Connections

Two deaths. One deliberate, one accidental. Two different continents. Two different issues. I can't explain precisely why, but in my heart I feel these two deaths are connected. Maybe cause of the desperate state in which we find ourselves. I don't know. If anyone wants to suggest a reason, I'm listening.

From Newsday (Long Island, NY) for Saturday:

Distraught over the re-election of President George W. Bush, a Georgia man traveled to New York City, went to Ground Zero and killed himself with a shotgun blast, police said yesterday. ...

No suicide note was found, but according to a Port Authority police source, family members said [Andrew] Veal, [25,] a registered Democrat, was despondent over Bush's defeat of Sen. John Kerry. A second source said Veal, who lived in Athens, Ga., and worked for the University of Georgia, was also adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq. ...

[A visitor to Ground Zero,] Jeffim Kuznetsov, a 25-year-old student from Russia who lives in Atlanta, said the suicide is evidence of how deeply many Americans were affected by Kerry's defeat.

"It's a national tragedy," he said. "This election is devastating to all who believe in democracy."

And from the BBC for Sunday:

A anti-nuclear protester has died after his leg was severed by a train carrying atomic waste from France to Germany.

The 23-year-old lay down on the track as the train passed near the town of Avricourt, eastern France. ...

The train was carrying nuclear waste being sent back to Germany after reprocessing in northern France. ...

The train driver tried to brake after seeing a group of people sitting on the tracks, a spokeswoman for French railway company SNCF told Reuters.

"Some of them got up. He pulled the emergency brake, but one of the people remained sitting, and one of his legs was cut off and he has died," she said.

Earlier in the day another group of protesters delayed the train's journey for around two hours.

Two activists from the Sortir du Nucleaire (Out of Nuclear) group chained themselves to the tracks at Laneuveville-devant-Nancy, forcing the train to stop while police removed them. ...

The French protests followed a protest by 4,500 people at the Gorleben site in Saturday.

May they rest in peace and may we carry on.