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640 dead in Bagdad
- Thread starter swindonseagull
- Start date
Beeercan
New member
Same, f***ing !!!! - very NSP
edit - Bollox C*nt has been repalced by !!!!
edit - Bollox C*nt has been repalced by !!!!
Last edited:
HampshireSeagulls
Moulding Generation Z
I think we are slowly coming to what swindon actually meant to say. By saying that he "didn't feel sorry", I don't think he actually meant that he didn't give a shit - I think he meant that he has become desensitized to this sort of story, and as such was offering the news reporting as proof of how the world of the media are only interested in 1000 people dying until 1500 people die somewhere else, then they relegate the story to the back end of the news.
I can see his point on this, in that Iraq sees as many people die on a daily basis as we saw die in the London bombings, but the news does not see fit to keep a running tally - ie, it is no longer news because it is common place. Doesn't make it right, but the media is not interested in that sort of story, and it becomes "oh yes, another 1000 people died in Baghdad today" because it loses the shock impact. The London bombings have also come to mean the death of the Brazilian, not the death of the other people - when was the last time you saw them mentioned? The sad thing is that they are not newsworthy - they are relegated below Makosi getting her floppy tits out again. The media know that they have more of a story by following the Brazilian issue - it's more sensationalist, there is the potential for larger headlines, and never-ending interviews with the mourning cousin again. The families of the bomb victims are not driving themselves in front of the cameras, they have no "target" for their sorrow, particularly not one in the public service. The media cannot demand the resignation of bin Laden, or investigate their working practices. The deaths also occur almost annually on the Hajj pilgrimage, but they are not really news simply because they happen every year - they might get a 45 second mention for two days, then they get relegated in favour of other news.
Then again, the media cannot win on this one - do they string out the story at the expense of other news, or do they make a judgement call and lower the "value" of a story when something else happens? It also depends what media you watch - if you watch dedicated news channels, then the coverage is longer and deeper - on the news summaries it has to be shorter and more basic because they need to cover other events.
I don't think he meant that by not feeling sorry he didn't care, I think he meant that he was unable to feel sorry because it was "another" 1000 people dead, and in the overall scheme of things, this is no longer a large number, I don't think it was put particularly well.
I can see his point on this, in that Iraq sees as many people die on a daily basis as we saw die in the London bombings, but the news does not see fit to keep a running tally - ie, it is no longer news because it is common place. Doesn't make it right, but the media is not interested in that sort of story, and it becomes "oh yes, another 1000 people died in Baghdad today" because it loses the shock impact. The London bombings have also come to mean the death of the Brazilian, not the death of the other people - when was the last time you saw them mentioned? The sad thing is that they are not newsworthy - they are relegated below Makosi getting her floppy tits out again. The media know that they have more of a story by following the Brazilian issue - it's more sensationalist, there is the potential for larger headlines, and never-ending interviews with the mourning cousin again. The families of the bomb victims are not driving themselves in front of the cameras, they have no "target" for their sorrow, particularly not one in the public service. The media cannot demand the resignation of bin Laden, or investigate their working practices. The deaths also occur almost annually on the Hajj pilgrimage, but they are not really news simply because they happen every year - they might get a 45 second mention for two days, then they get relegated in favour of other news.
Then again, the media cannot win on this one - do they string out the story at the expense of other news, or do they make a judgement call and lower the "value" of a story when something else happens? It also depends what media you watch - if you watch dedicated news channels, then the coverage is longer and deeper - on the news summaries it has to be shorter and more basic because they need to cover other events.
I don't think he meant that by not feeling sorry he didn't care, I think he meant that he was unable to feel sorry because it was "another" 1000 people dead, and in the overall scheme of things, this is no longer a large number, I don't think it was put particularly well.
SK1NT
Well-known member
Regardless of what he meant. Any innocent people/person dying is very sad. For him to blatanly grab our attention with a thread title '640 dead in Bagdad' then in the next breath say i dont care, is utter callousness. It doesn't matter how many have died their recently. Imagine one of the hundreds that died was a family member of yours? 
