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MALAYSIA - Muslim girl looks on after Eid al-Fitr prayers at National mosque in Kuala Lumpur. By @MananVatsyayana: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto 6 July 2016
IRAQ - Iraqis light candles at the site of a suicide car bomb attack in Baghdad. By AHMAD AL-RUBAYE #AFP image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto 6 July 2016
AFGHANISTAN - Women beg for alms at the start of the Eid al-Fitr at Shah-e Do Shamshira mosque in Kabul. By @kohsar: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto 6 July 2016
7 years on, the official inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war is to give its verdict: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 6 July 2016
Follow AFP's Live Report on the #Chilcot inquiry here: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 6 July 2016
Tony Blair leaves his London home this morning before publication of the #Chilcot report: image via AFP London @AFPLondon, 6 July 2016
#BREAKING Blair says he acted in Britain's 'best interests' in Iraq war: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 6 July 2016
#UPDATE Britain went to war in Iraq before peaceful options exhausted: #Chilcot inquiry: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 6 July 2016
Chilcot's Iraq war inquiry delivers damning verdict on Blair: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 6 July 2016
Revisiting our powerful images from Britain's war in Iraq as #Chilcot inquiry slams Blair: image via Reuters Pictures @ReutersPictures, 6 July 2016
Official report damns UK over Iraq war: image via Reuters TV @ReutersTV, 6 July 2016
The #ChilcotReport in full: image via Reuters UK Politics @ReutersLobby, 6 July 2016
Revisiting our powerful images from Britain's war in Iraq as #Chilcot inquiry slams Blair: image via Reuters Pictures @ReutersPictures, 6 July 2016
Revisiting our powerful images from Britain's war in Iraq as #Chilcot inquiry slams Blair: image via Reuters Pictures @ReutersPictures, 6 July 2016
A model wears a creation for Jean Paul Gaultier’s Haute Couture Fall-Winter 2016-2017 fashion collection presented in Paris: photo by Thibault Camus/AP, 6 July 2016
. A model wears a creation for Jean Paul Gaultier’s Haute Couture Fall-Winter 2016-2017 fashion collection presented in Paris: photo by Thibault Camus/AP, 6 July 2016
A member of the stop the war coalition, dressed as Tony Blair, protest outside the Chilcot inquiry at the QEII Centre in London: photo by Charlie Bibby/FT, 6 July 2016
A member of the stop the war coalition, dressed as Tony Blair, protest outside the Chilcot inquiry at the QEII Centre in London: photo by Charlie Bibby/FT, 6 July 2016
A
protester outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London,
where the publication of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War is taking
place: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 6 July 2016
Iraq Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot is pictured through the viewfinder of a television camera as he comments on the findings of his report, inside the QEII Centre in London: photo by Dan Kitwood/AFP, 6 July 2016
Iraq Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot is pictured through the viewfinder of a television camera as he comments on the findings of his report, inside the QEII Centre in London: photo by Dan Kitwood/AFP, 6 July 2016
Ground staff clean the order of play boards on day eight of the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon: photo by Philip Toscano/PA, 5 July 2016
.Ground staff clean the order of play boards on day eight of the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon: photo by Philip Toscano/PA, 5 July 2016
A single Union Jack flag sits on a desk during a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France: photo by Patrick Seeger/EPA, 5 July 2016
A single Union Jack flag sits on a desk during a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France: photo by Patrick Seeger/EPA, 5 July 2016
Bank of England governor Mark Carney speaks during a news conference at the Bank of England in London: photo by Dylan Martinez/Reuters, 5 July 2016
Bank of England governor Mark Carney speaks during a news conference at the Bank of England in London: photo by Dylan Martinez/Reuters, 5 July 2016
Two women lead Britain's PM race as pound and property dive: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 5 July 2016
An Iraqi man weeps during his visit to the site of a suicide truck bomb attack in Karada district in central Baghdad, Iraq: photo by Ali Abbas/EPA, 6 July 2016
An Iraqi man weeps during his visit to the site of a suicide truck bomb attack in Karada district in central Baghdad, Iraq: photo by Ali Abbas/EPA, 6 July 2016
