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terrorism in pakistan

Tombo2001

There were a series of terrorist incidents in Pakistan last week which killed I believe around 115 to 120 people. This was given very little coverage in the Irish print media. Not one of the three national broadsheets ran it as a front page article, indeed not of them even ran it as the lead item in their international news sections, with the Oscar nominations and the terrorist killing of 3 Kurdish people in France being ranked ahead of it as a story.

For me, my jaw dropped when I heard the story because of the scale of it but also because I know one of the cities where most of the killings took place - Quetta. I spent a little bit of time there (about a week) and also some of my relations were born there during the days of the British raj. So I know what the place is like.

Just wanted to get people's views on the press coverage of this, or lack of.

I dont mean to get on my high horse about it and claim moral authority or whatever.

Obviously the newspapers have a reason for doing what they do.

But I just wanted to sound people out as to whether anyone here considers 3 people being killed in France being more newsworthy than the above story in Pakistan, and if so, why.

Can the press justifiably turn around and say "we are responding to demand, our readers arent that interested in what happens in Pakistan?".....

On a seperate story, the wiki page below makes for grim reading;.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrori...kistan_in_2012

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Wattle

Terrorism in France is a lot rarer than terrorism in Pakistan. To be honest I think people are kind of numbed by the sheer weight of numbers dying in places like Pakistan.

Tombo2001

sfwcork wrote: »

Are they reporting the trouble up north?

Why dont you go onto the isralie boards and ask why not

When I was over in India, I found that a lot of people were very well clued in to what was happening in Northern Ireland; and were quite interested to ask questions about it to understand it better.

Aquarius34

MadsL wrote: »

Given half of your 600+ posts in a couple of weeks are in Conspiracy Theories, why does that not surprise me.

Well if you don't think the coffee smells bad at this rate you've spent most of your life with head deep under the sand!

Ghandee

My very entrepreneurial friend started his own business in Pakistan a few years ago.

He made exploding rugs for the very lucrative suicide bomber market.

business must be goods, he said 'prophets are going through the roof!'

Aquarius34

People in the west are saints, and people in the east, well... are just suicide bombers! Said so on the t.v. I was there when it happened on Teeeveeee.

MadsL

Aquarius34 wrote: »

Well if you don't think the coffee smells bad at this rate you've spent most of your life with head deep under the sand!

This from a poster who claims vaccines are "cool aid poison" :rolleyes:

Aquarius34

MadsL wrote: »

This from a poster who claims vaccines are "cool aid poison" :rolleyes:

:rolleyes:

The Aussie

MadsL wrote: »

This from a poster who claims vaccines are "cool aid poison" :rolleyes:

Am I the only one who finds it lame when posts in other forums are needed to try and claim a faux moral high ground.
If you have to start digging your loosing

Shint0

Tombo, people might become more interested if tensions between Pakistan and India continue to escalate in Kashmir and if they both ever decided to nuke each other....and the rest of us.
As for people in India being interested in Northern Ireland? I am very familiar with India as well as Indians in Ireland. It is my experience that few have any interest in Irish related topics, even those with Irish citizenship living here for years. I'm guessing those you spoke to were in a tiny minority.

Sergeant

It's not on the hot list of righteous global conflicts.

GalwayGuy2

People in the west are saints, and people in the east, well... are just suicide bombers! Said so on the t.v. I was there when it happened on Teeeveeee.

Bit racist there

Aquarius34

GalwayGuy2 wrote: »

Bit racist there

Ever hear of sarcasm and a hint of irony

We in the west, can be very racist and subjective and ignorant towards everything outside our own western thinking. We seem to demonize so much people in the east for all sorts of reasons mainly due to our own arrogance and ignorance in how we view reality. I'd just want to mirror the irony back to us, interesting why you didn't even get that much.

Boombastic

Ghandee wrote: »

My very entrepreneurial friend started his own business in Pakistan a few years ago.

He made exploding rugs for the very lucrative suicide bomber market.

business must be goods, he said 'prophets are going through the roof!'

Sounds like business is booming for him

Tombo2001 wrote: »

............
Its a country with a hundred million people. Thats bigger than France or Germany.

Surely they have enough competent people there then to sort out the issues?