Wardy
NSC's Benefits Guru
brighton_b0y said:Regardless of what he meant. Any innocent people/person dying is very sad. For him to blatanly grab our attention with a thread title '640 dead in Bagdad' then in the next breath say i dont care, is utter callousness. It doesn't matter how many have died their recently. Imagine one of the hundreds that died was a family member of yours?
I agree, plus if he realy did mean something else, he as had plenty of time to correct us on the issue.
HampshireSeagulls
Moulding Generation Z
I think this was his badly put point! I don't think he was mocking, I think he was making a point about desensitization, but ended up in a corner before he realised it. It is the sheer amount of people that die on a daily basis that means that he is unable to feel sorry for a remote number of people somewhere else. I think he was also making a point about how the other pilgrims appeared to ignore the deaths and carry on, but this is slightly contrived as you would not expect something like this to affect a pilgrimage (it happens in other religions - and to a certain extent it happens in football - "he would have wanted us to carry on...etc, etc". To be fair, the media did follow up on the grieving that was taking place, but the story was taken over by the USA flooding story, which is proving to be a "bigger" story than Iraq.
I think he was also making a point about the way the media reported it, then dropped it for the next story.
I think he was also making a point about the way the media reported it, then dropped it for the next story.
HampshireSeagulls
Moulding Generation Z
Wardywonderland said:
I think that "cornered rat" syndrome had kicked in at this point, or he was unable to recover his argument in such a way without losing face or seeming to change his point of view. If the original post had been more detailed and explanatory, then we wouldn't be in this situation!
SK1NT
Well-known member
are you his spokemanHampshireSeagulls said:
no seriously hampshire if his words were taken out of context he had plenty of time to say, but instead he stood by what he said in a very childish manner saying 'stick and stones etc' Hes blatanly an attention seeker, but as swindon said himself, school starts again soon.
Meade's Ball
Well-known member
I don't care about millions of people who die each year that i never hear about.
I only really have it in me to care for the lives of those i have some connection with. Yes, i can feel sadness for lives lost, but it's impossible to empathise, for me at least, and it only arises with photos confronting me in the papers or people making stupid comments online. I don't comprehend mortality and hope i never do. I've watched those i love die and seen a couple of those i don't go the same way. None of it makes sense.
Who can say that one person should grieve like the rest of us? Can i go up to someone and tell them not to mourn the loss of Princess Di even if i find it slightly ludicrous? Engine-lovers were devastated when Ayrton Senna died. I couldn't give a shit though. John Peel died and i felt awful for a while.
I can say that many people dying is a terrible thing, but i think my sorrow lasts for as long as i look at this thread. Then i'll look at one about shit books and forget.
I really don't know what my point is. Maybe there is a larger debate to be had, but i'm not sure it should stem from the original "thought" expressed here.
I only really have it in me to care for the lives of those i have some connection with. Yes, i can feel sadness for lives lost, but it's impossible to empathise, for me at least, and it only arises with photos confronting me in the papers or people making stupid comments online. I don't comprehend mortality and hope i never do. I've watched those i love die and seen a couple of those i don't go the same way. None of it makes sense.
Who can say that one person should grieve like the rest of us? Can i go up to someone and tell them not to mourn the loss of Princess Di even if i find it slightly ludicrous? Engine-lovers were devastated when Ayrton Senna died. I couldn't give a shit though. John Peel died and i felt awful for a while.
I can say that many people dying is a terrible thing, but i think my sorrow lasts for as long as i look at this thread. Then i'll look at one about shit books and forget.
I really don't know what my point is. Maybe there is a larger debate to be had, but i'm not sure it should stem from the original "thought" expressed here.
Meade's Ball
Well-known member
Simster said::swindon:
swindonseagull
Well-known member
- Thread starter
- #74
so Brighton boy Whos doing a runner?
you seem to want to keep this thead going so let me help you.
your quote...
