UPDATE

 

UPDATE

Less my readers think this blog is having a positive effect, let me review some incidents I've heard about on the news:
2012
Oct. 9  A 15-year old girl in Pakistan was shot in the neck on her school bus allegedly by Taliban thugs that had stopped the bus.  This was in retaliation for her and her father being outspoken advocates for formal schooling for girls in Pakistan.  As of the 13th she was said to finally be in stable condition.  The Taliban has vowed to kill her and her father.

Oct. 9  Jerry Sandusky sentenced to thirty years in prison for sexual abuse of boys.  No word as to the fate of the other grown men with whom he allegedly shared boys.  Sandusky evidently won't help to stop these other men as he is maintaining his innocence.

Oct. 10  A 50 some year old man in downtown Pittsburgh was sucker punched by one of several teens.  He is expected to be able to return to work in a few days.

Oct. 10 An adult father, William Bailey, and son imitate the limping walk of a five-year old girl with Cerebral Palsy at a neighborhood school bus stop.

Oct.  12 Hundreds of trees were cut down in Los Angeles to accommodate the passage of the space shuttle through the streets.  No explanation as to why they could not have left it at the airport and had the Space Museum be in charge of displaying it there for an admission price nor why any of  thousands of engineers in this country could not figure out how to place the shuttle on a higher base so that the wings would clear the tops of the trees.

Oct. 16(?)  Dr. Phil covered the subject of human trafficking in this country.  It involves thousands of teenage  runaways being forced into prostitution.

Oct. 18  Man arrested for attempting to set off a bomb in New York City.

Oct 19  It was revealed today that the Boy Scouts of America have kept records since the 1920s about sexual abuse and abusers in leadership position within the organization.  The 1247 cases of  alleged  abuse  that took place during the last twenty years happened in 49  states.  Very few cases were reported to the proper authorities. 

Oct.23 A well-known member of the BBC, now deceased, is believed to have been an active  pedophile for years.  The truth is only now being exposed.

Nov. 6  Barrack Obama is president for four more years.  Bad news for bullies.  Good news for victims of bullying.

Nov.25 There was a report of the increasing frequency of hit and run accidents involving bicyclists.

Nov. 28 I heard on the news about two young women in India I believe.  They were arrested for expressing an unpopular opinion on Twitter about a local leader who had died.  Crowds of angry people protested the expression of the girls' opinion.  At least the story had a happy ending in that higher authorities arrested those officials responsible for the girls' arrest.  This incident shows how superior, intolerant social attitudes are related to bullying.
I realize that not everyone is going to agree with my approach to bullying.  However, we really need to discuss the differences of opinion in regard to definition and solution if things are to change.  As you can see from this update, nothing seems to be getting better in regard to bullying.

Dec.14 Lots of bullying incidents around the world have been occurring since my last entry.  There's today's mass shooting in a Conn. elementary school.  28 dead.  What do you think?  Should that be one more point for the NRA or 28?
Then there's the ongoing and escalating efforts to bully the Syrian people by their leader Assad  He reminds me of an infant having a temper tantrum.  He is now firing Scud missiles at Aleppo.   Thank goodness there are enough people willing to stand up physically/militarily to this bully.
In northern Mauritania, a country of West Africa, where extremist Islamists are in control, a woman was beaten and jailed for giving a drink of water to a thirsty man.   Is it fear that makes people want to put the letter of the law ahead of the commandment to love thy neighbor and do good to one's enemies?
In local news a man takes his own life with a gun after killing his girlfriend.  Lots of killings around the country.  Did you know there are 15,000 people killed with guns annually in this country?  That's like over 44 people per day.  I wonder how that compares to the number of gunfight fatalities in the old west?  Of course, in a gun fight one sometimes had a fighting chance.  Today's bullies with guns don't like to give anyone a fighting chance.

Dec. 15  I am heartened by the reaction to the Newtown, Conn. massacre.  So many people finally speaking out about the need for gun control.  Would it not be significant if 20 first graders had to give their lives before our politicians found enough back bone to ban automatic assault weapons and close the gap in the law that allows guns to be bought at gun shows without a background check?
Guns alone are not the problem and therefore not the sole solution to preventing further tragedies of this type.  Machetes, knives, etc. are also lethal weapons.  The difference is one needs to get much closer to the victim than with a gun.  This gives the potential victim or victims more of an opportunity to defend themselves.  If a homicidal bully can't get his hands on a gun, he does have other lethal alternatives. Perhaps schools should make as much effort teaching self-defense skills to children as they do to teach volleyball or basketball.  If we fail, as a society, to stop supporting and encouraging bullying in all its forms, the tragedy in Conn. is bound to repeat itself.

