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When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society [1] places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains. |
✖ Via Condition of the Working Class in England, by Frederick Engels, ch. VII: “Results”, 1845First published in Leipzig in 1845. The English edition (authorised by Engels) was published in 1887 in New York and in London in 1891. Source: Panther Edition, 1969, from text provided by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Moscow. Transcribed by Tim Delaney in 1998. (more) A similar (not identical) argument motivates various “murder by proxy” theories regarding mass murders. See for example Going Postal by Mark Ames (2005) and the documentary Murder by Proxy. How America Went Postal. |
• Aug 22, 2010 link notes tagged:
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In less than two months, China has seen six cases of men charging into schools and kindergartens to kill and hurt children. On April 28, 29 and 30, there was one incident per day in three separate cities. Last Wednesday, a man with a cleaver killed seven children and two adults in a central China kindergarten, while on Saturday the man behind the April 29 attack was sentenced to death for stabbing 29 children in an eastern province. The situation has become not only very dark but very surreal. |
✖ Via next: “Behind China’s killing spree” by Huang Hung, May 21st, 2010“Huang Hung is a columnist for China Daily, the English-language newspaper in China. She is also an avid blogger with more than 100 million page views on her blog on sina.co” |
• May 30, 2010 link notes tagged:
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It sort of makes sense, actually: Junk food consumption is correlated with violent crime. Virtually all the criminals in prison across the country are nutritionally imbalanced due to their consumption of processed junk foods and their lack of sufficient nutritional supplementation. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a study revealed that fried snack foods like Doritos are a favorite food among violent criminals. These are, after all, the kind of people depicted in some Doritos advertisements.
In my view, the violent Doritos commercials accurately reflect the senseless, violent behavior that typifies people (younger males, mostly) who consume large quantities of processed junk foods, sugary soft drinks and gimmicky “sports drinks.” These are the people who end up being put on antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs, after which they sometimes end up in a school shooting rampage.
It might make a good Doritos commercial, actually: A kid grows up on junk food and diet soda laced with aspartame. He’s drugged up on Ritalin and Prozac. One day he brings a semiautomatic rifle to school, barges into a classroom and opens fire on his classmates, shooting and screaming, “I WANT MY F*@!KING DORITOS!” |
✖ Via NaturalNews: “Doritos ads represent sick, demented nature of junk food companies and their products” by Mike Adams Feb. 27th, 2010 I’m not sure if he meant to say TV cause violence or junk food cause violence. The two are probably linked (as previous studies already suggested). I’d really like to get my hands on the correlation coefficients used for this “analysis” though. Food consumption may be part of the explanation, it may also be a side effect caused by other factors (the same goes for television). Furthermore, I’m not very confortable with the whole scapegoating practice : blame it on the Doritos. Somehow, I doubt Doritos alone explain those (and I’ll avoid the cliché consisting in naming famous killers who were vegetarians). Mike Adams is the Editor of NaturalNews.com. You can read his bio on his official website. Learn more about Doritos’ latest marketing campaign Viralocity. |
• Feb 28, 2010 link notes tagged:
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Perhaps a thorough investigation will reveal the “real” reasons for the murders. Perhaps Amy Bishop is mentally ill, or perhaps she is, quite simply, evil. |
✖ Via National Review Online: “Don’t Over-Generalize From the Huntsville Murders” by David French, Feb. 18, 2010 David French starts by arguing against what he believes to be an overstatement published in a post on the Chronicle of Higher Education website: “Academic life as a “petri dish for madness”? We may have a winner for overstatement of the year. At this point, we don’t even know if Amy Bishop was mentally ill. Nor do we know if academic life had anything to do with her killing spree.” On one hand, French is right : to suggest that academic life alone can explain Bishop’s behavior is to give way to much importance over this single factor while ignoring others. Though it’s true there has been at least one other similar incident (Valery Fabrikant) one needs to take into account multiple factors when trying to understand Bishop’s behavior (she killed here brother in 1986, was charged with assault on another woman in 2002, etc.) On the other hand, while French condemns what he sees as the “overstatement of the year”, he goes on suggesting that Bishop is perhaps quite simply evil… Looks like a self-contradictory argument. More importantly, it’s emblematic of what Dana L. Cloud calls a “therapeutic discourse” that is the “dislocation of social problems into a private, familial or psychological frame”. “Such discourse”, adds Cloud “emphasizes individual responsability for and the necessity of private rather than societal response to social problems.” (“Deranged Loners and Demented Outsiders? Therapeutic News Frames of Presidential Assassination Attempts, 1973–2001” by Kristen E. Hoerl, Dana L. Cloud & Sharon E. Jarvis, Communication, Culture & Critique, vol. 2, no 1, p. 84, March 2009). Dana L. Cloud’s book Control and Consolation in American Politics and Culture: Rhetorics of Therapy (London, Thousand Oaks: Sage Press, 1998) is available online free of charge. |
• Feb 22, 2010 link notes tagged:
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