French Terrorist Attacks

[JPGJOHNNYG]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

[muppet]

This is well worth a read as well. It hits a very uncomfortable nail bang on the head. I am certainly guilty of accusation made, namely why are we not sympathising with the innocent dead of Beirut as well?

http://stateofmind13.com/2015/11/14/from-beirut-this-is-paris-in-a-world-that-doesnt-care-about-arab-lives/

100% agree, deaths in non-western countries don't seem to count as much.

At least you have the decency not to bring colour and religion into it because the usual tirade is why do only white deaths count ignoring the fact that just like the london bus bombings the victims will be from all races and religions. Now for the reality - of course a tragedy in a city many of us have been to and know well and only a few hundred miles away is of more interest to us than any of the numerous events happening in cities we havent been to and dont know thousands of miles away. Does that make it right? No but thats how it is. Im sure afghan villagers are more concerned about an attack in another local village than Paris maybe the righteous here shoukd have words with those selfish people too. I guess the next time RTE report a road traffic accident in Donegal they should bury it amongst all the other global traffic accidents after all they are no lesser a tragedy.

Sometimes you hear similar news so often you become desenstised to it. One innocent life isn't really worth more than another, but when you grow up listening to murder after murder in the Middle east, it all begins to blur and you write it off as 'those mad bastards'. Paris or New York are far more familiar to us and we have either been there, or know people there, or both. It is always going to have a bigger impact on us.

The only time I can say I didn't really become completely desensitised to the same news over and over again, was wrt to the 6 counties.

As an aside, I have never been to Beirut, but I understand that it is a beautiful place and I'm am reliably told the women are stunning. Ironically it is often called the Paris of the Middle East.

[Sea The Stars]

It's worrying that all the attackers have clearly not being accounted for at least going by the information that's available in the media.

[charlieTully]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

― George Orwell, Animal Farm

[seafoid]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

911 was spectacular. The US attacked and powerless. It was a defining moment in history - there was a before and after.

But we don't care about brown people. Iraqis die and it's just business as usual.
The campus killings are so pointless. Without guns they wouldn't happen. 

[whitey]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

911 was spectacular. The US attacked and powerless. It was a defining moment in history - there was a before and after.
But we don't care about brown people. Iraqis die and it's just business as usual.

Unfortunately there's s lot of truth to your comment. More focus is given to tragedies in developed countries, because we can relate to them much more closely than those that occur in the far flung corners of he Third World (where there has been mayhem and strife for millenia)

[seafoid]

Molenbeek in Brussels is now part of the investigation. A jihadi hotspot.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/parking-ticket-paris-attacks-police-belgium-molenbeek

[seafoid]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

911 was spectacular. The US attacked and powerless. It was a defining moment in history - there was a before and after.
But we don't care about brown people. Iraqis die and it's just business as usual.

Unfortunately there's s lot of truth to your comment. More focus is given to tragedies in developed countries, because we can relate to them much more closely than those that occur in the far flung corners of he Third World (where there has been mayhem and strife for millenia)

The earth spins on its axis One man struggles while another relaxes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TrishCMmpc

[easytiger95]

I think it is very difficult for people to relate to those from other cultures - if empathy was easy, do you think we would be living in the world as it is?

I think it is very easy to be down on ourselves. There are very many people in the West would be more moved emotionally by Paris than Beirut, but would still be knowledge enough politically to support or protest Western policy in the region. For me, it is about causality - we need to make logical judgments on the links between our actions and those of the terrorists, but we can't control our own visceral feelings of horror when we see people like ourselves gunned down. News editors know this - as do the terrorists - otherwise they wouldn't be in Paris.

[brokencrossbar1]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

911 was spectacular. The US attacked and powerless. It was a defining moment in history - there was a before and after.
But we don't care about brown people. Iraqis die and it's just business as usual.

Unfortunately there's s lot of truth to your comment. More focus is given to tragedies in developed countries, because we can relate to them much more closely than those that occur in the far flung corners of he Third World (where there has been mayhem and strife for millenia)

I could have agreed with that back in the day when we really didn't know that much about the 'far flung corners' but we live in a world where news is generated and released by the nano second. We don't have to wait for our evening news or the hourly updates. We get it on demand as Sky like to remind us. There are no real far flung corners anymore except what we allow there to be. We deliberately acknowledge some atrocities as 'worse' because they are on our doorstep. This attitude strengthens the likes of IS and Al queda before them. It suits certain political and corporate agendas to do so. Time to see them all for what they really are.

[whitey]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

911 was spectacular. The US attacked and powerless. It was a defining moment in history - there was a before and after.
But we don't care about brown people. Iraqis die and it's just business as usual.