Dec. 16  The Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance program engaged almost 3,000 schools nation-wide in their Mix It Up At Lunch Day which encourages students to have lunch with someone new in the cafeteria.  An excellent way to discourage bullying in schools.  The American Family Association, a group of anti-gay religious zealots, tried to harass schools into not participating.  This is evidence that religious bullying is ongoing in this country.

The Newtown, Conn. tragedy continues to be in the news.  Perhaps that's because people continue to try to understand why it happened.  I'm willing to try to explain one possible scenario.  Let's say there is a first grader who is extremely timid and socially withdrawn.  Some bullying incident happens to him in first grade of which no adult is aware.  The first grade boy is so ashamed of what was done to him that he never tells any one about it.  Let's suppose there follow more incidents of bullying, some of which his teachers allow to occur, including his mother who is a substitute teacher in the school.  The boy, feeling helpless, never retaliates.  But he never forgives the bullies nor does he ever forget.  Flash forward 20 years.  The boy is now a man with a mental illness and access to guns and body armour.  He is finally in a place where he feels strong enough to exact revenge on the first grade students and teachers who humiliated him.  A sane person might take into consideration that 20 years had passed and that the same students and teachers are no longer in that school.  But this scenario involves a mentally ill person.
        I saw an interview with a former caretaker of the Conn. shooter on TV who claimed he was not bullied since there were adults around him all the time he was in elementary school.  First of all, unless he personally was with the child constantly, he is vouching for something he did not personally witness.  Also, one must wonder if there would not be even a few minutes occasionally when there would not be an adult present in the classroom.  And what about the restroom?  I'm not buying this claim that he could not have been bullied in school.
      I would be surprised if school children are not still being bullied by other children speaking in low tones/whispering nasty, negative things to them.  No one else hears it.  And even if the victim tells an adult, it's his/her word against that of the bully.  This happens in the classroom, in the halls, in gym class, in the restrooms, at recess.

Dec. 17 This happened last month I guess but is just making it onto the news.  I believe it occurred in Fayette County of western Pennsylvania.  A rancher was arrested and charged with interfering with pipeline employees after confronting the employees of the company which he believes had discharged acid mine drainage onto his property as well as tearing down fencing.  This is an example of corporate bullying.  Why does the local government support it?

Dec. 18  India.  It was reported that a young woman was viciously gang raped on a tour bus before being thrown off of the moving bus.
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Dec.22 India.  Thousands of citizens are protesting in favor of the death penalty for the gang rapists referred to above.  Government authorities are tear gassing the protesters.  This would seem to show that bullies tend to support other bullies in India.

Dec 23 It did not take long for another mass shooting to occur.  This time it involved four fireman on a call.  Two are dead, the other two wounded.  The shooter shot himself.

2013
Jan. 3  Since the previous date a local woman shot her boyfriend because he took her beer.  An example of the bully being bullied.
      Sad to report that the Indian woman gang raped on the bus, has died.
      The Pentagon says there were 3200 sexual assaults reported by military personnel last year.
      Why do some men think they have the need/right to sexually assault women?  This seems to be a virtually universal problem in every country.  Except for Buddhism, most of the world's major religions have historically viewed women as inferior to men.  That means Moslems, Christians and Jews.  I don't know enough about Hinduism to make an observation about their attitude toward women.  Nor am I blaming the bullying of women by men on religion.  I am suggesting that if women had been the founders, leaders, priestesses of these religions, perhaps women in today's world would enjoy  more respect from men in general
      There are underlying psychological factors that result in men's condescending attitude toward women.  Some men feel inferior to women, though they would never admit this, even to themselves.
There is also a fear factor.  Some men fear whatever they don't understand.  Combine either of those factors with an inability or impatience to win a woman's heart and a bullying attitude toward people in general and the social/religious belief in the lesser status of women, you have someone who is likely to sexually assault a woman whom he desires but who rejects him.

Jan.4  Back in December I posted a petition to the White House website (http://wh.gov/RLVW) to get
the white house to host a national discussion on bullying in light of the Newport, Ct. school shootings.  I asked as many of my "enlightened" friends as I had addresses for to add their names to my petition.  It is discouraging that in the last two weeks only one person, more of an acquaintance, has done so.  If it weren't for him, I would think I may have gotten the web address wrong.  This lack of response adds to meaning to the title of this blog, "Bullying-Do we really want nit to stop?".
         I heard on the radio yesterday that the Taliban bullies in northern Mali are cutting off people's  hands and feet in public for alleged offenses.
      On a brighter note, the 15 year old girl shot by Taliban bullies in Pakistan back in October is already released from the hospital.  Doctors say  she will eventually have to have several more operations.  In India the government announced that more women will be hired as police officers in an effort to protect women in that country.