Overseas Roundup

Good Morning! It's the end of another week, so let's take a look around the world and see what's in the headlines elsewhere. Not surprisingly, outher countries have weighed in on the Virginia Tech shooting. The UAE believes we may be rotten to the core.

AMERICA is yet to recover from the shock of what is being called, “the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history” - a shooting-spree that took the lives of 33 young, promising men and women at a prominent university campus in Virginia.

We too are shocked. All that is known so far is that a student of apparently of Asian origin wielded the gun, a fact which was confirmed in the second wave of attacks that took 30 lives, while some mystery still surrounds the first round of firings that killed three others.

What is also known is that this is the second time in nine months that this university has been shut due to gunfire; and that a bomb threat had been made against the campus two weeks ago. Under these circumstances, it appears strange that no special security measures were then put in place. Had they been, it might have at least helped minimize if not altogether avert, what happened on Monday morning.

It's also intriguing as to how, in an advanced state like Virginia, and on a high technology campus at that, it took two hours for an e-mail to circulate among students about a firing incident on campus - and alerting students that a killer was on the prowl in their midst. Had such a message reached students immediately after the first incident, they would have been in a state of high alert, and it might even have helped capture the assailant.

In many respects, America is currently in the best of positions. Its people are among the best cared for in the world by virtue of the affluence and systems that support life in that nation. Yet, without doubt, something is ailing that society at its very core, symptoms of which are evident in cases like the Virginia one.

Whether this has something to do with the overall weakening of its value system or America's pre-occupation with the affairs in the rest of the world leaving it little time to care for its own affairs, is simply a matter of conjecture.

Naturally, other countries are weighing in on our gun control laws, or lack thereof. The UK is particularly interested in why we don't want more gun control. But it should be obvious, if nobody had guns, then how could we fight back against the shooter?

IT IS surely an American oddity that, after the worst mass shooting in the country’s history, some are already saying that such horrors would be less likely if only guns were easier to own and carry. Americans love firearms. The second item in the constitution’s bill of rights, just after freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the press, is the right to bear arms. It is part of the national religion.

Mass killings remain rare events, whatever outsiders might think, and they also happen in other countries, including those with tight rules on gun ownership. But life in modern America is punctuated frighteningly often by such attacks. Making any sort of accurate international comparison is tricky, but some attempts have been tried. The International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), an activist group, counts 41 school shootings in America since 1996, which have claimed 110 lives, including those in Virginia this week. IANSA also looks at school shootings in 80 other countries. Culling from media reports, they count only 14 school gun killings outside America in the same period. Putting aside the Beslan massacre in Russia—committed by an organised terrorist group—school shootings in all those countries claimed just 59 victims.

As striking are the overall rates of violent death by handguns in America. The country is filled with 200m guns, half the world’s privately-owned total. Residents of other countries may fret that criminals, gang-members and insane individuals are increasingly likely to use guns and knives. But in comparison with America, few other developed countries have much to worry about. The gun-murder rate in America is more than 30 times that of England and Wales, for example. Canada—like America, a “frontier” country with high rates of gun ownership—sees far fewer victims shot down: the firearm murder-rate south of the Canadian border is vastly higher than the rate north of it. America may not quite lead the world in gun murders (South Africa probably holds that dubious title) but it has a dismally prominent position.

What might be done to improve matters in America? The intuitive answer, at least for Europeans and those who live in countries where guns are less easily available, is that laws must be tightened to make it harder to obtain and use such weapons. Not only might that reduce the frequency of criminal acts, goes the argument, but it may also cut the number of accidental deaths and suicides.

Yet some in America are reaching the opposite conclusion. Within hours of the shootings in Virginia on Monday April 16th, a conservative blogger was quoting a Roman military historian, suggesting that “if you want peace, prepare for war” (“si vis pacem, para bellum”). Others put it more bluntly: “an armed society is a polite society”. Virginia’s gun laws are generally permissive. Any adult can buy a handgun after a brief background check (as required by federal law), and anyone who legally owns a handgun and who asks for a permit to carry a concealed weapon must be granted such a permit. Yet Virginia Tech, like many schools and universities, is a gun-free zone. Gun advocates are daring to say that if Virginia Tech allowed concealed weapons, someone might have stopped the rampaging killer. To gun-control advocates, this is self-evident madness.

Lastly, of course, there's always a story about Iraq. It's hard to imagine things getting an worse after the series of bombings this week that have killed hundreds....but Switzerland thinks the worst is yet to come.

Everyone talks of al-Qaeda and its destructive madness. But that's only one small aspect of the problem. The Shiites are fighting among themselves for power and against the Sunnis, who would like to recover it. These two communities - sometimes - find that they agree on only one point: the fight against the “liberator” who very quickly became the invader.

And then, what is mentioned less and less often, is that Iraq has become a country of anarchy where brigands, extortionists and mafias cohabit, and it's not always possible to distinguish them from the militia who have their own representatives in government. In this hell, the Americans - after a fashion - are trying somehow to deal with the most urgent issues first. But by sending reinforcements they are only serving to feed the fire. And this is due to one simple fact: The United States has become the source of the problem.

Recall that less than a month after the entry of GIs into Baghdad on April 9, 2003, George W. Bush declared on the deck of an aircraft carrier amidst much fanfare that the war was over. History is often cruel.

Up to now, the only area of stability in Iraq has been that of the Iraqi Kurds, who have been faithful supporters - perhaps the only ones left - of the Americans. But the Kurds are also beginning to get pulled into the mire. Kurdish President Talabani evoked the American occupier, although that's who he owes his position to. And like an echo, the other Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, threatened to interfere with the Kurdish problem in Turkey [Kurds say the Turks oppress them]. One might as well say that a bomb has just been lit - and with a short fuse - which is located in Kirkuk, where a referendum is supposed to be held to determine whether the oil-rich city should be part of the Kurdish region - a referendum which is naturally unacceptable to Turkey. Ankara, defender of the Turkmen minority, could see this as a pretext to intervene militarily. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has let this be known loud and clear - on April 9, of course, as if to back up his remarks.

Iraq was invaded in a moment of ideological madness by American neoconservatives who dreamed of artificially grafting democracy there - and more likely, a Pax Americana. Four years later, Iraq is submerged in chaos and several wars. And the worst is undoubtedly yet to come.

So, another fun-filled week comes to an end. At long last, we're going to have decent weather this weekend...and I may be able to get the bike out and start riding next week!