IRAQ - Funeral of a victim killed by bombing attack in Baghdad two days earlier. By @SabahAfp: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
IRAQ - Lit candles sit at the site of Baghdad bombing attack which took place two days earlier. By @SabahAfp: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
Iraqi men look for missing victims of a deadly Sunday lorry bombing in the Karada neighbourhood of Baghdad: photo by AP, 5 July 2016
IRAQ - Relatives of victims gather at site of Baghdad bombing attack which took place 2 days earlier. By @SabahAfp: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
#Iraq At least 250 killed in #BaghdadAttack blast officials said #AFP Photo by Ahmad al-Rubaye: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto 6 July 2016
#Iraq At least 250 killed in #BaghdadAttack blast officials said #AFP Photo by Ahmad al-Rubaye: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto 6 July 2016
#Iraq At least 250 killed in #BaghdadAttack blast officials said #AFP Photo by Ahmad al-Rubaye: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto 6 July 2016
The Badshahi Masjid in Lahore: photo by Arif Ali / AFP, 6 July 2016
Kashmiri Muslims attend prayers in Srinagar: photo by EPA, 6 July 2016
Kenyan Muslims embrace each in Nairobi: photo by Sayyid Abdul Azim / AP, 6 July 2016
Eid prayers in Peshawar, Pakistan: photo by Bilawal Arbab / EPA, 6 July 2016
Children race to get balloons in Amman, Jordan: photo by Muhammad Hamed / Reuters, 6 July 2016
Egyptians attend Eid prayers at a public park outside Al Seddik Mosque in Cairo: photo by Amr Nabil / AP, 6 July 2016
Eid prayers at Badshahi Masjid in Lahore: photo by Arif Ali / AFP, 6 July 2016
Pakistani share greetings after offering prayers in Karachi: photo by Shakil Adil / AP, 6 July 2016
Pakistani children ride a seesaw in Peshawar: photo by Bilawal Arbab / EPA, 6 July 2016
Muslims pray before the Shaykhs tombs, relics from the 13th century, after Eid Al Fitr prayers at the Niujie mosque in Beijing: photo by Ng Han Guan / AP, 6 July 2016
Libyan worshippers gather on Martyrs’ Square in the capital Tripoli: photo by Mahmud Turkia / AFP, 6 July 2016
Indonesian children play with balloons at Sunda Kelapa port in Jakarta: photo by. Adi Weda / EPA, 6 July 2016
Iraqis pray at the grave of loved ones at a cemetery in the capital Baghdad: photo by Ahmad Al Rubaye / AFP, 6 July 2016
Sri Lankans offer Eid Al Fitr prayers at the Galle Face Green in Colombo: photo by Eranga Jayawardena / AP, 6 July 2016
People greet each other in Baghdad, Iraq: photo by Ahmed Saad / Reuters, 6 July 2016
Eid prayers at the Badshahi Masjid in Lahore, Pakistan: photo by Arif Ali / AFP, 6 July 2016
Eid prayers at the Niujie mosque, the oldest and largest mosque in Beijing: photo by Ng Han Guan / AP, 6 July 2016
Men hug as people gather for prayers at the velodrome of Saint-Denis de la Reunion on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean: photo by Richard Bouhet / AFP. 6 July 2016
Egyptian worshippers look up as balloons are released from the rooftop of a mosque in Mansura, some 120km north of Cairo: photo by Khaled Desouki / AFP. 6 July 2016
An Asian elephant eats fresh green leaves at the animal park Hagenbeck in Hamburg: photo by Lukas Schulze / EPA, 6 July 2016
Hindus take part in the annual Rath Yatra, or chariot procession in Ahmedabad: photo by Amit Dave / Reuters, 6 July 2016
Tibetan monks take part Dalai Lama birthday celebrations in Kathmandu, Nepal: photo by Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters, 6 July 2016
A man stands on the balcony of a hotel as he watches a rally organised by members of Ukrainian trade unions in Kiev: photo by Gleb Garanich / Reuters, 6 July 2016
Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies play at the Citizens Bank Park: photo by Mitchell Leff / AFP, 6 July 2016
Muslim worshipers praying late Saturday outside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem in observance of Lailat al Qadr, or Night of Destiny, which is a part of Ramadan: photo by Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse, 5 July 2016
Muslim worshipers praying late Saturday outside the Dome of the Rock in
Jerusalem in observance of Lailat al Qadr, or Night of Destiny, which is
a part of Ramadan: photo by
Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse, 5 July 2016
#quartetreport proves what #Netanyahu long ago internalized, nobody is coming to end #Israel occupation. #BDS @972mag: image via Dr. Basem Naim @basemn63, 5 July 2016
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon sharply criticized a decision by Israel to advance plans to build hundreds of units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem just days after world powers called on Israel to stop its settlement policy, his spokesman said on Tuesday.
