Value of a life
Letter to the Editor
Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: Viewpoint
This past Monday, people across the country were glued to their television screens, witnessing the chaos that ensued as the result of the violence carried out on the Virginia Tech campus. Deservedly, this event received a great deal of publicity - it was on the front page of The Observer and also had multi-page layouts and analysis in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. What didn't receive due media attention were the 37 Iraqi civilians who died the same day of the very same unwarranted and selfish violence, as well as others in Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other war-torn regions who perish daily.
These stories were overshadowed by the story which undoubtedly hit much closer to home for many on the Notre Dame campus. But we must remember that regardless of the locality of violence, it is still violence. The Virginia Tech students who died are no more or no less human than the countless people who die every day.
This is neither a pro- nor anti-war debate. This is a life debate. The murders at Virginia Tech are indeed a tragedy, but please be aware that in many countries violence of this nature is part of their bleak, everyday reality. The frequency of this sort of violence should not discount its impact on our conscience. We must be thankful that we don't suffer from the fear of bombs and bloodshed on a daily basis but also be more mindful about the tragedies and suffering that are experienced by those stretched across the world.
Sean Mallin
sophomore
Keough Hall
April 18
--
Original Source:
<a href="http://media.www.ndsmcobserver.com/media/storage/paper660/news/2007/04/20/Viewpoint/Value.Of.A.Life-2870832.shtml">http://media.www.ndsmcobserver.com/media/storage/paper660/news/2007/04/20/Viewpoint/Value.Of.A.Life-2870832.shtml</a>
Sean Mallin
2008-02-25
Kacey Beddoes
Christopher Hine <chine@nd.edu>
eng
Why Virginia Tech Shootings Happened
<b>A Statement from the International Action Center</b>
Yet another rampage has occurred at a school, this time leaving 33 people dead at Virginia Tech-the worst such incident ever at a U.S. college campus.
The news media seem stunned and surprised, yet their coverage sounds so similar to the stories about Columbine eight years ago. They dwell on the personality of the young man the police say did the shooting, before killing himself. They talk about him being a "loner," depressed, perhaps angry at women.
But aren't there lonely and depressed people all over the world? Many countries have high suicide rates. Why is it that here some become mass murderers?
The U.S. is the world leader in seemingly random acts of violence by individuals. Why?
President George W. Bush rushed to Virginia to speak at a large convocation the day after the killings and tried to set the tone for what could be said about them. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," he said.
Don't ask why, don't try to understand. It makes no sense. "Have faith" instead, was Bush's message.
But there ARE reasons these things happen here, and they are pretty clear to the rest of the world. It's just in the United States that no one is supposed to talk about the reasons.
What distinguishes this country from the rest of the world? It is neither the most affluent nor the poorest. It is neither the most secular nor the most religious. It is not the most culturally homogeneous nor is it the most diverse.
But in one area, it stands virtually alone. It has the biggest arsenal of high-tech weaponry in the world, way surpassing every other country. It has military bases spread all over; most countries have no troops outside their borders.
It is conducting two hot wars at the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has sent hundreds of thousands of troops abroad over the last few years. Every day, the public here is supposed to identify with soldiers who burst into homes in Baghdad, round up the people and take them away for "interrogation"-which everyone knows now can mean torture and indefinite detainment.
It also sends heavily armed "special ops" on secret missions to countless other countries, like the ones who just facilitated the invasion and bombing of Somalia, or the ones who have been trying to stir up opposition in Iran. This is documented in the news media.
The immense brutality of these colonial wars, as well as earlier ones, is praised from the White House on down as the best, the ONLY way to achieve what the political leaders and their influential, rich backers decide is necessary to protect their world empire. Do lots of people get killed? "Stuff happens," said former war secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Collateral damage," says the Pentagon.
At home, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Over 2 million people are locked up in the prison system each year, most of them people of color. When commercial armed security guards are also taken into consideration, the U.S. has millions of employees who use guns and other coercive paraphernalia in their jobs.
In the final analysis, the military and the police exist to perpetuate and protect this present unjust system of capitalist inequality, where a few can claim personal ownership over a vast economy built by the sweat and blood of hundreds of millions of workers.
And the more divided, the more polarized the society becomes, the higher the level of coercion and violence. Assault weapons are now everywhere in this society, as are Tasers, handcuffs, clubs and tear gas. They most often start out in the hands of the police, the military and other agents of the state, and can then turn up anywhere.
