Two minute silence

[ciphergoth]

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.

Comments

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

You're so sane!

[simm42.livejournal.com]

Thankyou for raising this.

There are far worse things being perpectuated around the world that people forget about.

People so often use such silences as this to reflect on things that have closely touched themselves and then give themselves a little pat on the back for giving up their time to think, then forget about everything and go back to their starbucks and their SUVs.

*nods*

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

About 500 were born, to give that 42 a scale. It's a disturbing percentage.

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

I think I'd say "other" rather than "far worse".

[simm42.livejournal.com]

Really? You dont think its worse that 42 children died because we in the west couldn't be bothered to give them the money instead of spending it on an over priced coffee of a fuel guzzling lump of metal? That we ignore that fact?

I think that is far worse. What happened in london atleast had a reason behind it, a message they were trying to convey. The reasoning was insane, the message stupid and the delivery barbaric, but to let children die because we as a whole just cant be bothered to fix it?

No there are far worse things that can and do happen in this world and our hands are dirty from them.

[painted-bird.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

No, I do not think we should ignore it. I apologise if you took me to mean that.

I think we should fight poverty and terrorism. Death from neither is 'better' than the other.

[simm42.livejournal.com]

Both should be stopped.

Deffinatly.

But I think the billions being put in to add new liberty infringing anti terrorist messures could have far far better uses.

The scales of the problems are confused in politics and the responses disproportionate to the actuality

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the perspective. Also, re world reaction to London, similar numbers of violent deaths elsewhere in the world get nowhere near the press.

Hell, similar numbers of violent terrorism inflicted deaths get nowhere near the press.

:sigh: which doesn't, though, make the London attacks any less bad . . . just that yeah, here's another vote for people thinking in more general terms.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

to let children die because we as a whole just cant be bothered to fix it?

You dont think its worse that 42 children died because we in the west couldn't be bothered to give them the money instead of spending it on an over priced coffee of a fuel guzzling lump of metal?


This isn't the way I see it, actually. I don't think it's possible to fix poverty by just giving people money. That might seem counterintuitive, but I genuinely believe it. I certainly don't think we are ignoring poverty. I understand and share your frustrations that poverty can't be cured with the click of a finger; the fight goes on to address the underlying problems and I think we are actually beginning to tackle them effectively. It will take time, but I am an optimist. I genuinely believe we will get there in the end.

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

I genuinely believe we will get there in the end.

I believe this too.

If not in their lifetimes, hopefully within ours.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Surely it's acceptable - and only human nature - to focus more on what happens close to home? I for one would never be able to get out of bed in the morning if I was forced to feel as much pain over every single death in the world as I have felt over the past week for those who died in the London bombs. I would feel permanently depressed, as if nothing was worth living for.

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.

[booklectica]

I for one would never be able to get out of bed in the morning if I was forced to feel as much pain over every single death in the world as I have felt over the past week for those who died in the London bombs. I would feel permanently depressed, as if nothing was worth living for.

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.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

Perspective and sanity good. But I am entirely in favour of the provision of such vigils, to allow people to publicly express what they're feeling. I don't know about all of Europe standing still, but all of London. Yup. Sorry.

[simm42.livejournal.com]

I agree - giving people money or food isn't going to fix it - but it is going to take money to fix the underlying problems.

Things like wiping out the debt of poorer countries, setting up fair trade laws and sorting out farming subsidies

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

Also, in my job particularly, I get heartily sick of people saying 'how can you fight x when y is going on?'. But that's an aside, I know it's not what you're saying

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm not against the vigils or the silence. And I also agree that having a 100% level sense of perspective would drive you mad very quickly - I don't apologise for feeling it more strongly when they bomb my city, and kill friends of friends, than when people thousands of miles away with no connection to me die.

But when we move from expressing what we're feeling and how we're affected, to what we're going to do about it as a matter of public policy, I want it recognised that compared even to road deaths, never mind global poverty, terrorism is barely a blip on the scale of problems government should be thinking about and spending money on.

[latexiron.livejournal.com]

A good point...

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

I see where you are coming from but I think it is possible to distinguish between what you feel and keeping a sense of perspective intellectually. The bombing of the World Trade Centre was appalling but the worldwide media response appeared disproportionate, to me at least, given the sort of statistics P quotes. That to me is a political matter which it is worth emphasising regardless of how upset or indeed removed one feels from all global atrocities/injustices. I agree entirely that there is no point trying to force yourself to feel guilty.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Not against vigils etc and dont think P is either.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree, about poverty, if not so much road deaths.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

I would quibble the road deaths comparison too, if only because road deaths are not political per se.

But I know what you mean. :o)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I've enjoyed the discussion in this entry, and agreed with a lot of contrasting things people have said. I've got to say, I think it reflects very poorly on you that you've disabled comments in the entry in your journal that it inspired. There are people on my friends list who have the courage of their convictions enough to do things like go to Uganda to try and make a difference. I can't match that, but at least I have enough courage in my convictions to allow people to challenge them here.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

It's completely acceptable and expected to focus on what happens close to home. I didn't mean to invalidate that at all.

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 ciphergoth mentioned above.*

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."

[simm42.livejournal.com]

I dont normnally disallow comments, in this case I was going for shock and the thought it creates (I know for one I dont score close to perfectly against the metrics I list there, but in writing it I've had to confront those issues in myself)

The main problem with this kind of discussion on LJ is that you are preaching to the choir, the people already doing something and that what you say doesnt reach those that really need to hear it, but then would they listen?