"This raises legitimate questions about Israel's long-term intentions, which are compounded by continuing statements of some Israeli ministers calling for the annexation of the West Bank," Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
Ban was "deeply disappointed" that Israel's announcement followed the release of a report on Friday by the "Quartet" sponsoring the stalled Middle East peace process -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
The long-awaited report said Israel should stop building settlements, denying Palestinian development and designating land for exclusive Israeli use that Palestinians seek for a future state.
The West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim: photo by Reuters, 5 July 2016
sraeli army paratroopers take part in a training jump in full battle gear over the Palmachim military base near Tel Aviv, Israel: photo by Abir Sultan/EPA, 5 July 2016
Israeli army paratroopers take part in a training jump in full battle gear over the Palmachim military base near Tel Aviv, Israel: photo by Abir Sultan/EPA, 5 July 2016
#quartetreport proves what #Netanyahu long ago internalized, nobody is coming to end #Israel occupation. #BDS @972mag: image via Dr. Basem Naim @basemn63, 5 July 2016
U.N. chief slams Israel over settlement plans in wake of Quartet report: Reuters, 5 July 2016
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon sharply criticized a decision by Israel to advance plans to build hundreds of units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem just days after world powers called on Israel to stop its settlement policy, his spokesman said on Tuesday.
"This raises legitimate questions about Israel's long-term intentions, which are compounded by continuing statements of some Israeli ministers calling for the annexation of the West Bank," Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
Ban was "deeply disappointed" that Israel's announcement followed the release of a report on Friday by the "Quartet" sponsoring the stalled Middle East peace process -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
The long-awaited report said Israel should stop building settlements, denying Palestinian development and designating land for exclusive Israeli use that Palestinians seek for a future state.
The West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim: photo by Reuters, 5 July 2016
sraeli army paratroopers take part in a training jump in full battle gear over the Palmachim military base near Tel Aviv, Israel: photo by Abir Sultan/EPA, 5 July 2016
Israeli army paratroopers take part in a training jump in full battle gear over the Palmachim military base near Tel Aviv, Israel: photo by Abir Sultan/EPA, 5 July 2016
Bangladeshis paid tribute on Sunday to the victims killed in the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in the diplomatic district of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh: photo by Associated Press, 5 July 2016
Bangladeshis paid tribute on Sunday to the victims killed in the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in the diplomatic district of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh: photo by Associated Press, 5 July 2016
Relatives on Monday mourned a victim killed in the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka: photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters, 5 July 2016
Relatives on Monday mourned a victim killed in the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka: photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters, 5 July 2016
Pizza chef killed during Bangladesh attack was probably in league with assailants - police: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 6 July 2016
Chef at Bangladesh cafe probably working with attackers - police: image via Reuters India @ReutersIndia, 6 July 2016
People stand in the windows of an overcrowded passenger train as they travel home to celebrate Eid al-Fitr festival, which marks the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, at a railway station in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Tuesday: photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters, 5 July 2016
People stand in the windows of an overcrowded passenger train as they travel home to celebrate Eid al-Fitr festival, which marks the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, at a railway station in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Tuesday: photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters, 5 July 2016
RUSSIAN FEDERATION - Celebrations of Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Kirill Kudryavtsev: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
RUSSIAN FEDERATION - Celebrations of Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Kirill Kudryavtsev: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
RUSSIAN FEDERATION - Celebrations of Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Kirill Kudryavtsev: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
RUSSIA - Muslims pray outside the central mosque in Moscow during celebrations of Eid al-Fitr. By @futoutka #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
