(March 1, 2014)
Knife-wielding assailants attacked people at a train station in southwestern China on Saturday in what authorities called a terrorist attack and police fatally shot five of the assailants, leaving 28 people dead and 113 injured, state media said. China's official Xinhua News Agency did not identify who might have been responsible for the late-evening attack at the Kunming Railway Station in Yunnan province, but said authorities considered it to be "an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack."Later news reports have upped the 'injury' toll to 130+. This is no time for a mere Oregon Blogger to get smarmy. This was a "massacre", in every sense of the word, and you can throw "senseless" into the equation as well. Surely, there will be later reports which will attempt to explain what seems to be a senseless tragedy. It must have made sense to some people ... if only to the ones with the knives.
So far, nobody is saying this is "muslim terrorism", or "lone shooter" terrorism, or (name your favorite brand of destructive idiocy here: ________). China press is kind of refreshing, in a way, because they just said what happened and are sometimes kind of slow at applying the 'spin'.)
Look at it like this: people kill people for reasons which are not always intuitively obvious .. everywhere!
In China, apparently, they use knives instead of guns, because guns are kind of hard to get to in a Totalitarian State.
In other states, they use guns, because the state in which they live is perhaps a bit less totalitarian.
Every state has massacres, sooner or later, for easily identifiable reasons (on a societal scale, such as an undeclared civil war) or for reasons which are not easily identifiable (in that case we often refer to individuals who perpetrate such acts as "lone shooters" or "madmen".)
It's not necessary to complicate the situation. Some people are okay, some are crazy, but usually the perpetrator/s is/are easily defined as ... EVIL.
Can we agree that murder is evil? Can we agree that mass murder (usually defined as "3 or more victims in a single event at a single locality") is evil?
We typically use the term "massacre" when some people kill a lot of people .. unnecessarily and indiscriminately. (The Dictionary definition of the word "massacre" includes these three elements ... quantity, need, discrimination.)
Somebody shooting up a shopping mall, a school, an airport, a church ... you know the list. You've read the hysterical press reports.
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In America (Australia/England/Canada/India/Russia .. etc), we usually see one or more people casually walking through a "target-rich environment", shooting shoppers, students or worshipers, whomever they see.
In places where firearms are highly restricted, you don't see that.
Instead, you see poison gas, or knives.
The so-called "Civilized" countries employ a privileged class which, as one of their job descriptions, is charged with the duty of protecting their citizenry from such attacks. This privileged class is collectively termed "Politicians". They are the winners of a beauty contest, whose sole claim to their position is their popularity.
This politicians have decided that the best way to stop massacres is to forbid their constituents from possessing the most efficient means of slaughter: firearms.
We see by the results, and the Massacre at this train station in China is a sterling example, that their efforts are only able to keep the innocents from being able to defend themselves. The slaughter will continue, so to speak, until there are no innocents left. (The "Madmen" are a self-perpetuating sub-species .. perhaps as a consequence of the same policies created unilaterally by the politicians?
Would it be too outrageous to suggest that the police are very good at picking up corpses, but not very good at preventing these 'social events' which we call Masssacres?
Some of us cannot help wondering whether, if The State did not prohibit the means of self protection .. would these Massacres be less frequent? After all, if a group of knife-wielding IDIOTS knew that there might be wolves rather than lambs in the flock whom they had chosen to attack ... might they be less inclined to initiate the attack?
But no, the Politicians and the Hoi Palloi who elect/select/endure them more frequently determine that the best way to protect "the People" is to restrict private ownership of firearms. As if responsible people who are armed would typically act out their murderous fantasies if they were armed.
On cannot help but wonder if the body-bag count would be higher if everyone was required to be armed, and to demonstrate both proficiency and sobriety on a regular basis?
If a Government decided that this (arming citizens) was "A Good idea", what would we have?
Switzerland?
Would that be so bad?
Unless you were a politician, of course. But then, NOBODY thinks that the agenda of the Politician puts their body guarded-protected ass ahead of the proletariat which they have sworn to protect and defend.
Who would be so stupid as to establish a nation whose politicians' primary duty was to the welfare of The People? Whatever it takes?
And who would long believe them, if they did?
One wonders.
