re: #12 Obdicut

That’s just a fallacy. Sure, maybe this story is getting popular and more attention because it involves an area with a lot of recent news and where people were afraid this would happen. Maybe it’s because it involves Muslims. But the mourning is still a ‘good’ thing, it’s still a respectful thing, and it’s something I’d expect whether these groups were religious or non-religious. I mean, I feel bad for those Copts, and I have no association with them other than humanity. And sure, I also know about the massacres, famines, and deaths from AIDs of people in Africa, and sure it makes this pale in comparison, if numbers are all that matters.

But they’re not. That’s the fallacy. There’s nothing about ethics that says we have to mourn tragedies in order of decreasing magnitude, or that we can’t be shocked by a new tragedy and feel it intensely, even while old tragedies of greater impact are happening.

I think the world’s neglect of and exploitation of Africa is and has been and probably will continue to be appalling. I think we owe a lot of apologies and aid for the places that we screwed over by turning them into proxy war zones.

But that doesn’t mean that we have to mourn the largest number of people killed at any one time.

Did you bother to read the article, by the way? The most that could be said in your defense is that this is a slightly misleading headline; all the article really talks about is Coptic Christians mourning what happened.

Much better said than Reine last night.

I don’t disagree with anything you say and I sympathize as much as you with the Copts in Egypt. At about 10% of the population they make me think of the blacks in the the US not terribly long ago.

Yes I reacted to the headline and allegation of all Christians in the USA and gave reasons why. It is one thing to make announcements of solidarity or concern, it is another to announce Three Days Of Mourning, since then one needs to mourn continuously, as I already said.