Violence is a big money maker in the mass culture. Television, films, pulp novels, Internet sites, video games-all dwell on "sociopaths" while glorifying the state's use of violence, often supplemented by a lone vigilante. By the time children reach their teens, they have already seen thousands of murders and killings on television. And these days even more suspense is added in countless programs that involve stalking and terror against women-and increasingly children.
As the Duke rape case and so many "escort service" ads show, women of color are particularly subject to exploitation and have little recourse to any justice. And as the murders along the border show, immigrants of color are fair game for racist killers.
The social soil of capitalism can alienate and enrage an unstable and miserable person who should be getting help but can't find it. If, as reports are saying, the young man accused of these killings was on anti-depressant medication, it is all the more evidence that, at a time when hospitals are closing and health care is unavailable for tens of millions, treating mental health problems requires more from society than just prescribing dubious chemicals.
Many liberal commentators are taking this occasion to renew the demand for tougher gun laws. Yes, assault weapons are horrible, but so are bunker buster bombs, helicopters that fire thousands of rounds a minute, and the ultimate-nuclear weapons. Disarming the people is not the answer, especially when the government is armed to the teeth and uses brutality and coercion daily.
The best antidote to these tragedies is to build a movement for profound social change, a movement directed at solving the great problems depressing so much of humanity today, whether they be wars or global climate change or the loneliness of the dog-eat-dog society.
--
Original Source: <a href="http://www.iactucson.org/VirginiaTech.html">http://www.iactucson.org/VirginiaTech.html</a>
Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License</a>.
International Action Center of Tucson
2007-08-04
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5
eng
Why Virginia Tech killings happened
EDITORIAL
Published Apr 17, 2007 11:36 PM
Yet another rampage has occurred at a school, this time leaving 33 people dead at Virginia Tech—the worst such incident ever at a U.S. college campus.
The news media seem stunned and surprised, yet their coverage sounds so similar to the stories about Columbine eight years ago. They dwell on the personality of the young man the police say did the shooting, before killing himself. They talk about him being a "loner," depressed, perhaps angry at women.
But aren't there lonely and depressed people all over the world? Many countries have high suicide rates. Why is it that here some become mass murderers?
The U.S. is the world leader in seemingly random acts of violence by individuals. Why?
President George W. Bush rushed to Virginia to speak at a large convocation the day after the killings and tried to set the tone for what could be said about them. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," he said.
Don't ask why, don't try to understand. It makes no sense. "Have faith" instead, was Bush's message.
But there ARE reasons these things happen here, and they are pretty clear to the rest of the world. It's just in the United States that no one is supposed to talk about the reasons.
What distinguishes this country from the rest of the world? It is neither the most affluent nor the poorest. It is neither the most secular nor the most religious. It is not the most culturally homogeneous nor is it the most diverse.
But in one area, it stands virtually alone. It has the biggest arsenal of high-tech weaponry in the world, way surpassing every other country. It has military bases spread all over; most countries have no troops outside their borders.
It is conducting two hot wars at the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has sent hundreds of thousands of troops abroad over the last few years. Every day, the public here is supposed to identify with soldiers who burst into homes in Baghdad, round up the people and take them away for "interrogation"—which everyone knows now can mean torture and indefinite detainment.
It also sends heavily armed "special ops" on secret missions to countless other countries, like the ones who just facilitated the invasion and bombing of Somalia, or the ones who have been trying to stir up opposition in Iran. This is documented in the news media.
The immense brutality of these colonial wars, as well as earlier ones, is praised from the White House on down as the best, the ONLY way to achieve what the political leaders and their influential, rich backers decide is necessary to protect their world empire. Do lots of people get killed? "Stuff happens," said former war secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Collateral damage," says the Pentagon.
At home, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Over 2 million people are locked up in the prison system each year, most of them people of color. When commercial armed security guards are also taken into consideration, the U.S. has millions of employees who use guns and other coercive paraphernalia in their jobs.
In the final analysis, the military and the police—the "armed bodies of men," as Marxists used to define them before women were added to their ranks—exist to perpetuate and protect this present unjust system of capitalist inequality, where a few can claim personal ownership over a vast economy built by the sweat and blood of hundreds of millions of workers.
And the more divided, the more polarized the society becomes, the higher the level of coercion and violence. Assault weapons are now everywhere in this society, as are Tasers, handcuffs, clubs and tear gas. They most often start out in the hands of the police, the military and other agents of the state, and can then turn up anywhere.
Violence is a big money maker in the mass culture. Television, films, pulp novels, Internet sites, video games—all dwell on "sociopaths" while glorifying the state's use of violence, often supplemented by a lone vigilante. By the time children reach their teens, they have already seen thousands of murders and killings on television. And these days even more suspense is added in countless programs that involve stalking and terror against women—and increasingly children.
