Cerberus to sell Bushmaster gun company

The New York Times reports: Sitting in their offices high above Park Avenue late on Monday, the private equity executives who own the country’s largest gun company received a phone call from one of their most influential investors.

An official at the California teachers’ pension fund, which has $750 million invested with the private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, was on the line, raising questions about the firm’s ownership of the Freedom Group, the gun maker that made the rifle used in the Connecticut school shootings.

Hours later, at 1 a.m. on Tuesday, Cerberus said that it was putting the Freedom Group up for sale.

“It is apparent that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level,” Cerberus said in a statement.

The move by Cerberus is a rare instance of a Wall Street firm bending to concerns about an investment’s societal impact rather than a profit-at-all-costs ethos. Public pension funds like the California one — officially, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs — have hundreds of billions of dollars in private equity and hedge fund investments. While their influence is vast, it is usually exerted behind the scenes and rarely prompts snap business decisions. [Continue reading…]

It turns out that quite a few gun owners are happy about the sale.

“The Freedom Group came in and consolidated production and just alienated everybody because they bought up these great brands and then destroyed them… it is fu***ng up some of the best brands in the gun world.”

Robert Farago, publisher of the popular gun blog The Truth About Guns, told me that about the Freedom Group a month before the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, involving its gun brand Bushmaster. It was a month and a few days before Cerberus Capital Management announced it would sell its 95 percent stake in Freedom Group, citing the school tragedy which had, in its words, “raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level.”

Investors saw Cerberus’ move as a surprise (an added wrinkle: the father of the founder of Cerberus lives in Newtown) despite the raging gun debate. But many in the gun owning community saw it as a ray of hope. Finally, maybe, some classic gun brands would be free from an umbrella group that, in the opinion of many, was destroying untold brand value.

“Cerberus is fu***ng up those gun making companies without any help whatsoever from George Soros. Every company they’ve bought is making inferior products to those made before the acquisition, and at higher prices. That’s why it’s important to support the remaining makers (Ruger, S&W, Taurus, Glock, Kel Tec, among others). Cerberus is ruining some great brand names that had long traditions of quality,” wrote user “Rbstern” on a message board back in March.

Freedom Group has faced two distinct problems since buying up some of the most storied names in firearms, including Barnes Bullets, Remington, Bushmaster, Dakota, Marlin, Parker. The first was a rumor that the conglomerate was a holding company owned by liberal boogeyman billionaire George Soros, who, the rumor went, would then close them down. That rumor turned out to be just another wild conspiracy theory but was so string that the NRA itself had to issue an official denial.

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Aleppo residents, battered by war, struggle to survive

C.J. Chivers reports: Inside the classrooms where they once studied, the boys darted like a pack. Their banging and clanking could be heard for a city block.

The playground outside had been hit by a Syrian Air Force airstrike, which fractured the school’s walls. Now the children were smashing the furniture, prying off wooden desktops and bench seats, rushing away with what they could.

The Isam al-Nadri School for Boys was being dismantled for the firewood it contained. One sixth grader, Ahmed, clutching the kindling he had made by ransacking a room, offered an irreducible argument for looting his own school. “I want heat,” he said.

Winter is descending on Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and the bloodied stage for an urban battle, now running into its sixth month, between rebels and the military of President Bashar al-Assad.

As temperatures drop and the weakened government’s artillery thunders on, Aleppo is administered by no one and slipping into disaster. Front-line neighborhoods are rubble. Most of the city’s districts have had no electricity and little water for weeks. All of Aleppo suffers from shortages of oil, food, medicine, doctors and gas.

Diseases are spreading. Parks and courtyards are being defoliated for firewood, turning streets once lined with trees into avenues bordered by stumps. Months’ worth of trash is piled high, often beside bread lines where hundreds of people wait for a meager stack of loaves.

One of the Middle East’s beautiful and historic cities is being forced by scarcity and violence into a bitter new shape. Overlaying it all is a mix of fatigue and distrust, the sentiments of a population divided in multiple ways. [Continue reading…]

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How Pakistan’s children are paying the price for the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden

Reuters reports: Gunmen shot dead six health workers on an anti-polio drive in a string of attacks in Pakistan over 24 hours, officials said on Tuesday, raising fears for the future of efforts to eradicate the crippling disease in one of its last strongholds.

It was not clear who was behind the shootings, but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the vaccination campaign as a Western plot. The campaign aims to wipe out polio in one of the last three countries where it is endemic.

