Actions and Reactions

Let's start close to home: Today one of the girls in my class was suspended for pummeling another at recess. When I asked her about it later, she said, "I don't want to talk about it." As near as I was able to piece together, the conflict began as part of a four-square game. I tried to understand, but it just didn't make a whole lot of sense - especially without some further explanation.
Elsewhere in the world, a preliminary military inquiry found evidence that U.S. Marines killed two dozen Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in November, contradicting the troops' account, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. This wasn't about a four-square game. A defense department official said, "Bad things happened that day, and it appears Marines lied about it."
Continuing our trot across the globe, we find roaming bands of youths fired sling shots, threw rocks and hacked rivals with machetes. Australian army medics treated a man who suffered head and back wounds after being attacked with a machete. At least eight people were hospitalized with machete wounds, and three of them were in critical condition, a hospital official said. Australia and New Zealand make up the bulk of the security forces trying to stabilize the city of Dili, where pro-independence factions fight those more loyal to Indonesia. "The prime minister should go," Rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado told The Associated Press by telephone from a rebel outpost in the hills surrounding Dili. "Why doesn't he just leave? Do more people need to be killed?" I'm reasonably certain that his question was rhetorical.
Back home in the fourth grade, consequences are swift and direct. Hit a kid and get sent home. Maybe it makes more sense than I know.