Skin colour, religion and nationality are as important as they ever were.

[DarkRaven]

On Sunday January 30th, 1972 British Paratroopers shot twenty-six unarmed civil rights marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland. Thirteen died on the day, and one more subsequently died. That was Bloody Sunday. On June 15th 2010, a report was published by British Prime Minister, David Cameron, detailing this atrocity and he apologised unconditionally for it. Clearly, public opinion in Britain and elsewhere states that civilian deaths in wartime are an abomination.

Then why is it that people still greet with such apathy, the deaths of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis? Why must "war be war"? Rubbish. If this happened on "our" soil, we would be as outraged as the Irish were after Bloody Sunday. We can't bother denying it. Whether it's because of their nationality, skin colour, religion or supposed political affiliation, we think that the local civilian victims in Iraq and Afghanistan are unworthy. It's the same story in every war. It rarely changes. Remember that loyalist and republican insurgents were active in Northern Ireland at that time of Bloody Sunday. It too was a war zone.

Skin colour, religion and nationality are as important to us today as they ever were. Now the tough question, how do we all feel about it?

[ManyIdeas]

There is a war going on, Raven. It is a little thing called propaganda. The UK uses it, the USA uses it, and Iraq and all the other places. They will be telling them how many of their people died to create anger so more people will join. That is they way it works. Skin colour, religion etc is not important as it was, actually. If it was, Cilo Green and Jay-Z wouldn't be famous musicians, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman wouldn't be acting, they wouldn't be in business or making lots of money. But they are. Freedom is taking its time, but it is there. Skin colour does not change much anymore. It seems to be more of how you dress and the way you sell yourself.

However, Religion seems to be an issue. In the Middle East, Christians are killed for worshipping and are stoned for wanting to build a Church. Ever since 9/11, people seem to be much more hostile around Muslims. Plus people generally joke about religion more often than not.
People don't seem to care much for nationality either. Well I don't, and a lot of people in my area don't care either. They just want to know if the person is good or bad.

One that does still care is gender, though. Men in the same job as a woman might earn more. There was a case were a woman was earning £20'000 in a job, but her male counterpart who slacked off was earning £35'000. Of course, she sued for the ammount she should have been paid over her 3 year working period. The company went bust.
I don't take notice of religion or skin colour or nationality. We all live on this Earth, but it is people with twisted views that ruin it all.

[SapphireSeaBird]

I agree with ManyIdeas that skin colour is not as big an issue as it once was. At least, not from what I've seen.

Religion and nationality, however, are a different story.

I live in Northern Ireland, and my mum grew up near Belfast during the troubles. That catastrophe is long over, but even today there are still clear divisions between Protestants and Catholics. In the town where I live, there are 6 main secondary schools; two Catholic, three Protestant and one integrated. The main place in town where you can see the full extent of the division is at the bus station. Kids from the different Protestant schools mix, and as do kids from the Catholic ones, but friendships between kids from both are very rare. As for the integrated school, they tend to keep to themselves. The integrated school also lacks the funding for a proper building; the school is made out of a series of portacabins and pupils have to go outside to go from one classroom to another. This seems particularly unfair when you compare it to the high end Protestand school which not only has acres of its own land, 6 rugby pitches, 3 hockey pitches but a monstrous three floored building with two gyms and two assembly halls.

I said at the start of that rant that the troubles are long over, but "over" is perhaps pushing it. There's still trouble between the two groups in Belfast, and there are areas which visitors to the city are often warned to keep away from because of the violence. At a fireworks display last Halloween in one of the neighbourhoods, there was some sort of ruffle involving a car being driven into the crowd and numerous people were injured.

My dad is actually from the south, and told me himself that ten years ago, there was a part of my town that, if a car with a southern reg had driven through it, the driver would probably have been dragged out of the car and beaten up. It's nowhere near as bad as that now, but when people hear my dad's accent they still sometimes give unfriendly looks and ask questions.

As for nationality, it's not such a big thing in Northern Ireland anyway, and Belfast is actually pretty diverse in that way, but there is a vendetta against Polish people in some places. I've grown up hearing racist jokes and comments made about them, and there was a situation a while back when a lot of Eastern European families' homes were attacked to the point where they had to leave.

[DarkRaven]

There is a war going on, Raven. It is a little thing called propaganda. The UK uses it, the USA uses it, and Iraq and all the other places.

The BBC, ITV, RTÉ, TF1, CNN etc - they are all supposedly "free media" which engage in independent journalism. This means that they shouldn't be buying into propaganda. It's somewhat understandable that the USA and the UK Governments would not be calling for inquiries into the deaths of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, but the media rarely reported on those cases anyway. It took Wikileaks to shine a spotlight on it in the first place.

And this happens in Ireland as well, despite being involved in either of those two wars.

@SaphireSeaBird - I'm not going to comment on the north of Ireland at all, especially to someone from there. Any time I give an opinion to anyone from Belfast, I get railed at for it. xD

[Jack]

The BBC,

The BBC is far from unbias.

[DarkRaven]

The BBC is far from unbias.

Well that's along the lines of the point I was trying to make. While they are Government funded, they are supposed to be free media, and they shouldn't be buying into Government propaganda. The point is, they are not, and were not fulfilling their duties regarding Iraq, Afghanistan and so on and so forth.

Fast-forward to 2:23 on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqoMy95MQKI

What the BBC Head of Newsgathering says seems to show that the British Gov is very good at hoodwinking the BBC, because the BBC don't ask the right questions. Of course, this is related to the a totally different topic, but it shows that they do selectively pick and choose what viewpoints to show. There is another interview there with the Editor in Chief of ITV News, which seems to show a similar bias (or selective reporting).

If they were hiding the facts then, are they hiding them now?

[KnightinArmor02]

[QUOTE=DarkRaven;124502]The BBC, ITV, RTÉ, TF1, CNN etc - they are all supposedly "free media" which engage in independent journalism. This means that they shouldn't be buying into propaganda.

All Media buys into propaganda, or should i say, is bought into propaganda, the government is going to keep offering more money to the media stations to take the spotlight off of the vile acts being done to iraqi & Afghani citizens. My uncle is in Afghanistan now, and we keep in touch alot, he tells me all of the things that goes on there, hes been ordered to shoot unarmed civilians, his C.O. claimed they were insurgeants, so he had to follow orders. its the same in the media, the government is gonna pay them to say that the civilians were actually insurgeants, and to spice things up a bit the military might send an american soldier to his death to make the story more believable. it sickens me to think that this kind of stuff is happening in our own military.:mad: