Thought Picnic: It was a Black Valentine

A Black Valentine

In one week, I have written nothing and a lot has happened since I penned the piece about My Funny Valentine in the earnest desire for love, company and companionship.

However, as we woke into the morning of St. Valentine’s Day of the year 2013, 4 shots reverberated round the world as it became an echo chamber of a tragedy that still leaves many in shock but worse still, the irreparable losses, the loss of freedoms to love, to live and to roam – it is all too sad.

She started the night before in the arms of her love and by daybreak she was in the arms of her Lord, the whole episode unfolding like a horrific thriller with both entombed in the ground and in a cell, the former we must never forget for the enduring glory of the latter.

Guns with irrational backbone

One cannot comment on the specifics of the case but one thing is evident, regardless of the status of whoever was caught enclosed and defenceless in that place, that person would have ended up dead, be the person an intruder or a lover and that for me is unacceptable aggression in the face of somewhat irrational fear predicated on the assumed extreme vulnerability of the perpetrator.

Guns appear to give people an unusual sense of bravado and daring where other defence mechanisms to seek help or flee, and I mean flee will kick in.

Four gunshots was four gun shots too many, too determined, too irrational, too demonstrative, too controlling and too self-assured of dealing with a situation. We may never know the mind of the how and why but result is devastating enough that the absence of a sense of great remorse of what was essentially avoidable will never be acceptable.

My sympathies are with the victim, totally

One must not stand to judge, but between the extremes of the benign of the fear of an assumed intruder and it must be clear that this was not fighting off an intruder and the unfortunate pall of spousal abuse resulting in a fatality all too common in many places around the world, my sympathies are squarely with the victim regardless of provocation; no non-aggressive provocation where the other party does not present an existential threat to life should have anyone ending up in the morgue.

The circus of love ended on Valentine’s Day and what we have now for entertainment is the circus of the macabre, it is almost as unwatchable as it is reprehensible as the media feeding frenzy has settled down south on a basic gavel hearing that has now stretched into the fourth day.

For all the accolades, glory and heroic feats of determination and achievement that dogs the principal and masks his attendant foibles, weaknesses and shortcomings, none of which must be discounted with the flippant wave of the hand, my thoughts, my pains and my heartache are with Reeva Steenkamp, her bereaved family, the death of the life force of an amazing dream and the many partners who have by pre-meditation or inadvertently fallen at the hands of the person they chose to love.

Rest well – Reeva Steenkamp.

Childhood: My dread of guns

My gun history

I have had my day with the gun, handled one a few times and had a few pointed at me with menace. When I handled a gun, I was a child, hardly 9 and fascinated by the experience.

The time the guns were pointed at me, armed robbers had entered my home and we were under threat of getting shot before the armed robber in charge - they had ranks - dissuaded his troop because we had cooperated in their enterprise to willingly give up our things, albeit under duress.

We have lived to tell the tale, 24 years on.

Rayfield, a field of dreams

However, back to the childhood experience, we lived in Rayfield, a suburb of Jos and an almost relic of its colonial past where the Amalgamated Tin Mines of Nigeria had its headquarters.

Our house was an imposing white bungalow with 4 bedrooms and acreage of land where cattle grazed tended by nomadic tribes, with 13 mango trees producing different varieties, a fig tree, a guava tree, a cashew tree, a thorny lemon tree and much else, it is was almost too idyllic for reality.

The other family

Down the back dirt road beyond the tennis courts where my dad played and the golf course, a sport my dad never took up though he had the kit was another family where I went to play sometimes.

The kids were much older though when one of them arrived in my class we all laughed at his rather poor grasp of English; it just never occurred to us that anyone could speak English that badly.

The eldest was imposing, tall, handsome and smart, when we played family games, I always chose him as my father, the feelings are almost too silly to recount but that was how it was.

Guns for play

I never asked what might have happened to their mother but their father was a lawyer and he had a gun, it was a rifle, probably just over a yard long and it was loaded with pellet shot.