“Such attacks deprive Pakistan’s most vulnerable population – especially children – of basic life-saving health interventions,” the World Health Organization and the UN Children’s Fund, which are working with the Pakistani government on the campaign, said in a joint statement.

Health officials suspended the campaign in two provinces of Pakistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Karachi, the capital of Sindh, is Pakistan’s biggest city and home to 18 million people.

Four people were killed in separate attacks on health workers in Karachi on Tuesday, the UN said. Another health worker was killed in the same city on Monday.

The team had received telephone calls warning workers they would regret helping the “infidel” campaign against polio, health official Gul Naz said.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, gunmen on a motorbike shot a 17-year-old girl supervising an anti-polio campaign, government official Javed Marwar said.

She died of her wounds in hospital, a doctor said.

All of the victims were Pakistanis who are among the tens of thousands working with a UN-backed program to eradicate polio, a disease which can be prevented but not cured and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection.

Pakistan, its neighbour, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are the only three countries where polio is still endemic, and so are key to the campaign to eradicate the disease worldwide. At least 35 children have been infected in Pakistan this year.

There have been at least three other shootings involving polio-eradication workers this year.

Some Islamists and Muslim preachers say the polio vaccine is a Western plot to sterilize Muslims while other religious leaders have taken part in campaigns aimed at debunking that myth.

Accusations that immunization campaigns are cover for spies were given credence when it emerged that the United States had used a Pakistani vaccination team to gather intelligence about Osama bin Laden.

In Karachi, provincial Health Minister Saghir Ahmed said the government had told 24,000 polio workers it was suspending the anti-polio drive in Sindh province.

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NRA comes out of hiding and promises meaningful something or other

Reuters reports: The National Rifle Association said on Tuesday it wanted to contribute meaningfully to prevent another massacre like the Connecticut shooting, suggesting a sharp change in tone for the largest U.S. gun rights group.

“The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown,” the organization said in a statement.

It said it plans a news conference on Friday after staying silent as a matter of common decency and out of respect for families in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a school last Friday.

“The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again,” the statement said. An NRA spokesman did not immediately respond when asked to elaborate on what the contributions might entail.

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How gun defenders deny the science on stopping more massacres

Alternet: Their innocence underlies our horror. In any mass shooting, we speak of the innocent bystanders, but for children to be gunned down prior to the end of their first semester in school leaves us speechless. While the victims remained anonymous, President Obama demanded “meaningful action.” But what do we, as a nation, do to slow the loss of innocent lives?

Almost immediately as the words “gun control” began to be uttered, opponents defended the status quo with their beliefs: that no law could have prevented this because the gun used by the shooter was legally purchased and registered; that if teachers had been armed lives would have been saved; that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

I’m hearing an eerie echo of the partisan disavowal of data showing the immediate perils of climate change, of Darwin’s theory of evolution and, in the days leading up to the election, the data of the polling aggregators, who predicted an Obama victory.

Indeed, the Pew Research Center found that previous mass shootings have not altered people’s core values regarding gun control, so despite slaughtering 20 children, we can expect the Newtown, Connecticut, mass shooting, to also have no such effect. This is a prediction based on the data, which as a scientist, I know to be the best basis available to both understand and address any issue.

And yet, we should hear the data as loud as we heard the gunshots (data which Ezra Klein conveniently compiled in his Washington Post blog on Friday). Mother Jones reported that 61 mass shootings have occurred in the US in the past 30 years, mostly with legally obtained guns. We witnessed 5 of the 11 most violent mass shootings since 2007, when most of the kindergarteners killed in Newtown were born. According to economist Richard Florida, writing in the Atlantic, states with the tightest gun control laws correlate to the states with the lowest gun related deaths.

As with climate change, we possess data that that documents a growing problem as well as a clear suggestion of actions that could ameliorate the problem. In the case of climate change, a recent report from the National Center for Atmospheric Research showed that the most ominous climate change algorithms best predicted what has occurred in the past decade. These algorithms forecast a global eight-degree temperature rise by 2100, a prediction that is incompatible with life as we know it.

The data also argue for tough gun control: when guns are not as easily available there are fewer gun deaths. [Continue reading…]

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5 reasons our changing climate is more dangerous than you think

Alternet: This week the sane among us will scoff at those hoarding candles and food for another apocalypse that fails to materialize. We’ll laugh at the accounts of people readying their bunkers and at store shelves being wiped clean. We know that the world will not come to a cataclysmic end on December 21.

