News Analysis: Giffords Shooting Flips Paradigm Shift In America

How the politics of violence has become the national conversation. Political cartoons too.

From Denny: With the outrageous heinous shooting this week of Democratic Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, has come some serious soul-searching in America. It's about time and past due for about three decades now - ever since the rise to power of vitriol-rhetoric spewing Republicans.

Father of hate speech Newt Gingrich 

It all began with the rise to power of conservative former GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich when he came from Ohio into Georgia and was elected in a very conservative district in 1978. I remember, while living in Atlanta, his rise to power and commented how this would not bode well for America for decades to come. Hate speech-fear promoters and insincere morality screamers always prove destructive to a nation. And now that famous mathematical exponential curve has reached its peak when it reveals that violent political discourse leads to violent acts of assassination.







Conservative media, GOP strategists, Tea Party share collective responsibility for violence 

At the moment the Republicans, the Tea Party, all the conservative talk show people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh. GOP political strategists, conservative media and the Fox News crowd are working hard to run as fast as they can away from their messy collective responsibility. GOP political strategists spew out constant poisonous political rhetoric to stir up the angry emotions of their base so they will go out and vote regularly for Republicans.

Bulls-eyes tagets and guns aimed against liberals

All of them have promoted hate speech and fear of loss as well as promoted violent acts against any Democrats and liberals. As the conservatives see it no one but "their kind" deserves to live in this country or breathe the same air. While we liberals tolerate the conservatives to live and breathe in America it is clear they do not look as tolerantly or as kindly upon "us."

They consider us beneath their feet and subhuman. At some point decent people just have to stand up and yell, "Enough!" Maybe now, after this vile shooting of so many innocent bystanders at the Giffords meeting, America will wake up and finally agree to dial back the garbage rhetoric. Maybe now politicians will fire their idiot strategists and get serious about governing this country properly.

Why our politics are so violent - political vitriol

As is typical of the American mindset, everyone is trying to play "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" for just one reason why this political assassination happened. It's a confluence of reasons. For one thing, the shooter is a 22-year-old man who grew up in an atmosphere of political hate. He does not remember a time when people who voted on opposite sides of the aisle could carry on a civil political discourse. We have an entire generation of young people who have never experienced such decency and mutual respect.

Mental illness causing violence 

Another reason is the shooter is mentally ill. There were many warning signs along the way and no one did anything about it. The college that kicked him out did not pass it along to authorities. Did they contact his parents? Where are his parents and family members in all this? When someone is slowly descending into insanity there are plenty of family, friends and co-workers who are aware something is definitely wrong - yet no one did anything?

How Congress and the President can solve the problem

The American people won't be violent if they have jobs, don't have to worry about home foreclosure so they don't end up homeless, will still be able to retire by age 65 and not worry about getting shot when they go to the polls to vote.

 Reinstate the balanced and fair news controls by the FCC that were abolished back in 1987 by the Republicans who wanted free rein to create today's mess.  Legislate  cable, network TV and radio to conform to a national standard that does not incite the population to commit violent acts.

Wake up, Congress and Mr. President, you have a lot of work to do - on yourselves.


Cartoonist opinions of where the metaphor of literally shooting our politicians becomes a dying  reality:





















































Congresswoman Giffords survived a point blank range shot to her head and is still responding well to her doctors:






How good is our aim at becoming a better society, a better nation?

Has America become a nation of violent fools?

Related articles

• Religious Leaders Call For Calm, Civility After Arizona Shooting (huffingtonpost.com)
• Soothing Piano Music: First Love by Utada Hikaru (beautifulillustratedquotations.blogspot.com)
• Music Video: In The Arms Of The Angel by Sarah McLachlan and Josh Groban (beautifulillustratedquotations.blogspot.com)
• A Thought poem - Libations Friday 3 Dec 2010 (thesocialpoets.blogspot.com)
• The Heart Remembers: Veterans Day poem Libations Friday On A Thursday - 11 Nov 2010 (thesocialpoets.blogspot.com)
• Is Arizona Shooting About Politics or Mental Illness? (politicalwire.com)
• U.S. Sen. Lautenberg introduces bill banning high-capacity ammunition clips in wake of Arizona shootings (nj.com)
• Time for stricter gun-control laws? (politico.com)
• Democrat, Rep. Giffords, Shot In Head At Rally By Crazed Gunman Attack: 6 Dead (thesocialpoets.blogspot.com)
• Michael B. Keegan: Denouncing Violent Rhetoric, the Sheriff Gets it Right (huffingtonpost.com)
• Gabrielle Giffords shooting: has the backlash damaged Sarah Palin? (guardian.co.uk)

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Mass Murder of Women

Bob Herbert: Women at Risk

"I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me," wrote George Sodini in a blog that he kept while preparing for this week's shooting in a Pennsylvania gym in which he killed three women, wounded nine others and then killed himself.