RUSSIAN FEDERATION - Celebrations of Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Kirill Kudryavtsev: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
Egyptian Muslims release balloons from the roof top of a mosque at the end of prayers on the first day of Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in the Nile Delta city of Mansura, Egypt: photo by Khaled Desouski/AFP, 6 July 2016
Egyptian Muslims release balloons from the roof top of a mosque at the end of prayers on the first day of Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in the Nile Delta city of Mansura, Egypt: photo by Khaled Desouski/AFP, 6 July 2016
Syrian children run amidst heavily damaged buildings during an activity organised by a charity group in Jobar, a rebel-held district on the eastern outskirts of the capital Damascus: photo by Amer Almohibany/AFP 6 July 2016
Syrian children run amidst heavily damaged buildings during an activity organised by a charity group in Jobar, a rebel-held district on the eastern outskirts of the capital Damascus: photo by Amer Almohibany/AFP 6 July 2016
People pass by Interior Ministry members in an underground walkway before a morning prayer, in Moscow, Russia: photo by Reuters, 5 July 2016
Police stand among Russian Muslims praying outside the central mosque in Moscow: photo by AFP, 5 July 2016
Cars drive along the “Yenisei” M54 federal motorway, with heavy clouds seen in the sky, through the Siberian Taiga area outside Krasnoyarsk, Russia: photo by Reuters, 5 July 2016
Muslim men rest inside Istiqlal mosque on the last day of Ramadan in Jakarta, Indonesia: photo by Reuters, 5 July 2016
A bee collects pollen from a sunflower in a field near Frankfurt an der Oder, eastern Germany: photo by AFP, 5 July 2016
NIGERIA - A Muslim woman is praying at the entrance of the Central Mosque in Lagos. By @Flopaucheur #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
RUSSIA - Muslims pray outside the central mosque in Moscow during celebrations of Eid al-Fitr. By @futoutka #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 5 July 2016
INDIA - A Kashmiri Muslim prays during last day of Ramadan at Shah-i-Hamdaan shrine in Srinagar. By @TauseefMUSTAFA: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 5 July 2016
U.N. rights boss calls bombing near Saudi holy mosque an attack on Islam: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 5 July 2016
People stand by the explosion site near one of Islam’s holiest sites in Medina, Saudi Arabia: photo courtesy of Noor Punasiya via AP/The National, 4 July 2016
Smoke billowing after a bomb explosion close to the Prophet Mohammed Mosque in the holy city of Medina. Media reports state that an apparent suicide bomber had detonated a device at the second holiest site in Islam. Other explosions were also reported from sites in Jeddah and Qatif earlier the same day: photo by Saudi Press Agency via EPA, 4 July 2016
Muslim worshippers gather after a suicide bomber detonated a device near the security headquarters of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia: photo by Reuters 4 July 2016
A screen grab from footage released by Al-Ekhbariya showing Saudi security forces at the scene of an explosion in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which according to the interior ministry was carried out by a suicide bomber near an American diplomatic site: photo by Al-Ekhbariya via AP, 4 July 2016
Saudi policemen stand guard at the site where a suicide bomber blew himself up in the early hours of July 4, 2016 near the American consulate in the Red Sea city of Jeddah: photo by AFP, 4 July 2016
A damaged car is seen after a blast near the US consulate in Saudi Arabia’s second city of Jeddah: photo by Saudi Press Agency via Reuters, 4 July 2016
An animal rights protester covered in fake blood demonstrate for the abolition of bull runs and bullfights a day before the start of the famous running of the bulls San Fermin festival in Pamplona, northern Spain: photo by Eloy Alonso/Reuters, 5 July 2016
An animal rights protester covered in fake blood demonstrate for the abolition of bull runs and bullfights a day before the start of the famous running of the bulls San Fermin festival in Pamplona, northern Spain: photo by Eloy Alonso/Reuters, 5 July 2016
People gather during the launch of the ‘Chupinazo’ rocket, to celebrate the official opening of the 2016 San Fermin Fiestas, in Pamplona, northern Spain: photo by Alvaro Barrientos/AP, 6 July 2016
People gather during the launch of the ‘Chupinazo’ rocket, to celebrate the official opening of the 2016 San Fermin Fiestas, in Pamplona, northern Spain: photo by Alvaro Barrientos/AP, 6 July 2016
LIVE: Hillary Clinton delivers remarks in Atlantic City on Donald Trump's business record: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 6 July 2016
