You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Violence’ tag.
“Since Israel’s brutal 21-day assault on Gaza in the winter of ’08-’09 (dubbed by Israeli politicians as Operation Cast Lead) that led to over 1,400 Palestinian deaths – of which 930 were civilians including many women and children – followed by its deadly raid on a civilian Turkish ship headed to Gaza in June 2010 that resulted in nine casualties and dozens injured, many Palestinians as well as their advocates in the West have spoken of a significant “sea change” in the western media’s once hegemonic support for Israel. However, since this latest military operation began – already claiming more than 30 lives and injuring hundreds – evidence of any changing tide has been scant.”
Well we need to have *some* happy news from the occupied territories no? It can’t always be more innocents dead and heavy handed state oppression can it?
“Some mainstream liberal media outlets have discussed the imbalance between the rocket launches from Gaza resistance groups and the attacks executed by one of the mightiest armies in the world. While some may take this as a sign of newfound “support” or “empathy” for Palestinians, this is precarious logic. If Hamas’ rockets were to become more powerful, as they are proving to be, will these outlets retract their critique of Israel’s actions? Or is support for Palestinians contingent on them remaining “victims” and will vanish at any sign of their resistance becoming more powerful or effective?”
Perspective is always so important. The farcical Fox News is readily distinguishable as propaganda, but are we ready to see the propaganda function of other media organizations, the BBC for instance.
“A focus on “who started it?” consumes the mainstream media’s discussion on the latest violence, leading commentators to discuss timelines as though they were opinions rather than verifiable facts to consider and, to a one, even getting that wrong, with media outlets from NPR to the NYT declaring that Israel’s – rather than Hamas’ – strikes were retaliatory.
Meanwhile pundits feverishly try to tease out a political motive to explain Israel’s latest massive assault on Gaza. So far, the realpolitick most commonly alluded to is the impending Israeli election, scheduled for January 22, giving Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak strategic reasons for timing an assault on Gaza now.”
Defending the nation is always a great political platform to run on, even when you are the aggressor.
“When it comes to looking behind the scenes of Israeli military assaults on Gaza (or Lebanon), there is always a general hoping for a promotion, a politician looking for votes, and an arms dealer making profits, but the rationale that enables that triumvirate to enact the lethal policies we are seeing play out in Gaza right now is the same one that allows the Israeli government to calculate how many calories each Palestinian in the Gaza Strip needs to survive, and to then intentionally allow fewer trucks and supplies in to meet that need. And it’s the same rationale that motivates the Israeli occupation authorities to prevent construction in Area C of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to encourage widespread drug addiction in Area B, and to make near-daily incursions into Area A to arrest political leaders, activists and journalists.
It’s the rationale of a coloniser, who wants land but not the people on it.
The other pervasive rationale has been that Israel is “testing” the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt as well as, to a degree, President Obama in his second and last term in office.”
The media is responsible for the people’s erroneous view about guns and violence in society. Good work by CNN to get some facts and information into the debate.
“The good news is that as America becomes safer, fewer and fewer Americans feel the need for a weapon. The overall violent crime index has tumbled by one-third since the early 1990s. The worst crimes — murder and rape — have declined even more. American citizens are safer today from crime than at almost any time since record-keeping began, very likely safer than at any time in the history of the country.
Americans perceive these improvements in the safety of their immediate neighborhood. Back in the early 1980s, half of Americans said they feared to walk alone at night near their own homes. By the early 2000s, only one-third expressed such fears. (Those fears have ticked up a little in the last few years, even as crime rates continue to fall, but again they remain way below historic peaks.)
Yet unfortunately, Americans are not, however, nearly so accurate at assessing national trends. In the mid-2000s, when crime rates were declining fast, almost 70% of Americans wrongly said that crime rates had risen over the past year.”
We’re getting safer, but feeling more fearful. When drama is the key requisite for news programs as opposed to educating the public, this is what you get.
I think one of the smartest things a parent can do is get rid of the TV if they have children. TV land is a violently misogynistic place that perpetuates the current ugly set of cultural norms we have here in North America. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation shares some startling/depressing facts about what people are subjected to while they watch TV.
“Nearly 2 out of 3 TV programs contained some
violence,2 averaging about 6 violent acts per hour.3
• Fewer than 5% of these programs featured an
anti-violence theme or prosocial message emphasizing
alternatives to or consequences of violence.4
• Violence was found to be more prevalent in children’s
programming (69%) than in other types of
programming (57%). In a typical hour of programming,
children’s shows featured more than twice
as many violent incidents (14) than other types of
programming (6).5
• The average child who watches 2 hours of
cartoons a day may see nearly 10,000 violent incidents
each year, of which the researchers estimate
that at least 500 pose a high risk for learning and
imitating aggression and becoming desensitized to
violence.6
• The number of prime-time programs with violence
increased over the three years of the study, from
53% to 67% on broadcast television and from
54% to 64% on basic cable. Premium cable networks
have the highest percentage of shows with
violence, averaging 92% since 1994.7
With this sort of socialization base are we really surprised about the lack of empathy and caring in our society?
