Posted by panch from pool0542.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.252.32) on Monday, September 02, 2002 at 9:12PM :
I don't mean to be callous or facetious...ordinarily one wouldn't have to qualify like that...but these aren't ordinary times or topics.
Apparently a nun was brutally murdered...is there any other way...and her head cut off. There were notices on the forums...there was outrage...there were calls to protest, to demand justice, increased protection. Surely, everyone believes, this was a terrible crime and a personal tragedy.
But so what? What will our protests do...really do I mean? To whom are we protesting? Are people not murdered every day and in every land? What makes this murder so special? I'll say it is because it was a Christian being killed by a Muslim. I doubt if there would have been any outrage otherwise. You'll say that's because this is a Christian Assyrian forum...okay. But whom do we live among? Who outnumbers us over there? And...are all the people implicated? That seems to be the underlying message...that this is typical behavior for Muslims. This of course violates several of the new rules...but let that go.
Now...are we only concerned for murdered Christians? Are we equally outraged when innocent Iraqis, Assyrians among them, are murdered...even when they are murdered by Christians? It doesn't seem to be the case.
A while back Aprim said there COULDN'T be seven Assyrian children dying a day over there. But as a percentage of the total population...figuring how many children there are and how many are Assyrians...it stands to reason...as Tiglath Chibo pointed out. But what if it wasn't seven...what if it was five...or two...or one a day. Is that not at least as awful as a one dead nun in 14 years?
What if the no-fly zone is moved? What happens to all those darling Assyrian children you now admit live there? What if for whatever reason their region becomes the new war zone. Will you say anything then?
These are the things that make me wonder just what your interest in one dead nun is...while you remain very philosophical about dead and innocent children. if you had some recent evidence that Saddam was starving children...Assyrian children...what WOULDN'T you do?
Then you tell me a monument is no big deal...it is a personal thing. You come to America and you look backwards, to where you came from. Meanwhile your children slip out from under your care...because you are concerned for what we are losing over there. If you were really in America you would learn to appreciate the value of public relations...of films and monuments and Art and shows and plays. You'd learn to do what others have done...you'd learn to get your story out...over here.
You say it's personal anger at having my work blocked or ruined or left unsold...that I take out my personal anger at people who don't "agree with me". You mean to tell me that when leaders of ours, so called, take it upon themselves to remove paintings, block monuments, throw artwork in a corner and threaten an Assyrian artist with arrest...it isn't news...it doesn't affect the rest of us and our children and our standing here?
Really?
-- panch
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