A spotlight catches the top of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's head, as she enters to address the National Education Association’s 95th Representative Assembly in Washington D.C. In her remarks Mrs.Clinton made no reference to comments earlier in the day by FBI director James Comey regarding her seemingly casual use of a private-mail server while working as Secretary of State. “Although we did not find clear evidence that the secretary or colleagues intended to violate laws," said Comey, "there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of highly classified information,” said Comey.: photo by Michael Reynolds/EPA, 5 July 2016
A spotlight catches the top of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's head, as she enters to address the National Education Association’s 95th Representative Assembly in Washington D.C. In her remarks Mrs.Clinton made no reference to comments earlier in the day by FBI director James Comey regarding her seemingly casual use of a private-mail server while working as Secretary of State. “Although we did not find clear evidence that the secretary or colleagues intended to violate laws," said Comey, "there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of highly classified information,” said Comey.: photo by Michael Reynolds/EPA, 5 July 2016
GREECE - A woman sits by a graffiti reading 'Exit' in Athens. By @gouliam #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
GREECE - When you are free but trapped somewhere you haven't chosen! By @ArisMessinis #refugees: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 July 2016
A migrant boat in the Mediterranean Sea: photo by Reuters, 6 July 2016
8 comments:
A high government report issued in England all but calls Tony Blair a war criminal. And now we are going to elect one our next president. It wasn't just the FBI 'Censure' that clinched it; it was when House democrats booed Bernie Sanders for demanding the Democratic Party stand for something besides winning. I just hope he bolts the party and accepts Jill Stein's invitation to be the Green Party nominee. Having a say in a party plank means nothing. Besides, planks are made to walk into oceans filled with sharks.
Found this poem by Josephine Miles that I meant to send to you on Flag Day. Written, I think in the 1930s, it seems to remain incorrigibly relevant.
Flag Level
World at flag level rides ambitious ride,
The seagull air there flaps from side to side
And the terrific brink is countrified.
That's why so much dreamed up at flag level
Comes to completion in the yards lower,
In a paved world busier and slower.
And that's the reason in the highest offices
The officers dispose, bestow, at ease,
And the feet of the office girls float in the breeze.
David, the line of thinking that led me to make this post had to do, I guess, with -- and I fear this may sound awfully simplistic, but still -- fairness.
An argument following a similar line of thinking is made in a recent Times piece, perhaps worth quoting at some length.
__
After Attacks on Muslims, Many Ask: Where Is the Outpouring? Anne Barnard, NYT, 5 July 2016
PARIS — In recent days, jihadists killed 41 people at Istanbul’s bustling, shiny airport; 22 at a cafe in Bangladesh; and at least 250 celebrating the final days of Ramadan in Baghdad. Then the Islamic State attacked, again, with bombings in three cities in Saudi Arabia.
By Tuesday, Michel Kilo, a Syrian dissident, was leaning wearily over his coffee at a Left Bank cafe, wondering: Where was the global outrage? Where was the outpouring that came after the same terrorist groups unleashed horror in Brussels and here in Paris? In a supposedly globalized world, do nonwhites, non-Christians and non-Westerners count as fully human?
“All this crazy violence has a goal,” Mr. Kilo, who is Christian, said: to create a backlash against Muslims, divide societies and “make Sunnis feel that no matter what happens, they don’t have any other option.”
This is not the first time that the West seems to have shrugged off massacres in predominantly Muslim countries. But the relative indifference after so many deaths caused by the very groups that have plagued the West is more than a matter of hurt feelings.
One of the primary goals of the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups is to drive a wedge between Sunni Muslims and the wider world, to fuel alienation as a recruiting tool. And when that world appears to show less empathy for the victims of attacks in Muslim nations, who have borne the brunt of the Islamic State’s massacres and predatory rule, it seems to prove their point.
“Why isn’t #PrayForIraq trending?” Razan Hasan of Baghdad posted on Twitter. “Oh yeah no one cares about us.”
Hira Saeed of Ottawa asked on Twitter why Facebook had not activated its Safety Check feature after recent attacks as it did for Brussels, Paris and Orlando, Fla., and why social media had not been similarly filled with the flags of Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. “The hypocrisy is the western world is strong,” she wrote.
The global mood increasingly feels like one of atavism, of retreat into narrower identities of nation, politics or sect, with Britain voting to leave the European Union and many Americans supporting the nativist presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.
