tmidgett wrote:

salfordboysclub wrote:ok now to upset you all... i dont agree with this..sorry but i dont.. 26 kids were killed in Iraq yesterday as US troops handed sweets out. Over 100,000 have been killed in Iraq since the US/UK governments decided to free them.. thats 200000 minutes of silence we owe them...
or maybe we should build a memorial garden to them all..i reckon that equates to about the size of Kent...sorry but we have to get some things in
to perspective.. i am sorry if i have offended anyone.. i am sorry if anyone has personally lost someone they knew / loved last week..i am sorry for all the families destroyed by last week.. but my mourning is not reserved for people on this island

there are maybe 3 million dead in the congo

maybe you should just stop talking permanently

also, i don't know where you get your numbers, but they are high, even among people who would be sympathetic to your stance

i'm not defending the conduct of the US/UK military in iraq--not the impetus for the invasion, not the results thus far, nothing. i am not defending it. but people seem to forget that somewhere around a half million people died violently in iraq between gulf wars I and II. it's not a safe place, and as unsafe as it is today, it was not safe before we blundered in there.

london, on the other hand, isn't a place where scores of people die violently every day. this is why the bombings were remarkable.

I don't think more deaths elsewhere (tragic, pointless and awful as they are) should be taken to devalue deaths here. I take a positive view of the silence and its symbolism - to me it represents peace and solidarity. But I may just be a hippy there.

With regards to the casualty figures in Iraq, the Lancet, a scientific, not politically orientated organ, gave the figure of 100,000 civilians:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0, ... 49,00.html

I was for various reasons cautiously pro-intervention before the war, and now feel stupid, disillusioned and guilty. I'd love to believe that the average Iraqi's existence is better now than it was under oppressive dictatorship, but surveys (polling of Iraqis) and everything that I have read of late indicate that life is worse, with no prospect of improvement in the medium term. The infrastructure has been shot to pieces (mainly post-war), sectarian murder is rife, it's just horrible.

Maybe we should move this off this thread though...

thats where i got my figures..

look lets get one thing clear.. if someone dies at the hands of another its TRAGIC WASTE OF LIFE.. if someone dies from a natural disaster ( earthquake, tsunami) its a tragic waste ( and it shuts up the religious crowd for a while..gods will ??) i was moved by people's support fo the silence.. i just wanted to point out that we are a very insular country...
lets just end this post now with the thought that no one regardless of whether they do it in the line of faith, politics or any other reason deserves to take a life of another.

salfordboysclub wrote:you seriously believe we went into Iraq to save lives ????

if you read my previous post even casually, it is manifestly clear that i said nothing of the sort

have fun pounding on that straw man you have constructed, but he bears no resemblance to me

sparky wrote:I was for various reasons cautiously pro-intervention before the war, and now feel stupid, disillusioned and guilty. I'd love to believe that the average Iraqi's existence is better now than it was under oppressive dictatorship, but surveys (polling of Iraqis) and everything that I have read of late indicate that life is worse, with no prospect of improvement in the medium term. The infrastructure has been shot to pieces (mainly post-war), sectarian murder is rife, it's just horrible.

yeah, you're not alone. i wasn't optimistic, given the lead-up to the invasion--remember 'old europe?' ah, those were the days. but i AT LEAST wanted to think it was POSSIBLE our militaries could do this for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way, and still bumble into a net-positive result for iraq.

now, civil war seems likely, and perhaps we can use that term for some of what is happening now. it's a total clusterfuck. entertaining the notion that it might work out seems foolish in retrospect.

ok, anyway. i agree--let's end this part of the discussion. i found the descriptions of the silences to be moving and evocative. please contribute more if you have them, and i have been thinking about all you londoners since this first occurred.

thx

tm

people on my street stepped out of their front doors to mark the silence. it was strangely heartwarming to see all these people doing this in almost complete uniformity.


london 7/7/05. we are not afraid.