MY very first post in this thread.
where in those few words did I say I do not care?
simple question....
as Hampshire seagull has put it all the news from the middle east is bad news so therefore we get desensitsed.
none of them were my relations and I probably have never met any of them ( there is a minute chance I might have as I have been to Iraq 20Plus times. since the invasion.)
so how or why should I grieve for someone I have never met?
do you wake up and cry everyday because some one died in Australia or africa? No I doubt that you do.
so just remember erery one has a right to an opinion and it may not be the same as yours.
you seem to want to keep this thead going so let me help you.
your quote...
MY very first post in this thread.
where in those few words did I say I do not care?
simple question....
as Hampshire seagull has put it all the news from the middle east is bad news so therefore we get desensitsed.
none of them were my relations and I probably have never met any of them ( there is a minute chance I might have as I have been to Iraq 20Plus times. since the invasion.)
so how or why should I grieve for someone I have never met?
do you wake up and cry everyday because some one died in Australia or africa? No I doubt that you do.
so just remember erery one has a right to an opinion and it may not be the same as yours.
mejonaNO12 aka riskit
Well-known member
SK1NT
Well-known member
I'm not expecting you to grieve, but people dying is generally something that you feel sadness for, even if it occupys a second of your thoughts. It's generally classed as a sad thing. For you to post and say i feel nothing is fine, but im sure that most will feel sorrow. Not the same sorrow as if a memeber of your family died, but never the less isn't sad if 1000 women and children are crushed to death? I don't understand your way of thinking.swindonseagull said:
Yes i agree with you that due to the many killings etc in iraq it might take away a little of the sadness and yes its not in our country etc, but it is still very saddening.
London Irish
Well-known member
HampshireSeagulls said:
No, that wasn't his point, although to save his sorry arse for the overwhelming humiliation and opprobrium being heaped on him, he did attempt, cornered-rat/weasel style, to move it on to that by the third page (media distortion I know is your big thing, HampshireSeagulls, so I think you tend to talk it up where-ever you see it!
).The actual point he was making was that it was the religious, Islamic nature of the gathering that had led to the crowding and the panic and therefore the deaths. Swindon was saying that the stampeded people were complicit in their own deaths, hence they did not deserve any sympathy.
I heard very similar arguments from very snobbish English people in the 1980s about the deaths at Heysel and Hillsborough. They regarded all football supporters as sub-human scum and just reasoned the crushed and stampeded people at these two games must have "done something" to contribute to their own deaths.
Swindon I think looks down on these Shia Muslims in similar fashion, as some kind of sub-human scum. Why he does so, we can only guess at, but it's obviously some kind of hazy racism/xenophobia combined with political bitterness at the catastrophic progress of the occupation of the country by US/UK troops.
Both the deaths at Baghdad and Heysel/Hillsborough have remarkably similar causes, the failure of authorities to impose any kind of public order control on huge gatherings of people.
Why is there no public order control in Baghdad? Because the security infrastructure of the country is, of course, a joke. There is no effective police force, no real security, no one taking charge of large public gatherings, no one able to prevent the stray mortar rounds landing on the crowd and provoking the stampede.
Lazy racists like Swindon will blame all this on the pour souls who died. But anyone with half a brain cell knows who is really responsible for the utterly chaotic shambles that passes for public order in that country.
HampshireSeagulls
Moulding Generation Z
I didn't say (or mean) media distortion - I was pointing out how a story becomes of less media value over a short period of time. Whilst the deaths in Iraq are shocking, the US storms have relegated these Iraqi deaths to a second or third-line story. On some websites, Makosi's impending deportation and Antony's nightclub ban have dropped the Iraq story from the front page completely! The media has a tendency to tailor the stories to capture the largest reading audience, otherwise they wouldn't be doing their job - Makosi's tits are of more media value (in some circles) than 600+ dead Iraqis unfortunately.