Here’s what we’re not so good at understanding: We are part of a slowly enfolding tragedy in which the end of the world as we know it may be getting closer and closer. It won’t happen on any particular day that we can pinpoint and there won’t be a giant explosion or a big flood that will wipe everything away. There will be many floods and fires over many years. One species, one crop dying off after another.

This may seem like a bad disaster flick straight out of Hollywood, but unfortunately, all of us have already been cast in this drama and it’s called Climate Change. The prognosis for heading off this catastrophe is not great … but it’s also not impossible. We don’t need fear-mongering, but we do need a kick in the pants. And that’s a gross understatement. We need decisive action on a scale that we’ve yet to see materialize. There are great things being done and wise words being written. Osha Gray Davidson has detailed Germany’s rise as an renewable energy giant, and says that we can follow in its footsteps if we want. Alex Steffen believes cities will be the key to transforming our future and has presented a path for change. Bill McKibben and 350.org have led one campaign after another to raise consciousness, fight fossil fuel giants, stop dirty energy, and ignite action. Unless more of us join in their efforts and create new ones of our own, we’ll be headed toward a disaster in which no amount of canned goods or personal bunkers will save us. Here are five scary reasons things may be about to get a whole lot worse. [Continue reading…]

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Drone war: ‘On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed’

A feature report for Der Spiegel (I linked to the first part on Sunday), describes the experiences of drone operator, Brandon Bryant.

Bryant remembers the first time he fired a missile, killing two men instantly. As Bryant looked on, he could see a third man in mortal agony. The man’s leg was missing and he was holding his hands over the stump as his warm blood flowed onto the ground — for two long minutes. He cried on his way home, says Bryant, and he called his mother.

“I felt disconnected from humanity for almost a week,” he says, sitting in his favorite coffee shop in Missoula, where the smell of cinnamon and butter wafts in the air. He spends a lot of time there, watching people and reading books by Nietzsche and Mark Twain, sometimes getting up to change seats. He can’t sit in one place for very long anymore, he says. It makes him nervous.

His girlfriend broke up with him recently. She had asked him about the burden he carries, so he told her about it. But it proved to be a hardship she could neither cope with nor share.

When Bryant drives through his hometown, he wears aviator sunglasses and a Palestinian scarf. The inside of his Chrysler is covered with patches from his squadrons. On his Facebook page, he’s created a photo album of his coins, unofficial medals he was awarded. All he has is this one past. He wrestles with it, but it is also a source of pride.

When he was sent to Iraq in 2007, he posted the words “ready for action” on his profile. He was assigned to an American military base about 100 kilometers (63 miles) from Baghdad, where his job was to take off and land drones.

As soon as the drones reached flying altitude, pilots in the United States took over. The Predator can remain airborne for an entire day, but it is also slow, which is why it is stationed near the area of operation. Bryant posed for photos wearing sand-colored overalls and a bulletproof vest, leaning against a drone.

Two years later, the Air Force accepted him into a special unit, and he was transferred to the Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. He and a fellow soldier shared a bungalow in a dusty town called Clovis, which consists mainly of trailers, gas stations and evangelical churches. Clovis is located hours away from the nearest city.

Bryant preferred night shifts, because that meant it was daytime in Afghanistan. In the spring, the landscape, with its snow-covered peaks and green valleys, reminded him of his native Montana. He saw people cultivating their fields, boys playing soccer and men hugging their wives and children.

When it got dark, Bryant switched to the infrared camera. Many Afghans sleep on the roof in the summer, because of the heat. “I saw them having sex with their wives. It’s two infrared spots becoming one,” he recalls.

He observed people for weeks, including Taliban fighters hiding weapons, and people who were on lists because the military, the intelligence agencies or local informants knew something about them.

“I got to know them. Until someone higher up in the chain of command gave me the order to shoot.” He felt remorse because of the children, whose fathers he was taking away. “They were good daddies,” he says.
[…]
At some point, Brandon Bryant just wanted to get out and do something else. He spent a few more months overseas, this time in Afghanistan. But then, when he returned to New Mexico, he found that he suddenly hated the cockpit, which smelled of sweat. He began spraying air freshener to get rid of the stench. He also found he wanted to do something that saved lives rather than took them away. He thought working as a survival trainer might fit the bill, although his friends tried to dissuade him.

