Let's Just Talk
“It’s not my natural language. I’m not a politician. I haven’t been a social activist. At the same time, it’s an opportunity and a duty that I cannot let go. . . . We have vowed to fight the hatred that took Danny’s life, and one way to fight the hatred is to communicate. . . . This is our vision of revenge. . . . The loss of Danny will forever tear my heart. But I can think of no greater consolation than seeing your [Pakistani] children some day pointing at Danny’s picture and saying, ‘This is the kind of person I want to be.”’
—Judea Pearl, computer science professor, remembering his son, Daniel Pearl (1963-2002), a Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002 and later beheaded, 2008
On This Day . . .
In 1889, the Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower's designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers.
In 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson announced: “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party as your President.”
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Daniel Pearl's abduction and murder was horrifying. Last year, more journalists were killed while trying to cover the world than in any previous year (see Committee to Protect Journalists). Journalists used to be protected in war zones, because combatants understood that they were there to do a job. But it's the new strategy in war zones for militias and other combatants to whack those who are simply trying to help the rest of us make sense of what's happening. It's bad enough that the world is consumed by violence...on the other hand, if babies and mothers and grandfathers and other innocents are slaughtered, why not journalists????
ReplyDeleteIn mourning,
One Sad, Lonely Voice