We've seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.

Back in the fall of 2006, a fiend invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five.

I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women — not so much of an uproar.

Or, can you imagine if the gunman was Arab, Muslim or black. The news would be filled with analyses of black violence or Muslim misogyny or whatever. Just look at how some people try to make Mark Lepine into a secret Muslim, so that the violent impulses can be blamed on his Algerian-ness instead of his male-ness. Why is it when a white man commits a similar act, neither whiteness nor maleness are examined?

According to police accounts, Sodini walked into a dance-aerobics class of about 30 women who were being led by a pregnant instructor. He turned out the lights and opened fire. The instructor was among the wounded.

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.

The mainstream culture is filled with the most gruesome forms of misogyny, and pornography is now a multibillion-dollar industry — much of it controlled by mainstream U.S. corporations.

One of the striking things about mass killings in the U.S. is how consistently we find that the killers were riddled with shame and sexual humiliation, which they inevitably blamed on women and girls. The answer to their feelings of inadequacy was to get their hands on a gun (or guns) and begin blowing people away.

What was unusual about Sodini was how explicit he was in his blog about his personal shame and his hatred of women. “Why do this?” he asked. “To young girls? Just read below.” In his gruesome, monthslong rant, he managed to say, among other things: “It seems many teenage girls have sex frequently. One 16 year old does it usually three times a day with her boyfriend. So, err, after a month of that, this little [expletive] has had more sex than ME in my LIFE, and I am 48. One more reason.”

I was reminded of the Virginia Tech gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in a rampage at the university in 2007. While Cho shot males as well as females, he was reported to have previously stalked female classmates and to have leaned under tables to take inappropriate photos of women. A former roommate said Cho once claimed to have seen “promiscuity” when he looked into the eyes of a woman on campus.

Soon after the Virginia Tech slayings, I interviewed Dr. James Gilligan, who spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts and as a professor at Harvard and N.Y.U. “What I’ve concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal,” he said, “is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act.”

Life in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent. But we should take particular notice of the staggering amounts of violence brought down on the nation’s women and girls each and every day for no other reason than who they are. They are attacked because they are female.

A girl or woman somewhere in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count.

There were so many sexual attacks against women in the armed forces that the Defense Department had to revise its entire approach to the problem.

We would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions.

I don't for a minute believe that all men hate women or that all men are violent or whatever the right wing wants you to think feminists believe, but that there is an undercurrent in our culture which accepts too much violence in general and too much violence against women in particular.

We need to take a good honest look at our society and take responsibility for these sick people we raise. We need to promote healthier ways to deal with anger and other strong emotions. We desperately need a healthier masculinity. We also need to abandon our antisocial and ultra-competitive society that rewards domination.

Torture in 60s South Shows Error of Waterboarding

Tom Gardner:

When I read about the increasing acceptance of waterboarding as a form of torture, I vividly recall how in 1968 members of the Memphis Police Department believed I could tell them information about civil rights insurgents arriving to create havoc. Forty years later I still hide my serrated scars.

I was 14 years old and forgot I was a black boy living in racist America and heading for the devil's den of discrimination.
[...]
Who were these people I supposedly knew who were ready to disrupt the city's infrastructure? My wild eyes could only register pain as the large men kicked, punched and beat me with nightsticks because I was unable to speak coherently between my sobs of sorrow and moans for my mother.
[...]
Like relentless Stalinists, the policemen gave me a few hard, calculated kicks with steel-toed boots in my back and ribs for making them exhausted from their beating. I promised them the names of protesters, when they were coming, and what they were driving. I could hardly speak from my busted lips, chipped teeth and broken jaw, but I forced words from my mouth that sounded like what they wanted as long as they stopped their feverish beating to decipher what my cracking voice was revealing.

