There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the early morning attack on the consulate in the Athens suburb of Chalandri. The area has been cordoned off by police and there has not been any further details from the authorities.
I don’t know whether it’s that I’m simply getting older or the world is really an angrier place.
When I use that phrase—“the world”—I’m thinking primarily of the online space in which many of us sort of live and kind of move and have at least a portion of our being. Sure, there are links and blog posts and poems and stories to be found where the syncopation of grief and gladness are a truly magnificent thing. But on the whole, the social media score is one of outrage, an out-of-control violence via words.
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JONATHAN HAIDT
What is happening to our country, and our universities? It sometimes seems that everything is coming apart. To understand why, I have found it helpful to think about an idea from cosmology called “the fine-tuned universe.” There are around 20 fundamental constants in physics — things like the speed of light, Newton’s gravitational constant, and the charge of an electron. In the weird world of cosmology, these are constants throughout our universe, but it is thought that some of them could be set to different values in other universes. As physicists have begun to understand our universe, they have noticed that many of these physical constants seem to be set just right to allow matter to condense and life to get started.”
And again, it may be that I’m simply getting older, but who in his right mind wants to listen to that? I remember several years ago a phrase that was making the rounds: “compassion fatigue.”
Compassion Fatigue is a state experienced by those helping people or animals in distress; it is an extreme state of tension and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it can create a secondary traumatic stress for the helper
It was during that time when everybody and his grandma were advocating for a cause, all legitimately good. But the pleas were so numerous and, honestly, at times overwhelming that it wore folks out.
Normally good-hearted, uber-compassionate people sighed and said, “Too much. I need a break.” People backed off, and a number of organizations floundered for a while.
In a not-exactly-but-somewhat-similar way, that’s what I currently feel in my aging bones. I’ve got outrage fatigue. I need a break. Truth be told, I think we all do.
BY BENJAMIN FEARNOW//Right Wing Radio Host Says ‘Muslims Are Treated Better Than Christians And White People’ In America.
Right-wing radio host Jesse Lee Peterson claimed Muslims in America are “treated better” than white people as he expressed concern that repressed white Americans may be incited to carry out an attack in the U.S. similar to the recent massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, that left at least 50 dead.
Peterson said during his Friday radio show that “white people are getting angry rather than speaking up prior to anger” because “normal whites” and Christians are treated more poorly in the U.S. than Muslims are.
The controversial pro–Donald Trump host rejected the labeling of suspected Christchurch mosque shooter as a “white supremacist,” claiming he doesn’t understand the news media’s definition. Peterson warned listeners not to support politicians, including Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, because “if white people get angry, this is what’s going to happen” in the United States.
Peterson, who is black, claimed on his national show he doesn’t “really know what it means” for someone to be a white supremacist in New Zealand and derided the term.
“But I know here in this country, the antifa people are protected,” he said, referring to anti-fascist militant groups. “And they are more violent and terrorist than normal whites. But the normal whites are called ‘white supremacy’ while the radical, antifa whites are being protected” by the Democratic Party and news media.
Peterson went on to justify his claim that Muslims in America are treated better than white people by pointing to the 2018 election of Minnesota Democrat Omar and Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib, the nation’s first two Muslim congresswomen.
“In this country, the Muslims are treated better than the Christians and white people,” Peterson continued. “We just saw where they allow two Muslims to become congressmen [sic] in our government, and that is not good. Those two women hate Israel, and they hate America.”
Both Tlaib and Omar expressed their sadness and shock with the news last Friday of the New Zealand massacre. Tlaib issued a statement saying, “This morning I tried to hold back tears as I hugged my two brown, Muslim boys a little tighter and longer. I am so angry at those who follow the ‘white supremacy’ agenda in my own country that sends a signal across the world that massacres like this is some kind of call to action.”
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Peterson gave some advice to angry white people who may be considering mimicking the New Zealand mosque shooting: “You’ve got to start standing up before you get your anger out of control in this country.”
On Sunday morning, Peterson tweeted a headline from the right-wing New American magazine to his nearly 55,000 followers: “Christchurch Shooter Praises Communist China, Condemns Conservatism and Capitalism: Media Call Him a Trump Supporter.” The right-wing minister is only one of dozens of high-profile conservatives defending Trump and his rhetoric against accusations he influenced the New Zealand shooter.
Last year, Peterson claimed there wasn’t one thing he could think of that black people went into and “made better.” And a white producer of his show proclaimed on the air that the n-word is not racist.
At least one person has been killed and several others wounded in a shooting on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht, police in the Netherlands have said.
Authorities immediately raised the terror alert for the area to the maximum level and said they are considering the possibility of a “terrorist motive” in the attack.
Dutch military police went on extra alert at Dutch airports and at key buildings in the country as the police launched a manhunt for the gunman.
Heavily armed police officers flooded the October 21st square, a tram station outside the city centre where the shooting took place, and later erected a white tent over an area where a body appeared to be lying next to the tram.
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte called the situation “very worrying” and the country’s counterterror coordinator said a crisis team was meeting to discuss the situation.
A 50-year-old man from the village of Stanwell, near Heathrow Airport, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and racially aggravated public order offences.
A 19-year-old man was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Neil Basu, head of counter-terrorism policing, said Sunday that while the investigation was just beginning, the incident had “hallmarks of a terror event.”
He added “police are committed to tackling all forms of toxic extremist ideology.”
