Two minute silence
Jul. 14th, 2005 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
At 12:00 BST today, London and many around the world observed a two minute silence for the 48 people who died in the terrorist attacks on London on 7 July.
During those two minutes, approximately 42 children worldwide died due to poverty.
We are not going to let terrorists cause us to lose perspective.
During those two minutes, approximately 42 children worldwide died due to poverty.
We are not going to let terrorists cause us to lose perspective.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 11:54 am (UTC)I'm not suggesting we should forget atrocities carried out elsewhere (on the contrary I feel we should make an effort to educate ourselves about the world); I just don't think we should feel guilty about not feeling them as much.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 11:58 am (UTC)Yes - I've been getting exactly this feeling since Holly was born, over the number of children in the world who are abused, starving or neglected. It makes me miserable to agonise about it and it doesn't really help either me or them.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 12:45 pm (UTC)I suppose I should mention that I'm in the USA, not Britain, and that I just returned from my Israeli cousin's wedding. There was a suicide attack in Netanya on Tuesday but google news doesn't seem to show any mention of it on non-Israeli sites.
A suicide blast in Iraq that killed mostly children was in today's "oh, and by the way" section of CNN.com; the headline was the 2 minutes of silence
Attacks against civilians in both Israel and Iraq are sadly the norm**, and I understand that the normal is not news. And what happens close is going to have a lot more of an impact than what happens elsewhere, just as much as what's defined as 'close' gets redefined as the pain gets to be too much***, which again is completely expected and understandable.
Just . . . sometimes I wish that the press, at least, would remember.
(That, and that the US press would stop abdicating their responsibility to inform rather than entertain or whip emotion, but that's another post entirely.)
*I will say, though, that I'm happy that Karl Rove's name is sticking in the main headlines; the news connecting him and the Valerie Plame outing came out on Thursday and was understandably eclipsed.
** I called my aunt a few years ago when I heard about the 12/2002 Ben Yehuda Street attacks killing, I believe, 25 people at a popular Saturday night outdoor gathering. Despite my calling the very next day she had no idea why I was calling -- the youngest son was away, the middle son hadn't gone down there as he ordinarily would but had hung out in the suburbs that night, and the eldest son had been in Tel Aviv, and wonder of wonders he'd returned to find his motorbike had been unscathed by the bomb that damaged all the cars around it.
*** WW2 anecdote which the above reminded me of: [journalist]- "so you've just come back from the front lines?" [soldier] "oh, no, no. I was 50 yards back from the front lines."
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 12:59 pm (UTC)However, I would expect the press in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv to give more emphasis (than the bbc does, say) to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, for example, including the intifada, suicide bombings in general, arguments about withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the dividing wall etc. Equally, I would expect different editorial on Al-Jazeera and Arab world news media on world issues.
I suppose the point I am trying make is that, although we can feel uncomfortable with the bias in the media we frequent, it is also largely *our* decision which ones we read/watch. Obviously we are limited by what languages we can understand, but this particular barrier is I think becoming less and less important, particularly for those who have a good grasp of English (and of course, one can always learn other languages). We set up our own filters, and become our own editors in a way, by choosing what to read. So I do not think it entirely fair that we hold "the media" responsible for bias. We make our own bias, by neglecting to strike a balance in our own reading.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:10 pm (UTC)Even putting aside proximity, "child shot" makes headlines, while "child run over" doesn't; this makes some people worry more about the former than the latter, and is precisely because the latter is much more likely than the former.
Schneier's maxim: if it's in the news, don't worry about it.
I'm still not saying we shouldn't be shocked, moved, outraged and defiant, just that keeping perspective is part of that defiance.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:23 pm (UTC)I understand and applaud your plea for perspective.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:11 pm (UTC)True, those who are motivated can seek out a more full understanding of what's happening in the world. But here, at least, there are still a heck of a lot of people who get their news from broadcast media, which will run off together and focus for weeks on some celebrity trial or one missing person and then not bother to cover what's going on in the legislature. It's maddening.
Part of why I wish the broadcast folks would make more of an attempt to cover pending legislation or give more broad analysis of world events is that so many people will only seek news from sources they match politically. And then we end up with situations like we had in the US where people who planned to vote for Bush often assumed he supported the policies they supported, when he often did not (that PIPA report about separate realities).
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:20 pm (UTC)Mind you, most media outlets are either commercial organisations or competing with commercial organisations. So perhaps we can't expect too much from them. The people get what the people want...
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:31 pm (UTC)Now the information is fragmented and polarized. I'm not sure how this can be rectified.
And yes. Some time in the last 15 to 20 years the news segment of the media stopped being seen as a public duty and necessary cost center to being instead a profit center. Worse, consolidation of the media companies means that there are far fewer foreign desk reporters now than there were even 10 years ago. Coverage suffers, and more organizations rely on the same few journalistic sources.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 04:43 pm (UTC)That's a thought-provoking point. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 10:13 pm (UTC)I just hope things never again get as bad as what we had after Diana's death in '97. I remember watching one news programme, which was almost entirely given over to the coverage of her death (it wasn't breaking news at this point, but some time after). In the "oh by the way" section at the end, there was something along the lines of a family dying in a house fire.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:37 pm (UTC)Well, I think that would be a good idea. Although radical, it would be the right thing to do. Of course it would be very inconvenient, and pointless if only you personally felt that way, but if we all did some problems would be very quickly fixed, no?
Malice is not the cause of evil in the world, indifference is.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 01:54 pm (UTC)Well, not really. We'd all be stuck in bed, slowly starving to death. Including the policy-makers. Nothing at all would happen. Now that's what I'd call indifference in action.
:o)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 05:31 pm (UTC)If the world as a whole felt more empathy, however, that would perhaps lead to some problems being fixed. Or at least no longer ignored or having to be made into a trendy cause which most forget about when the next trendy cause comes along.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 06:05 pm (UTC)I strongly feel that the right approach to atrocity is to treat all of them the same way. 9/11: Incapacitating emotional pain. Bombs in London: Incapacitating emotional pain. Invasion of Iraq: Incapacitating emotional pain. Darfur: Incapacitating emotional pain. Either that or callous apathy and business as usual in every case. But all the same, because human suffering is all the same.
If that means that the entire Western population cowers in bed unable to face the World, well, that in itself would solve a lot of problems. We wouldn't be invading other countries, for instance. More realistically, if we feel such debilitating pain every time there is a comparable atrocity anywhere we would swiftly put these issues at the top of our collective priorities and solve them. We could solve them quite easily if there was any priority put to doing so.
What I have an issue with is feeling terrible gut-wrenching pain when your own countrypeople suffer relatively minor attacks but at the same time merely registering mild sympathy to foreigners suffering extended casualties. I think no politician is ever going to put priority on fixing world problems while their constituency has this double standard.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-15 04:23 am (UTC)We agree that the correct approach to atrocity is to treat them all in the same way and that a response to human suffering of one's own country/countries should be the same as the response to human suffering in other countries. What we disagree about is what that treatment should be. I don't feel that incapacitating emotional pain would be helpful; it would only lead to apathetic and hopeless anger. Deep empathy on a mass scale however, breeds a very different type of anger which I feel would indeed lead to the issues of atrocity and what causes them to occur being put on the top of our collective priorities and being solved.