MadsL

The Aussie wrote: »

Am I the only one who finds it lame when posts in other forums are needed to try and claim a faux moral high ground.
If you have to start digging your loosing

Oh, please, everyone knows that Conspiracy Theories is the sump boards.ie drains into.

Chuck Stone

I prefer the freedom, justice and democracy bombs us westerners shoot from the unmanned flying meat grinders made, purchased and operated by regular good ol folks from the west.

'Peace bombs' I guess you could call them.

Project Werewolf

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I prefer the freedom, justice and democracy bombs us westerners shoot from the unmanned flying meat grinders made, purchased and operated by regular good ol folks from the west.

'Peace bombs' I guess you could call them.

Well not everyone can afford to use Boeing 737s laden with passengers to spread their message of peace and love so us westerners will have to make do with those peace bombs.

Tombo2001

Shint0 wrote: »

Tombo, people might become more interested if tensions between Pakistan and India continue to escalate in Kashmir and if they both ever decided to nuke each other....and the rest of us.
As for people in India being interested in Northern Ireland? I am very familiar with India as well as Indians in Ireland. It is my experience that few have any interest in Irish related topics, even those with Irish citizenship living here for years. I'm guessing those you spoke to were in a tiny minority.

On the Northern Ireland point......

The conflict is in the North is no longer an international media story. Fifteen years ago it most definitely was.

The time I was referring to was fifteen years ago rather than today. And I can only speak for my own experience, but yes I definitely met numerous people in India who asked me about Northern Ireland.

I distinctly remember asking them why they would be interested in a relatively minor conflict (by international standards) in a small country far far away, when there so were so many larger conflicts around the world....and I distinctly remember getting the answer that "it just seems different when its white people who are fighting".

Tombo2001

Boombastic wrote: »

Surely they have enough competent people there then to sort out the issues?

You mean like when Bill Clinton stepped in and sorted out our mess?

squod

Aquarius34 wrote: »

There is always "terrorists" in places, where there is oil,gas, opium, mineral wealth and we always seem to blame Muslim for bombing things. Something doesn't quite make sense with that. I don't believe people decide to blow themselves up for no reason and I certainly don't believe this nonsense because why does suicide bombers always exist in places where there is a lot of mineral wealth?

Tombo2001 wrote: »

think you are on the wrong track there........very little oil or mineral wealth in Pakistan.

You might have missed a bit there in fairness.

Chart

You should read up on the 'aul opium production and it's effect on the world economy. You'll see no Afghan farmers driving around in gold plated sports cars like. All that opium and the money it makes is going somewhere.

GalwayGuy2

The time I was referring to was fifteen years ago rather than today. And I can only speak for my own experience, but yes I definitely met numerous people in India who asked me about Northern Ireland.

Well, tbf, India is a commonwealth country and was colonized by England, so they would be more interested in the Northern Ireland occupation yoke.

Boombastic

Tombo2001 wrote: »

You mean like when Bill Clinton stepped in and sorted out our mess?

So Enda should jump in and sort out theirs? FFS He can't even look after the little country we have here

Tombo2001

GalwayGuy2 wrote: »

Well, tbf, India is a commonwealth country and was colonized by England, so they would be more interested in the Northern Ireland occupation yoke.

Ok....well to all those who said that Ireland has nothing in common with these places in Pakistan...

If you go back to the OP, the town I mentioned.....Quetta.....there is a Christian graveyard there and there are over a thousand Irish people buried there, over a thousand different headstones with Irish names on them....

Dostoevsky

Tombo2001 wrote: »

There were a series of terrorist incidents in Pakistan last week which killed I believe around 115 to 120 people. This was given very little coverage in the Irish print media. Not one of the three national broadsheets ran it as a front page article, indeed not of them even ran it as the lead item in their international news sections, with the Oscar nominations and the terrorist killing of 3 Kurdish people in France being ranked ahead of it as a story.

For me, my jaw dropped when I heard the story because of the scale of it but also because I know one of the cities where most of the killings took place - Quetta. I spent a little bit of time there (about a week) and also some of my relations were born there during the days of the British raj. So I know what the place is like.

Just wanted to get people's views on the press coverage of this, or lack of.

I dont mean to get on my high horse about it and claim moral authority or whatever.

Obviously the newspapers have a reason for doing what they do.