salfordboysclub wrote:i was on the kings rd also...
ok now to upset you all... i dont agree with this..sorry but i dont.. 26 kids were killed in Iraq yesterday as US troops handed sweets out. Over 100,000 have been killed in Iraq since the US/UK governments decided to free them.. thats 200000 minutes of silence we owe them...
or maybe we should build a memorial garden to them all..i reckon that equates to about the size of Kent...sorry but we have to get some things in
to perspective.. i am sorry if i have offended anyone.. i am sorry if anyone has personally lost someone they knew / loved last week..i am sorry for all the families destroyed by last week.. but my mourning is not reserved for people on this island

You go to your friends' funerals, and family. Not strangers. Mourning is for those close to you. Londoners are closer to other Londoners than to the unnamed scores of people whose lives have no intersection with their own. It makes sense to me, and the numbers don't matter. You're mourning the loss of something close to you, not the quantity of things lost, but the character of it.

You mourn who's close to you.

Knowing this truth, that mourning is out of respect for those who are "close" to you in some way, I find these giant public displays quite moving. I walked into one in a Berlin train station the day after 9/11. I walked into a giant central station, normally teeming and electric, and saw hundreds (thousands?) of people standing still, heads down, in absolute silence. It was chilling and genuinely touching.

Part of my distaste for our President (I hate that I must call him that) is that he took that genuine sympathy, the closeness I referred-to, and squandered it with an arrogant and insulting unilateralism. If I went to a funeral, and the family of the deceased strutted though the assembled mourners individually telling them to fuck off, I would not waste my time with sympathy for that family ever again.

O! I hate our President! He is a stupid and arrogant man!

I've just got back from Rome. A vigil was held for the victims of the London bombs on our first day there. When I was out and about I saw many notices in shops extending sympathy and condolences to Britons and Londoners. I found it touching and sincere, even unexpected.

The events of last week are becoming even more sad and tragic as the investigation unfolds.

i agree... yes its moving but if as you point out people mourned the 9/11 in every country round the world then why no mourning for the 100,000 who have died in Iraq ?
I am just being honest..

Bush vs Blair ? its the Star Wars quote " who's the bigger fool ? the fool or the fool who follows the fool ?"
I actually believe Bush to be dangerous and i am obviously not alone..what i dont understand is why our prime minister blindly followed him... i dont actually believe Blair is stupid.

an honour to have you reply to one of my posts tho...

salfordboysclub wrote: but my mourning is not reserved for people on this island

Good for you... but strange as it may seem many people feel an close emotional bond with the people in their communities and as much as we can empathise with the suffering in other parts of the world, local events will always have a far stronger impact than events on a TV screen.

Of course I feel upset everytime an Islamo-fascist blows up an Israeli bus, but when 13 people are killed in bus 10 mins walk from my home...

Your "we're all one big global village" schtick just isn't reality.

salfordboysclub wrote:i agree... yes its moving but if as you point out people mourned the 9/11 in every country round the world then why no mourning for the 100,000 who have died in Iraq ?
I am just being honest..

I reckon you should start going to funerals around town, bursting-in and shouting "You people make me sick! Don't you know that people are dying every day!"

I'm not much of a 'smilie' user, but what the hell?

why isnt it reality ??
Ok maybe its because i dont consider myself to be English/ british ( even tho i am ).
What is wrong with thinking of the world as a global village ? Why is the pain and suffering greater if the person was from the same Island as yourself.. you dont know them.. is it because you are thinking "shit that could have been me ? "
I know of no one who died last week but i do know of people killed in the Tsunami.. so who do i mourn ??
All i was trying to point out in this thread was that 100,000 people have died since we went in to free Iraq. 26 kids died this week in Iraq. their lives are as worthy of our mourning as the people who died last week.

I am not saying the people who died last week dont deserve to be mourned..of course they do.. they didnt deserve to die .. and FYI..it could have been me.. i took a different route that day..otherwise i would have been going thru Aldgate East at that time..