There was a big tree in front of their house and just at about the 6 feet height, the tree trunk branched out into a perfect Y and that is where we placed a tin can for target practice.

He sat on the steps in front of the house about 20 yards from the tree and held the gun for us because it was a bit heavy to keep steady; we then found the range and pulled the trigger. Having taken a few instructions from him, we were quite good at hitting the tin.

The memory that lingered

The last time I remember handling the gun is like a picture in my mind that has never faded and I do have some pictures like that from my distant childhood that prominently gets replayed like I am going through an old family album.

Everything was set as we usually did and there were more people at the house because there was a party and this was probably part of the entertainment, the fascination with guns.

It was my turn to shoot and confidently, I sought the target and pulled the trigger hitting the tin again but something was wrong with that arrangement especially with the adult supervision we supposedly had and the many children around the house.

My vivid mind with the sometimes dangerous ability to process more than is necessary rolled back the time to just before I pulled the trigger; there was a girl standing just below the tin; a poor aim, a distraction or some scatter shot and it would have been an entirely different story.

No toy at all

My world stopped and the burden of a fate unimaginable consumed my 9-year old mind, I never touched a real gun ever since even when I had opportunity and legal access to handle one.

The girl I remember quite well, she contacted me a few years ago after she read one of my other childhood recollections, I am glad she did and I doubt she realised how our lives could have been changed too radically to contemplate.

In my experience, I learnt enough about guns to know they are not toys no matter how much we like to toy with them.

Im-Palin-g McCain's picket

Cultivating relationships

I have made many acquaintances but have very few friends, in fact, the people I call my friends, I have known for at least 15 years, putting that in the time frame of my last long-term partner, beyond that, it goes back 24 years.

Some 22 years ago, when I was made the class representative and a good representative I was, we were a noisy class and when someone challenged me about being the ring-leader of the noise-makers, I had to say if I did not represent my class in noise-making I would not be representing them effectively.

The real context of this is I left that school with 3 good friends, one of whom I have lost contact with in Russia, one with whom I have little contact in Nigeria and the other with whom I talk to quite frequently in London.

These along with the other friends are people I can trust with a lot, talk to about much and expect to act in my behalf just as if I were there without any fear for their judgement and whilst being assured of the quality of their person and integrity.

I am proud to say that where I have recommended these people on my own recognisance they have been accepted in my person and proved to be just as recommended and better.

I have also entered into business dealings with people through having first known them, known their judgement, their values and realised how we can work together for a common good, I do not take these issues lightly at all.

My congratulations to Sarah Palin

It is on this note that I first congratulate Sarah Palin [1] on being selected by John McCain as his vice-Presidential running mate. Until she was selected, I did not know anything about this governor of a backwater state called Alaska [2] apart from the bridge to nowhere [3] which has since been abandoned [4] by her and the indictments [5] of Ted Stevens [6], the longest serving GOP Senator.

What we read about Sarah Palin is interesting, a mother of 5 children, the last being born only in April 2008 with Down’s Syndrome, she is a devout Christian, pro-life and pro-gun politician who seems to be working at cleaning up Alaskan politics.

She has been governor for less than 2 years and might be implicated [7] in trying to obtain the sacking of her ex-brother-in-law who was undergoing a messy divorce and child custody batter with her sister as a serious abuse of power.

Gay abortions of gun marriage

On the issues that excite the conservatives about her candidacy, I find myself more pragmatic than fundamentalist and agree more with Senator Obama’s views on abortion, gun-control and gay marriage as he articulated in his acceptance speech [8].

The need to work on preventing unwanted pregnancies than jostling with the issue of abortion could mean condoms and contraceptives have a place in society, if we are less emotive about presumed societal decay. People would always have sex, it is probably better we ensure they have it safely and avoid regrettable situations.

Being painted as an Annie, Get Your Gun figure does nothing for me, it fact that gun use in the country differs from what guns get used for in the inner cities; there is a need for balance in enacting laws with due respect to the 2^nd Amendment to protect rights as well as protect lives.

If people have a right to love regardless of gender pairing, that love-relationship constitutes their family unit for those concerned such that sharing, caring and privileges should by rights and fairness accrue to that relationship.

I still contend that it is only those whose heterosexual marriages and relationships are weak that think gay marriage would impact on marriage as an institution. If same-sex couples had basic rights conferred on their partnerships, there would be no need for the marriage debate, but the absence of such partnership rights makes many want to go the whole hog and I see nothing really wrong with that.

Time for the United States of Americans

America within itself needs conciliation through pragmatic analysis of social issues not the promotion of political figures that accentuate the wedge issues that divide the people, polarise the nation and try to make traitors of people who disagree about these things.

We need the vision of a new president who brings together the whole country in the unity of purpose looking to change and grasping unto the edifying message of hope than one who dwells on the divisions that has turned America into one of the most divided countries on social issues.

Conservatives and liberals alike have to recognise that they are all American first and the politics of being disagreeable because of the difference of opinion has to stop – I must contend the Obama offers the healing balm of reason that John McCain cannot deign to offer to his most beloved country.

This is no great thing

Nevertheless, I am not excited by any stretch of the imagination about McCain’s choice of vice-President. It is amazing that after so many years in Washington, his numbered years and the need to buttress areas where he is weak, he has chosen to lay such a responsibility on someone he has only met once before, with whom he has no particular affinity.

Nobody can convince me that this selection is borne of some deliberate and considered thinking that binds people who have developed a relationship of mutual aims, goals and vision.

The fellowship of minds

I have just started a new job today, the company has in the past employed the best consultants money could buy to solve intractable problems with solutions that sound amazing but yield none of the expected results.

The team has now regrouped into one that seeks shared experiences with others who they have worked with before to address the problems with the fellowship of minds that are geared to succeed rather than push a particular solution provider’s agenda which just accumulates hours of expensive waffle.

I find myself amongst people who I have worked with in different companies over the last 5 years, who I know, who I respect, who have a shared vision and acknowledging each others expertise and who have gathered together to be a winning team – we know we would crack those problems because we have developed a relationship of peers and expertise.

After an exemplary life

The choice that John McCain has made is the most cynical ploy to emotively use gender sympathies and religious adherence to befuddle voters into a false sense of thinking sameness brings comfort, it offers the opportunity for a complacency that imagines things would be done the way we believe we would do things. How further from the truth can we be about judgement and the assessment of character?

It is a presidency not a bishopric that is at stake, it is about human government not church government. I would be fearful of an ultra-religious person who dreams dreams, sees visions and reckons that God commands them to take some action without considering all the consequences for the basis of secular government.

America has been too divided along wedge issues to tolerate more of the same again for 4 more years.

I am surprised that no one sees that after 72 years of a rather distinguished and exemplary life John McCain could find no friend, colleague, confidant, mentor or protégé in his long political, social, business or military life and career to join him in the most important quest of his life but a stranger.

No judgment no story

This man has no judgment; he fails woefully at what should have been the culmination of relationships with other men and women he has met in all walks of life; this should have had a history and story that fills us with awe, but he picks someone he met only six months ago.

He is both a maverick and breathtakingly reckless; the levers of world government must never be within his grasp.

There is no greater poverty of spirit and goodwill than to share your greatest stage with strangers rather than with friends, with people you hardly know, in order to prove you are different.

This is exactly what makes John McCain unworthy of the calling to which he aspires, he has made vain a lifetime of experiences to hug the limelight alone and he has dangled a juicy bait that has everyone whooping too distractedly to realise that they are being patronised by a consummate denier of his legacy and his original platforms for the want of power.

A picket not a ticket

It has left the Economist asking Bring back the real McCain [9] in their leader this week, just as John Kerry compared and contrasted Senator McCain with Candidate McCain in his speech [10] at the Democratic National Convention last week.

The selection of Sarah Palin does not present us with a McCain-Palin ticket, rather it is an appalling McCain picket; it is not revolutionary but reactionary, it not inspired but desperate, it is not conciliatory but anarchist, it not cultured but vulgar, it is not considered but rash, it is maverick in its context and reckless to the extreme.

For a man of John McCain’s stature to impose on a nursing mother he hardly knows regardless of her abilities and suitability a responsibility so large as to create the most exacting pressures on her needs to satisfy motherhood and the call of office is in the least irresponsible and at the most heartless.

If the 3:00AM advertisement [11] would ever question the ability of anyone to meet the demands of a great crisis, just imagine accommodating that under the stress of nursing a child that most definitely needs that extra bit of care and having another child away in harm’s way in a war that should never have been started.

I am sorry, this selection is not gentlemanly at all and it proves once and for all that Senator John McCain is probably better a senator and definitely not material for a president by any stretch of the imagination.

The man is just not the man we used to know.

Sources

[1] Sarah Palin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Alaska - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment

[4] 'Bridge to nowhere' abandoned - CNN.com

[5] Nation & World | Ted Stevens indicted, longest-serving GOP senator | Seattle Times Newspaper

[6] Ted Stevens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] Obama: We are better than these last eight years - CNN.com

[9] The presidential race | Bring back the real McCain | Economist.com

[10] Transcript: Sen. John Kerry On Foreign Policy : NPR

[11] Hillary Clinton, 3am commercial White House Ad - Truveo Video Search

Guns and Churches for Security

Another attempt at the 2nd

I think it is time to forget the debate about ownership of guns in America. The contentious Second Amendment of their Constitution needs clearer interpretation and hopefully the Supreme Court would rise to the occasion and be true to English as a mode of communication than Political English as a mode for confusion by June 2008.

I covered this matter in October 2004, I have read the Second Amendment a good few times and the text needs no further clarification than what it states.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of the free state, then the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.

The plurality of this statement is evident in that one person cannot constitute a militia, that it is to be regulated would mean that the militia would be under the control of some organised organ of the free state.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms, - not everyman - then derives from membership of the well regulated militia that acts to secure the free state.

It would by inference mean that everyone who then keeps and bears arms must be available to be called up to the service of maintaining the security of the free state; that does not read personal property or any other endeavour.

So, how this can be read to mean everyone has the right to bear arms escapes me, but lobbies and political subterfuge have allowed for a very basic law to become a standard for the bastardisation of English as we know it.

This issue has visited the Supreme Court five times but never resulted in clearing the supposed ambiguity in the statement – these learned judges of the United States of America Supreme Court have an opportunity to make history and their courage must not fail them.

Cold dead innocents

Americans would not part with their guns easily, as in the words of Charlton Heston when his great machismo had not deserted him, he declared that his musket gun would have to snatched “from my cold, dead hands”.

One wonders how many more innocent off the streets of America without guns to protect themselves but running the gauntlet of deranged people who shoot up everything that moves, should have their lives snuffed out by cold murderous hands before someone begins to reconsider this affinity for Wild West braggadocio, the swagger and the quick-draw at noon.

Church offers no refuge

What bothers one even more is the recent incident of mass killing in religious meeting places. Anyone would think a church or a church establishment offers a kind of sanctuary not only as shelter from the elements but also from disturbed and deranged gun-totting death-mongers who having concluded on the worthlessness of their lives need to make their deaths significant by taking innocent people along.

Not only that, one is also concerned about a development that my fellow blogger friend Roosevelt has noticed, a trend towards armed security at churches. Surely, not to keep church-goers in order, but who knows?

The security guard said this, “I took cover, and I waited for him to get closer, and I came out of cover and identified myself, and engaged him, and took him down. And that's pretty much it.” She took him down! Hallelujah!

My Jesus Boys

No, it is not funny at all, but that is not the only place where a type of protection has been employed by the church to maintain order. A few weeks ago in Nigeria at a major gospel concert called The Experience , the organisers engaged the services of the usually menacing hoodlums and anti-social vermin of “Area Boys ” to police the premises and handle the matters of order and some ushering under some supervision – hence their Damascene conversion to Jesus Boys – it almost reads like comedy.

