I’m sorry to post a diary that consists only of quotes, but this needs to be said…
July 7th in England
Around 700 people were wounded, markets plummeted before partially recovering and Prime Minister Tony Blair rushed to London from the Group of Eight summit in Scotland after branding the attacks “barbaric”.
July 7th in Iraq
MOSUL – At least 10 mortar rounds fell in a crowded market in central Mosul near the city’s provincial council headquarters. Hospital officials said three Iraqi civilians were killed and 52 injured from the blasts. A second such attack killed two civilians and wounded seven, the U.S. military said.
MASHRU – A double car bomb killed 18 people and wounded dozens late on Wednesday in Mashru, near the mainly Shi’ite city of Hilla, hospital sources said. It was the deadliest attack in Iraq for several days.
BAGHDAD – At dawn, Iraqi police commandos stormed the Dahab neighbourhood of the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, recovering dozens of tonnes of fuel and oil hijacked from road tankers and stored in underground tanks for resale on the black market, Interior Minister Bayan Jabor told a news conference. Fuel shortages have been a major grievance in Baghdad for months.
BAGHDAD – Jabor also said an al Qaeda cell comprising eight members, including officers, from his ministry’s 8th Armoured Brigade, a mechanised counter-insurgency unit, had been arrested and accused of plotting to kill senior officials and to blow up the Interior Ministry headquarters.
TIKRIT – Around 1,000 protesters clashed with Iraqi police outside Tikrit’s police headquarters, a Reuters witness said. One policeman was killed and three protestors were injured when the crowd overran the building, a local government spokesman said. The protests were triggered by the killing of a former mayor in the town which his tribe blamed on a rival clan.
BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Interior Minister said a counter-insurgency campaign in central Iraq dubbed Operation Lightning had captured 1,691 suspects so far, including 43 foreign Arabs. Bayan Jabor said 14 members of Iraq’s security forces have died in the operation and a total of 160 car and roadside bombs were defused.
BAGHDAD – Three Baghdad barbers were shot dead by militants on Tuesday in Baghdad, a Defence ministry statement said on Thursday. Radical Islamists have killed dozens of barbers in the past year for giving clean shaves which they say is “un-Islamic”.
BAIJI – An Iraqi soldier and a civilian were shot and killed as they were driving in a civilian car on Wednesday in the northern Iraqi town of Baiji, the defence ministry said.
(Reporting by Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul, Amer Amery in Tikrit,
Mussab Khairalla, Alastair Macdonald and Hiba Mousa in Baghdad)
Thanks for this, zander. For some people it’s London every day.
I compared with my son this morning the difference between
our reaction to the deaths in London to the deaths in
Baghdad. For us westerners value of life appears to be greater in London. He said this is not racism, it is
survival. When mass murder happens in more familiar western cities we think in the base survival section of
our brains ‘it could be us, our family, our friends, our
city.’
Perfectly said. A few English-speaking white people get blown up and the world goes ga-ga. Ten thousand brown people die unnoticed.
Thanks for the comparison zander. I hope you were able to get some rest, I’ve been a zombie at work today. The state of our world makes me physically ill.
Thanks Zander. It is mind numbing to think of this going on day after day after day. But we need to remember that it IS, and there isn’t any rest for those in Iraq, everyday it seems there is at least one or usually several attacks that kill, maime, wound.
Perhaps this somehow disproves evolution. . .we, as a race of humans, do not seem to be able to stop hating and killing each other. I want to go home to my “home planet” now, a place of peace and understanding with loving concern for others.
Thanks for your post and your always being around for the rest of us. Thanks a lot. . .
Hugs
I think something like this was said on dKos today and removed as racist or stupid. I couldn’t agree more with your point, well made.
This is what I have been thinking all day. I really appreciate you putting this in some perspective. Seems to me that a lot of the world (certainly outside the US and Europe) will see the same thing.
I want to say that there is no comparison – in the sense that any comparison is moot.
It’s like asking whose carnage is worse? Or, whose is better? (And then you have to figure out what worse and better mean).
It’s still death and fear and chaos, with the greatest suffering visited on those who have the least to do with any of it, and who are just trying to get on with their lives.
If we must love everyone equally, then we must acknowledge that everyone suffers equally as well.