As the Duke rape case and so many "escort service" ads show, women of color are particularly subject to exploitation and have little recourse to any justice. And as the murders along the border show, immigrants of color are fair game for racist killers.
The social soil of capitalism can alienate and enrage an unstable and miserable person who should be getting help but can't find it. If, as reports are saying, the young man accused of these killings was on anti-depressant medication, it is all the more evidence that, at a time when hospitals are closing and health care is unavailable for tens of millions, treating mental health problems requires more from society than just prescribing dubious chemicals.
Many liberal commentators are taking this occasion to renew the demand for tougher gun laws. Yes, assault weapons are horrible, but so are bunker buster bombs, helicopters that fire thousands of rounds a minute, and the ultimate—nuclear weapons. Disarming the people is not the answer, especially when the capitalist state is armed to the teeth and uses brutality and coercion daily.
The best antidote to these tragedies is to build a movement for profound social change, for replacing capitalism with socialism, so that people's energies can be directed at solving the great problems depressing so much of humanity today, whether they be wars or global climate change or the loneliness of the dog-eat-dog society.
--
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--
Original Source: <a href="http://www.workers.org/2007/editorials/virginia-tech-0426/">http://www.workers.org/2007/editorials/virginia-tech-0426/</a>
Workers World
2007-06-10
Brent Jesiek
Copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
eng
Bowing Down to Our Own Violence
<b>Media Beat (4/19/07)</b>
By <a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=10&author_id=167">Norman Solomon</a>
Many days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominated front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale -- the war in Iraq -- ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the American media establishment.
In the world of U.S. mainline journalism, the boilerplate legitimacy of official American violence overseas is a routine assumption.
"The first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence," George Will wrote on April 7, 2004, in the <b>Washington Post</b>. But three years later, his <b>Newsweek</b> column laments: "Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq has produced an antiwar America."
Current polls and public discourse -- in spite of media inclinations to tamp down authentic anger at the war -- do reflect an "antiwar America" of sorts. So, why is the ghastly war effort continuing unabated? A big factor is the undue respect that's reserved for American warriors in American society.
When a mentally unstable person goes on a shooting rampage in the United States, no one questions that such actions are intrinsically, fundamentally and absolutely wrong. The media condemnation is 100 percent.
However -- even after four years of a U.S. war in Iraq that has been increasingly deplored by the American public -- the standard violence directed from the Pentagon does not undergo much critical scrutiny from American journalists. The president's war policies may come under withering media fire, but the daily activities of the U.S. armed forces are subjected to scant moral condemnation. Yet, under orders from the top, they routinely continue to inflict -- or serve as a catalyst for -- violence far more extensive than the shooting sprees that turned a placid Virginia campus into a slaughterhouse.
News outlets in the United States combine the totally proper condemnation of killing at home with a notably different affect toward the methodical killing abroad that is funded by the U.S. Treasury. We often read, see and hear explicit media commendations that praise as heroic the Americans in uniform who are trying to kill, and to avoid being killed, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In recent decades, the trends of war have been clear. A majority of the dead -- estimated at 75 to 90 percent -- are civilians. They are no less innocent than the more than 30 people who suddenly died from gunshots at Virginia Tech.
It would be inaccurate to say that the bulk of U.S. media's coverage accepts war launched from Washington. The media system of the USA does much more than accept -- it embraces the high-tech violence under the Pentagon's aegis. Key reasons are cultural, economic and political.
We grew up with -- and continue to see -- countless movies and TV programs showing how certain people with a handgun, a machine gun or missiles are able to set wrongs right with sufficiently deft and destructive violence.
The annual reports of large, medium and small companies boast that the U.S. Defense Department is a lucrative customer with more and more to spend on their wares for war.
And the scope of political discourse, reinforced by major news outlets, ordinarily remains narrow enough to dodge the huge differences between "defense spending" and "military spending." More broadly, the big media rarely explore the terrain of basic moral challenges to the warfare state.
Everyone who isn't deranged can agree that what happened on April 16, 2007, at the campus of Virginia Tech was an abomination. It came about because of an individual's madness. We must reject it without the slightest equivocation. And we do.
But the media baseline is to glorify the U.S. military -- yesterday, today and tomorrow -- bringing so much bloodshed to Iraq. The social dynamics in our own midst, fueling the war effort, are spared tough scrutiny. We're constantly encouraged to go along, avidly or passively.
Yet George Will has it wrong. The first task of government should not be "to establish a monopoly on violence." Government should work to prevent violence -- including its own.