However, when you read the story of an influential madam ordering her driver to drive up against the traffic only to be arrested by the state governor, it suddenly seems having armed security and hoodlum ushers in the church is all too necessary as the custom registration on her car read “My Jesus”.

Obituary: Shambo, the loss of respect

Called out of the meadow

His was no ordinary life, nay, a female or milk would have flowed from the udders each morning, no feeding and nurturing for a silver-side steak with French fries as fat as human hair.

He was called to service and he did receive the tribute of religion that attempted to exclude him from the rule of law, the application of commonsense and immediacy of a pervasive danger to others.

For, he was the embodiment of the sanctity of life in every living creature, a life that must not be needlessly destroyed. To that point, it was a less to all; life is too precious to be wasted on the whim of the desires of others.

For the holy cow remains

So, this Friesian bull born in 2001, adopted in the monastic order of a religion that holds them dear and attaining the majesty of the holy cow, most sacred that it must be untouchable was touched by something so minuscule, yet too fearful to contemplate, for touch was a gift of death, bovine tuberculosis.

Had this bull been nameless, he would have died, unsung, unmourned and unknown, but his name was Shambo and they gave him a humanity that pitched a community against due process in the name of religion.

But the cow died and afterwards it indeed was a danger to other flock, it had lesions indicative of the presence of bovine tuberculosis.

Shambo leaves a community bereft of their sacred cow and some who travelled in all the way from New Zealand, all for the life of cow.

Rational religion, irrational adherents

The story of Shambo however does not end with its death because the community now appeals that no other animal be killed even if they are bovine tuberculosis indicative.

The sanctity of life awakens us to another reality, the "vicarious" sacrifice of one diseased animal to save other animals, as other farmers have required and as the health experts have advised; it is a fearful analogy, but whilst religion can be rational, the adherents can be so far from the rationality their religion demands.

This is not respect

This same sanctity of life is defiled time and again as individuals exercise their rights to remain alive without due consideration for others in the community.

People swift to use guns in the streets of London, many have become mobile abattoirs, a knife to hand and it goes deep into the flesh of another man because of respect.

A type of respect that does not belong on our streets but has broken out of the prison regiment where the law has placed people who need to be denied their liberty and their community as a just consequence of deeds which threaten society - crimes, misdeeds and disobedience amongst a multitude of many sins unmentionable.

In prison, the only dignity left in a man is the jungle of the alpha male; you are in a correction facility and hence damn the consequences of being corrected when you are wrong.

Like a pervasive contagion leading to a pandemic, the prison pathogen is wiping out civility in our societies, people would not countenance being corrected, because it makes them lose face for which they must make drastic amends by having in possession a gun which targets that lone protector of civility in our communities and snuffs the person out life a candlelight in a gale.

Doing right getting wronged

This has nothing to do with respect, people earn respect by being productive members of their communities and that completely excludes crime as unwarranted violence, breaking rules, possessing a firearm or harmful weapon.

But yesterday, the family of James Oyebola, 46, granted that the life-support machine keeping his sanctity of whatever life he had left be turned off.

This is another name of Nigerian heritage too many, from Damilola Taylor, 10, in 2000 who was thrust through in a stairwell, Michael Dosunmu, 15, in February 2007, who was shot while he slept in his bedroom, too many of my people are getting caught up in this rotten morass.

A ban on smoking in public areas exists in England, it came into effect on the 1^st of July 2007 and people cannot have been oblivious of this fact. Some customers however decided to trespass this law and the gentle giant figure of the one-time WBC international heavyweight champion advised the customers to desist without rancour.

Those customers shot him in the face with a gun and the man died. For all the respect any man could demand of his fellow man, the most important one is to be able stand by what you have done and face the consequences for your actions like a man. They ran away.

