Recently in Killing Category

You are the pilot of a spaceship.  All systems are failing with no chance for recovery.  You, and all souls aboard, are going to disintegrate in a crash and explosion.  There is no hope for escape or survival.  Everyone will die.

It is our responsibility as cogent human beings to ban all handguns. We've felt the massacre at Virginia Tech. We know the horror of the gangland killings in Newark. We live with the regret of eight dead in Omaha. We're still freshly frozen from the  aftermath of last week's multiple Northern Illinois University assassinations:

Burma is burning. In blood. I'm not sure what to make of the monks’ protest or how to help their cause or what to do to stop the dying.

Monks are being killed:

Journalists are being shot by the government:

The BBC reports today 4,000 monks are being exiled:
Thousands of monks detained in Burma's main city of Rangoon will be sent to prisons in the far north of the country, sources have told the BBC. About 4,000 monks have been rounded up in the past week as the military government has tried to stamp out pro-democracy protests.
It seems the whole mess started on August 15 when the government doubled the price of fuel and quintupled the price of compressed used to power buses and the monks stepped in to help protest these unfair increases in basic living expenses:
The hikes hit Burma's people hard, forcing up the price of public transport and triggering a knock-on effect for staples such as rice and cooking oil. Pro-democracy activists led the initial demonstrations in Burma's main city, Rangoon. When about 400 people marched on 19 August, it was the largest demonstration in the military-ruled nation for several years. The monks started participating in large numbers after troops used force to break up a peaceful rally in the central town of Pakokku on 5 September. At least three monks were hurt. The next day, monks in Pakokku briefly took government officials hostage. They gave the government until 17 September to apologise, but no apology was forthcoming. When the deadline expired, the monks began to protest in much greater numbers and also withdrew their religious services from the military and their families. There have been protests every day since the deadline, both in Rangoon and elsewhere, and they are getting bigger by the day. Tens of thousands of monks are now involved.
How will this War of the Wills end? Will the military government resign? Will the monks give in and stop protesting? Will the bloodshed continue without end?
O.J. Simpson is back in our face again!

Memes of Belonging

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Are we required to join? Are we made to create? It is necessary for us to belong to someone other than ourselves? What happens when we are carved from each other and caved in a culture from which there is no escape?

Handguns are made to kill people. We know this in our bones because of murders in Far Rockaway and Fulham and Orange and now, once again, in Newark. The bloodshed in New Jersey, spewed Gangland style, killed three kids and injured another on an abandoned schoolyard in a tonier part of Newark -- where this sort of thing doesn't happen -- called Ivy Hill.
Two days ago a Haitian immigrant friend of mine -- who recently landed in Far Rockaway, Queens to find a better life and to chase the American Dream -- heard a fight in the street below his apartment. He then made the fatal mistake of the curious and went to his window to see what was happening. A stray 9mm bullet shot from the street blasted through his window, ricocheted off his collarbone, and punctured his heart. He was dead before his body slumped to the floor.

Kathakali Chatterjee wrote this article.

We all know Hitler caused the biggest genocide on earth; he eliminated approximately six million Jews and half a million Gypsies. The Holocaust is the most widely known and despised event in world history. I argue that during World War II in India, the undivided Bengal witnessed the greatest passive-Holocaust in the world and it was all courtesy of the British who were "administering" India at the time.

I thought the whole reason we are slogging through the war in Iraq is to keep the Terrorists "there" and not "here?" That, at least, is the war drum President Bush has been beating and still beats. In a 2003 interview -- published on the White House website -- Bush makes it clear the Terrorists will remain "over there" as long as we stay there engaging them in Iraq (emphasis added):

Q: Well, what about the suggestion from your critics that while you won the war, the peace is being bungled? THE PRESIDENT: They're wrong. We're making great progress in Iraq. We've got a pretty steep hill to climb. After all, one, we're facing a bunch of terrorists who can't stand freedom. These thugs were in power for awhile, and now they're not going to be in power anymore, and they don't like it. And they're willing to kill innocent people. Their terrorist activities -- we'd rather fight them there than here.

I have been wanting to write about the massive -- in the hundreds of millions pounds -- recall of tainted pet food sold in America, but there hasn't been time for reflection and distance to help provide context and meaning of pet owners unwittingly killing their pets with food they purchase to keep them healthy.

I realize now is the moment to step forward in light of today's New York Times article -- explaining how it is a conflict of cultures, an acquiescence of values, and a shared economic drive between companies and countries to save as much money as possible -- that threatened our animals and killed our pets:

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This page is an archive of recent entries in the Killing category.

Humanity is the previous category.

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