terrible

the 2nd emergency closing of this campus this year

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Dana Perino said the president believes Americans have a right to bear arms but all laws must be followed.

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I phoned my wife at work and my kids at home just to see if they are OK.

While these kinds of events seem random, I can't help but think they aren't, somehow. There seemed to be far fewer after Sept. 11, 01, after they seemed to be reaching a fever pitch before that.

And I am going by memory, which is admittedly faulty in my case.

But it seems to me that events where several people were shot at a school sort of dissappeared after 9/11, only to reappear at that Amish school, in Montreal, and now in Virginia just recently.

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Originally posted by quelar:
An interesting comment on The World at Six on CBC Radio, the reported said (paraphrased) that "School shoots are so common in the US these days that only the big ones get any coverage".

So maybe it didn't go away after 9/11, it just stopped being reported....along with any number of issues.

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Mark Ames has written a book called "Going Postal" that examines this issue in considerable detail. I wrote a review of it for The Republic that you can find here:

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Originally posted by TemporalHominid:
why the #x$& would the executive office want to so quickly qualify this type of statment?

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quote:

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Mark Ames has written a book called "Going Postal"

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
The Newfoundland cop simply pointed out a recent study that claimed the following: when a country is at war ... as the war winds down, the murder rates climb, reflecting the morally polluting effect that war has on a society. He predicted that as the US war in Iraq winds down, murders and slaughter like the one today in Virginia will increase.

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Actually, that was Elliott Layton, emeritus prof of anthropology at Memorial University.

How did you get, "cop"?

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Originally posted by quelar:
Any bets on how long until there's an NRA rally in South West Virginia?

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No kidding.

I just heard about this tonight when I was at a get-together. Horrifying. And of course, Dubya has to make sure to let people know that while this is a tragedy, people still have the right to bear arms!

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Originally posted by siren:

Actually, that was Elliott Layton, emeritus prof of anthropology at Memorial University.

How did you get, "cop"?

Anyway -- he makes a very sane comment and one that will be utterly ignored by everyone else. [As] usual violent music and rap will be tagged.

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Which blows.

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And of course, Dubya has to make sure to let people know that while this is a tragedy, people still have the right to bear arms!

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Dubya and his associated filth are of course the most hypocritical of them all by twisting it into that issue, instead of looking at the key motivators for violence in US society.

Of course people have the right to bear arms. What somebody needs to tell the Big Shrub is that it seems like more and more people think it's their right to go around shooting other people for absolutely no damn reason.

Why doesn't the Texas Shrub commission a study on the relation between violent crime and as time goes on it seems the only place left in the US to get a decent-paying job is the underground economy--especially in the drug trade, the only sector where there seems to be any real prosperity in the US economy?

Or maybe have someone study the effects of his regime's perpetual war culture on the country as a whole, or maybe the huge sense of alienation and anger obviously facing working class America that seems to always arise when Neo-Conservative policies go into effect.

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The Newfoundland cop simply pointed out a recent study that claimed the following: when a country is at war ... as the war winds down, the murder rates climb, reflecting the morally polluting effect that war has on a society. He predicted that as the US war in Iraq winds down, murders and slaughter like the one today in Virginia will increase.
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Actually, that was Elliott Layton, emeritus prof of anthropology at Memorial University.

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On one hand, it seems we are helpless against the deranged gunman who does something like this. I'm not even interested about what set this guy off, or any causation. There will be no answers, no conclusion, no resulting course of action.

While these kinds of events seem random, I can't help but think they aren't, somehow. There seemed to be far fewer after Sept. 11, 01, after they seemed to be reaching a fever pitch before that.

Now, the phenomenon seems to have returned.

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this statement that you posted comes to the mian problem with events like todays....

your feelings are common and are a result of improper education...

These events are not random and have never stopped happening.

You need to know what set this guy off so that you can stop it from happening again.

And yes there are answers, just not ones you want to hear.

The basic underlying theme to all of these events is the fact taht they are held in capitalist countries. As Marx said it is not man thAT effects his environment but his environment effect him...

I like to use this... it is not " I think, there for I am"... it is " I am, there for I think"...

What are the environmental conditions this person lived under.. They are dictated by his possition in the capitalist system... His thoughts over a live time will be formed by the things that happen to him...

Under the capitalist system a person is not more then a piece of machinery. To by used and disposed of at the beckening of the market. The levels of frustration vary from person to person..

