JAMES HOLMES, ANDERS BREIVIK AND GUNS FOR THE BOYS

July 21, 2012

Yesterday, James Holmes, a 24-year-old young man was arrested on the spot for the killing of 12 people at a premier of Batman in Denver USA. Another 58 people were injured in the attack, some of them seriously.

Today is the eve of the first anniversary of Anders Behring Breivik's bombing of the government buildings in Oslo and his shooting spree at the camp of the Workers' Youth League of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya. The bomb attack cost 8 lives, while 69 people, mostly teenagers, were slaughtered at Utøya.

Tomorrow several heads of state and politicians will defend gun ownership. Well, not tomorrow, maybe, they are usually a bit more subtle than that and are rather quiet at the moment, but soon enough nonetheless. Us politicians will probably be at the top of that list. The same politicians who treat the likes of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela with disdain. The very Hugo Chavez whose government passed a law on June 1, 2012 criminalising the commercial sale of firearms to civilians. No one should be too lofty to learn, be it from our enemies or events. It is what life is all about.

ITHAKA (K.P. Kavafis)

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your journey be a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.