But I didn’t know anyone, and I certainly didn’t know about a conspiracy to take over Memphis...

Torture, not only cruel and immoral, but ineffective for intelligence gathering. The rest of the article at Common Dreams. And find out about the history of waterboarding at the torture museum: barbarism then and now.

Suicide Bombing: Just Another Kind of Bombing?

So I was listening to CBC this morning and the Current was continuing a discussion (it's mail day) about suicide bombing: causes, etc. Some comments I agreed with, some I didn't. But what struck me was how odd it is that we spend so much time analyzing the technique of suicide bombing (remember I do think it is a rational tactic). Why do we treat it so differently than, say, aerial bombing, such as by the US in Iraq or Israel in the Occupied Territories?

Well, lets think about this for a moment. (And of course, first I need to make the requisite disclaimer: I do not condone suicide bombing, or civilian-targeting violence on the part of either terrorists or governments.)

What is the difference between a bomb that falls from the airplane of a conventional army and a bomb that is meant to explode while still attached to a body? Why does the second attract such complete and vehement denunciation (just watch what kind of comments this post gets) while the first elicits barely a comment?

Here are some possibilities:
A) Certainty of death. The person responsible for exploding the bomb will only maybe die in the first case, but will almost surely die in the second. Does this explain the completely different responses? I think not. After all, both are equally willing to kill for their causes. And if someone is willing to die for a cause (which is nothing new), that's his or her business, is it not?

B) Type of perpetrators. A soldier employed by the state in a conventional army is clearly different than a fighter in an unconventional force, so the violence perpetrated by the former must be treated differently than the latter. I think this is partially true, but is not a sufficient explanation. See, if it is not the technique that matters, but the actors, then any techniques employed by any non-state actors should be denounced as vociferously as suicide bombing. There are enough examples in recent history to prove that this is plainly not the case. (Not to mention that it is crazy to think that violence committed by a state is somehow more justifiable than violence committed by non-state actors, especially when you consider a state with no legitimacy - Iraq, Afghanistan - or no state at all - Palestine?)

C) Type of victims. We are often reminded that suicide bombers often kill civilians, something completely worthy of censure. But aerial bombardment is so efficient at killing civilians, it is a bit ridiculous to even raise this point.

D) Or is it that suicide bombing is nearly the only weapon left among certain dispossessed groups, who have almost no other techniques left at their disposal? For instance, the Palestinians have tried nonviolence, they have tried political solutions, and without an army or weapons, there are few military options, aside from rock throwing or homemade bombs with low-tech means of delivery. In other words, these people can't opt for airstrikes and other high-tech forms of killing. Unfortunately for the imperial powers and colonial occupiers who wish for the end of resistance (as of course all imperial powers do), it turns out to be a weapon that is nearly impossible to prevent from being used. In some situations, like the Palestinian/Israeli situation, I think this explanation has some validity.

I think a lot of it has also to be blamed on propaganda, perpetuated by an uncritical media that has bought into the clash of civilizations model. We (of the rational, normal, enlightened West) would never consider strapping bombs to our bodies and setting them off in a public place (we pay people to do our killing for us). Therefore, there must be something pathological about their culture/religion/part of the world.

I'm mostly just thinking out loud here. I'd be curious to hear other thoughts on this. Preferably non-frothing-at-the-mouth types.

Happy Birthday to Gitmo: An astrological reading

Wow. I feel so honoured to share my birthday (yesterday) with Guantanamo Bay.
Indymedia:

JANUARY 11, 2008 -- On the day six years ago that the first prisoners began arriving at the U.S. torture camp at Guantánamo, protests were staged across the country and around the world demanding that Guantanamo be shut down. Prisoners are kept in Guantanamo under horrific conditions for years without trial.

That makes good old Gitmo a Capricorn, just like me. I think I'd like to offer an astrological reading, modified from wikipedia, which informs us that "According to astrological beliefs, celestial phenomena reflect or govern human activity on the principle of 'as above, so below', so that the twelve signs at the same time are held to represent twelve basic personality types or characteristic modes of expression."

