Êtes-vous Lahore?

[luvdovz]

We've talked about this before, haven't we. When a score of people were killed and dozens more wounded in the Brussels attacks, everyone was Brussels (Je suis Bruxelles!). Now when three-score were killed and hundreds wounded by a Taliban attack in Lahore, Pakistan, where are the tears? Some diplomats and heads of state have sent mourning letters

Comments

[dreamville_bg]

What's this Lahore thing that you speak of? Some place with brown people? Duh.

Pass me the remote. There's the Farmer Wants A Goat show starting in a minute.

[airiefairie]

Frankly, I am Lahore exactly as much as I am Baghdad, as much as I am Brussels, Paris, etc. I just do not display it on Facebook.

[htpcl]

Even the fact that it was an attack on Christians couldn't negate the fact that they were mostly brown ones that we're not supposed to care about that much.

[ddstory]

Effective from today*, I'm setting up a FB account which I'll be solely using to post regular obituaries.

* ok, maybe tomorrow

[underlankers]

The honest answer is that no, people in the West aren't Lahore because Lahore wasn't white and Christian enough and the bombing didn't go after an athletic event. All that "Je suis Charlie" bit was as much about sticking it to the Muslims as it was about actual sympathy even for the Charlie Hebdo Magazine. I am a bit more concerned about terrorist attacks in Pakistan than I am in say, Paris, because the ones in Pakistan reflect what happens when you allow spies to become overmighty subjects and the monsters they make decide "Fuck this, I'm-a kill you" and they're stuck in the very nightmare they made for themselves. And because the regime's unstable enough it's one of the only plausible vectors for nuclear terrorism of any sort. That is when it's not launching large-scale terrorist attacks like the one in Mumbai against its neighbors.

[htpcl]

Well, curiously, the closest the world has come to nuclear terrorism is when the Brussels terrorist cell actually targeted the chief of Belgium's largest nuclear power station. Seems like a vector that's plausible enough, given the Belgians' lack of vigilance.