In the case of Postal Workers, their work and debt loads effected their minds... The constant pressure became to much of a burden for some of the people and their thoughts turned disfunctional then distructive.

It important to understand these issues before the capitalists and the clueless turn this into something that it is not...

They are all true blooded capitalists... There postion in the system effects the way they think..

This position turns thier thoughts into disfunctional deformed ways...

This is played out in the fact that for them to maintain their social order they feel the need to let loose some of the most distructive forces known to humanity .. They do this by coming to the conclusion that the only thing left for them to do is to send the Armed Forces of Canada on killing spree....

[ 16 April 2007: Message edited by: Coyote ]

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siren: Actually, that was Elliott Layton, emeritus prof of anthropology at Memorial University.

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Thanks. I'm still mighty impressed by his lucidity - especially in the face of the current media feeding frenzy over the shooting.

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How did you get, "cop"?

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Layton mentioned in his documentary about murder how he got special access to police data during the course of his research. I really thought he was a retired cop. If you search the internet with his name you will get, among other links, one link listing him as an invited speaker, as university criminologist, for the John Howard Society of Newfoundland in their 1999-2000 AGM. He spoke about the "trench coat mafia".

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Steppenwolf Allende: Is Canada headed for the same problem once the Afghanistan fiasco starts to "wind down?"

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According to the study that Layton quoted on TV yesterday, we should expect more violence, murders and massacres in Canada as a result of Canadian violence in Afghanistan. The next time you hear some reactionary or Conservative point out the moral "degeneration" of society it might be useful to point out that it is Conservatives and their war-mongering ilk, by pursuing the continuing war and occupation of Afghanistan, that is creating that moral degeneration in the first place.

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Leyton earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of British Columbia then went on to obtain his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Toronto in 1972. During his ensuing career, he dedicated himself to the analysis and research of social ills such as juvenile delinquency and the psychology behind perpetrators of serial killings. Leyton's achieved level of expertise has led to his giving lectures at the College of Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa.

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"according to the CTV television News network, is probably the world's most widely consulted expert on serial homicide."

Publications:

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* Dying Hard (1975, 1996)
* The Myth of Delinquency (1979)
* Compulsive killers (1986)
* Hunting Humans (1986, reprint: 1995, 2005)
* Sole Survivor (1990)
* Violence and public anxiety: A Canadian case (1992)
* Touched by Fire (with photographer Greg Locke) (1998)
* Serial Murder: Modern Scientific Perspectives (with Linda Chafe) (1999)
* Men of Blood (2002)

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And, of course as much as this young victim seems to have been an admirable person, you just know that the media's real interest is that he was also exceedingly handsome and photogenic.

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Originally posted by Briguy:
What was disturbing was the NRA's response to the threats: they suggested that the campus would be safer if every student carried a firearm. That way the law-abiding students would be in a position to stop crime, you see.

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Where did you see this? The NRA website has: Statement From the National Rifle Association

"The National Rifle Association joins the entire country in expressing our deepest condolences to the families of Virginia Tech University and everyone else affected by this horrible tragedy.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families.

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:

Where did you see this?

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State Requirements
Rifles and Shotguns

* Permit to purchase rifles and shotguns? No.

* Registration of rifles and shotguns? No.

* Licensing of owners of rifles and shotguns? No.

* Permit to carry rifles and shotguns? No.

Handguns

* Permit to purchase handgun? No.

* Registration of handguns? No.

* Licensing of owners of handguns? No.

* Permit to carry handguns? Yes. A permit is required if concealed.

Other Requirements

* Is there a State waiting period? No.

* Is there a FBI *NICS check for firearm transactions? No. State system.

* Permit to carry a concealed weapon required? Yes.

* Record of sale: No.

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:

Where did you see this? The NRA website has: Statement From the National Rifle Association

"The National Rifle Association joins the entire country in expressing our deepest condolences to the families of Virginia Tech University and everyone else affected by this horrible tragedy.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families.

We will not have further comment until all the facts are known."

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(Edited to post a link)

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BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - A student from South Korea was identified on Tuesday as the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech university in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.

Police said the shooter was Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior who was a legal U.S. resident, and that ballistics tests showed one gun had been used in both attacks on Monday at the sprawling rural campus in southwestern Virginia.