The violence feeds a growing impulse among many in the West to fear Muslims and Arabs, which has already prompted a political crisis over immigration that, in turn, has buttressed extremists’ goals. Europe is convulsing over a movement to reject refugees from Syria and Iraq, who are themselves fleeing violence by jihadists and their own governments.
[continues:]
It is in Syria and Iraq that the Islamic State has established its so-called caliphate, ruling overwhelmingly Muslim populations with the threat of gruesome violence. The group has killed Muslims in those countries by the thousands, by far the largest share of its victims.
When Islamic State militants mowed down cafegoers in Paris in November, people across the world adorned public landmarks and their private Facebook pages with the French flag — not just in Europe and the United States, but also, with an empathy born of experience, in Syria and Iraq.
But over the past week, Facebook activated its Safety Check feature, which allows people in the vicinity of a disaster to mark themselves safe, only after the attack on the Istanbul airport.
The flags of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Bangladesh have not been widely projected on landmarks or adopted as profile pictures. (Photographs on social media showed that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of Europe’s two majority-Muslim countries, the Turkish flag was beamed onto a bridge in Mostar, the scene of sectarian killings in the 1990s.) Some wonder if part of the reason is that three of those flags bear Islamic symbols or slogans.
“More deaths in Iraq in the last week than Paris and Orlando combined but nobody is changing their profile pics, building colours, etc.,” Kareem Rahaman wrote on Twitter.
[continues:]
There are some understandable reasons for the differing reactions. People typically identify more closely with places and cultures that are familiar to them. With Iraq, there is also a degree of fatigue, and a feeling that a bombing there is less surprising than one in Europe.
Deadly attacks have been a constant in Iraq after years of American occupation, followed by a sectarian war in which Sunni and Shiite militias slaughtered civilians of the opposite sect. Still, while terrorist attacks in Europe may feel more surprising to the West — though they have become all too common there, too — that does not explain the relative indifference to attacks in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh.
“That’s what happens in Iraq,” Sajad Jiyad, a researcher in Iraq who rushed to the scene of the Baghdad bombing and found that one of his friends had died there, wrote on his own blog. “Deaths become just statistics, and the frequency of attacks means the shock doesn’t register as it would elsewhere, or that you have enough time to feel sad or grieve.”
In the Muslim world, the partly sectarian nature of some conflicts shades people’s reactions, producing a kind of internal sympathy gap. People from one sect or political group often discount or excuse casualties from another.
In Iraq, the Islamic State took root within an insurgency against the country’s Shiite-led government, and Shiite militias fighting it have been accused of brutality as well. In Syria, it is just one menace; many more Syrians have been killed by the government’s attacks on areas held by Sunni insurgents, including rebel groups opposed to the Islamic State.
Mr. Jiyad added that the Islamic State was “hoping to incite a reaction and a spiral into endless violence,” and that Iraqis played into that when they mourned more for their own sect than for others.
In the West, though, there is a tendency in certain quarters, legitimized by some politicians, to conflate extremist Islamist militants with the Muslim societies that are often their primary victims, or to dismiss Muslim countries as inherently violent.
“Either Iraqi blood is too cheap or murder is normalized,” Sayed Saleh Qazwini, an Islamic educator in Michigan, wrote on Twitter.
In Paris, a rainbow flag hangs on the Hotel de Ville, memorializing the 49 people gunned down at a gay nightclub in Orlando last month. But in a corner shop on Monday, the woman who served me had no such sympathy for the Middle East.
When she asked where I lived, and I told her Beirut, Lebanon, she exclaimed about the violence in the region. Struggling to explain that there is a lot more than just violence happening there, I said: “Yes, there are a lot of problems. What can one do?”
“Exterminer les islamistes,” she said grimly. Exterminate: a strong word. Islamists: a broad category of people.
Mr. Kilo, who spent years in the prisons of the Syrian government and opposes both it and the Islamic State, said his life in Paris had changed since November. Speaking Arabic is now suspect. He sees fear in French people’s eyes when they see Syrians.
“I’m afraid, too,” he said. “Someone could blow himself up anytime.”
He has written an article that will be published in the newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed, titled “The Curse of Syria.”
The failure of empathy is broader than the Islamic State, he said; it extends to the international community’s unwillingness or inability to stop the slaughter of the Syrian civil war, which began with protests for political change.
