Thursday, January 12, 2006

America, the Most Important

You know, if 345 people had died in the U.S., it would be all over the headlines. And not just in America. This is the number of people who died, just today, in Saudi Arabia in a massive trampling (everyone was trying to stone the devil, supposedly, who does not exist - at least not in any sort of human form). Can you imagine that? I think it's horrifying. Do you think someone will put a plaque together with the names of the deceased or devote a website to their memory? Probably not.

We lose 11 coal miners and Lifetime and the WB are fighting over the movie rights. Not to take anything away from those courageous miners, but you see what I am getting at. Do any of you listen to NPR and feel that the innocent lives taken during insurgent attacks are glossed over while the numbers of American deaths in Iraq are underscored and bold-faced? I think every death ought to be underscored and bold-faced.

3 Comments:

At 10:52 AM, Blogger Peter N said...

The thing that hit me over the head just as if Jimmy Rice had swung a sledge hammer is this; the SAME THING happened last year, with another horrible loss of life. You know what they say, fool me once.......

 
At 12:07 PM, Blogger twitch124 said...

It happens every year, and has since travel got cheap enough that most muslims can afford to make the pilgrimage once in their life. This is the first year that so many have died since the new safety barriers went up, though.

The pillar that gets stoned is in a pit. Once, there were no barriers on the edge of the pit. So people fell in and got stoned instead of trampled. Then there were concrete barriers, and people got crushed against them. Now, the barriers are padded, so it's only the ones who lose their footing and get trampled who die.

The crowds are just so big that they can't be controlled, and they're getting bigger every year. One thing that might help is making people leave their luggage back at their hotels, so it's just people instead of people and heavy bags. But then a lot of the luggage will get stolen, so there's no buy-in.

 
At 12:17 PM, Blogger Kim said...

Interesting. I did not know this. Mainly because headlines like "Aniston Wasn't Alerted to Pregnancy" pretty much take over.

God, I hope they can figure something out! Seems like a whole lot of preventable death.

 

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