone. 
News agencies have tried to report some of these injuries and deaths. 
And if you count the starvation, the villages bombed, and the 
accidents during flight, I know they are significant... and include 
many children.

To mourn those civilians, to recognize them as humans like us, would 
be to recognize the travesty of war.  We are not allowed to do that.

But I say we just can't sit around and not care, because the dead 
aren't blue-eyed Americans.

There are many things I never understood.  I never understood, when I 
was a teenager, why tragedies that involved loss of life would be 
described in terms of dollars lost.  I don't notice that so much any 
more.  I don't know if that's because news agencies finally realized 
how callous it sounds, or if I just stopped noticing.

I also never understood why American... especially white American... 
lives are valued in our press so much more than non-American and/or 
non-white lives.

The cold hard fact is that we can't turn away from the misery of the 
world and pretend it doesn't DIRECTLY affect each one of us, even us 
well-fed Americans.

Afghan children are starving to death right now.   African children 
being orphaned by AIDs, a disease that is controlled in this country, 
with proper treatment.  These are our children, our people, and we 
ignore their suffering.  In fact, we profit from it.

But that profit is only short-term.  What goes around comes around 
and no one is immune.

Kofi Annan said on Tuesday:

<quote>
Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful 
and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, 
no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part 
of the world from national security crises in another.
</quote>

His speech
http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/2001/annan-lecture.html
contains a great deal of wisdom.

Perhaps our press reproduced some of this wisdom.  I didn't see it. 
If it was published at all, it was overshadowed by the "should we be 
permitted to view Osama's latest video" debate.

I'm sorry my country doesn't get it. 

Our arrogance + ignorance will be our undoing.

& no missile shield is going to save us.

Erika

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