Just alling by to take my lumps and lift that Kissinger quote for inclusion in a thread where Hrothgar may think it fits better.

Alio, it's a matter of perspective. What about the 800,000 killed in Ruanda in the space of four months, mostly with machetes, out of a total population of less than five million? Or the two million who have died in the conflict in DRC (Congo) - 300,000 of them killed, the rest dying of hunger and disease? What about the 10,000 people who died in such agony after the Bophal catastophe that we in the UK have been hearing so much about lately? How many of these far-away people have to die to qualify for a minute's silence?

Bill D, sadly I can't think of a single fatcat country that's showing any sort of example. However some of the Scandinavian countries are way ahead of UK and US on issues like social justice, aid to developing countries, and running economies that don't depend on the sickening trade in arms. (The UK and USA arm impoverished countries to the hilt then bomb the crap out of them if they even look like using what they've bought.)

And I can't say the UK is any better than the USA when it comes to media-hyped maudlin sentiment. The response to the death of Princess Di, for instance, was disproportionate in the extreme. Just recently the UK has been demented over two girls who were abducted and murdered. It was a desperately sad business, obviously, but over the first eight weeks of that saga, nine people were killed within the one square mile of London where I used to live. (Maybe just as many in other parts of London, for all I know.) As a doctor in that area asked on a radio show, how young would those nine people have had to be, or how many more would have had to be murdered, for them to qualify for the media-driven mass hysteria that attached to Holly and Jessica?

I fear we're being reduced to a baying mob, largely on the media's terms.