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Kacey Beddoes
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Sean Mallin
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2008-02-25
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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>
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eng
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Christopher Hine <chine@nd.edu>
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Value of a life
darfur
iraq
notre dame
war
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Kacey Beddoes
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Tim Tassa
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2008-02-18
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Issue Date:Tuesday April 17, 2007
Section: Sports Section
By Tim Tassa, Sports Editor
Monday morning's events make sports seem so petty, so irrelevant.
Every year there are one or two tragedies of monumental proportion that unite people and draw to mind that there is more to life than a rivalry, a goal post, a field and a coach.
And, unfortunately, April 16, when at least 32 people at Virginia Tech were killed by a deranged gunman, was one of those days. It marked the beginning of a time to reach out to the Virginia Tech community, for so many at West Virginia University - through geography, friends and family - are connected to the institution.
The day after the deadliest shooting on a college campus in United States history brings nothing but disbelief, outrage, curiosity and grief.
As we often do during times of bewilderment and mourning, we ask, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
And still, there is no answer.
As a University that is familiar with Virginia Tech, whether on the playing field, academically or socially, it is only human to keep southwest Virginia in our thoughts just a day after such a disaster.
But the effects are much more widespread.
After the images displayed on network television, Monday's violence will be remembered just as the Kent State, University of Texas and Columbine shootings - except at an even larger level.
In addition, the events may be a catalyst for change in the way higher education is conducted nationwide. Or at least in security procedures.
For those of us sitting in large lecture halls and residing in campus dormitories, the anxiety and horror of what happened in Blacksburg, Va., doesn't seem very far.
The realization is that tragedies of this magnitude can happen on any campus, big or small. For current WVU students, sitting in class today will feel much different than it did last Tuesday.
In speaking with a few VT students on Monday, the realities of the events had yet to hit them.
By day's end it surely had.
It was certainly felt by VT's most familiar face.
"How could one person cause so many senseless deaths? I'm in shock," said head football coach Frank Beamer, according to espn.com. "This is such a caring, friendly place. This is a college town. And now one person has an impact like this?"
But on a day, and by a person whose words are normally revered, his thoughts were no more telling than the voices and words of the students who called in on CNN to tell their stories.
In watching the cable network, a Virginia Tech student, Matt Waldron, was interviewed and spoke of his interactions with well-wishers and friends.
Among them: a U.S. Soldier in Iraq who ironically faces similar dangers daily.
And in watching Monday's death toll grow from 22 to 25 to 30 to 32, I wondered why the deaths in Iraq do not collect the same disbelief, outrage, curiosity and grief.
But as violence in war is unfortunately expected, bloodshed in the classroom is unimaginable.
timothy.tassa@mail.wvu.edu
--
Original Source: The Daily Athenaeum
<a href="http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=27545">http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=27545</a>
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eng
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Leann Ray <Leann.Ray@mail.wvu.edu>
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Remember the Hokies
beamer
iraq
security
sports
wvu
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Brent Jesiek
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Keith Boykin
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2007-07-17
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By Keith Boykin, in <a href="http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/politics/">politics</a>
Tuesday, April 17 2007, 10:24AM
The news was gruesome and alarming. Reuters reported that at least <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM628011.htm">30 people</a> were shot yesterday in a deadly gun rampage that rocked a city once known for its <a href="http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/baghdad.htm">safety</a> and <a href="http://islam.about.com/cs/history/a/aa040703a.htm">scholarship</a>. By now, you've heard about the story, and many of us have already stopped paying attention.
But I'm not talking about the deadly school shooting in Virginia Monday morning. I'm talking about the deadly violence in <a href="http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx">Iraq</a> that goes on everyday. While most of the world was understandably horrified by the campus shooting at Virginia Tech yesterday, almost no one paid attention to the 30 people who were <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM628011.htm">shot and killed</a> in Baghdad on the same day. The shock and horror of watching such dramatic violence in Virginia immediately resonated with Americans. But here's something else to ponder. What if it happened every day? What if we saw that kind of carnage in our communities every night on the evening news? It sounds far-fetched, but that's exactly the situation that faces many Iraqis almost every day of the year.
If the shooting in Virginia tells us anything about human society, it should tell us that violence is far too common in the world. It's not just an American problem or an Iraqi problem, it is a global problem. What kind of world do we live in where young students have virtually unfettered access to sophisticated deadly weapons that can be used to kill their classmates and teachers? And how did we become desensitized to the tens of thousands of civilian casulaties in a war we're still fighting in Baghdad?
I don't think it is possible to stop every murder or every killing that takes place in this country or abroad, but I do believe we have a responsibility to promote the conditions for peace.
For all the talk about our Christian values in America, we are an extraordinarily violent society. The FBI reported <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html">1.4 million</a> violent crimes in the U.S. in 2005 and more than 16,000 murders. That's a drop from the record high figures in the early 1990s but it shows that we are still far too violent.
Through elective wars, capital punishment, gang violence, and media depictions of violence, we demonstrate our collective societal preference for violence as a solution to our problems. I don't know what motivated the young student in Virginia to shoot up his classmates, and I don't know what motivates the suicide bombers in Iraq to blow up their neighbors. But I do know that we have a duty to promote peace in this country and abroad.
Imagine the impact that could be made if America lead an international campaign for peace instead of a war on terror. Imagine the goodwill we could generate if we diverted some of the $500 billion we've spent on war in recent years so that we could build hospitals, schools, and housing throughout the undeveloped world.
Imagine the difference it might make if our leaders dropped some of the macho rhetoric and talked about service, duty and community responsibility? I know there will be much discussion in the next few days about gun control and mental health counseling and legislation, and I welcome that conversation. But we should also ask ourselves about the world we've created and what each of us can do to make it better and more peaceful.
The Virginia shooting was shocking, in part, because it was so unusual. Unlike the Iraqis, we're not accustomed to seeing such large-scale violence on a regular basis. Or, more precisely, we're not accustomed to seeing it here in the United States, because clearly we know it's happening in Iraq. But what if it happened here everyday? That might be the tragic catalyst that would finally inspire us to do something positive and constructive about the violence in our country and the rest of the world.
It would be tempting to point to the shooter in Blacksburg and isolate him as the problem. But the problem and the solution don't lie outside of us. They answers are within.
--
Original Source: keithboykin.com
<a href="http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2007/04/17/what_if_it_happ">http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2007/04/17/what_if_it_happ</a>
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What If It Happened Every Day?
baghdad
blog
iraq
society
violence
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Brent Jesiek
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Norman Solomon
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2007-06-09
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<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>.
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
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Bowing Down to Our Own Violence
commentary
iraq
media
violence
war
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Brent Jesiek
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Floyd Rudmin
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2007-06-05
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<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>
--
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.
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Floyd Webster Rudmin (frudmin@psyk.uit.no)
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32 Senseless Deaths: A Chance for Empathy, Change of Heart, and Change of Course
iraq
tragedy
war