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From Reuters: MOSCOW, April 19 (Reuters) - The...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:06:00 -0400

From Reuters:

MOSCOW, April 19 (Reuters) - The Russian-installed leader of Chechnya criticized U.S. police on Friday for killing an ethnic Chechen suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing and blamed the violence on his upbringing in the United States.

“The root of evil should be looked for in the United States,” Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments posted online after the police shot dead Tamerlan Tsarnaev and hunted for his brother Dzhokhar, his suspected accomplice.

“They (the brothers) grew up and studied in the United States and their attitudes and beliefs were formed there,” Kadyrov said. “Any attempt to make a connection between Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs is in vain.”

Kadyrov, a tough pro-Kremlin leader whose security services have been accused of human rights abuses such as kidnappings and torture, questioned why the U.S. police had not been able to arrest Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

“Apparently the special services needed a result by whatever means to appease society,” he said.

On Boston.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 01:38:00 -0400

Hey, everyone. I’d just like to take a moment away from the usual for some words on the bombing in Boston, and some of the responses I’ve been seeing on social media sites. There have been numerous posts that’ve brushed off the bombing with other tragedies that range from the tangentially related to the utterly inane. I get bringing up the bombings in Iraq that have so far killed dozens, days before the vote there. Or the atrocities that scar entire communities on a daily basis, mostly outside the West. Drones are a stretch, although I get the link to hellfire missiles. Western imperialism is where things start to get ridiculous. However, regardless of the strength of the association, I find the reasoning behind it all to be crass and absurd. Such a zero-sum game of comparative suffering is not only ridiculously insensitive but strategically self-mutilating.

Let’s reduce things down to the barebones, for a moment. One such offending statement may go like this: “Those who find the deaths in Boston tragic really should consider that more people have died today from the continued violence in Syria.” This can be generalized into two types of statements. It could just weigh the two events: “Those who find X tragic really should consider Y.” Alternatively (and, within my newsfeeds, more commonly), it could weigh the two events in the context of some factor that implies a negative judgement on those that dislike/disagree/are offended by the comparison. Often, this context pertains to geography and the economic north-south divide (“Those who find X in America tragic should really consider Y in Pakistan”). The implied “negative judgement” often wraps itself with a cloak of anything ranging from global social justice to anti-Western imperialism, that shields its wearer from both internal and external criticisms. It also tends to shield them from human sensitivity and proper reason.

The reasoning behind these comparative statements are atrocious. Let’s swap some variables. Again, starting from “Those who find X tragic should really consider Y”. Personalizing this can get you anything from “If you consider your abusive childhood tragic you should really consider the fate of child soldiers” to “If you consider your rape traumatic you should really consider all the women sold into sexual slavery”. The connections implied in these statements are the same. You are asked to weigh suffering that is closer and more salient to you against a similar (or, sometimes, “similar”) type of suffering that is further and less salient to you. This is meant to link your emotions around event X to event Y; to put things in perspective; to trigger your empathy, a more potent force than the relative detachment of sympathy.

Does this work? In a horrible way, it both does, and does not. I’ve seen comparisons between the bombing in Boston to American drone strikes in the Middle East garner much approval. I’ve also seen vehemently negative responses. However, imagine the differences in approach. If I support the statement, I am likely to be more emotionally distant from the trauma of the bombings, or come from some sort of cognitive state that is more distant (i.e., I may live in Boston but may also be Korean and more focused on the tensions on the peninsula). I am much less likely to support such statements if, say, I’ve had my leg blown off by the explosions, or lost a loved one to the tragedy. The reason why this is horrible is that it is carnivorous. If it garners much favour with those that are not as affected as those who are, it does so at the expense of the latter group, by making “comparative” light on their suffering. It relies on its tendency to prey on those who are hurt, to sway those that are not. It is a low and twisted tactic - and ultimately, it is bad strategy.