Celestial phenomena say that Gitmo is ambitious, and hard-working. (After all, those dang prisoners won't torture themselves.) It is methodical and focused, businesslike and persevering - if Gitmo all of a sudden discovered it was at the top of a cliff, it wouldn't flip flop or turn around. Nope, it would keep on going. That's just the kind of place it is. It is so dedicated it won't stop, not even waterboarding, unless prisoners manage to commit suicide.

Gitmo can also be calculating, suspicious, cold, and sometimes displays a lack of emotional depth. It believes in self-reliance, preferring to keep prisoners isolated and in sensory deprivation. It is possessive (certainly doesn't want to let Canada get Omar Khadr) and controlling. It is narrow-minded, vindictive by nature, and truly lacking hope.

Likes: Force feeding prisoners on hunger strikes, Making long term relationship plans (Khadr has been there 5 1/2 years), Unquestioning Loyalty, Dick Cheney, Rummy.

Dislikes: Human rights

Yup, me and Gitmo, two capricorns in a pod.

Abuse in the Teen Rehab Industry

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office was asked to investigate the allegations of child abuse and neglect at residential "treatment centres" (also commonly known as "boot camps," "wilderness programs," or "behavior modification facilities"), including the deaths of 10 children. As mentioned before, these horrible places abuse kids on the parents' dollar.

The report (PDF) just came out. From USA today:

The congressional investigative agency selected 10 deaths to examine in depth and found reckless practices, inadequate training and misleading marketing. It also found what Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., called "horrific" examples of abuse.

Other common problems included:

• Ineffective management
• Untrained staff
• Inadequate nourishment
• Reckless or negligent operating practices
• Inadequate equipment

The agency is examining how such facilities are regulated and is expected to make recommendations next year.

Update: Burma - It's not good news

Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month’s pro-democracy uprising.

The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime’s soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.

Read all about it here.

Indigenous Peoples Fighting Ongoing Colonization and Genocide: Australia

Indigenous peoples all over the world are fighting valiant battles to protect what's left of their land, peoples, and cultures in the face of ongoing colonialism. While there are some small victories, the vast juggernaut of globalized corporate Capitalism simply steamrolls on. Helping this along is the paternalism of well-meaning liberals.

It is from the "white man's burden" that some of the most lasting harm has come. Apartheid in South Africa grew out of the same reserve system we have in Canada. Self-government for the natives in semi-autonomous communities - sounds almost progressive doesn't it? Well, we all know how that ended up.

Similarly, misguided but mostly benevolant people, who wanted to improve the lot of young native children through education, created Residential Schools - known as The Stolen Generation) in Australia. This was genocide dressed up as education, with devastating consequences. What happens when nearly an entire people is subject to state-sponsored physical, sexual, verbal, spiritual, and other forms of abuse - for generations? Anyone familiar with the effects of child abuse knows that it can persist through generations in complex ways.

Australia has done little to heal the damage, despite evidence of chronic social problems in Indigenous Australians communities. Instead of promoting healing, the Howard government introduced a a policy banning porn and alcohol for Aboriginals, ostensibly to protect children from abuse(even though the abuse is committed by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people). Howard's actions are reactionary, but he speaks the language of care, which unfortunately is often accepted by kind and decent people.

How does eliminating pornography teach a child to love her blood, her cells, her roots?
How does a ban on alcohol erase the desire to no longer be aboriginal?
How does controlling welfare payments teach aboriginal mothers to trust themselves and their love again? <BFP>

Not only are the Howard government's policies cruel and racist, but they are also not likely to be effective because they are targeting the consequences instead of the causes. Alcohol and pornography do not cause abuse. Rather, those with a history of abuse are far more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs and to have difficulty achieving healthy sexuality, among other terrible outcomes. Even I know better than to conflate correlation with causation.

But perhaps the Howard government does not care if it will be effective. Perhaps this has to do with gaining increasing control over Aboriginal communities and lands (possibly for more nuclear waste dumps or mining): "Australia’s national Government was using its powers to seize control of the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal settlements... The proposals mean scrapping the entry-permit system under which Aboriginal people have controlled access to northern Australia’s 660,000 square kilometres of Aboriginal lands - an area about of the size of Afghanistan - in recent decades." <Times Online> The Howard government is using well-intentioned Australians to promote his atrocious policies. But such paternalism, however pure the intentions, is still racist.

Most Australians don't like to be termed as racist.

