This is the first part of the full story:
Italian newspapers, an archbishop and civil liberties campaigners expressed shock and revulsion on Monday after photographs were published of sunbathers apparently enjoying a day at the beach just meters from where the bodies of two drowned Roma girls were laid out on the sand.
The bodies of two drowned Gypsy girls were laid out on the sand under beach towels.
1 of 2 Italian news agency ANSA reported that the incident had occurred on Saturday at the beach of Torregaveta, west of Naples, southern Italy, where the two girls had earlier been swimming in the sea with two other Roma girls. Reports said they had gone to the beach to beg and sell trinkets.
Local news reports said the four girls found themselves in trouble amid fierce waves and strong currents. Emergency services responded 10 minutes after a distress call was made from the beach and two lifeguards attended the girls upon hearing their screams.
Two of them were pulled to safety but rescuers failed to reach the other two in time to save them.
The Web site of the Archbishop of Naples said the girls were cousins named Violetta and Cristina, aged 12 and 13.
Very tragic indeed.
From many of the comments posted immediately following that story, many people (no doubt Americans) felt that it was somehow “rude”, “inappropriate”, or wrong in some way that the beach guests would continue with their normal activities when there were dead bodies within view.
Let me tell you something.
Where law intersects with culture, it is different in countries outside the USA. Here in the US, they would rope off the area, the CSI would be there within minutes, and after about 4 hours (after detectives have done their jobs), the beach would be re-opened. There might be a little memorial area for (with flowers and stuff) in memory of the dead kids (even if they were black kids, LOL). Topless chicks and sluts would cover up just for that day at least. The situation would be a decent compromise between the tragedy and “Business as Usual”.
But Italy is different. The situation was different. They simply don’t LIKE gypsies (“Roma”). Plus the police is kinda slow to react (too busy taking payoffs from the Mafia). So the beach guests carried on while the bodies were being eaten by sand worms and crabs. Hey, at least 2 kids were saved! Let’s carry on with the topless sunbathing and chatting about Mussolini, spaghetti and meatballs.
Yet, horrible as it sounds to some people, the situation was STILL better than if it were somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example.
Back in my country, I literally witnessed a decapitated body (apparently victim of the motorcycle vs. car crash… the car won). The body was sitting on the side of the freeway for WEEKS, besieged by the elements, starving vultures, and cars, until at some point it was basically a flat pancake of old clothes. All this time not a single cop came by (they are not paid enough to do that), and no one came to claim the body.
Point is, the Italians and beach bunnies in this CNN story acted like that because they are Italians… a whole different people in a whole different country. They don’t need, or have to, follow OUR moral or legal standards.
That is life, that event was very tragic, but that story was NOT news. THIS is news: “More innocent CHILDREN die due to Bush’s fucking war”.
Dead Iraq kids. What are YOU going to do about it?
July 30, 2008 at 9:06 pm |
Consider this: I have never ever heard of law enforcement officers of any kind or nationality remove corpses from anywhere in coffins. I tried to point this out on CNN.com many times, but my comment was never published. I reposted again and again re-phrasing this observation in the most politically correct fashion I could possibly muster and finally a few moments after I last published, they closed comments over there.
This is reminiscent of tactics that so-called “civil liberties” group use to intimidate majority groups. Most famously the Southern Poverty Law Center in the USA drew scores of thousands of black to descend on a small town of 3000 in Louisiana because a school supposedly had a “white tree” and kids hung nooses in it because blacks supposedly sat there. Both accusations were found to be completely false.