But I just wanted to sound people out as to whether anyone here considers 3 people being killed in France being more newsworthy than the above story in Pakistan, and if so, why.

Can the press justifiably turn around and say "we are responding to demand, our readers arent that interested in what happens in Pakistan?".....

On a seperate story, the wiki page below makes for grim reading;.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrori...kistan_in_2012

Pakistan, India and Afghanistan seem to be barbarous places, most particularly the way they treat women. In fact, above all else the way they treat women. But this "terrorism" malarkey is, well, for readers of the British/rightwing tabloids.

Tombo2001

Dostoevsky wrote: »

Pakistan, India and Afghanistan seem to be barbarous places, most particularly the way they treat women. In fact, above all else the way they treat women..

On the one hand, I'd agree with a lot of what you say.

On the other hand, an Indian might well be entitled to say Pot, Kettle, Black after reading about recent events in our hospitals, or reading about Magdalene Laundaries, or any number of insitituional or famly cases in Ireland.

Tombo2001

Dostoevsky wrote: »

But this "terrorism" malarkey is, well, for readers of the British/rightwing tabloids.

To ask the question again.......what is the right word when someone puts a bomb in a market and kills 50 people. And why do the semantics matter?

Dostoevsky

Tombo2001 wrote: »

To ask the question again.......what is the right word when someone puts a bomb in a market and kills 50 people. And why do the semantics matter?

Massacre, slaughter, brutality....

The whole "terrorism" thing for those of us old enough to remember is reminiscent of when the word was used to describe any action against the speakers' side - British describing anti-British/colonial violence; Americans describing anti-American/colonial violence, French describing anti-French/colonial violence and so on. It was never used by the same people to describe the violence of the British, American or French sides against their opponents. That's my objection to the word "terrorism". It's just one of those "turn-off/watch the politics of the user" words.

Madam_X

It's surprising this atrocity wasn't reported much here, but Pakistan is not off the radar - and there were no doubt plenty of other atrocities going on at the same time that were not reported. For instance, there's virtually nothing about Yemen in the western media. Pakistan would receive more coverage than Yemen.

As you say OP, you're familiar with it, which is probably what's shaping your view. It's not feasible for everything going on in the world to be reported. I think it's unfair whenever it's implied the western media doesn't care about the east. It's absolutely not true. At the same time though, it's understandable the stories closer to home will be prioritised.

Tombo2001

Madam_X wrote: »

As you say OP, you're familiar with it, which is probably what's shaping your view. It's not feasible for everything going on in the world to be reported. I think it's unfair whenever it's implied the western media doesn't care about the east. It's absolutely not true. At the same time though, it's understandable the stories closer to home will be prioritised.

I dont think its the press's job to care one way or the other.

Its the press's job to

(i) report news

or

(ii) make money.

You say that its not feasible for everything that happens in the world to be reported. But this is the biggest terrorist massacre to take place in the world in the past 8 months and one of the biggest in recent years.....

Does the fact that people dont care about it mean that its not news? That its not important?

Reminds me a bit of when I hear people say.....I wish they'd ever stop talking about child abuse on the radio....all those guys ever do is whinge......

If you are starting from the premise that its the press's job to make money....then fair enough.....and I'm not criticizing that. They do have to make money. And that means giving people what they want.

Tombo2001

Shint0 wrote: »

Tombo, people might become more interested if tensions between Pakistan and India continue to escalate in Kashmir and if they both ever decided to nuke each other....and the rest of us.

funny you say that....

I quote from an article I read in the Financial Times at the weekend, which was a review of a book written about the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake...

"Such fickle fluctuations in foreign interest are the subject of Jonathan Katz’s book The Big Truck That Went By, concisely summarised in the subtitle: “How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster”. He recounts a press conference after a donors’ meeting in 2010 hosted by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her international counterparts. Following a question on aid, discussion quickly turned to Iran. “Do I need to develop a nuclear programme ... so that we come back to talking about Haiti?” René Préval, the country’s frustrated president, cut in."

Seaneh

its no surprise that this bombing wasnt reported in the west.

ffs tge biggest terrorist grouo in the world are routinely bombing people in northern Pakistan and then bombing the emergency personal who happen to respond to the explosion. thousands killed in the last few years and nobody reports that either.