Unfortunately there's s lot of truth to your comment. More focus is given to tragedies in developed countries, because we can relate to them much more closely than those that occur in the far flung corners of he Third World (where there has been mayhem and strife for millenia)

I could have agreed with that back in the day when we really didn't know that much about the 'far flung corners' but we live in a world where news is generated and released by the nano second. We don't have to wait for our evening news or the hourly updates. We get it on demand as Sky like to remind us. There are no real far flung corners anymore except what we allow there to be. We deliberately acknowledge some atrocities as 'worse' because they are on our doorstep. This attitude strengthens the likes of IS and Al queda before them. It suits certain political and corporate agendas to do so. Time to see them all for what they really are.

True, but if an atrocity occurs in a war torn country, we become desensitized to it.

[Esmarelda]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

A lot of the follow up posts sum up what I was saying but I don't think the "Irishness" of 9/11 would've made a difference to our reaction. Our media dictates what we see. 9/11, the London 7/7 bombings and the attacks in Paris were big here because the TV made them big. The attack in Beirut almost passed me by and I follow the news relatively well, I thought.

People with no interest in politics, or geography, have French flags on their Facebook profile page. It's in their minds because the media put it in their faces. I don't mean to be hard on people and maybe if this argument was made to them they'd see the point. I'm just making the point.

[seafoid]

9/11?
Forget for a moment that ireland and new york are closely linked, it wasnt that long ago that there were more irish born living around the city than left in ireland. Forget for a moment that we lost several of our own citizens in the attack and forget that the most famous victim was father mychal judge just one of many many irish americans to die.
9/11 was such a huge event with casualties from around 70 different countries (again not just white folk) i think its pretty to save to say that everywhere around the globe sat up and took notice.
A fairer comparison would be one of the big college campus shootings which usually does involve a lot of white affluent kids and guess what within a day noone over here could care less

911 was spectacular. The US attacked and powerless. It was a defining moment in history - there was a before and after.
But we don't care about brown people. Iraqis die and it's just business as usual.

Unfortunately there's s lot of truth to your comment. More focus is given to tragedies in developed countries, because we can relate to them much more closely than those that occur in the far flung corners of he Third World (where there has been mayhem and strife for millenia)

I could have agreed with that back in the day when we really didn't know that much about the 'far flung corners' but we live in a world where news is generated and released by the nano second. We don't have to wait for our evening news or the hourly updates. We get it on demand as Sky like to remind us. There are no real far flung corners anymore except what we allow there to be. We deliberately acknowledge some atrocities as 'worse' because they are on our doorstep. This attitude strengthens the likes of IS and Al queda before them. It suits certain political and corporate agendas to do so. Time to see them all for what they really are.

It is but it's mediated as it is everywhere. Great little country syndrome. And language is a huge barrier. Even French is alien enough so Pashtu or Arabic are way off the scale. Interesting that so many people globally are on twitter but most people stick to global celeb and local stuff. And the echo chamber problem where people stick to stuff they know and talk amongst people like them.

Al Q and IS know how to generate media attention. But in the big picture nothing really changes.

[macdanger2]

This is well worth a read as well. It hits a very uncomfortable nail bang on the head. I am certainly guilty of accusation made, namely why are we not sympathising with the innocent dead of Beirut as well?

http://stateofmind13.com/2015/11/14/from-beirut-this-is-paris-in-a-world-that-doesnt-care-about-arab-lives/

100% agree, deaths in non-western countries don't seem to count as much.

At least you have the decency not to bring colour and religion into it because the usual tirade is why do only white deaths count ignoring the fact that just like the london bus bombings the victims will be from all races and religions. Now for the reality - of course a tragedy in a city many of us have been to and know well and only a few hundred miles away is of more interest to us than any of the numerous events happening in cities we havent been to and dont know thousands of miles away. Does that make it right? No but thats how it is. Im sure afghan villagers are more concerned about an attack in another local village than Paris maybe the righteous here shoukd have words with those selfish people too. I guess the next time RTE report a road traffic accident in Donegal they should bury it amongst all the other global traffic accidents after all they are no lesser a tragedy.

Yeah, I understand why we personally relate more readily with Paris or the Boston marathon than Beruit but that doesn't mean there should be a greater political reaction i.e. We need to "fix" the problem now cos some Europeans got killed. That might be fairly aspirational / idealistic but not wrong imo

[seafoid]

 via the FT

Rami Khouri, founding director at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, says "the real story of ISIS is the incompetence, corruption, mismanagement and almost universal lack of political legitimacy among most of the political leaderships in the Arab countries". (Democracy Now)