Why no tears for Paul?

Good text, Silje.

Well, that's what the media made, a huge show. What would you call all those live transfers and doezens of slow motion replays from different angles? The whole thing was like a huge action movie. Yes, it was real and people suffer, but so do thousands of other people around the world EVERY DAY. They don't get 3 minutes of silence on the next day after their death.

here here

So, the fact that their deaths were conviently recorded by the news media and replayed in slow motion is cause to diminish their impact?

I do not enjoy seeing people die or suffer, regardless of nationality or beliefs. When we ignore others and become so enured to violence and suffering, we begin to lose a bit of our own humanity. Calling the deaths of 3000 people, regardless of the situation or manner of their demise, a "good show" is crude and callous.

There's nobody whose skin I value greater than my own, but even I despair at some of your comments.

By God, did our ancestors live through such desperate times for the next generation to become so spineless? Your blasé attitudes to the death of an innocent may well be understandable, but they are also unforgivable. Your shame is still outweighed by the bravery and valour of people who have fought for your very being here to dismiss them off-hand as if they did not matter.

Mind you, I'm also a hypocrite.
I'd love to be able to do something about it, but I just can't be arsed.

Sue me.

Are we referring to me here?

If we are, I am making my Nick Berg site into a Nick Berg/Paul Johnson site as soon as I get on the computer I have the site stored on...

Does anyone have any info on Mr. Johnson? I plan to get started as soon as I switch over to my work computer tomorrow.

Bob the Shrek - let's say, working to put myself through college, I accept a job in a risky part of Philadelphia. Coming home one day, I am brutally murdered. I'm glad to know that you'll not give a shit because I "knew the risks". Trying to make a living doesn't equal jumping out of a plane into the ocean... "He shouldn't have been there"? No, terrorists shouldn't have been there. They shouldn't be ANYWHERE.

First of all can I just apologise for the venom in my initial post. I'd had a couple of shandies and jumped in with the old size tens again.
I could go back and edit the post but it might be taken the wrong way.
I'm not having a pop at you FGT. I can't see the point of what your doing or what it is supposed to acheive but it's a free country (until Fairyqueen becomes president at least) and you can do whatever you like.
It just saddens me when the deaths of two Americans are considered far more horrific or newsworthy than the countless thousands of innocent Iraqis who have died. The whole thing stinks of racism. I am not saying that the lives of Nick and Paul were less important and I sympathise with their families but this new trend of enforced greif is starting to get on my tits.
I am not anti-American and I would hate to think that people felt I was just taking another cheap dig at the states but the fact of the matter is, your country is run by a homicidal madman. A shit kicking bully who wants to go down in the history books as the guy who defeated world terrorism.
He hasn't a snowballs chance in hell and if he gets re-elected in November neither will America.

fatty.

Just because I am saddened by the death of either Nick, or Paul, does NOT mean that I don't also feel bad about ALL the innocent life lost because of this war. I don't think its fair to assume that if I am saddened about one, that I am indifferent to the other.

I just want to point out that I do show respect for everyone who died and everyone who suffered - it just doesn't make any huge impact on me anymore (if it ever did). I don't cry over them or let it affect my everyday life, and I don't go about to make internet pages for them or even sign the already existing ones. I mostly just shrug and think "awful" while I eat my breakfast and watch the morning news.

My point was just that most people are hypocrites, yet when someone dare say "I really didn't cry over this Paul", that's so outrageous. To say that Twin Towers was a great show doesn't show respect, I agree. What I disagree with was what I thought was the original point of this thread - namely why no one makes pages or cries over Paul, and then the responds about how any decent humanbeing probably cried. I see myself as a decent humanbeing regardless of whether I shed some tears over a beheaded man from the USA. It's a pity, it's another horrible event, it's awful for the family, etc, etc, but I didn't cry and I didn't even get very sentimental.

Once again fatty, you've said it all. It's tempting to copy and paste your intellectual property but I won't.
I realise that particularly all you Americans out there are having a tough time with this terrorism thing - I don't think any of us outside of the States can quite comprehend how much it's affected the sensibilities of the population.
And while I think that it's disgusting that the Iraqis are out there decapitating American civilians I have to say that I'd be surprised if any of you showed all this Mediterranean-style breast-beating grief if, say, it was a New Zealander that got killed. Yes, it has happened.
And let's face it, these men are dead and gone. It's not going to worry them one way or another. "But their families..."
What about the Iraqis who lose entire families to the war, not just single members? What about the Iraqis in the famous prison photos who are going to have to live with those memories of what happened for the rest of their lives?
Maybe seeing 11/9 as a big show is a bit callous but I honestly think that's what it's turned into. As soon as there's an outpouring of anti-war sentiment on goes the WTC footage and suddenly it's ok again, we must avenge it.
We can't go making ourselves crazy over what we can't control, the best you can do is make sure you don't vote for Bush.
Then again, that's no guarantee that he won't get in again is it.

I agree with Zeni. My life has not stopped bc an American or any other human from another country has lost their life in the war, car accident, or whatever other horrible event has taken place to take someone's life.

But I do stop for however long I feel like, think about it, keep their family in my thoughts, and wish it didn't happen to them.

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]fatty wrote: [/QUOTENAME] A shit kicking bully who wants to go down in the history books as the guy who defeated world terrorism.
He hasn't a snowballs chance in hell and if he gets re-elected in November neither will America.
[/QUOTE]

Is that really such a bad notion to have? For too long we have sat idly by while hundreds of thousands of folk less fortunate than ourselves are slaughtered or tortured. Who else has come to their aid?

This chap Bush may only have a few working brain cells, but at the end of the day he is nought but a figurehead. His advisers will have sense enough to keep him busy with unnecessary paperwork and the like.

Mind you, if a wet-nose like Kerry takes over, then that really could be the end.

Bob the Shrek - let's say, working to put myself through college, I accept a job in a risky part of Philadelphia. Coming home one day, I am brutally murdered. I'm glad to know that you'll not give a shit because I "knew the risks". Trying to make a living doesn't equal jumping out of a plane into the ocean... "He shouldn't have been there"? No, terrorists shouldn't have been there. They shouldn't be ANYWHERE.

You have to get the context right - if you went to Philadephia, knowing that there was a high risk of murder and the Police Dept, FBI, CIA, CBS, NBC et al have told you to stay away - THEN I wouldn't give a shit.

Bob the Shrek - Perhaps the CIA and FBI don't tell people to stay out of big cities, but statistics basically do. Every place carries with it a certain amount of risk, well, you take the risk, but I don't think that means that someone should be thought less of simply because they opted to go do something overseas as opposed to staying here.