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I just realized something.
The efforts by those to separate the Sandy Hook shootings from a political narrative “out of respect” are essentially saying, “if you attach a pre-existing narrative to our tragedy, you lessen its import.”
We all know what political tragedies look like; we hear about them every morning on the radio, read about them every day in the paper. They are black kids in Chicago getting gunned down before they have a chance to graduate high school. They are brown kids in Pakistan murdered by drones sent out by a nation that Pakistan is supposedly allied with. They are the innocents who are murdered by a gang war that is tearing Mexico apart. They are the millions of women and children that are sold into sexual slavery every day in every part of the world.
These people, these deaths, they exist in a separate part of our brain. They are “news”. Their voices, their faces, they can be turned off, when we complain that we’re “sick of the news”, or that “the news is too negative”.
Categorization allows us to ignore them.
So to place these dead (our dead) into this category by attaching their stories to a political narrative, is to lessen the importance of their deaths.
Because this is so tragic, this can’t possibly compare. Because if you could, then these dead kids become just another statistic, just some other tragedy that we can chalk up to another sad incident in a sad pattern.
…. the answer is obvious, isn’t it?
There are no deaths that can be ignored. There are no tragedies that aren’t personal. You do not have permission to turn your brain off when you’re sick of the news, because the families of those lost don’t have that luxury.
Even when its a political tragedy.
(via skunkitty)
Following Sandy Hook, gun deaths continue through weekend
The families of Sandy Hook, Conn., struggled to cope with the enormous grief of losing 28 of their neighbors, 20 of them children over the weekend.
President Barack Obama pledged to use whatever power the office of the presidency holds to prevent another tragedy like this one.
And elsewhere in the country, people continued to die from gun fire.
On Saturday, shootings in Cleburne and Oxford counties in Alabama left two injured and three dead, including a child.
A sheriff’s deputy in Missouri was shot in the back and killed while on the scene responding to an emergency medicla situation. The patient’s son ambushed the officer and shot him at close range in the back.
Authorities investigated the shooting death of a boy in Southwest Denver.
A man was shot and killed in Harrisburg, Pa., his body dropped off at a local hospital.
A Nevada man shot and killed himself on Friday after shooting his girlfriend in the face.
In the early morning hours of Saturday, police responded to a murder suicide. A 76-year-old man shot and killed a 51-year old woman with a rifle in California City, Calif.
A 28-year old man was shot and killed while standing on a front porch early Sunday on the West Side of Chicago.
A 21-year old man was shot and killed by someone he knew in Charlotte, N.C..
Two Topeka, Kan. police officers were fatally shot in the head outside a grocery store Sunday responding to a suspicious vehicle report.
The tattoo artist in a Los Angeles tattoo parlor was fatally shot in the early morning hours of Sunday.
These stories represent only a handful of the deaths from gun violence that took place in the 72 hours since Adam Lanza stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg put it best on Friday:
“For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns.”
A lot of people have pointed out that, while the Sandy Hook shooting was an unthinkable tragedy, gun violence happens every single day in America. Here’s everyone who was sacrificed this weekend for America’s sick gun worship.
Also, yes, I will be talking about the shooting throughout the day. I will tag all of the posts with “gun control” if you want to Tumblr Savior it.
Several people are shot in Chicago every weekend. We have a serious gun violence problem, but it’s ongoing. This list makes it seem as though the gun violence here is somehow connected to the school shooting in Connecticut. It’s not; and I’d venture a guess that none of the others are either.
(via proudlybigotedmisandrist)
Argument over loud music led to fatal shooting of teen
November 27, 2012A Brevard County man was in jail Monday, accused of shooting a teenager dead in an argument over loud music.
Michael David Dunn, 45, and his girlfriend were in Jacksonville Friday for Dunn’s son’s wedding when they stopped at a convenience store, Jacksonville sheriff’s Lt. Rob Schoonover said.
Jordan Russell Davis, 17, and several other teenagers were sitting in a sport utility vehicle in the parking lot when Dunn pulled up next to them in a car and asked them to turn down their music, Schoonover said.
Jordan and Dunn exchanged words, and Dunn pulled a gun and shot eight or nine times, striking Jordan twice, Schoonover said. Jordan was sitting in the back seat. No one else was hurt.
Dunn’s attorney Monday said her client acted responsibly and in self-defense. She did not elaborate.
Dunn’s girlfriend and the driver of Jordan’s vehicle were in Gate Food Post, 8251 Southside Blvd., when the shooting happened. Dunn and his girlfriend took off afterward, and witnesses jotted down their tag number, deputies said.
