The Sheila Variations

And this will help him get his pension...how?

The point is he knew that he wouldn't get his pension, in the same way that the Palestinians who blow themselves up know that there will be no peace for them in Israel.

Desparation, of a type most of us will never have experienced in our life time, is what drives people to commit these kinds of acts. I don't condone these acts, but I have a sincere sense of the mind set that can push one to this point. It's not always the kind of fanticism that gets broadcast by the media, but flat out desparation.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. Think about that. When you're that kind of poor, you don't do a lot of moralizing about right and wrong, especially when it's apparent that the powers that be don't extend the same kind of courtesy when it comes to paying a decent wage and not looting the pension plan of people who eek out an existence.

To put it into a more North American context, check out the John Sayles film, Matewan, it's all about the same kind of oppression in the hills of West Virginia at the turn of the 20th century. Same kind of situation, just most of the folks involved were white instead of some shade of brown.

"Desparation, of a type most of us will never have experienced in our life time, is what drives people to commit these kinds of acts..."

THAT is a cop-out. There are plenty of people who are more desperate than a Bolivian miner, let alone than most Palestinian suicide bombers, who are generally middle-class, educated, and considerably better off financially than most of their erstwhile "countrymen." Desperation may drive people to suicide, but desperation alone cannot possibly ever explain suicide turned to murder.

It may sound like a cop out to you, but again, you aren't working for a pitance, thinking that when your an old man you won't have to worry too much about starving to death because you'll have your pension to fall back on.

Oh wait...maybe you are, since Social Security is scheduled to run out of money before most of us who were born in the 60s are dead. So who knows, maybe by the time you're a wizened old man sick of living off of cat food and crackers cause that's all you can afford, maybe one day you will reach your "f--- it!" point and strap on some dynamite.

It's all very righteous for we who have everything to think that we can then tell they who have next to nothing that they shouldn't act on their desparation, that they should just sit back and take it.

Murder is never justified, but neither is the kind of greediness and arrogance that leads governments to exploit the poorest and most underprivileged. My question is what drives a man or woman to make that decision? It's not anything that's coming from a warm and fuzzy kind of place.

Sitting here warm, well fed, and somewhat secure in my livelihood, I know what I wouldn't do. I can't say what I would do if I had my back up against it. If I felt so oppressed that I saw no way out, murder might now seem so bad to me.

And where are you getting your information on the the Palestinian suicide bombers? Many are poor. Ramallah ain't Tel Aviv. The news? Please, as if any of what we're fed is a) factual and b) not skewed to fit Western views. Our media is no better tha Al Jazeera.

It makes a more interesting news story to spotlight the handful of middle-class Palestinians who make that choice.

Fee,
I'm sorry. I have been desperate. I have gone without food for days. I have lived, albeit briefly, with no roof over my head, at a time when it looked like salvation was not in sight. Never mind murder, I never ONCE thought of stealing or otherwise harming another human being in order to improve or "make a statement" my situation. The idea that poverty-induced desperation leads to this kind of thing is total bullshit. Character and regard for the lives of your fellow mankind are free.

"Murder is never justified, but neither is the kind of greediness and arrogance that leads governments to exploit the poorest and most underprivileged."

And the relationship between the two is what, exactly? Poverty or any other objective standard of "misery" does not create terrorism, or sub-Saharan Africa would be the world's hotbed of it. Neither does political oppression, or one would expect there to be suicide bombers in Pyongyang or Teheran.

What creates terrorism is an attitude, understanding and/or idelogy that your life is less important than someone else's death. Desperation, other than as part of some kind of deluded fantasy, has no real connection to that. Do you think that the 9/11 hijackeers were in any sense "desperate?" Yeah, they were desperate to kill as many innocent people as possible.

"My question is what drives a man or woman to make that decision? It's not anything that's coming from a warm and fuzzy kind of place."

Well, no shit.

"...as if any of what we're fed is a) factual and b) not skewed to fit Western views. Our media is no better tha Al Jazeera."

If everything is unmitigated propaganda, then no matter what I or anyone else says won't matter to you. It's the conspiracy theory of evidence: the absence of any evidence PROVES the existence of a conspiratorial coverup.

Not that it will help matters; but it is, I think, worth pointing out there is a difference between the Palestinian suicide bombers and this Bolivian fellow. But it is merely a difference of degree.

Both, of course, have committed acts of extreme evil. But a Palestinian bomber is motivated by one thing in particular: sheer, unrelenting hatred of the people he is about to murder. Further, he (or she) knows full well what he is going to accomplish if he succeeds. This fellow in Bolivia, I would submit, likely had several other issues along with not getting his pension -- such as serious mental problems. I do not see his evil as on the same level as those who purposely set out to kill women and children. I am not convinced the Bolivian thought he would kill others in destroying himself.

However, all that said, even if he truly thought he would only harm himself, this fellow cannot be excused for his action. To argue that poverty strips a man of his capacity for discerning right and wrong is to strip the poor of their humanity, to degrade them to the level of animals. To apply such a premise, even if only to explain any person's actions, is flawed thinking. It is both an inherently materialist and classist proposition, and history has shown these two lines of thought are intellectually poisonous.

As such, this fellow must be held to account for his act; and the fact he took the lives of two policemen gravely compounds his sin. He has not merely committed the ultimate act of selfishness with full knowledge of what he was doing; he is now a murderer. For this fellow, it is an ignomious and sad end to what may have been an otherwise honorable life.

Two final points, somewhat off-topic but related to prior comments.

First, I have noticed that some people who rightly point out that Social Security is going broke also oppose measures that would sustain the program indefinitely. Why this is, I don't know; but with tongue very much in cheek I would submit they will have no excuse to do *anything*, much less blow themselves up, when they are stuck eating cat food in their golden years. Besides, as a person born in the mid-Seventies myself, I do think that I may be on my own when I retire. I'm already planning for that, and I would hope -- pray -- that others my age are also coming to that realization.

Secondly, as for the criticism of the American media, I'm not impressed. If anything the U.S. media are overly generous to the Palestinians because they are trying to present a fair view of the situation. That said, one will not get an objective view of the situation -- because objectivity is an impossible aim. A Western reporter is going to write a Western story for a Western audience. Still, the Western concepts of a free press and a free market allow readers or viewers to get information from sources around the world, so that makes the criticism a moot point. Further, to boldly say that the entire U.S. media invents facts out of thin air is an amazingly cynical argument: one could even call it a lazy argument. After all, one can see how the media deals with its Jack Kelleys and Jayson Blairs.