- Last week, while heading a 'Congress on your Corner'
meeting in a parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, House member Gabrielle Giffords
(D-AZ) suffered a head-shot from a deranged 22 year old youth named Jared
Loughner. In total, the gun-toting walking insane-asylum killed six and
wounded 13 people.
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- A bright light of energy, intellect and personality in
the House of Representatives, Ms. Giffords struggles for her life in an
Arizona hospital. Loughner sits in a jail cell with the demons swirling
in his head.
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- Media pundits scream from the tops of their lungs for
gun control, more police and better social interaction.
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- But wait, let's examine America's current obsession with
violence, killing and murder:
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- The majority of Americans support(ed) two wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan for the past 10 years with deaths in excess of 1 million
Iraqis and Afghanistans, 2.5 million refugees, plutonium loaded bombs that
create birth defects for decades and countless bodily carnage for the hundreds
of thousands of wounded:
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- "Even with the lower confirmed figures, by the end
of 2006, an average of 5,000 Iraqis had been killed every month by US forces
since the beginning of the occupation. However, the rate of fatalities
in 2006 was twice as high as the overall average, meaning that the American
average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or over 300 Iraqis every
day. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even
higher."
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- Sources
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- After Downing Street, July 6, 2007
- Title: "Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis
Every Month? Or Is It More?"
- Author: Michael Schwartz; AlterNet, September 17, 2007.
Title: "Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda genocide, Cambodian killing
fields" Author: Joshua Holland.
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- In other words, Americans condone mass killing on an
unimaginable scale. They don't question it while their tax dollars support
the oxymoron of "War against Terror." Americans lack even the
slightest clue as to the mayhem and suffering they caused all those families
from all that death. They supported 2.2 million Vietnamese deaths in our
10 year Vietnam war while only 58,300 of their kids returned home in coffins.
After 1975, another 175,000 combat troops committed suicide when they
returned home to falter against their own demons. War scrambles a man's
mind. Yet, this society continues to operate as if war must continue in
cycles, i.e., Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq. No doubt,
our politicians and generals will contrive another war at some point in
the future.
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- Thus, today in America, we condone and encourage incredible
violence. If you visit any packed video arcade at any mall in America,
you will see our youth shooting, stomping, murdering, slashing and killing
endless numbers of human beings on the video screen. A visit to the cinema
in the same malls depicts half of all movies featuring gratuitous killing.
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- Those same kids return home to video games on their own
computers like "Doom" and "Zombies killing spree"
where they see peoples' heads chopped off among other atrocities. By the
time they finish with murdering and mayhem on their computers, they click
on their televisions with "CSI: Miami"; "CSI: Los Angeles";
"CSI: New York" ; "Detroit 187" ; "Law and Order"
; "Criminal Minds" ; "Vampire Diaries" and many other
shows featuring diabolical violence.
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- Any doubts that a percentage of those youth will turn
into cold blooded murderers?
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- In the January 24, 2011 Time Magazine, Michael Grunwald
wrote a piece, "Fire Away!" Every year in America, 31,224 Americans
die from guns. Police intervention, assaults, murderers and suicides account
for 100,000 Americans being shot annually. A mind-numbing 17,352 Americans
shoot themselves to death annually. Eight children die from gun violence
every day in America. A whopping 86 people die from gun violence 24/7!
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- Where cities grow more compact, tempers grow more irritated,
people shoot each other with uncommon consistency.
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- If they don't shoot each other, they drink themselves
into a stupor before jumping into a 4,000 pound missile and drive down
the highway to kill another 26,000 people (1982 figures) annually , now
down to 13,000 people in 2009, with the biggest bullet in America: a car!
Millions drive drunk everyday in America!
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- If we can't secure a gun, we use a knife! In 2008,
even as gun killings fell, the number of killings committed with knives
or other "cutting instruments" rose 50 percent in New York City.
Thousands of Americans kill others with knives annually.
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- Let's face it; as we compact ourselves more and more
into cities and urban areas, we face accelerating human densities not normal
for the human animal.
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- "Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city
civilization, of the sweet security of the streets-all as part of the natural
upgrowth of man towards the high destiny we hear so much of. I know that
our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which
pure air is found. If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns
in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee
as from a plague. All are more or less sick; there is not a perfectly
sane man in all of San Francisco." John Muir 1874
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- As we allow more "parenting" by television
violence, mall viciousness-video arcades, movie brutalities and aggression
within homes from angry parents-a growing percentage of our citizens cannot
help but express themselves with the violence template that we condone.
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- What can we do to obviate such U.S. atrocities as Tucson,
Columbine, Texas University, University of Virginia, Oklahoma, Unabomber,
ad infinitum?
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- 1. Stop killing people in
'enemy' countries by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. Leave their
civilizations to their people to solve their problems by their cultures
and choices. After 10 years, more 'war' is not the answer! This would
bring a measure of peace to the world 'mind' and human race.
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- 2. Take the $12 billion
monthly war bill and inject it into America's school systems to foster
education and better mental health assessments. Discover at-risk children
at an early age for remediation and support to families. (As a retired
math/science teacher, I know the value of student/teacher ratios.)
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- 3. Better to build a healthy
young man or woman than try to repair a broken one like Loughner or Lindsey
Lohan or any of our tortured military with PTSD.
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- 4. Normalize cities by moving
toward "stabilized population policies." We cannot keep up with
our youth in our overpopulated and overwhelmed city schools where violence,
isolation and frustration become the norm.
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- 5. We must question, debate
and move toward emotionally healthier television. I grew up on "Father
Knows Best" ; "My Three Sons" ; "Leave it to Beaver";
"Captain Kangaroo" ; "Mr. Rogers" ; "The Muppets"
. Offer intriguing shows that entertain by stretching the mind and imagination.
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- 6. Provide high school students
with mandatory family, relationship, child rearing, compatibility and means
courses to move them toward a positive future with children.
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- Finally, what have you done to stop the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars? Answer: nothing, right?! That's why they continue 10 years later!
This Republican form of government is not a spectator sport. You provide
the vital ingredient to make it work. Why does violence continue on such
a horrific and prolific level in the USA? Answer: we apathetically set
the paradigm and we reap the obvious results. Your convictions without
action equals nothing but horrific entertainment.
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