The word is supposed to be for South Africans two decades ago, or for Americans before the civil rights era, or even for our earlier colonial ancestors, about two hundred years ago.

But what other reason could there be for the fact Aboriginal people have the same mortality rate of sheep?

And what other word could be used to justify the fact that being an Aboriginal Australia is more dangerous in terms of annual excess mortality than that people in US-occupied Iraq? <National Indigenous Times via Shmohawk's Shmorg>

She Hit Me First! And Other Poor Justifications for War

Photo Credit

Yesterday, I was watching the (excellent and engaging) film I Know I'm Not Alone with D.S.

In the segment before Michael Franti goes to Israel and the Occupied Territories there's a few short statements to fill in some background. To paraphrase: "In relation to Israel there's as many versions of history as there are people telling it" and then "in 1967 Israel launched a pre-emptive strike". At which point D.S. said that was weird, because he knows Israel was attacked first. He was a kid at the time, but it wasn't history to him, he actually remembered it. He was in synagogue when it was announced and he remembers it very well. For me I learned something different, but then again, it's history to me (since I wasn't born yet). I said it's complicated figuring who started something, especially when you consider the possible biases of those reporting an event. Consider last summer's war with Lebanon. Who started it? 30 or 40 years from now, what will the history book say?

According to the current consensus at Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but still, it's a good resource) it was a pre-emptive strike by Israel, although they have a nice long list of sources for both sides of the debate.

Today, I stumbled on a piece (ha ha) by Daniel Gilbert which is all about the psychology behind the "he started it" argument.

Research shows that while people think of their own actions as the consequences of what came before, they think of other people’s actions as the causes of what came later.

In a study conducted by William Swann and colleagues at the University of Texas, pairs of volunteers played the roles of world leaders who were trying to decide whether to initiate a nuclear strike. The first volunteer was asked to make an opening statement, the second volunteer was asked to respond, the first volunteer was asked to respond to the second, and so on. At the end of the conversation, the volunteers were shown several of the statements that had been made and were asked to recall what had been said just before and just after each of them.

The results revealed an intriguing asymmetry: When volunteers were shown one of their own statements, they naturally remembered what had led them to say it. But when they were shown one of their conversation partner’s statements, they naturally remembered how they had responded to it. In other words, volunteers remembered the causes of their own statements and the consequences of their partner’s statements.

What seems like a grossly self-serving pattern of remembering is actually the product of two innocent facts. First, because our senses point outward, we can observe other people’s actions but not our own. Second, because mental life is a private affair, we can observe our own thoughts but not the thoughts of others. Together, these facts suggest that our reasons for punching will always be more salient to us than the punches themselves — but that the opposite will be true of other people’s reasons and other people’s punches.

So, it's psychologically sensible for us to think the other party started it. We also tend to escalate in our response:

Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.

This explains the pattern of fighting over the victim position, since the victim can get away with anything.

Of course, there's a larger question: does it really matter who started it?

Afghanistan war: who started it? Al-Qaeda? The US? How about the Iraq War? What will history say?

The Perpetrator as Victim, Too

This is a note from a young, thoughtful man who has a lot of significance to say. To understand the minds of our youth, it is important to listen to them. So read this:

I'm dead tired of them demonizing the shooters. People fail to see the shooter himself as a victim as well. A victim of exclusion, bullying, beatings, ridicule and being ignored. The most frustrating thing is that I can relate to these shooters. I feel like every time they criticise them they indirectly criticise me. Another very frustrating thing is that they dodge the issue of ignorance. If I go to someone for help, and they criticise, ignore or admonish me, will I bother? I got lucky there were no firearms readily available and just got forced to quit school. I wonder if only two students who had it coming ended up on the news, what would people say? Poor guys, boo-hoo, nice guys, what a shame. How about a couple witnesses saying that they pushed him too far, they had it coming. It's no different than silencing the protests to the war on Iraq. They only keep one side of the story. Then you hear the typical opinion of a prof. of psychology. My mom and dad still maintain that it was my fault that I "quit" school. I've still got that beef with them. They didn't help much. But Mr. [xxx] (principal of [xxxx]) is still in my black books. I still want him dead, I just don't want to do it myself. I need to speak out about the FACT that the SHOOTER was VICTIMISED without being told how insensitive and mean and evil I am. I want to save lives. I want bullies to get expelled on the first offence and sent to juvie for assault and harassment like any other criminal. Once you can't get away with something, people don't do it as much. Then comes the problems of popular kids sticking up for popular kids, getting bullies off the hook or other kids (maybe 12 of them) saying YOU'RE a bully and getting YOU expelled. How come a kid can break another kid's arm and watch him scream with a smile on his face, before some other kid gets a teacher. If you can resolve the REAL problem (bullies, ignorance etc.) you won't usually have to deal with the RESULT (the shootings) as often. I want to do something about this. Any ideas?