I don't think he was saying that they were complicit in their own deaths, rather that he considered it odd that despite the deaths they carried on with their pilgrimage. This is down to a lack of understanding of the religious factors involved - the deaths of pilgrims within this religious structure is of infinitely less value than the pilgrimage itself. Look at the Hajj, which regularly results in multiple crushing deaths - they do not try to cancel it, or even control it - do we really understand the self-mutilation which accompanies the Hajj, and should that be a reason to try to control it or regulate it by our western standards?. Of course not, and to apply our cultural standards to other cultures is naive. I expect they would be unable to understand how we could carry on a football match after crushing deaths, or a lady being hit by a flare, or someone having a heart attack and dying - it's not religion, so how could that be more important than someone's life?
The follow up story, which has been given less attention, shows the mourning which has taken place following the main event of the pilgrimage. His lack of sympathetic feeling is probably more aligned to lack of empathetic feeling - hundreds more deaths in a morass of thousands is not likely to suddenly pluck someone's heart strings. Desensitisation is a definite factor - you can download the Perl beheading for mobile phones for chrissakes - why would you want to? People are ever more curious, and ever more desensitised, which has been blamed on everything from 24 hours news channels to computer games.
As for the "snobbish" comments regarding football deaths - I didn't think the Sun was a particularly snobbish comic - they are still effectively banned from sale in some parts of Merseyside for the allegations they made. It is more frequently the broadsheets which are keen to denigrate football supporters as being quite some way below rugby union followers, but marginally above convicted war criminals.
I don't think he was saying that they were complicit in their own deaths, rather that he considered it odd that despite the deaths they carried on with their pilgrimage. This is down to a lack of understanding of the religious factors involved - the deaths of pilgrims within this religious structure is of infinitely less value than the pilgrimage itself. Look at the Hajj, which regularly results in multiple crushing deaths - they do not try to cancel it, or even control it - do we really understand the self-mutilation which accompanies the Hajj, and should that be a reason to try to control it or regulate it by our western standards?. Of course not, and to apply our cultural standards to other cultures is naive. I expect they would be unable to understand how we could carry on a football match after crushing deaths, or a lady being hit by a flare, or someone having a heart attack and dying - it's not religion, so how could that be more important than someone's life?
The follow up story, which has been given less attention, shows the mourning which has taken place following the main event of the pilgrimage. His lack of sympathetic feeling is probably more aligned to lack of empathetic feeling - hundreds more deaths in a morass of thousands is not likely to suddenly pluck someone's heart strings. Desensitisation is a definite factor - you can download the Perl beheading for mobile phones for chrissakes - why would you want to? People are ever more curious, and ever more desensitised, which has been blamed on everything from 24 hours news channels to computer games.
As for the "snobbish" comments regarding football deaths - I didn't think the Sun was a particularly snobbish comic - they are still effectively banned from sale in some parts of Merseyside for the allegations they made. It is more frequently the broadsheets which are keen to denigrate football supporters as being quite some way below rugby union followers, but marginally above convicted war criminals.
London Irish
Well-known member
HampshireSeagulls said:
Maybe, but in this case, there are far more "active" factors at work - anti-Arab bigotry, political bitterness, xenophobic ignorance.
HampshireSeagulls
Moulding Generation Z
..and helped by reporting like this...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4206708.stm
...adding some more fuel to the fires of anti-Arab feeling. Al-Jazeera were wondering why the US shot some of their reporters during the conflict - I think that kevlar jackets should now be part of contract negotiations. This is amazingly irresponsible broadcasting by Al-Jazeera, and serves only to widen the divide and exacerbate the problem.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4206708.stm
...adding some more fuel to the fires of anti-Arab feeling. Al-Jazeera were wondering why the US shot some of their reporters during the conflict - I think that kevlar jackets should now be part of contract negotiations. This is amazingly irresponsible broadcasting by Al-Jazeera, and serves only to widen the divide and exacerbate the problem.