[Peace-discuss] Newtown…

[Stuart Levy]

Yes yes yes - thanks for this.   One quote (via Greenwald from another 
writer, Atrios) --

> "I do wish more people who manage to fully comprehend the broad trauma 
> a mass shooting can have on our country would consider the 
> consequences of a decade of war."
We have to make a sign from this.

... and, from Greenwald --

> [...] But there are nonetheless two key issues highlighted by the 
> intense grief for the Newtown victims compared to the utter 
> indifference to the victims of Obama's militarism. The first is that 
> it underscores how potent and effective the last decade's anti-Muslim 
> dehumanization campaign has been.
>
> Every war - particularly protracted ones like the "War on Terror" - 
> demands sustained dehumanization campaigns against the targets of the 
> violence. Few populations will tolerate continuous killings if they 
> have to confront the humanity of those who are being killed. The 
> humanity of the victims must be hidden and denied. [...]
>
> But this dehumanization is about more than simply hiding and thus 
> denying the personhood of Muslim victims of US violence. It is worse 
> than that: it is based on the implicit, and sometimes overtly stated, 
> premise that Muslims generally, even those guilty of nothing, deserve 
> what the US does to them, or are at least presumed to carry blame. [...]
>
> [...]
>
> There's one other issue highlighted by this disparate reaction: the 
> question of agency and culpability. It's easy to express rage over the 
> Newtown shooting because so few of us bear any responsibility for it 
> and - although we can take steps to minimize the impact and make 
> similar attacks less likely - there is ultimately little we can do to 
> stop psychotic individuals from snapping. Fury is easy because it's 
> easy to tell ourselves that the perpetrator - the shooter - has so 
> little to do with us and our actions.
>
> Exactly the opposite is true for the violence that continuously kills 
> children and other innocent people in the Muslim world. Many of us 
> empowered and cheer for the person responsible for that. US citizens 
> pay for it, enable it, and now under Obama, most at the very least 
> acquiesce to it if not support it.


On 12/19/12 11:18 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> Glen Greenwald, as usual, has a penetrating, coruscating, commentary 
>  comparing the Newtown tragedy, and reactions to it,  to what "we" 
> have been doing around the world to children, mostly off color.
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/19-10
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20121220/65852291/attachment.html>