Gideon Polya, “US Mass Murder. US infant mortality, homicides & Wars”, MWC News, 20 April, 2007, not cached by Google.
US Mass Murder. US infant mortality, homicides & Wars
BUSH AMERICA is gunned-up and horrible massacres such as that at Blacksburg will be inevitably be repeated because of (a) a horribly distorted, psychotic national culture that accepts horrendous violence as a solution (e.g. as in the Bush War on Terror), (b) the ready availability of deadly automatic weapons and (c) the sheer failure of Mainstream media and politicians to address the core problems and the awful human consequences. These deficiencies are briefly analyzed below in a posetive way by indicating practical solution to these American deficiencies.
(a) Humanitarian empathy, introspection and non-violence as the only way
It is now just over a century since Mahatma Gandhi launched his Satygraha Movement in Johannesburg, South Africa on September 11, 1906. Satyagraha (non-violent resistance or literally “truth endeavour”) involves non-violent resistance to the world’s ills. In Gandhi’s own words: “Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it Love-force or Soul-force. In the application of Satyagraha I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one’s self.”
This Satygraha philosophy ultimately saw the liberation of the people of India from 2 centuries of brutal, genocidal British colonial rule in 1947 and of the people of South Africa from Apartheid in 1993. However this peaceful, introspective philosophy is anti-thetical to current American culture that is most starkly revealed by the psychopathy of the Racist Religious Right Republican (R4) Bush-ites as revealed in Walter Davis’ outstanding book “Death’s Dream Kingdom. The American Psyche since 9/11” (Pluto, London, 2006).
In “Death’s Dream Kingdom” eminent American scholar and writer Professor Walter Davis has described how sensible, humane people try to get to the truth of themselves by painful introspection. Further, they empathize with the Other, take on board the difficulties of the Other and deal with them in a process of empathic introspection. However the “cartoon” of Racist Religious Right Republican (R4) Bush-ites reveals an utter perversion of this moral process – (a) the “born again” have all the answers they need, introspection is not needed and (b) the Other is damned at the outset and is dealt with by egregious, guilt-driven violence (e.g. the Bush War on Terror that is in horrible reality a cowardly War on Asian Women and Children). The tragic Blacksburg Massacre had these same perverted elements as revealed by the rambling video of the perpetrator.
(b) Post-massacre Australian Gun Laws dramatically reduced gun deaths
After the horrendous Port Arthur Massacre in my home state of Tasmania (April 28, 1996; 35 victims killed) the conservative Coalition Australian Federal Government passed powerful Gun Control Laws – 700,000 guns were taken out of circulation by a buy-back and destruction program and tightly-regulated gun use was confined to the Emergency and Security Services, farmers and sporting shooters.
Already in 1994 Australia had very low gun deaths in comparison with the US as indicated by the following statistics of annual gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in the world's 36 richest countries in 1994 (see: HERE ): United States 14.24; Brazil 12.95; Mexico 12.69; Estonia 12.26; Argentina 8.93; Northern Ireland 6.63; Finland 6.46; Switzerland 5.31; France 5.15; Canada 4.31; Norway 3.82; Austria 3.70; Portugal 3.20; Israel 2.91; Belgium 2.90; Australia 2.65; Slovenia 2.60; Italy 2.44; New Zealand 2.38; Denmark 2.09; Sweden 1.92; Kuwait 1.84; Greece 1.29; Germany 1.24; Hungary 1.11; Republic of Ireland 0.97; Spain 0.78; Netherlands 0.70; Scotland 0.54; England and Wales 0.41; Taiwan 0.37; Singapore 0.21; Mauritius 0.19; Hong Kong 0.14; South Korea 0.12; Japan 0.05.
