>the acts of a
>white lynch mob going after a black man in the deep south is
>significantly different from an opressed afghani mob going after
>an innocent white man.
Had Robert Fisk been a black man in the South assaulted by a white lynch mob, he would not have likely lived to write an article, as there wouldn't have been any white Good Samaritan with courage enough to step forward, stop the mob, and escort him to safety, in the manner that an elderly Muslim man did in Fisk's article:
***** The Independent 10 December 2001
My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war
Report by Robert Fisk in Kila Abdullah after Afghan border ordeal
...I was back in the middle of the road but could not see. I brought my hands to my eyes and they were full of blood and with my fingers I tried to scrape the gooey stuff out. It made a kind of sucking sound but I began to see again and realised that I was crying and weeping and that the tears were cleaning my eyes of blood. What had I done, I kept asking myself? I had been punching and attacking Afghan refugees, the very people I had been writing about for so long, the very dispossessed, mutilated people whom my own country -- among others -- was killing along, with the Taliban, just across the border. God spare me, I thought. I think I actually said it. The men whose families our bombers were killing were now my enemies too.
Then something quite remarkable happened. A man walked up to me, very calmly, and took me by the arm. I couldn't see him very well for all the blood that was running into my eyes but he was dressed in a kind of robe and wore a turban and had a white-grey beard. And he led me away from the crowd. I looked over my shoulder. There were now a hundred men behind me and a few stones skittered along the road, but they were not aimed at me -- presumably to avoid hitting the stranger. He was like an Old Testament figure or some Bible story, the Good Samaritan, a Muslim man - perhaps a mullah in the village - who was trying to save my life....
<http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1209-07.htm> ***** -- Yoshie
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