James Oyebola was born in Lagos on the 10th of June 1961, he was well received as a boxer and a respected man in the community, he is survived by his girlfriend and two children.

Cowards without souls

These are men who have no respect for themselves or others, but this is becoming the Plimsoll line of respect amongst our youth.

The warped concept of respect that portends that society owes you everything and you have nothing to contribute to society, one that damns the consequences and gives you peer honour as a fugitive and criminal, one that is an untrammelled dementia of the ego that they feel they are bigger than everything around them and answerable to no one.

Within this youth subculture, exists the pain of the death of 17 young people in London since the beginning of the year, 5 of which were through gunshots. Lives needlessly destroyed in the pursuit of intemperate and criminal self aggrandisement masquerading as respect.

If we do not seize our societies and communities from this prison cancer, the raconteur would be possessed of interminable obituaries.

May the souls of all those forcibly made to depart this beautiful earth rest in peace, as for Shambo, the last wish of an adherent when it was taken from the monastery was for it to return a human - even I cannot begin to plumb the depths of the absurdities of religion - if it is believable, it is the beginning of faith, the emasculation of the rational.

The right to bear death

The right they should lose

Obviously, the gun lobby in America would be wondering if a backlash would occur on the validity of the 2^nd Amendment and the right to bear arms.

What one can say in the light of the great tragedy that has befallen America with the worst mass shooting ever and that on a university, one of many shootings that happen in schools as an American way of life is that something feeds this rage and guns are easily available.

I reiterate that the right to bear arms should and must only be for legally sanctioned law enforcement and organised armed forces for the defence of the realm - America is no more the Wild West, it is time to put away the primitive instinct to point and shoot at the slightest provocation.

For the 32 that have died, it is a tragedy so great and my prayers are with their families, loved ones and friends - if America would have some soul-searching and go out to deal with the real problem is another issue all together.

Today, we grieve in sorrow and pray for succour.

American Congress failing the American People

Red face from reps page

Three pieces of news coming out of America appear to show how so different that land is and it so fills me with amazement that people find such comfort in that place.

Probably 10 years ago, the by-line would have been – Rep pages page’s pager … or something along those lines if the tabloids ever got into the salacious side of a sad story of child sexual abuse.

Apparently, for a few years, a Republican Congressman has found the pastime of sending sexually explicit messages to pages – students who get the opportunity to walk the corridors of power as messengers and assistants.

The youngest of who might have been 16, now, for a man in power and authority having membership of the caucus on missing and exploited children it was wrong to abuse his position in that way and it was wrong to subject the young men to such illicit and lewd communication.

Culpability in inaction

If Congressman Foley considered his actions a form of mentoring young men into understanding sex, well, one can only speculate; however, the Republican leadership of the Congress who appeared to have known about this for a while now seem to be feigning innocence as the whole affair has suddenly consumed the fire of their campaign hardly six weeks to the mid-term elections.

It reminds one of the inaction that accompanied sexual abuse claims within the Catholic Church, alas, lessons are not being learnt.

The converse of this is, the young man was 16, quite well past puberty and in Europe would have been more sexually aware, intelligent or active rather than being utterly sexually naïve as one can almost expect of Americans of that age.

There would be some mileage in this thing before the elections turf out a few more Republicans, meanwhile, Mr Foley has demonstrated a classic, accepted guilt, gone for rehabilitation for alcoholism and behavioural problems – it is unlikely the birch would be introduced to teach bad boy – Mr Foley – a useful lesson.

Sadly, the abused child might only be able to afford a comforting ice-cream from mummy and daddy before the media circus helps to ruin the young man’s self esteem for life.

Gambling on a fools gambit

Then, as usually, the warped argument about online gambling leading to addiction, debt and enticement of children has lead to a bad law being promulgated to ban financial institutions like banks and credit card companies from processing payments for participating in online gambling.

This is America where gambling is extremely big business Las Vegas is the bastion of wanton decadence and gambling like no other place on earth and somehow people who go there cannot play the same games from home. Absurd.