The program that he then began working on in his bungalow in Clovis every day was called Power 90 Extreme, a boot camp-style fitness regimen. It included dumbbell training, push-ups, chin-ups and sit-ups. He also lifted weights almost every day.

On uneventful days in the cockpit, he would write in his diary, jotting down lines like: “On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed. Total war. Every horror witnessed. I wish my eyes would rot.”

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Lost in the Middle East

Excerpt from Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy at All? by Amaney A. Jamal:

They hate what we see right here in this chamber—a democratically elected government. . . . They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble.

— President George W. Bush, September 20, 2001, quoted in The Stakes: America in the Middle East by Shibley Telhami.

Perhaps nothing is more insulting to Arab societies than U.S. claims that America values freedoms in ways that ordinary Muslim and Arab citizens don’t—or even worse, can’t. It is one thing to claim that the United States has strong geostrategic interests in the region that render democracy inconsequential; it is another altogether to sell such interest, which has resulted in authoritarian durability, as the result of something inherently undemocratic among the people of the region. Not only has the United States continued to invest in the myth of a civilizational divide but it now designs policies to remedy this clash that miss the root cause of the problem and, indeed, perpetuate it.

Because democratic inferiority is the policy theory du jour, we are now confronted with a new set of policies aimed at addressing it. The United States is currently engaged in bolstering liberal and secular elements of Arab societies as a means to counter the influence of Islamists. This strategy does little to address the sources of anti-Americanism in the region. But describing the problem as an ideological one exonerates the United States from culpability because this strategy implies that Islamists are problematic because of their Islamic belief systems and not their anti-Americanism.

In fact, commentators often assume that Islamists are anti-American by default, failing to recognize the significant variation that exists among Islamists in their anti-American sentiments. While Islamists have shown significant levels of moderation on domestic political issues relating to Islam, whether it is human rights, women’s rights, or democracy, they have been less compromising on the issues that they are most passionate about, like foreign policy. Islamist groups have shown a remarkable willingness to play within the rules of democratic elections—in part because they can be confident about the level of their support among the voters. According to Muriel Asseburg, “The democratic openings that have been achieved, albeit limited, have encouraged many Islamists to pursue their agendas through the ballot box rather than violence; when and where Islamists have been allowed to do so, they have started to work for change within the political systems.” [Continue reading…]

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Chuck Hagel: America shouldn’t be in the lead on Syria, not time to attack Iran

The Cable: The American people are weary of war and aren’t up for another military adventure in either Syria or Iran, former Nebraska senator and potential defense secretary Chuck Hagel told The Cable.

Hagel sat down for a 90-minute exclusive interview in his Georgetown office in May, well before President Barack Obama began vetting him for a top national security position in his second-term cabinet, perhaps to replace Leon Panetta at the Pentagon.

In previously unreleased portions of that interview, Hagel commented on how the United States should move forward in Syria and Iran, urging caution, patience, and a focus on multilateral diplomacy.

“I think we’ve got to be very wise and careful on this and continue to work with the multilateral institutions in the lead in Syria. I don’t think America wants to be in the lead on this,” he said. “What you have to do is manage the problem. You manage it to a higher ground of possible solutions, ultimately to try to get to a resolution. You don’t have control over what’s going on in Syria.”

“You’ve got to be patient, smart, wise, manage the problem,” he said.

The Obama administration has resisted intervention in Syria based on the risk that arming the opposition directly could fuel the fire and out of concern that establishing a no-fly zone would require a major U.S. commitment with uncertain results.

Hagel said he agreed with that policy, and urged caution and patience when dealing with the Syrian crisis — though it’s worth reiterating that these remarks were made in May.

“I don’t think I’d do anything different from what the Obama administration is doing. I think they are handling this responsibly and working with everybody. It’s frustrating; it’s maddening. I get all that. But we’re still in the longest war in American history and our standing in that part of the world is not that good,” he said.

Hagel believes that the world is moving toward more diffused power structure where the United States no longer remains the single unchallenged superpower. That, combined with America’s internal problems and the desire for Americans to end over a decade of war, points to the need for a diplomatic solution in Syria, he said.

