Word: randoms
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...international sanctions bring food shortages and ration lines. Operation Iraqi Freedom seems a godsend, but optimism fizzles when there's no new order to fill the post-Saddam vacuum. By 2005, the women are all but trapped in their own homes, depressed, often without electricity, scared of random violence and of violence targeted at foreigners, and terrified that their family members will be kidnapped for ransom. Pauline's days, writes O'Donnell, "were punctuated with the constant phone calls she demanded from [her son] Jamal - when he got to college, as he moved from class to class, as he chose...
Johnston's captors are thought to be a clan with criminal as well as political connections, and the lawlessness of this kidnapping is another sign of anarchic times in Gaza. Hamas and Fatah are fighting for power, and random armed groups are filling the vacuum in unpredictable ways. Compare the silence from Johnston's captors to the more traditional dealings of those who have held Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit since June. Earlier this month, they gave Israel a long list of prisoners they want in exchange for Shalit. The swap hasn't happened, but in light of Johnston's case...
...seen our children die, for these were not children. They were young adults who had come to learn how to live as full adults, on their own. Yet it still felt protected, different somehow from the fast-food restaurants or office buildings or factory floors where grownups do their random killing. Every student said it: the place was special...
...Mass murder, in short, is not a random act. There are things that explain it. Psychosis, for one, can never be ruled out. Russell Weston, a 41-year-old killer who went on a shooting spree in the Capitol Building in Washington in 1998, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Brain injury in an otherwise healthy person can lead to similar violence. Damage to the frontal region of the brain, which regulates what psychologists call the observing ego, or the limbic region, which controls violence, reflection and defensive behavior, can shut down internal governors and trigger all manner of unregulated behavior. "Somebody...
...colors arrived in the Coliseum and the crowd stood and went silent. When the flags arrived at the back of the arena, the crowd sat. Very distraught relatives of the dead were brought to random open seats around the auditorium. They were not fancy people. Some were in jeans, some in sunglasses; the kids carried backpacks. Most of the grieving families consisted of multiple generations: parents, siblings and grandparents. One very sad couple, fighting back tears, arrived alone and was shown to their seats. There was the uniform clatter of seats as Bush came in and the crowd stood...