I understand completely what you are saying Rub but I think the major point being made here is that no one hears about the hundreds of innocents being killed or arrested in Iraq on a daily basis. I was feeling yesterday that there was almost a lack of outpouring from the USA, like people were thinking in comparrison to 9/11 this wasn’t so bad. Same kind of thing. I mean I heard it over and over again on the news, it could have been worse. Worse than what? Death is death. The missing girl in Aruba is getting more media attention than this tragedy probably will. Now go about your business and be sure to shop Walmart mentality makes me physically ill!
I think we (as a nation, not individually) are gradually becoming more immune to the suffering of others because it has become an everyday occurrence. I was shocked yesterday and this morning because NO ONE outside of my family even mentioned the bombings as we went through our day. None of my neighbors, business associates, friends we saw at the CSA pickup, swim teacher, trainer at the gym…nobody.
Isn’t that amazing? How does one ever become so apathetic? I cannot fathom ever feeling that way.
I don’t know how they get so divorced from feeling compassion for others. Is it that they just don’t care unless it affects them directly? Are they so concerned about what’s in their wallets, bank accounts, driveways, and houses (and how it compares to the neighbors collection of stuff) that they’ve forgotten to care about anything else?
(Sorry to be so depressing, I’m just feeling down about the state of the world today, and the weather here isn’t helping any…)
The diaries, “Iraq War Grief Daily Witness,” includes photographs and poetry. They are powerful tools to make us all bear witness — every day — to the realities of war.
Thank you, Rub, for exposing the truth and keeping our hearts alive. I have admired your work for a long time.
It appears to me that anglophiles have an inbred appreciation for other anglophiles and that anyone outstide of that circle has a decreasing value, gendered on how much the skin color differentiates from themselves. Is this inherent racism, I don’t know, but I know from history that those who are not anglo are viewed as culturally inferior and therefore have less intrinstic human value, in the anglo culture.
The loss of innocent life in Iraq is so utterly despicable I find myself enraged by its disregard in the MSM. That no one is reporting to the anglo press that for every American or British casualty, there are probably 20 or 30 Iraqi innocents that are casualities. That they are deemed necessary collateral damage in this immoral and illegal war, is a moral outrage. That my government continues to lie about how this war is worth it, that the damage done to this country and Iraq is worth it, infuriates me to no end.
I pray each day for my country men serving in this war and for the Iraqi people who have been harmed by my governments illegal and immoral actions. I pray that the madman who is the leader of my country will somehow come to some sanity and stop this atrocious attack upon the world that does not fit into his square peg of life. I pray that mankind will survive this assault upon itself and will not self destruct because of the actions of few who deem that their world view is the only view that has merit. That anglo’s in power will not create the Armageddon that their bible teaches.
I am angry, I am not despaired, I am hopeful, not hopeless, I will stand against injustice, for I am a Human Being.
A good article on that topic was the hierarchy of grief by Matt Taibbi. I have sadly not been able to find a full version on the net, but its basic point was to rate the interest of plane crashed for Western media – and basically, the more Western the victims, the location of the crash and the plane model, the bigger the media frenzy. A 747 crash in New-York is the ultimate story; an Antonov crashing in Angola barely rates a few lines.
Thanks for this diary.
Or Dafur, Africa…
Today I lost a friend because he was telling me that we should just NUKE EM ALL…
I was shocked. His step-son is Jordanian and could easily be the victim of a redneck “liberating” hate crime.
I sent him the link of OMIR”S tell me again, George and then that I don’t support torture, napalming entire cities, concentration camps. That I support Amnesty Intl.
I guess some just can’t see because they are blinded by fear and hate of anyone who isn’t American. My friend hung up. But… I can’t support what they vote for. “Nuke em all”… Oh my dear.
I can’t fathom the level our country will allow such attrocities … just as long as the people aren’t white, anglo, saxxon, protestants.
And then they’ll tell us it’s our fault.
It feels just awful, doesn’t it – losing a friend in that way. I went through that with a friend/coworker a while back. Subject was pro-choice. I told her I believed in it, her eyes widened, the word “murder” came up. It was an impossible situation. I despise what the president, this “uniter” has done for an inifinite number of reasons. And this is another – his attitude, his very existence fosters and deepens conflicts between people