One of the oddest facts about the tragedy of suicide is that it isn’t as common in every country, society and age. Rates of suicide appear to rise enormously the more a society becomes wealthy and industrialised. Why should this be? And how can we learn from this about how we might better prevent a terrible loss of life?
4 October 2017
The Conversation: As Spain represses Catalonia’s show of independence, the rest of Europe watches on nervously
In March 2017, former Catalan leader Artur Mas was banned from holding public office after being found guilty of disobeying the Constitutional Court by holding a symbolic referendum in 2014. Such aggressive responses by Spain to the idea of secession have driven increasing numbers of Catalonians toward the independence movement. [...]
The referendum’s legality is certainly contentious, notably because it did not adhere to democratic conventions like the requirement for a minimum threshold of votes. Regardless, Puigdemont is looking to make a declaration of independence in the coming days. [...]
The UN has criticised Madrid for its disproportionate and violent response to a peaceful attempt at self-determination. Human Rights Watch has condemned the Spanish government for violating Catalans’ civil right to peaceful assembly and free expression.
In contrast, the European Union regards the vote as illegal but has called for unity and peaceful relations between Spain and Catalonia.
The Guardian: What if Trump is actually a master of empathy?
It has nothing to do with genuinely identifying with others or actually feeling their pain; that would be sympathy. Instead, empathy is really about having an accurate theory of mind of other people – and getting under their skin. [...]
Trump made a strong empathic connection with his supporters by acknowledging their pain and economic hardship and by promising to Make America (and by extension, them) Great Again. How? It hardly mattered once he made people feel he understood and liked them, something far more effective than policy details. [...]
After all, if you are angry about having lost your job, it is far more emotionally satisfying to blame an immigrant than the likely truth, which is that you lost your job to automation or a shift in the nature of the economy – an abstract explanation without a human target for your anger.
Vox: White American men are a bigger domestic terrorist threat than Muslim foreigners
Radical Islamic terrorists inspired or directed by groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda do pose a clear threat to the US. There is no question about that. Before last night’s deadly shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history occurred in June 2016 when an ISIS-inspired man opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding 53.
And ISIS-linked militants have killed or injured dozens of people in countries like England, France, and Canada so far this year, including two women killed in a stabbing attack in Marseille, France, and several people injured in a car-ramming attack in Edmonton, Canada, just this weekend. [...]
n fact, between 2001 and 2015, more Americans were killed by homegrown right-wing extremists than by Islamist terrorists, according to a study by New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC. [...]
And as my colleague Zack Beauchamp has written, the average likelihood of an American being killed in a terrorist attack in which an immigrant participated in any given year is one in 3.6 million — even including the 9/11 deaths. The average American is more likely to die from their own clothing or a toddler with a gun than an immigrant terrorist. But we’re not banning guns and T-shirts from coming into the country.
African Arguments: “We lose entire communities in the blink of an eye and people do not seem to look.”
As an activist in Maiduguri explains, the situation here is not like that in Syria or Afghanistan in its scope or international awareness. “It’s not been ten years with foreign fighters and a big war with just 50,000 dead,” he sighs. “Here, we lose entire communities in the blink of an eye and people do not seem to look.” [...]
The sheer statistics of the crisis are shocking. At the time of writing, more than 2.3 million people have been displaced. 7.2 million are “food insecure” and are at risk of starvation and malnutrition. And over half a million children are considered to be “severely acutely malnourished”, meaning they are weeks away from death if they don’t receive urgent assistance. [...]
An array of factors limits the extent of the humanitarian intervention in the Lake Chad Basin, such as safety concerns, an overstretched budget, and the politics of intervention. However, Gubio gives undue credit to the will and capacity of the international humanitarian community in the first place. Among other things, its lack of engagement is also undeniably an exercise in privilege. The host communities absorbing those displaced by Boko Haram have no choice but to engage with this crisis. They do not have the option of turning a blind eye.
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