Violent Crime Rising Sharply in Some Cities: NYTimes.

[spanone]

People are strange and getting stranger

~snip~ ... And the police say the increase is not driven by battles over gangs and drugs, which characterized violent crime in the early 1990's, but by something more bewildering: petty disputes and arguments that hardly seem the stuff of fistfights, much less gunfire or stabbings. ~snip~

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/national/12homicide.html?ei=5094&en=d025fcb8aed402f2&hp=&ex=1139720400&partner=AOL&pagewanted=print

[Kansas Wyatt]

1. The natives are getting restless, and agent mike is spying on peace groups

BushCo & Banana Republican Government, Inc. can't govern, and the powder keg they have been shitting on is about to blow.

[BattyDem]

2. We've got a government that encourages people to be ...

intolerant of anyone or anything that's even the slightest bit different from them. We've got a government that tells certain people that they are better than everyone else, so it's perfectly alright to treat others as if they were sub-human. We've got a government that has divided this country by race, religion, gender, education level, economic status, sexual orientation and political affiliation.

Under these circumstances, OF COURSE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET VIOLENT OVER INSIGNIFICANT SHIT! :grr: :grr: :grr:

[MatrixEscape]

4. I agree that

we've got a government that has divided this country by race, religion, gender, education level, economic status, sexual orientation and political affiliation.

However, we have always had a country divided that way in various degrees. What this government, (or should we say the people who have usurped it) is doing is not only taking that mask off for us all to see the prejudices and hierarchy, it is simply codifying it and exacerbating the differences to unheard of degrees.

What is going on is only a surprise to those who have not taken a stroll through the annals of history, as distorted and prejudiced as they are – the victors always right the history books.

When send for whom the bell tolls, of course. In some ways, our total projection outwards creates a Dorian Gray mirror that are revolted by when we look into it. As polarized as it all appears, its totality is us, our culture, and our government. The significant and lasting changes come, slowly, painfully, from there.

Not doing is the activism of apathy and a nod to the status quo.

[Matariki]

3. I wonder if anyone has tracked violent crime statistics with wartime

[applegrove]

5. Isn't tribalism a joy. Saudis love it in the middle east. Neocons love

it in the USA.

[jody]

6. The article speculates about causes.

QUOTE
The police say the suspects and the victims tend to be black, young — midteens to mid-20's — and have previous criminal records. They tend to know each other. Several cities said that domestic violence had also risen. And the murders tend to be limited to particular neighborhoods. Downtown Milwaukee has not had a homicide in about five years, but in largely black neighborhoods on the north side, murders rose from 57 in 2004 to 94 last year.
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Homicide rates are driven by different factors in each city, but even cities whose rates have fallen have seen problems with disputes, though those disputes are often about drugs or gangs. "As the murder universe continues to shrink in New York, the common denominators remain consistent," said Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne. "In most instances, killers and victims knew each other, each had criminal records, and they were engaged in disputes, usually over narcotics."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"We have people who've done two, three, four, five shootings who are back on the streets," said Kathleen M. O'Toole, Boston's police commissioner. "Unless we have bail reform, unless these impact players with multiple gun arrests are kept off the streets, we won't reverse this problem."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The neighborhoods with the most murders tend to be the poorest. In Milwaukee, Mallory O'Brien, an epidemiologist brought in to direct the new homicide review commission, said suspects and victims tend to have been born to teenage mothers. The city has one of the nation's highest teen pregnancy rates for blacks, and among black men, one of the lowest high school graduation rates. An industrial base that used to provide jobs for those without a high school diploma has shrunk.
UNQUOTE