Thursday, July 10, 2008

big friendly giants

this issue i want to discuss is sort of an old one, i remember watching this on the news and just being shocked, but for those who have no clue what i am talking about... here it is



now if you still dont know what i am talking about. that is one of the buddhas of bamyan. (note the size of it by looking at the people at its feet)
those buddhas were situated in afganistan which we all hopefully know is an islamic state who do not believe in idolisation, as in you can worship god but you are no allowed to worship a statue of god.

these statues are over 1500 years old, and were listed on the world heritage site.

unfortunately, they were destroyed by the taliban.


and now virtually nothing remains.



of course it is such a huge shame to lose something like that. but before you starting yelling out things like "bloody turbin heads!" etc...

from what i have read, a major factor in it's destruction was a protest...protest against what? you ask.

well, as you probably know, afghanistan is a very poor country with a lot of it's citizens suffering heavily not just from violence, but from poverty and starvation. aid agencies wanted to pay millions to restore the statues before they were destroyed, the government wanted to use the millions to feed the starving children and keep them alive, but were told the money was not for the children but for the statues.

having read that, i can imagine the outrage. yes the starvation is probably due to the government themselves. but this contributed to the destruction.

yes, blowing them up may have been abit extreme and impulsive due to extreme anger.

its funny that there was such outrage at the destruction of the statues, but no outrage when aid agencies decide they dont want to save starving children.
i have never suffered from starvation and have never had to look after a country with children starving, thus perhaps i can not give a very strong and well informed opinon.

but it seems its hard for me to decide between saving a carved rock, or the lives of starving children.

there's something wrong with us all.

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