Before my libertarian friends get entirely up in arms I’d like to preface this article with a disclaimer. This is not a’ beat up on libertarian inanity’ post, I have plenty of those already, but rather an examination of the role of the state when it comes to managing the affairs of a country. Now as to what the optimal mix is between the public/private is, is quite contentious. In my opinion, the social democratic state a la Sweden or to a lesser extent Canada does the best at preserving choice and liberty while keeping its citizens safe from “free-market” discipline and providing the social services necessary for a smoothly running society. Unfortunately for Mexico, they have been herded far away from anything resembling a social democratic state.
Mexico, the biggest loser in the NAFTA free investors agreement has never recovered from the trauma. Local industry and manufacturing was gutted with the influx of tariff free American goods. Local agriculture was hollowed out as tariff free food-stuffs made farming unprofitable with people leaving the land en mass (Our churlish Canadian federal conservatives are dismembering our single desk wheat board, moving us merrily closer to the Mexico model, yaaaa!) . What was left intact in Mexico was drug cultivation and production, as illegal trade tends not to respect treaties or borders (kinda like a different shade of NAFTA, creepy eh?) While the Mexican economy is going on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the government was forced to adopt many of the notorious structural adjustments that we tend to enforce on even poorer countries to cut the ‘fat’ out of government spending.
What constitutes “fat” are programs that strengthen the social fabric and cohesion of society: Health Care, Education, and Welfare. Obviously the state has no business in areas like these, and the inevitable cuts destroy the social safety net for a countries citizens. Another step toward that lovely Darwinian state of being that is so often bandied about by libertarians. Survival of the fittest, personal liberties and freedom from government interference. Most of the time, your freedom consists of choosing how you and your family can starve or how quickly you can be come destitute if your unlucky enough to get sick. As the structures of the state fall away society morphs closer to the “me first, once I get mine, fuck you” attitude that exemplifies the majority of libertarian thought. Altruism, community, social supports all decay as the struggle to survive quickly marginalizes these now luxurious concerns. “How can I help my community?”, is trumped by, “How can I feed my family?” and necessarily so.
The emergence of the Mexican Narco state is the response to “how can I feed my family?”. The Narcotics industry is profitable, and there are many jobs available, positions that need to be filled and are filled by desperate people who struggle to exist in Mexican state that has been economically and socially hollowed out by ‘market forces’. The violence continues as the Cartels struggle for territory and power while the enfeebled state attempts to maintain order.
“The bound and gagged bodies of 26 young men were found dumped in the heart of Mexico’s second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country’s two main drug cartels.
The bodies were found early on Thursday in two vans and a pickup truck abandoned on an expressway near the Milennium Arches in Guadalajara, one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city, according to several local media.Most of the men died of asphyxia, according to officials in Jalisco state where Guadalajara is located, though initial reports indicated some had been shot. Mexican drug cartels frequently leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims as a way of sowing fear and taking credit for their actions.”
This is a version of the free market in action. With no rules, no regulation, everything is on the table.
“The victims, apparently between the ages of 25 and 35, all had the words “Milenio Zetas” or “Milenium” written on their chests in oil, said Jalisco state Interior Secretary Fernando Guzman Perez. A law enforcement official who was not authorised to speak on the record said the writing was apparently meant as the killers’ calling card, identifying the assassins as being from the Zetas and a smaller, allied gang, the Milenio Cartel. The official said a banner found in one of the vehicles, whose contents Guzman Perez refused to reveal, was in fact signed by the Zetas. The killings, apparently carried out before dawn, bore an eerie similarity to the September 20 dumping of 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz.”
The desperate poor a set on each other killing themselves for their small slice of “the action” so they and their families might survive another day.
“Our correspondent said the federal government was steadfast in its decision to continue using the full force of the state to battle the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel.
“Despite all of those efforts … these kinds of killings continue here and there’s a sense at times that the federal government is really unable to control these kinds of possible revenge killings by trafficking organisations,” he said. Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, has deployed the army to crack down on powerful criminal gangs and some 45,000 people have died in the conflict since he took office.”
The Drug War continues in Mexico. We are at least partially responsible for what has happened there, and what continues to happen there (we provide the market for the narco state’s end products).
I try and start my Saturdays on a positive note. I look at the CBC, a few Science Blogs usually something upbeat is going on. Not today though.
With a hat-tap to Shakesville, I excerpt from the linked article:
“Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: They are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.” Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org) to help such women “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”
I post one of 12 pictures representative of thousands of women who have been permanently disfigured by acid attacks by men. When women are not people, when they cannot speak or be heard, when they have no rights…
Saira Liaqat, 26, poses for the camera as she holds a portrait of herself before being burned, at her home in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 9, 2008. When she was fifteen, Saira was married to a relative who would later attack her with acid after insistently demanding her to live with him, although the families had agreed she wouldn't join him until she finished school. Saira has undergone plastic surgery 9 times to try to recover from her scars.
They get male centric justice.
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