Well, the greater reason is, the clout of these casinos as lobbyists and sponsors of politicians has prevent Internet upstarts from establishing online gambling businesses, it is also amusing that having raped indigenous American Indians of wealth and land, they are allowed to build humongous gambling empires in their reservations as a sop for past injustices, part of what lead to the Abramoff scandal.

It is the taxes, stupid

More so, Americans being able to gamble in a global market from the comfort of their homes in a $12 billion business registered offshore, the federal and state governments get not taxes or revenues from these organisations lodged in tax havens all around the world.

No online gambling dollars lining the campaign funds or hospitality troughs of politicians is a cause to fight for and nip the financial transactions in the bud and let it all get more sinister, go underground and less regulated – because the American Congress has been elected to protect the American People from things they as adults should have the sense to know to want to do or abstain from.

The thing about children getting addicted to gambling does not wash, you need a credit card to join an online gambling facility and you can only get a credit card at a certain age – the same credit card can be used to register on porn sites, but I see no Congressman seeking to ban financial transactions to porn sites except those of the fundamentalist and Puritan kind.

Those who want to gamble would gamble in anyway they want; regulation is the better use of law not prohibition, just as drug addicts or alcoholics cannot be legislated out of existence. This is one rather bad law, it might hurt the online gambling businesses for a while, but it would not cure the 50% trade that comes from America from their addiction if they are already hooked.

Suicide gunners and schools

Utterly depressed, repressed or disturbed people with access to guns and ammunition that have been seized from the cold dead hands of Charles Heston have visited schools and shot people, already, thrice this week in America.

OK! We did have one occasion in Dunblane in Scotland where a crazed loner shot 16 children with their teacher before killing himself, one well-adjusted and successful kid from that school is Andrew Murray the rising tennis star – thank God for that – I could almost assume such a recovery might be difficult in America, but that would be both facetious and cynical.

However, it appears people do not want to singularly and quietly commit suicide anymore because their insignificant and uneventful lives might not even make the village rag, so they walk off into a nearby school, take children hostage, run the airwaves for a few hours, appear to negotiate and then shoot up innocent people and then themselves.

I am tempted to say that suicide bombers have a cause and these people have no cause, no purpose and no souls – why use innocent blood to give some publicity or credence to your suicide? This applies to all “suiciders” (a Bushism) all around the world.

A gun law is needed

If there is a case of the Congress to settle on, it is the getting of guns off the streets and reducing the availability of guns to just anyone, the warped interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is a problem.

It is still my belief that what it means is; the right to bear arms is only justified as part of a well regulated militia – basically, if you are not in the forces, that right does not exist except when you can called up to defend the state – it does not say you cannot own a gun, but it is not a right to hold one, just as you can own a car, but that does not become a right to have a car.

If there is any need for a new study too, it is that about finding out why these people choose vulnerable people to experience their gruesome deaths when they could find an isolated barn and do the deed if they so wish to end their lives.

How many more headline grabbing shootouts of kids in schools like Columbine do we need before the guns are grabbed out of living and dead hands and burnt out of existence?

Do you read this, the way I do?

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Second Amendment

Are you Belgian-Suspect?

Not the kind of news to hear

Being a regular visitor to Antwerp, I was quite surprised that I missed a rather harrowing but evident piece of news about the murders of 2 people and one left seriously injured [1].

It transpired that the perpetrator had bunked off boarding school (privilege) being on the verge of being suspended for smoking and drinking the day before.

The young man had been planning to commit an act of terminal self-harm but felt he would even serve society better if just before he committed the ultimate, he randomly kills a few immigrants who he referred to in the most derogatory terms.

If I were to dabble into profiling, we are given the impression that a person who in Europe has the privilege of a boarding school education, has the best opportunities for education, can be assertive, self-assured, confident and probably get by on his own cognisance, something ordinary people would probably need a police check and references for.

Classed as Belgian-suspect

So, he bunks off school and walks into a shop and buys a gun, gets the ammunition and declares open season on fellow human-beings who have the unfortunate distinction of having an appearance that is Belgian-suspect.