--
Original Source: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
<a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3088">http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3088</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.
Norman Solomon
2007-06-09
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
eng
32 Senseless Deaths: A Chance for Empathy, Change of Heart, and Change of Course
<i>Published on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 by <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/">CommonDreams.org</a></i>
<b>by Floyd Rudmin</b>
The tragedy at Virginia Tech tears at the heart of everyone. Thirty-two innocent students and teachers, in the normal activities of their lives, are suddenly shot dead. Each one of them has a mother, a father, friends, classmates, siblings, and others who held them dear. And all of these have had their hearts torn, or torn out. There is now emptiness and grief where once there was a person.
Americans in their sharing of this sadness should consider how others in the world have similar feelings when facing similar loss and tragedy. These 32 senseless deaths are a chance for empathy with other communities who have also lost 32 loved persons to sudden death.
A search of Google using the search expression: <i>"Iraq AND ("32 killed" OR "32 died" OR "killing 32")"</i> finds the following news headlines and news text (in brackets):
3 March 2004:
Bremer: U.S. to bolster Iraq border security ("killing 32 people")
24 April 2004:
At least 32 killed, nearly 60 injured in another day of violence in Iraq
1 June 2004:
3rd of detainees who died were assaulted ("32 died in Iraq over 12 months")
16 July 2004:
32 killed as attacks rock Iraq
17 September 2004:
32 killed as US Forces continued their relentless strikes in Baghdad
15 October 2004:
At least 32 killed in Iraq violence
28 December 2004:
32 killed in attacks in Tikrit
23 June 2005:
32 killed in coordinated attacks
14 November 2005:
On American attacks in Iraq ("American navy announced killing 32 gunmen")
9 December 2005:
Suicide bomber on Iraqi bus kills 32
6 January 2006:
Scores killed on Iraq's bloodiest day ("32 killed by a suicide bomber at a Shiite funeral")
2 March 2006:
Iraqi parties want Jaafari out of Prime Minister race ("more violence struck Iraq, killing 32 people")
24 March 2006:
32 killed in attacks across Iraq
14 May 2006:
32 killed in violence
27 June 2006:
Seven Sunni groups seek truce in Iraq ("32 killed in violence")
28 July 2006: IRAQ:
32 killed in Baghdad blasts
8 December 2006:
At least 32 killed in attack on two families in Iraq
10 January 2007:
Weather blamed for plane crash near Baghdad ("killing 32")
30 January 2007:
At least 32 killed in Iraq holy day violence
15 March 2007:
Suicide bomber apparently targeting senior city official devastates busy square in Baghdad ("killing 32 people")
10 April 2007:
Bombings kill 32 in Iraq; U.S. raids hit civilians
15 April 2007:
Dozens killed in Iraqi holy city ("killing at least 32 people")
In each of these tragic events, each one of the 32 people also had a mother, a father, friends, classmates, siblings, and others who held them dear. And all of these also have had their hearts torn, or torn out, to be filled with emptiness and grief.
The tragedy at Virginia Tech was caused by lone gunman, probably deranged. It was a one-time event. It is finished. The tragedy in Iraq was caused by the US government, with the over-whelming support of the US Congress, most of the US media, and much of the US population. This war was planned and executed by rational men and women, none of them deranged.
The US decided to start the war against Iraq.
The US decided to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq.
The US decided to destroy the Iraqi government and to disband its police and army.
The US decided to send too few soldiers to secure the nation after doing these destructive deeds.
And the tragedy of Iraq is not a one-time event. It is not finished. It continues, apparently without end.
By many reports, the US is now preparing to start another war, this time against Iran.
Americans feeling the shock and grief of the tragedy at Virginia Tech should look into their hearts and realize that they through their government are bringing this same tragedy again, and again, and again, and again, and again, endlessly and needlessly, to other people in the world who also have hearts that can be torn out, who also feel grief and loss when family and friends are suddenly killed when doing ordinary things of life, like going to school.
Tragic deaths force us to feel our humanity and to see we are similar to others in the world. The tragic deaths in Virginia might serve to motivate Americans to curb their militarism and to minimize the tragedies of sudden death that they have been bringing to other families in the world.
<i><a href="frudmin@psyk.uit.no">Floyd Rudmin</a> is a professor of psychology at the University of Tromsø¸ in Norway. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Peace Studies and is a member of Science for Peace.</i>
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/18/593/">http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/18/593/</a>
Essay provided courtesy of Floyd Rudmin.
Floyd Rudmin
2007-06-05
Brent Jesiek
Floyd Webster Rudmin (frudmin@psyk.uit.no)
eng