They were staying in a Jacksonville hotel when they heard a news report Saturday morning indicating someone had died in the shooting, deputies said. They then returned to Brevard.
Dunn, a gun collector, was arrested Saturday at his home in Satellite Beach on charges of murder and attempted murder. He was being held without bail.
Jordan, who was a student at Samuel W. Wolfson High School, a magnet school in Duval County, will be buried in his hometown of Marietta, Ga. He is survived by his parents and a brother. Jordan worked at Winn-Dixie, according to his Facebook page.
This is absolutely heartbreaking. Dunn will likely use Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law as defense even though he fired at least eight times into a vehicle with four unarmed teenagers.
Another case of a black child going to the convenience store and never coming home…
What in the shittin ass hell…
So that’s how we lash out, now? We kill other people’s children? This is a thing, people. We’re not making this shit up.
(via itchynosepolitics)
Woops.
h/t Rocky Anderson
remember that time President Obama ordered the military to fire indiscriminate missile attacks on populated areas?
LTMC: Frankly it would be better if it was indiscriminate, given that Obama has ordered the military, quite discriminately, to “double tap” drone targets by shooting missiles at civilian rescue workers attempting to tend to the wounded from drone attacks in Pakistan. I suppose this could somehow be justified in a Machiavellian paradigm if we were killing lots of terrorists. But America currently kills 49 people with drones for every known terrorist in Pakistan. And that too, quite discriminately, it would seem.
The whole thing is made even more grand by the fact that Pakistani political leaders have asked Washington to stop doing this. But they haven’t, despite the fact that the Pakistani government publicly opposes the program, which the State Department’s top lawyer says may make U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan an act of war under international law.
Oh, I forgot to mention that a 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute called the “double tap” a “favorite tactic of Hamas,” and the FBI considers it to be a tactic chiefly employed by terrorist organizations. I suppose it takes one to know one, in the War on Terror.
Quality post right here. For all the interest that drone strikes draw in the current political climate, rarely do I see such a concise critique of not only the bloodshed itself but the immorality of the specific tactic, and the double speak that comes out of Washington during the rare times that it is discussed in public.
Damn. Props to NixonPlumbingCo for the research. Click the link that he/she posted saying: “Obama has ordered the military, quite discriminately, to “double tap” drone targets by shooting missiles at civilian rescue workers attempting to tend to the wounded from drone attacks in Pakistan.”
Oh no, don’t thank me for the research, that was Letterstomycountry. I don’t do shout outs very often, but I feel it’s necessary to thank them for their great research and fantastic blog in general. If you’re not following them, you’re missing out.
(via seriouslyamerica)
Israeli officers try to detain a Palestinian demonstrator after they clashed with Palestinians during a protest against Israel’s military operation in Gaza, outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, November 16, 2012. (Reuters / Ammar Awad)
(Source: israelfacts, via neverdancewiththedevil)
Breaking: Israel is targeting live streamers in Gaza. The building @HarryFear is in just took a direct hit. You can watch his livestream here.
(via stay-human)
Obama Sides With Israel Regarding Conflict In Gaza
U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday and reiterated U.S. support for Israel’s right to self-defense in light of rocket attacks from Gaza, the White House said.
Obama spoke to the leaders about the rocket attacks being launched from Gaza into Israel and the escalating violence in Gaza, the White House said in a statement.
“The President urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to make every effort to avoid civilian casualties. The two agreed that Hamas needs to stop its attacks on Israel to allow the situation to de-escalate,” the statement said.
“The President also spoke with President Morsi given Egypt’s central role in preserving regional security. In their conversation, President Obama condemned the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and reiterated Israel’s right to self-defense,” it said.
Following four days of escalation on the Israel-Gaza border, Israel launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip Wednesday, killing Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari in an airstrike, and targeting weapons warehouses and long-range rocket launchers.
The IDF hit more than 20 targets in the Gaza Strip, including rocket warehouses and rocket-launching facilities. Palestinians say eight people in the Gaza Strip were killed, including Jabari, and more than 30 were injured in Israeli strikes Wednesday.
who the fuck is surprised
obama you’re fucking killing me
and you’re telling israel it’s okay to kill brown people
Damn, Barry.
(via myjourneymythoughts)
Anonymous just successfully hacked the Israeli government's top security and surveillance website
(Source: sinidentidades, via myjourneymythoughts)
Ali Abunimah explains the latest violence between Israel and Gaza
Israeli activists protesting in front of the residence of the Israeli Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak against the attack on Gaza on, Tel-Aviv, November 14, 2012.
(Source: isqineeha, via obliquecity)