Cho killed himself at Virginia Tech after opening fire in four classrooms where in some cases he apparently chained doors to prevent victims from escaping, officials said. Two people were shot to death two hours earlier at a dormitory.

"It's certainly reasonable for us to assume that Cho was the shooter in both places," said Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police.

There was no official word on a motive for the attacks.

But the Chicago Tribune quoted investigative sources as saying Cho, who was studying English literature, left behind an invective-filled note and had shown recent signs of aberrant behavior, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women.

Victims were found in at least four classrooms as well as a stairwell, Flaherty said. "The gunman was discovered among several of the victims in one of the classrooms," he said. "He had taken his own life."

Cho was a South Korean citizen who had lived in the United States since 1992, said U.S. immigration spokesman Chris Bentley. He and his family lived in Centreville, Virginia.

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[ 17 April 2007: Message edited by: BetterRed ]

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Originally posted by BetterRed:
The shooter was a student from South Korea. CNN said he was a "resident alien" (sic).
Just wait for the anti-immigration and racist hysteria to set in....

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I wonder if he entered the States through Canada?

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I'll bet much more attention will be paid to this tragic nightmare than even the Hurricane Katrina one let alone the Iraq war.

[ 17 April 2007: Message edited by: mary123 ]

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Originally posted by Sineed:

The pro-gun people are already saying that this tragedy would have been averted if the students were allowed to carry guns.

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Originally posted by Coyote:
Oh, come on. We all live under capitalism. Surely to God you're not reducing all the potential motivations/reasons for something this awful to a simple binary equation between socialism and capitalism. Surely you aren't doing that.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
The next time you hear some reactionary or Conservative point out the moral "degeneration" of society it might be useful to point out that it is Conservatives and their war-mongering ilk, by pursuing the continuing war and occupation of Afghanistan, that is creating that moral degeneration in the first place.

Another good reason to oppose the continuing Canadian involvement in the NATO occupation of that country. It's causing moral pollution in our own country.

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Yes, have already had this conversation today with some people today and said the same thing. They have to be called on their "declining morals" ridiculousness.

[ 18 April 2007: Message edited by: remind ]

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A car bomb slaughtered 34 people near a revered Shiite shrine in Iraq's pilgrimage city of Karbala on Saturday, two months to the day after US-led troops launched a security crackdown in Baghdad.

Another 10 people were killed in a suicide bombing in Baghdad while other attacks around the country killed 13 more people, pushing the death toll to 57 and undermining the Iraqi-US security offensive as it began a third month

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This is the second time I've seen this in this thread - I haven't seen any links supporting this, nor have I heard anyone on the news suggest such an idea.

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I think, though, Michelle prefers if we don't link to FD. Here is, however, something from Free Republic:

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He has no idea how many people on the campus held right to carry permits. It is clear, however, that there was no chance to stop the killer when the good guys were disarmed.

According to Gilbert, "When a bad guy knows he is entering a gun free zone, it is setting the stage for bad things happening."

Gilbert is very concerned that the anti-gun lobby has jumped into this tragedy with both feet. There will be a greater effort to push new laws on the only people they affect -- law-abiding citizens.

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Originally posted by Sineed:
I think, though, Michelle prefers if we don't link to FD. Here is, however, something from Free Republic:

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Originally posted by Sineed:
I heard it on the American news, so I wandered over to Free Dominion to see what they were saying, and heard it reiterated over there.

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Yes, that's right - the only solution to gun violence is… more people walking around with guns.

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That it's been dragged into this incident is disgusting.

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Originally posted by Sineed:

Over at Firedoglake, after reading reactions from the right-wing blogosphere, he said,

quote:

Yes, that's right - the only solution to gun violence is… more people walking around with guns.

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[ 17 April 2007: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Sometimes I think the hard part is not having a country to bomb.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Grover:
Except for the Monash shooting...

Wikipedia article

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He only managed to kill two and injure five, as he didn't have a semiautomatic and was tackled by staff when he ran out of bullets and had to change guns. The taxpayer funded recall of millions of dollars worth of guns certainly saved many lives.

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Sometimes I think the hard part is not having a country to bomb.
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I don't know about you...but for me, that says it all.

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Originally posted by mary123:
Unlike during the Hurricane Katrina devastation, George Bush went immediately down there at the tragic site to comfort the population.

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They are his base, and he had to pray with them.

