Growing up and developing values

peter.reardon on society, basic kindness and respect

The attempted assassination of Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; she was shot in the head but clings to life. As well as the slain there were also a number of critically injured people at the scene.

Giffords was attending a shopping mall in Tuscan to meet her political supporters, one of whom was Christine, a nine year old schoolgirl Christine’s life was busy with putting together the building blocks of school activism.

She was a social activist in the making, her election to the school Student Council would help her to learn communication skills and to respect the value of the ballot-box.   

Christine Green was the youngest of the victims, born on 9/11, [November 11th ], the infamous mass murder in New York City, and was murdered, with others  exercising her “right of freedom of assembly”.     

A question raised by many people appalled by the Tuscan atrocities must have been: was the gunman acting alone? Was he acting out of some ultra right belief? Or was he acting for an organization, or perhaps a person?

One significant player on the current political landscape is former Governor Palin from Alaska a woman not known for her warmth or compassion in her speeches or her communiqués. Indeed, in her approach to urge voters to work for her Tea-Party run-up to the next presidential elections she demonstrates the lowest kind of language at her political rallies, on television and in the print media. A computer graphic of ethically questionable language identifies:

“...20 congressmen and women who voted in favour of .... the health care bill”  in “the Stranger” here

who were, according to Palin, “un-American”.

The graphic featured might not have been conceived by Palin but by her back-room advisers. Palin denies that this imagery has anything to do with wishing that the 20 people named on her list should be massacred. Elsewhere, her ‘advisers’ seem to have borrowed from ‘Non Opinion Muslim’ to conjure-up the Islam concept of Jihad.

In English-speaking countries, especially the United States, the term "jihadist" has been used in Western media as a synonym for mujahid, and frequently used to describe militant Islamic groups, including but not restricted to Islamic terrorism. here

Palin responds with grieved indignation claiming that her communication was totally misrepresented if she is questioned on the double meaning of guns, telescopic gun sights, and political ‘enemies’ or, opponents.

So the shooting of nine people at Tuscan was merely “coincidental”. Palin’s strategy is not new in the world of violent political rhetoric; it thrives in the Middle East, for example from the “Assassins” to the current groups of Islamic terrorists:

The fedayeen were the ardent followers of Hasan-i Sabbah (d. 1124), a leader of Ismail Shia in Iran, Iraq, and in Syria, known to the west as the Assassins. The Assassins are regarded as "the first group to make systematic use of murder as a political weapon." Established in Iran and Syria in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they used assassination and terrorism with the aim of overthrowing Sunni Islam's order and establishing their own. here

But we are not in the Middle East, and Palin’s tone might be acceptable by a relative few voters in America. Indeed, she published an article to condemn people any or all of those who would criticize her communication skills, or suitability to hold public office.  However, Palin did manage to attract further attention with a reference in a communication which is culled from the dark ages of history:

Sarah Palin today accused her opponents of manufacturing a "blood libel" by suggesting that her rhetoric and campaign tactics had nothing to do with the Arizona shootings. Giffords is Arizona's first Jewish congresswoman.

Palin's bizarre use of language is almost certain to provoke controversy by all reasonable people. A blood libel refers to a passage in St. Mathew where Jews said of the crucifixion: "Let his blood be on our heads." Reading further we are informed that in medieval mythology Jews killed their children as part of a religious ritual.

Sarah Palin borrows this phrase from a notorious passage in the Bible which has been used by some Christians to persecute Jews for nearly 2,000 years. (In the Guardian; Stephan Bates, here) (End)