Mecca: What the fuck?!?
January 14th, 2006So I’m reading the New York Times yesterday, and I come across a little article about — oh, nothing much — just 345 people killed in a stampede in Mecca. Today I learned that number had been adjusted to 363 (apparently they needed that day to scrape the additional 18 people off their shoes).
Mecca, of course, is the holy city of Islamic tradition, and the people were pilgrims participating in the hajj. More specifically, they were heading towards a ritual “stoning of Satan” which I haven’t learned much about except that it seems to involve running real fast to throw rocks at the devil.
My reaction was, of course, “What the fuck!” but the Times reporter didn’t seem to share my surprise, noting that this was “the deadliest such stampede since 1990.” So I did a little research, and found that two years ago, 251 people died during the same ritual. And on July 2, 1990, a similar stampede killed 1402 people. That’s one thousand, four hundred, and two. Trampled to death. That’s over half the people who died in the World Trade Center, people. That’s roughly one whole tower’s worth.
My question is, why the hell isn’t this bigger news? 168 people died in the Oklahoma City bombing, and that got to be on the front page for weeks. Miniseries were made, I remember. Well over twice that number died yesterday because someone left some luggage in the wrong place and it’s below the fold on the Times and God knows where CNN put it, but I had to search.
The framers of the Constitution said a dark-skinned person was worth 3/5 of a light-skinned one, but if the US news media is any indication, I think they may have overestimated.