Since the introduction of Federal Australian Gun Control Laws in 1996, the annual gun-related deaths (from suicide, homicide and accidents) has roughly HALVED and there have been no further massacres. A study by the University of Sydney, published last December in the international research journal Injury Prevention, found that by 2002-03, Australia's rate of 2.7 firearm-related homicides per million of population had dropped to one-fifteenth that of the United States. According to Sydney University's School of Public Health: "From 1996 to 2003, the total number of gun deaths each year fell from 521 to 289, suggesting that the removal of more than 700,000 guns was associated with a faster declining rate of gun suicide and gun homicide. This was a milestone public health and safety issue, driven by an overwhelming swing in public opinion, and promptly delivered by governments…The Australian example provides evidence that removing large numbers of firearms from a community can be associated with a sudden and on-going decline in mass shootings, and accelerating declines in total firearm-related deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides."
An annual homicide rate in the (domestically) relatively civilized country Australia is about 14 per million (as compared to 55 per million in the US) (see: HERE ) - indicating that even in a prosperous, domestically peaceful society such as Australia 14 human beings in a million can "snap” and “go homicidally mad" each year. However arm them to the teeth with automatic weapons and the probability of resultant deaths greatly increases – it just takes a squeeze on a trigger. Thus the annual homicide rate per million of population is 14 in Australia as compared to 55 in gun-toting America and 44 in the Apartheid Israel-ruled Holy Land (80% of the homicides being committed by Jewish Israelis and largely perpetrated on Palestinian civilians by gun-toting young Jewish Israeli soldiers) (for details and documentation see MWC News ).
Gun Control has worked dramatically well in Australia and should be applied rigorously in the US.
(c) Americans must be told the TRUTH about US mass murder at home and abroad
There has been immense international coverage of the Blacksburg Massacre (32 homicide victims) that is in stark contrast to the sustained lying by omission by racist, holocaust-ignoring and genocide-ignoring Mainstream media over the horrendous consequences of Bush policies at home and abroad. Thus inspect the following core statistics (readily Web-accessible from UN agencies) are deliberately kept from American and Western citizens by lying, racist mainstream media and politicians (but made readily available to readers by MWC News and like-minded humanitarian journals e.g. for a range of related articles published on MWC News ):
Post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) now total 0.3 million, 1.0 million and 2.4 million, respectively, in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories.
Post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories now total 0.2 million, 0.5 million and 1.9 million, respectively.
The “annual under-5 infant death rate” is 0.5%, 2.7% and 6.7% in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories, respectively (as compared to what it SHOULD be under International Law: 0.1%).
The Occupiers are responsible for annual avoidable under-5 infant deaths totalling 2,400 (due to Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory) and 113,000 (US-occupied Iraq) and 333,000 (US-occupied Afghanistan).
Annual avoidable deaths on First World-dominated Spaceship Earth (with Bush at the helm) total 16 million, with about 10 million of these being under-5 year old infants.
About 7 million people die each year from drug consumption – 5 million from tobacco (about 0.4 million in America alone), 1.8 million from alcohol and 0.2 million from illicit drugs.
Avoidable under-5 infant deaths in the US have totalled 0.12 million under the Bush Administration due to warped Bush priorities (the accrual cost of the Bush War on Terror is now $2.5 trillion according to US Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz).
About 60,000 Americans have died from opiate drug-related causes since 9/11 due to Bush Administration restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry (now over 90% of world market share).
Conclusions
Decent Americans, shocked by the Blacksburg Massacre, can act positively by (a) advocacy of an agenda of truth and non-violence – with a corollary of total rejection of the violent Racist Bush-ite (RB) liars currently dominating America and the World ; (b) advocating stringent gun control and other avoidable death-prevention measures (e.g. banning tobacco); and (c) most importantly, by TELLING THE TRUTH.
Silence kills and silence is complicity. History ignored yields history repeated. We are obliged to inform others about all gross humanitarian abuses. As a continuing memorial to the victims of the Blacksburg Massacre, please inform everyone about the horrendous burden of avoidable death in America and elsewhere on Spaceship Earth.