Written by Emerson MacIntosh.

How is it that a 24 year old understands this, but our politicians and pundits can't seem to wrap their heads around it?

It's extremely hard to grow up in this hyper-individualized super-paced and highly complex world. The widening poverty/wealth gap, isolation, bullying, pressure to conform, child abuse, pressure to succeed, and a culture of violence have their effects on the children who will one day be the adults running the world.

If we insist on fearing and pathologizing the emotions and behaviour that are an inevitable result of the society we live in, we only alienate these kids even more. Is it any wonder that depression, eating disorders, partner violence, binge drinking, and drug abuse are common among kids and young adults?

One example: anger. Our society doesn't demonstrate healthy ways of dealing with anger, a normal natural emotion. Kids learn either that anger is bad and shouldn't be felt, or they learn that anger is best expressed through violence (at least if they watch TV - and I'm not even talking about Rambo, watching a White House press conference is enough to give that message).

Also on the Virginia Tech massacre

Violence at Virginia Tech and at Iraq's Universities Unacceptable

Think about how you felt when you heard about the terrible tragedy that happened yesterday at Virginia Tech. Think of those 33 innocent people who were killed, for no good reason, while they were going about their business. They had futures, which are now gone. They have families who loved them and who are devastated. Their friends, lovers, parents, neighbours, teachers, and even strangers like us are mourning their loss. There is fear among students and their families - what if this happens again? What if it's my school next? What if it is my son or daughter?

Now think about this: Iraqis face this every day.

Innocent Iraqi students, who also have bright futures, and families who love them, are killed or fear being killed every day.

Photo by Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty, from Iraqslogger.com
Students look at the scene of two explosions in front of Mustansiriya University on January 16.

The nation reacted in horror as students counted their dead by the dozens, all innocent victims of an indiscriminate attack violating the sanctity of the university campus.

Today, it’s Virginia Tech, the site of a horrific mass murder in which at least 33 students are confirmed dead in a shooting rampage by an as-yet unidentified gunman.

In Iraq, universities struggling to operate in the midst of a war zone have been struck repeatedly by bombings, shootings, assassinations, and abductions that have left behind hundreds of killed and wounded, victims and forced thousands of students and professors to stay away, or even leave the country.

On Monday, the same day as the Virginia Tech mass shooting, two separate shooting incidents struck Mosul University, one killing Dr. Talal Younis al-Jelili, the dean of the college of Political Science as he walked through the university gate, and another killing Dr. Jaafar Hassan Sadeq, a professor from the Faculty of Arts at the school, who was targeted in front of his home in the al-Kifaat area, according to Aswat al-Iraq.

In January, Baghdad’s Mustansiriya University sufferred a double suicide bombing in January that killed at least 70 people, including students, faculty, and staff. A month later, another suicide bomber struck at Mustansiriya, killing 40.

Read the rest of the article from Iraqslogger.com.

Yesterday as we huddled around our TVs and Radios, listening to the events at Virginia Tech and the subsequent analysis, we were putting ourselves in the place of those affected by the violence. We were imagining what if it was our son, our daughter, our wife or husband, or ourselves who were killed. We were experiencing our natural human gift of empathy. Universally there was an opening of hearts. What happened yesterday was a tragedy, and I think as human beings, we all feel the pain of those who suffered.

A wise woman I know once said: "When a heart breaks, it opens, and it can become a powerful force for love in this world". I hope our hearts stay open to help us feel the pain of others in the world, and I hope we are inspired to act and stop letting thugs kill and destroy, indiscriminately ruining countless lives.

Oh right, but I forgot. The most important thing is to make sure nobody worries about losing their right to bear arms.

Inspired by this and this.