Belgian-suspect? Indeed, but that is part of the wave of right-wing populism that I have tried to ignore not only in Belgium, but in France and recently in the UK when the British National Party took a few seats in the local government elections.

The whole principle and premise that a certain group of people indigenously belong somewhere and they are being deprived of their rights because immigrants, foreigners or citizens of foreign progeny are getting priority in jobs, welfare and other “so-called” benefits.

This tripe, as ideology gets fed to the populace and finds resonance; that the broad church of democracy can allow sinners against liberty and tolerance to worship at the altar of universal franchise.

Caught in the stomach

The young man in event got shot in the stomach by a police marksman but not before he had shot and grievously wounded a Turkish woman, then killed an au-pair black woman with her ward, a 2-year old Caucasian child.

In his words, she was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

That is what bothers me, any up-bringing, education, experience or tutelage that allows for a situation where a 2-year old cannot walk safe in the streets is in need of obliteration at source.

Where be the faults?

His aunt is a Member of Parliament representative of the Flemish Interest Party which was birthed at the demise of the similarly extreme right Flemish Block that the parliament proscribed a few years ago.

His father was a founding a member of the Flemish Block, and though the party spokespeople deny the young man is a member of their party, there are enough role models to influence, if not indoctrinate the child in abhorrent ideology.

The young man intimated to friends that he would commit terminal self-harm and take 10 immigrants with him and privileged few did nothing with that information thinking it was an empty threat.

The head of the school came across a suicide note and did not cotton on the possible gravity of the situation; rather school discipline through a suspension would have made the problem go away. Whatever acts he then committed would have absolved the school from culpability.

I have my doubts about that being the best kind of school to send impressionable people, if students can be subject to opprobrium and authorities can be in such dereliction of duty and responsibility.

A matrix of skinhead amity

Then he walks into what might be a gun store and gets a high-calibre rifle, no questions asked, and then walks up a street in Antwerp seeking his quarry dressed like a character out of the Matrix.

Surreal as this may seem, there does not seem to be one intelligent initiative from all these people who could have affected and avoided the situation

+ Parents associated with fear-purveying anti-immigrant movements;

+ Schoolmates learning to be farm-hands in a boarding school but having no sense of the consequence that can be adduced from information they are privy to;

+ School authorities who think a suicide note is better dealt with by suspension or expulsion;

+ A gun shop owner in dalliance with the money, ignoring the common-sense need to ascertain, verify, enquire and consequently deny.

They know not the effects of their rhetoric

Auntie then speaks, he grew up in an atmosphere of anti-violence – I think NOT!

The rhetoric of the extreme-right is anything but the gospel of peace to all mankind; that atmosphere is enough to create the self-loathing to commit suicide and the warped sense of duty to society leading to killing innocent immigrants.

Where the party has rejected the young man, having been caught; there are others who in their clandestine ceremonies who would be offering the proverbial pat on the back for speaking up for the working man of Dutch-speaking Belgium.

References

[1] Woman, child murdered in 'racist' Antwerp shooting

[2] 'Teen killer' deliberately targeted random foreigners

[3] Racist shooting rampage shocks Antwerp

General information about the school, translated from Flemish.

The boarding school - Vrij Agro- en Biotechnisch Instituut – (Free Agricultural and Biotechnical Institute)

A school with a past and a future

The school was established in 1922, and has more than 7000 alumni. A modern infrastructure guarantees a safe future.

A school with a heart

The VABI offers a student-centred educational curriculum offering practical tuition beyond just knowledge transfer.

A school in a “green lung” (Green in the context of environment)

The VABI is situated in splendid green surroundings within the grounds of a small seminary.

The boarding school has a totally new kitchen and a restaurant that caters for healthy meals, with accommodation adapted for study and entertainment.

Most students graduate to further education in various related fields in university.

Our diploma offers great opportunities for employment and other career enhancing prospects.