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"As the scripture tells us, don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,"

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Originally posted by unionist:
I wonder if he entered the States through Canada?

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Originally posted by Sineed:
If he did, Fox News will be sure to uncover it.

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From the National Post this morning:

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Cho arrived in Detroit on Sept. 2, 1992. He registered with U.S. authorities at the Detroit airport suggesting that, although Detroit is home to a busy border crossing with Windsor, the family did not drive to the U.S. from Canada. ... Canada Border Services Agency has not record of Cho being in Canada.

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[ 18 April 2007: Message edited by: trasie ]

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Farmpunk:
The concealed-carry thing is the gun lobby's latest ploy. That it's been dragged into this incident is disgusting.

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I don't usually read these kind of things, but I happened to start reading this account of the shooting, and couldn't stop until the end 5 pages later.

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He and a few followers of his group, Operation Save America, distributed a tract blaming Monday's massacre on the godlessness of Americans. It stated that abortion, day care and the absence of religion in public schools were the reasons “kids are killing kids in college.”

“We have shed blood in the womb — over 50 million slaughtered — and we have been reaping an ever-increasing harvest of bloodshed in our streets,” said the leaflet.

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After you read them you can see that he had a hard time with the social realities of the USA...

In his first play he talks about family break up and how it affects childern...

http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/richard-mcbeef-cover-page/20070417134109990001

In the second play he uses the kids as a representation of the proletarian class and the teacher is the bourgeoisie....

http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/mr-brownstone-title-page/20070417141309990001

Of course most peeople taht read them will have reactionary out looks . But if you have any understanding about the Capitalist system or Marx understandings you can see that he sees the problems but does not know how to handle it....

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Originally posted by Coyote:
I think, trippie, that there is a lot more going on here than can be explained by looking purely at class relations.

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I'm not saying social inequality doesn't play a part in the semiotic landscape of this kind of tragedy. I'm not. I'm sure that there are particualities of race and class that deeply affected this person. But I also don't think, absent a deep ideological connection that he does not exhibit - there are no exhortations of marx or any other revolutionary thinker, aside from (chillingly) Jesus - that we can really say that this was honestly a manifestation of "propaganda of the deed".

I have deep concerns with trying to make political points of the backs of this kind of tragedy. More guns or less? I lean to less myself of course, but a wise man I know once told me that someone willing to die in order to kill is almost impossible to stop. The isolation of immigrant families? Obviously neeeds to be adressed, but then why is the profile for this kind of shooting a frustrated white male?

quote:

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Originally posted by Coyote:
But I also don't think, absent a deep ideological connection that he does not exhibit - there are no exhortations of marx or any other revolutionary thinker, aside from (chillingly) Jesus - that we can really say that this was honestly a manifestation of "propaganda of the deed".

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Was Jesus closer to Marx or slave-owning Liberal elitists of that time?. I think Mother Theresa once said she felt sorrier for the poor in rich nations than those in the third world. Because in the third world, everyone is poor and are less conscious of class.

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I have deep concerns with trying to make political points of the backs of this kind of tragedy. More guns or less? I lean to less myself of course, but a wise man I know once told me that someone willing to die in order to kill is almost impossible to stop. The isolation of immigrant families? Obviously neeeds to be adressed, but then why is the profile for this kind of shooting a frustrated white male?

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I think he was frustrated. Who wouldn't be frustrated in the U.S. right now ?. Krugman says inequality in the U.S. is unprecedented since the 1920's, and poorest Americans know it. I think studies have shown that the Swiss have fewer death by gun play incidents than the U.S. or Brazil, and I think American-style inequality doesn't exist in countries like Switzerland at the same time.

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People are more complicated than what they believe. And tragedies like this are more complicated their political legacies.

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Going haywire like that though ?. Why the U.S. again ?. When has a confused boy gone on the rampage in Stockholm, Paris or Tokyo ?. I think it could be said that bloody revolutions are an expression of rage and insanity when lives are taken. Something causes it.

[ 20 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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It stuns me, truly, the kind of coverage this gets, when compared to coverage of the normalized slaughter of the Iraq war.

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That's partly because the mass murder in Iraq has official state sanction and is taking place for the benefit of the various corporate dictatorships in the US (like some of those that control the media networks).