There are many atrocities that scar our world on a regular basis, and it is imperative that they not be forgotten. It is also imperative that the individuals, organizations, movements, etc., that try to combat these causes not be ignored or condemned. Crude statements that compare suffering alienate those that are hurting (along with many of their supporters, friends, family, etc.) from those that make such statements. In the conflation of the proponent with their cause, these statements alienate the hurt from the cause. Those drawn toward the cause, however, are minimally affected; they may “like” a Facebook status or reblog a Tumblr post, but their distance from event X means that whatever transference of emotion from X to Y is, at best, equally distant.

This could be conceptualized of as a scale with differently sized stones. Comparing suffering to “raise awareness” may shift some smaller sized stones from one side to another; on the other hand, it is much more likely to move significantly larger stones in the opposite direction. This effect is further compounded as it takes a lot more to effectively support a cause than to be alienated from it; it takes much more to contribute to Greenpeace than to be offended by its tactics and distanced from its cause (as well as from its affiliates by association, and the like). In short: such statements are more likely to do much greater harm than good to the causes it might try to support.

I agree that it is a deeply disturbing fact that whilst the bombing in Boston was a shock to the entire country, the sixty-one deaths in Iraq drew much sympathy but little surprise. I think it’s safe to assume that the people that follow this tumblr are more aware of this discrepancy, more often, than most (as well as to assume that we’d all prefer if more news agencies around the world took a greater international focus than they do now). I also think it is safe to assume that, if tragedy were to strike your family, or your immediate community, you would feel more traumatized about that than the conflicts that burn the blood and bones of too many people into too much earth, around the globe. I could go on here about the logic behind “duty of care” and the sliding gradient of obligations that we have to each other but that isn’t the issue today. Because I think we can all agree that no one should be shamed for mourning over the death of a sister but not for the death of a stranger; that no one should be judged for suffering more from a close loss than a distant one; that however utilitarian your ethics, you have no right to condemn someone hurting for not hurting more.

Of course, such statements of “comparative suffering” are different from two related but dissimilar types of remarks. I think we can all agree that there is nothing wrong with conveying a general sense of horror at the sheer number of people who have died today, in Boston and Iraq and Syria and elsewhere; there is nothing wrong at being primed by the bombing in Boston to recognize bombings elsewhere in the world; the problem with the type we’re talking about has to do with its accusatory stance, and its making light of X to “raise awareness” of Y. As for the second type, I’m sure some will disagree with me, but understand where my stance is coming from: statements that link event X with a Y that is strongly correlated with (and probably causative of) X. A recent American example of this is Sandy Hook and gun control (for others it may be Sandy Hook and mental health, for some it may be both). These statements are dissimilar because addressing Y may be critical in preventing future X. Think of the family members of the victims of gun violence that advocate for stronger gun control legislation. Regardless of your personal stance on gun control, I hope you can see why I believe such statements are dissimilar. However, such statements are still harmful if they, as aforementioned, make light of X. “We must strengthen gun control legislation in order to prevent future Sandy Hooks” is arguably a more sensitive statement (among other things) than “If you think the violent murder of your child was a horrible thing, you should really consider all of the people killed by legally owned guns this year due to weak gun control legislation.”

As a Harvard student, as a person close to the bombing and the people affected by it, I feel like I can say that I’m not terribly receptive at the moment to interjections that compare the sense of horror in this community to the sense of horror we “should” be feeling about other places. I’m hurt by people making light of human suffering, even if in the “cause” of fighting “greater” human suffering. More importantly, I am outraged at any statement that suggests that my concern for Boston somehow lessens how sick I find the atrocities in Syria, how cold I find the proliferation of drones, or even how afraid I am for my family in Korea that live under the range of the North’s missiles, tanks, and possibly nukes. My humanity is not zero-sum; people’s compassions are not zero-sum; this isn’t a terror Olympics, and the practice of sorting gold from bronze disgusts me.

My deepest condolences to the victims of the bombing in Boston; to their friends and families; to their communities. As to the victims in Iraq, and their friends and families, and their communities. As to victims of violence around the world, and those affected by it. I am sorry for your loss; I am sorry that your loss is so often slighted; I am sorry that your trauma is so often made light of.

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International Relations as Depicted by Cats

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From Reuters: MOSCOW, April 19 (Reuters) - The...

On Boston.

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