“We’ve got to understand great-power limitations. There are so many uncontrollable variables at play in Syria and the Middle East,” Hagel said. “You work through the multilateral institutions that are available, the U.N., the Arab league. The last thing you want is an American-led or Western-led invasion into Syria.” [Continue reading…]

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The eurozone’s delayed reckoning

Nouriel Roubini writes: The risks facing the eurozone have been reduced since the summer, when a Greek exit looked imminent and borrowing costs for Spain and Italy reached new and unsustainable heights. But, while financial strains have since eased, economic conditions on the eurozone’s periphery remain shaky.

Several factors account for the reduction in risks. For starters, the European Central Bank’s “outright monetary transactions” program has been incredibly effective: interest-rate spreads for Spain and Italy have fallen by about 250 basis points, even before a single euro has been spent to purchase government bonds. The introduction of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which provides another €500 billion ($650 billion) to be used to backstop banks and sovereigns, has also helped, as has European leaders’ recognition that a monetary union alone is unstable and incomplete, requiring deeper banking, fiscal, economic, and political integration.

CommentsBut, perhaps most important, Germany’s attitude toward the eurozone in general, and Greece in particular, has changed. German officials now understand that, given extensive trade and financial links, a disorderly eurozone hurts not just the periphery but the core. They have stopped making public statements about a possible Greek exit, and just supported a third bailout package for the country. As long as Spain and Italy remain vulnerable, a Greek blowup could spark severe contagion before Germany’s election next year, jeopardizing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chances of winning another term. So Germany will continue to finance Greece for the time being. [Continue reading…]

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Low turnout in Egypt’s referendum raises questions about voting fatigue, stalling tactics

The Associated Press reports: Just under a third of voters turned out for the first stage of the referendum on a constitution meant to be a historic milestone in setting Egypt’s future — a showing critics say deepens doubts over the legitimacy of a charter that has already polarized the country.

The dismal showing also raises the question whether Egyptians have been turned off by the turmoil that has characterized the country’s politics throughout the nearly two years since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic regime.

Last Saturday’s voting took place in 10 of Egypt’s 27 provinces, including Cairo and the nation’s second largest city Alexandria. Some 26 million voters were eligible to vote, but only 32 percent of them did. Voting in the remainder 17 provinces will take place the coming Saturday.

The turnout was the second lowest of the relentless series of five nationwide elections that Egyptians have been called to in the 22 months since Mubarak’s fall in last year’s popular uprising. The highest was nearly 60 percent in the election of parliament’s lawmaking lower chamber. The lowest was an embarrassing 8 percent for the vote for the upper chamber, a largely toothless body that the public cares little about.

Besides the low turnout, preliminary results show that the “yes” vote carried the first round only by a slim margin of 56 percent — hardly the resounding endorsement the Islamists were looking for to silence the increasingly vocal and united opposition that called on supporters to vote “no.”

For weeks, legal experts in Egypt have said if turnout is low and the final majority in favor of the constitution is lower than 70 percent, it would raise damaging questions about how representative the document is of the nation.

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Islamist rebels rescue NBC crew held captive in Syria

NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and members of his network production team were freed from captors in Syria after a firefight at a checkpoint on Monday, five days after they were taken prisoner, NBC News said early Tuesday.

“After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed. We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country,” the network said in a statement.

The captors were unidentified and were not believed to be loyal to the Assad regime.

Engel, 39, along with other employees the network did not identify, disappeared shortly after crossing into northwest Syria from Turkey on Thursday. The network had not been able to contact them until learning that they had been freed on Monday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

After entering Syria, Engel and his team were abducted, tossed into the back of a truck and blindfolded before being transported to an unknown location believed to be near the small town of Ma’arrat Misrin. During their captivity, they were blindfolded and bound, but otherwise not physically harmed, the network said.

Early Monday evening local time, the prisoners were being moved to a new location in a vehicle when their captors ran into a checkpoint manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group. There was a confrontation and a firefight ensued. Two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped, the network said.

The NBC News crew was unharmed in the incident. They remained in Syria until Tuesday morning when they made their way to the border and re-entered Turkey, the network said. They were to be evaluated and debriefed, but had communicated that everyone was in good health.

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Newtown shootings: why education is key to preventing mass killings

Peter Aylward writes: There is still little information about the perpetrator of the atrocity in Newtown, Connecticut, although I would be surprised if Adam Lanza didn’t fit the general profile of mass killers: a loner, introverted and on the margins of his social group. What has been reported is that he killed his mother, then went on to kill 20 pupils and six adults at the school where she apparently had links, before taking his own life.

