Friday, November 20, 2015

Russian plane bombing fades (quickly) into obscurity

It's interesting to note the extent to which the Russian plane crash on October 31st has been completely overshadowed by the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13th.
A Russian passenger plane was brought down by a terrorist bomb over Egypt's Sinai peninsula on October 31st, killing all 224 people (tourists and crew) on board. It cause, then, almost twice as many casualties as the Paris bombings. A local affiliate of Islamic State has claimed full responsibility for the bombing, making it just as much a terrorist act as the events of November 13th.
But, even before the Paris attacks, there seemed to be relatively little news coverage and outrage over the Russian plane crash, and since Paris, hardly any.
Likewise, the Islamic State suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, on November 12th, which killed at least 37, got lost in the Paris coverage, and the more recent Al-Qaeda-sponsored siege of a hotel in Bamako, Mali, on November 20th, in which 19 guests and two militants were killed, has received only fleeting attention from the press in comparison with Paris.
This, of course, is to say nothing of the casualties in Syria itself, at the hands of the various different armed groups which are operating there, which include Syrian governmental forces, Russian forces, Kurdish self-management forces, extremist Islamic groups, armed opposition groups, international coalition forces, and other unidentified groups. The death toll is estimated at between 120 and 180 each day, which includes 20-50 civilian casualties. And then, of course, there is also Iraq...
Now, Egypt, Lebanon, Mali, Syria and Iraq are admittedly a bit further away from the European/American centre of world gravity than is France, but not that much. And I am as unsympathetic to Russia and the Putin regime as most Westerners are. But why such disproportionate media attention, I wonder?

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