Gabrielle Giffords, Sarah Palin and Christina Taylor-Green.

The world knows what has happened here in the USA, in the good old boy state of Arizona, with the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, and the murder of six others, including a nine year old girl who was actually born on September 11^th 2001.

What a tragic little life that little girl lived, her life framing two horrific events in American history which she had no control of but by all accounts she lived a very happy one.

She had just been elected to a student council and wanted to meet Gabrielle Giffords.

Her name was Christina Taylor-Green and she was the granddaughter of an ex-manager of the Phillies Baseball team and the daughter of one of the Dodgers Baseball team's scouts; she was featured in the book Faces of Hope which was about babies born on nine eleven; who would have thought that someone from that book would die in such circumstances but on the other hand who would have thought otherwise with the way the world is going?

There is a lot of talk about Sarah Palin since the shooting and the cross hairs of a gun sight she put on one of her web sights which included the district Gabrielle Giffords looked after.

Giffords herself had previously raised concerns about Palin's map: "The way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action."

Not long after that a shot was fired – a pellet gun I think – into Giffords' offices.

The cross hairs were placed over Democratic Congress members who had voted for Obama's healthcare reform; read it yourself above.

Even though I wrote a post, Sarah Palin, The most dangerous women in the world, I'm not saying that Sarah Palin is directly responsible for the shooting but what do you think hateful rhetoric does? It stirs up hatred.

The person who shot her – or should I say allegedly shot her – was a conspiracy theorist; he had crazy ideas about what the government does and how if you have your name written on your birth certificate in block capital letters the government would be after you and . . . do I need to even repeat this verbage?

His favourite books are Mein Kafmpf, The Communist Manifesto and one of the Alice books - through the looking glass or in Wonderland.

He had met Gabrielle Giffords a couple of years ago and had taken a dislike to her; now I wonder why a conspiracy theorist would have anything against a Jewish Congresswoman?

So I'm asking the question again – what do you think hateful rhetoric does and what does it cause people slightly mad and confused to do?

And where do these slightly mad people get their information from?

The answer is the mass media – TV and radio.

I hate to compare one country with another but in Britain it is the law for television and radio companies to be non-partial – if you put one view of anything you have to put the other point of view. It may seem strange but it works.

Of course the law doesn't include the printed word and newspapers there are committed to one of the parties; the Murdoch papers have dictated to their readers who to vote for and the sheep have voted for them each time. He followed Thatcher, Major; then changed parties to follow Tony Blair and last year he changed parties again and went back to his usual Conservative Party with David Cameron.

In America we have cable channels such as Fox News and MSNBC – the first one Republican the latter Democratic; there are others of course but those are the main ones.

Up to 1987 you wouldn't be able to do that in America; there was something called The Fairness Doctrine which was abolished by Ronald Regan in 1987.

There's Gabrielle below - or Gabby as her friends call her; let's wish her well.