“If we lose all humanity,” Mr. Kilo said, “if you allow the slaughter of a nation for five and a half years, after all the leaders of the international community declared the right of these people to revolt against their government, then expect Islamic State — and many other Islamic States in other forms and shapes.”
The "fairness" has begun to manifest (many-fest) as the bitterest fruits of capitalism and the alienation it breeds: revenge and nihilism. By this I mean symmetry. Last night's sniper shootings of police in Dallas could very well have been sniper shootings of U.S. soldiers in Fallujah or Kabul once we made Baghdad a model city for indiscriminate global carnage. I'm willing to bet the shooters learned their craft in the Middle East as emissaries of American hegemonism. I agree with you that Arabs have become the new 'niggers of the world'. And as one who spent 12 years with a Sufi Teacher who decried the rise of Khomeini as the beginning of a great darkness, I have watched helplessly and now hopelessly as the succubi of American racism and rapacity have laid waste the world--and, ironically, made us afraid of its victims. As long as no one connects the radioactive dots between Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria to the new killing fields of the West, there is no chance for fairness. The inevitable consequence is predicted in this 1969 poem by Lew Welch:
THE BASIC CON
Those who can't find anything to live for,
always invent something to die for.
Then they want the rest of us to
die for it, too.
These, and an elite army of thousands,
who do nobody any good at all, but do
great harm to some,
have always collected vast sums from all.
Finally, all this machinery
tries to kill us,
because we won't die for it, too.
--Lew Welch, Ring of Bone, p. 116
David, all I meant by "fairness" was simple balance in addressing human suffering.
Last night's key Dallas shooter was trained in the acts he performed by the US military while serving in Afghanistan.
Those radioactive dots are now connected-up within each of us until we die.
Tom, Forgive me. Maybe I'm too syncretic. But my French wife's father died in November 1944, in Belfort, France, leading a squadron of Moroccans. This victory against Vichy French and Nazi fighters cleared a path into Germany. If not for the Muhammads and Abduls, France would never have been freed. Yet Arab North Africa had to fight for the independence their volunteers were fighting for in and for France. Two years later, Private Dave Brubeck describes passing a restaurant in a southern town where German POWs were being taken to lunch. Yet the same restaurant barred his fellow negro servicemen. He wept openly as he told the story on Ken Burns' series devoted to jazz. Now our 'Moroccans' and 'Algerians'--i.e., African-Americans--fight wars for their country in the Middle East and come home to new walls of Jim Crow. And so many of the shooters in France and Belgium are citizens of Arab descent who are victims of European Jim Crow. These are some of the radioactive dots we in the West have to connect--and refuse to. If we can't have fairness here, how can we expect it anywhere? I still have yet to see "I'm Trayvon Martin" t-sirts and assemblies. I applaud your plea for fairness. I extend my hands to you in support. But true fairness is accompanied by applause that makes the sound of one hand clapping. If unity of humankind and union of hearts are not preeminent actionable values, what hope is there? This apocalypse is taking a very long time to reach category five. But no one can say the gods didn't send small craft warnings--lots of them.
David, thanks again.
Personal history is such a crazy jigsaw puzzle.
My wife's Austrian family became refugees thanks to Germany, otherwise she'd never have had the misfortune of knowing me, poor thing. I have worn the uniform of the US Army. I spent five years out of the US largely in order to to avoid wearing it again. In those years I had a sort of voluntary job in Paris and spent a part of every year in France, and traveled a lot through the Mediterranean countries and North Africa. In Morocco and Algeria I learned a respect for a kind of culture very unlike that of the places I had lived previously. We're all cobbled together out of our disparate experiences.
Not quite sure I understand the word "applause" here...
"But true fairness is accompanied by applause that makes the sound of one hand clapping."
To be clear, I don't believe fairness exists or is any sort of factor in any tiny part of the cosmos that might matter to us.
But aspiration for fairness exists, where there's life here's hope, seems to remain the only possible operating principle, if one is to get though another day of this madness, I say to myself, amid desperation, exhaustion, pain and fear, here by the freeway feeder, as the mad traffic blows past, getting and spending its way to death and doing its best to run us over in the course of it.
In that respect, any day I don't get run over and killed in front of my house again, is a relatively good day. Once was enough for that particular form of Murican fun.
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