This incident has deep resonance with the Dunblane massacre in Scotland in 1996 when Thomas Watt Hamilton walked into a primary school and shot dead 16 young children and a teacher before killing himself. My own recent research into the Dunblane tragedy established early developmental trauma in Hamilton highlighted by an unhealthy, problematic relationship with his mother and sibling and crucially an absent, and abandoning, father. This was also the situation for Anders Breivik, the mass killer in Norway.

My experience with the assessment and treatment of homicidal perpetrators at Broadmoor hospital informs me that both Hamilton’s and Breivik’s murderous rage had their roots in unresolved family relationships and conflicts that became displaced into their community; not simply that somebody has a difficult childhood and later becomes a troubled adult.

One understandable response to such incidents is to review gun laws in the hope that this will prevent further incidents occurring. This might restrict firearms access – in America’s case, this may well be a crucial step. But this in itself will never be enough: rather like the security scanning machines at airports, tighter regulation alone would do little to help us understand the murderousness in the mind. Such violent acts appear incomprehensible and the subsequent inquiries too often reach a simplistic conclusion by focusing on the social or political grievances of the perpetrator, coupled with a diagnosis of mental illness or personality disorder or both.

This misses the crucial fact that the perpetrator’s crime is inextricably linked to the individual’s early experience. All responses to violence need to include a full understanding of the history of the perpetrator in an attempt to establish the “why”. This will offer the only opportunity we have to establish the fundamental truth. The question arises, how does society deal with “marginalised” individuals in their midst like Hamilton, Breivik or Lanza, and how do we try to prevent such events from recurring?

It is sadly inevitable that we will continue to experience individuals committing criminal acts as a corollary to fundamentally feeling uncontained, excluded and emasculated (originating from the experience in their first tier of socialisation, namely the family). So there is a vital role to be played by the next tier of socialisation, namely education.

I believe we need to educate the next generation of mothers and fathers, starting at the earliest phase of schooling, about relationships. This would include the vital importance of developing the capacity to reflect, thereby mitigating exclusion and promoting that fundamental human need of a sense of belonging. [Continue reading…]

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War is raging in Aleppo but in a classroom 40km away, there are grounds for hope

Luke Harding writes: I had come in search of families displaced by Syria’s war. But when I entered Qabbasin secondary school I was surprised to discover lessons were going on. Two months ago head Nasar Mamar decided to reopen.

There was fighting going on down the road in Aleppo. But Qabbasin, some 40km away, was comparatively safe – safe, if you ignored the regime jets flying overhead. “We need Syria to be an educated country. We should not be afraid,” Mamar explained, taking me on a tour of his classrooms.

Downstairs I found 30 boys in the middle of an English lesson. Written on the blackboard was some useful vocabulary: “library” and “explorer”, and examples of the present continuous tense – “I am eating. I am reading” – with a neat translation in Arabic. Their teacher was 30-year-old Abu Hassan. Hassan said he had fled from Aleppo. He was now working as an unsalaried volunteer. “I want to teach. It’s my job,” he said.

Hassan was melancholic when I asked him about the destruction of Aleppo – “my lovely city”, as he put it. Much of it is now a smouldering ruin: the medieval souks dating back to the 14th century part-destroyed; the old citadel the frontline between embattled government troops, the Free Syrian Army and jihadist militias.

Syria’s war reached Aleppo nearly six months ago. Since then the city’s cosmopolitan charm has been snuffed out; it is a place of hunger, cold, misery and death from the sky, he said.

I asked Hassan whom he thought was responsible for his Syria’s collapse, moral and social. He thought for a moment, then replied: “For me, all of us. All of us have wrong actions. I wish everything would be back how it was.” Hassan said he was an English graduate from Aleppo University. He declined to give me his full family name. “I’d rather not,” he said. I left Hassan’s classroom – lit only by a weak winter sun – urging the boys to study hard.

Many of the pupils now back at school had fled with their families from Aleppo. Syria’s uprising began in March 2011; since then the town’s population has swollen from 18,000 to 30,000.

It’s a similar story across rebel-controlled northern Syria: millions are displaced, staying with relatives, renting private rooms, or crammed into dismal border camps. Qabbasin has a mixed population of Arabs and Kurds, and despite tensions elsewhere is a model of inter-ethnic co-operation. Mamar, the head, is a Kurd; most of his staff are Arabs; the headteacher at the girls’ school next door is a Turkman. [Continue reading…]

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