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In 2005, a wholly typical year, automotive collisions took the lives of 43,443 residents of the United States. That is 119 people killed per day, almost four times the 32 people murdered this Monday at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

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Dawson compare this to the Japanese bullet train:

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Wikipedia: "There have been no passenger fatalities due to derailments or collisions during operation of the Shinkansen [the Japanese bullet train network], including during earthquakes or typhoons, in its 40-plus year, 6 billion passenger history." Now, can you say "senseless?

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I have deep concerns with trying to make political points of the backs of this kind of tragedy. More guns or less? I lean to less myself of course, but a wise man I know once told me that someone willing to die in order to kill is almost impossible to stop. The isolation of immigrant families? Obviously neeeds to be adressed, but then why is the profile for this kind of shooting a frustrated white male?

People are more complicated than what they believe. And tragedies like this are more complicated their political legacies.

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First off Im am not trying to make 'Political points" here... No one is keeping a score... I was highliting the fact that in his plays he talked about spacific social realites. 1- the break up of a family and the ability of the new father to support the family economicly and emotionaly.. 2- the young kids in "mr brownstone' represent the proletarian always under the pressure from someone above. For them to excape the go gamble and sing songs about drinking and drugs.. When they win money their oppresser comes and takes the money away from them...

These are two conditions of class seperation under the capitalist system..

Im not saying this guy was some sort of Marxist theorerist. What Im saying is that Marx theory models capitalist life and taht the proletarian class will always knowingly or unknowingly express it in an art form..

This guy seen it and could not handle it.

My guess is that he was not educated about class structure properly and became confused and isolated..

A possible way of helping him may have been not to shut him out and make him feel weird but to talk about waht he sees wrong with the social system of America and to see if anyone else feels this way also...

He was sent to a doctor and the doctor said that he posses no threat to himself or anyone else..

If this was the advice form a professional then there must be some other reason for his anti-social behaviour...

I blame it on a totally confused mind that could not find answers to the social ills he seen and experienced...

Like Marx said , man is effected be his environment...

or as i say, it is not " I think, there for I am" it is " I am, there for I think".

[ 20 April 2007: Message edited by: trippie ]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/virg-a23.shtml

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The accusation of “anti-Americanism” leveled against the WSWS is the default setting of the McCarthyite witch-hunter. The more background material that emerges, the more it becomes clear that Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman in Virginia, was affected by social inequality and the generally grotesque state of social relations in America.

The New York Times reported Sunday that after Cho’s parents arrived in the US in 1992 with their two children, “They found jobs in the dry-cleaning business and worked the longest of hours.... The goal, of course, was to own one’s own business. But it did not happen for Seung-Tae Cho. He began as a presser—an 8 a.m.-to-10 p.m. job—and that is what he is today. His wife worked in the same capacity until a few years ago, when she accepted a job in a high school cafeteria so the family could have medical insurance. They lived in a nondescript row house in a modest section of town [Centreville, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC], friendly but not overly sociable.”

The article continued: “The Korean community of Centreville is a high-aspiring one, and nothing matters more than bright futures for its children. The area is speckled with tutoring academies—‘Believe & Achieve,’ ‘Ivy Academy’—high SAT scores and road maps to elite colleges. The local Korean papers publish lists of students admitted to Ivy League institutions. Mr. Cho’s older sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, went to Princeton and made the lists, but not him.”

Cho had his own personal torments, some of them perhaps physiologically based, but the manner in which his paranoia and sense of injustice emerged has everything to do with the character of present-day life in America. What does a young person, even the most mentally stable, confront today in the US?

A nation in which one’s accumulation of wealth is the measure of all things; in which, yes, the ruling elite demonstrates every day by word and deed all over the globe that “in achieving one’s aims, any sort of ruthlessness is legitimate”; in which cutthroat competition in schools and the workplace prevails, where anyone who falls behind a step is left to his own devices; in which no helping hand for the weak or defenseless is ever extended; in which official culture and the media attempts relentlessly to dehumanize and brutalize its consumers; in which college campuses are sharply divided between haves and have-nots, with the former lording it over the latter.

Recent research suggests compellingly complex links between social inequality and mental health problems. For example, in a 2002 issue of Psychiatric Services, a journal of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Carl I. Cohen, professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York (SUNY) Health Science Center in Brooklyn, concludes, “Regardless of causality, studies have consistently shown that socioeconomic factors affect the course and outcome of mental disorders.”

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