Thursday 13 September 2012

US embassy deaths

it's all very well keeping a positive frame of mind, and making a conscious decision to be happy.  which has been working quite well for me thus far.  but then you listen to the news and somehow it seems unfair to be happy when so many people are struggling.

there's the continuing news of job losses, the research coming out about child poverty, the constant nasty beneficiary-bashing policies being put out by the government, school closures in canterbury.  and overseas, workers being killed in factory fires in pakistan, and embassy staff under threat & some killed as protest rages in various countries in response to some stupid film produced by some random idiot in america.

i'm not sure i even have the energy to respond to the latter.  the protests in themselves i don't have a problem.  someone produces something stupid and offensive, then fine, gather a group of people and protest about how stupid and offensive that thing was.  make your point, express yourself.  don't have a problem with burning flags either, mostly because i don't attach a whole lot of emotional symbolism or meaning to flags.  they're just a piece of cloth after all.

but hurting people, and specifically, people who have taken no part in the financing, production or distribution of the film concerned makes no sense whatsoever.  in fact, it seems that many of the people who did take part were conned & had no idea what they were actually participating in.  not that i'm saying that it's ok to hurt the people who did know what they were doing and who deliberately set out to hurt and inflame.  of course it's not.  there are plenty of ways to protest against them without causing them physical harm.

i know we're talking about environments where violence is already a huge part of the mix.  the arab spring started in many countries with peaceful protest, but has led to violence by the state, which in turn has caused rebellion and further violence.  it gets to a stage where violence becomes the only response, an emotional gut response to a "we hate you" message from abroad.

i can't say i'm impressed with hilary clinton's response, though mr obama's was somewhat better (& mr romney's reaction is purely appalling - please US voters, do not let this man be your president).  and i hated the coverage i saw on the tv news - which i know, i mostly try to avoid, and for good reason - which was all about these countries which the US has been so generous in helping turning around and doing this terrible stuff.  yes, it's terrible, but as to the latter, let us not forget the wholesale destruction of infrastructure, the death of civilians and the huge decrease in the standard of living that were the result of NATO bombing in libya (in which the US played a large part).  we can show sympathy towards those killed and currently living in fear and condemn violence, without the rewriting of history.

i can't even begin to understand the mentality of the people who made the film.  it was such a strong, clear "i hate you" message, and what they hoped to gain from it i'm not sure.  other than to hurt others and to inflame emotions.  as if there isn't already enough hatred and violence in the world.  what makes a person want to pile more on?  no, i really can't understand it.

still, i can do nothing by sitting around being miserable here in this country.  the answer is to keep on keeping on.  a positive bit of news was an article in the community newspaper - the hamilton press - about the diversity award given to the waikato interfaith council (online version here if you register - pg 14, 12/9/12 edition).  if anything, the events above clearly reinforce just how important interfaith work is, and how much it is needed to provide an alternative model to the ones we've seen above.

and finally, my sincere condolences to the families of those embassy staff who have died, and my sympathy to those who are currently living in fear of attack & to their friends and family anxiously waiting and hoping for their safety.  i know this is a difficult time for you and i'm sorry that you have to deal with this.

6 comments:

Brett Dale said...

The last paragraph of this post was good.

stargazer said...

brett, i don't understand why you feel the need to leave insulting comments on my blog. pretending to disguise it as a compliment is pretty shallow. you know, i have never once seen you comment with sympathy on my blog about the suffering of people who aren't white, while at the same time taking great pains to make excuses for racist behaviour and baldly stating that racism doesn't even exist. the callous cruelty in so many of your comments really does astound me.

on a more general note (ie not directed to brett), this is worth reading on the subject at hand.

Brett Dale said...

I post here because I am fascinated by media/bloggers who are disingenuous and hypocritical and have to revert to name calling. Bloggers such as your self have a delusion of grandeur and a sense of entitlement.

If you were right wing you would work for Faux News. You like to twist any story into your world view and it sickens you that someone may dare give sympathy to anyone that doesn't have your ideology. I would go as far to say that your kinda racist.

Your past two posts have proven my point. The one about us embassy deaths, where 90% of it, was talking about your disappointment about the US response, and the youtube video itself.

Your last paragraph seemed like an afterthought.

Now you have done a post on police raids in Australia, (I wonder why you decided to write that piece?)

Kinda be nice if there is a attack on someone, you do a post with sympathy, and not your posts that are basically saying "well they sort of deserve it"

I am done here.

stargazer said...

well brett, i can't believe you proved my point so clearly. i haven't called you any names by the way, just made a [very valid] judgement on the nature of your comments.

it sickens you that someone may dare give sympathy to anyone that doesn't have your ideology

you say this on a post where i have shown sympathy to people who may indeed not follow my "ideology" - in fact it's highly likely they don't? i can't even understand why you'd bother making a comment like that.

where 90% of it, was talking about your disappointment about the US response

um really? i wrote 1 line in a long post about responses from US politicians, and you call that 90%? again, i'm really struggling to find any kind of logic to your comments, nor any relationship to any actual facts.

Now you have done a post on police raids in Australia, (I wonder why you decided to write that piece?)

and this is it. this is exactly what i was talking about in my previous comments. those raids were traumatic, especially for the children who had to be a part of the whole thing. but could you be bothered to express even one word of concern for them? of course not. because they don't matter to you. because they aren't like you, you don't care about them. and in this post i wrote about the conditions in libya (in relation to nz media reporting - nothing to do with the US response, nor to say "they sort of deserve if"), and do you have the slightest bit of sympathy for the lives of ordinary libyan people? do you care that they are starving and living in violence? you don't care the slightest bit, you write that whole bit of as an attempt to blame the american ambassador for his own death. it's exactly what i mean when i say that your comments contain callous cruelty, a total indifference to suffering of people who aren't like you.

what is so tragic about this is the prevalence of views like yourselves, the total lack of empathy which makes it so much easier to go to war, to bomb out another country, to perpetrate violence on a mass scale.

and then the flounce:

I am done here.

i'm profundly thankful. i'm really not interested in having this kind of heartlessenss displayed on my blog.

LOVETTE said...

" someone produces something stupid and offensive, then fine, gather a group of people and protest about how stupid and offensive that thing was. make your point, express yourself. don't have a problem with burning flags either, mostly because i don't attach a whole lot of emotional symbolism or meaning to flags. they're just a piece of cloth after all."

Fair enough, but I wonder if the US embassy is the correct place to direct this protest. As far as I can tell the US government's involvement with this film was absolutely zero.

I suppose you could argue that because it was made by US citizens the embassy is the best way to protest, but protesting outside the Saudi embassy because you dont like Bin Laden doesnt strike me as particularly useful.

stargazer said...

thanx for your comment lovette.

i guess the only thing i'd say is that protesting outside the saudi embassy would have been a better option than bombing most of afghanistan and a lot of northern pakistan. and then going on to bomb iraq. i can think of solutions that would have lead to a lot less destruction and death.

i think it's useful for people to be able to express their anger, and a protest (that doesn't involve killing innocent people) is one way for that anger to be expressed. i think targetting of the US embassy is much more than about the film itself. there's a lot of anger about US foreign policy and the effect it's having on the lives (& deaths) of people, and that's why protest is directed towards american emabssies. sucks for the staff though.