Warning Signs
POSTED BY: Jongsstraw
UPDATED: Sunday, April 29, 2007 19:28
VIEWED: 14532
PAGE 1 of 2
It's really too bad that they couldn't have hung a " WARNING: ABUSIVE " sign or label around Cho, or all the other Chos out there, past, present & future like FFF has done in a few, highly necessary selected cases on these boards, branding the zanti misfits who don't seem to be with us anymore lately. A scarlet letter if you will, to be worn and displayed in humiliating shame in front of all who can stop to mock and judge. Maybe it could have stopped Manson & his gang of fun-loving chicks, or any of the hundreds or thousands of murderers and rapists known by the authorities to be, as the newspapers would say...well-known ticking time-bombs. FF Fans has given the good folks here the human rights decency at least to have the knowledge of what's around them that could statistically potentially harm or kill them. Those who innocently stumble upon those offensive posts have fair warning that there lies danger ahead if you go ahead and risk reading it. At least it's safe and secure in here.
I know that some of my posts in the past may have come real close to Reaver space in terms of appropriateness and civility; someone out there must have had their finger cocked and ready to hit the warning-offensive button on me on a few occasions, but through the grace of 'on high, and un-canny luck, I'm still here completely with a clean record, no label-scarred bundle of firewood here, just all shinylike; so to potentially avoid any, any possible slippage back, back to the dark and distasteful recklessness of anything I've ever written here in the past, present, and future; I hereby do offer the most sincerest apologies, and beggings for forgiveness. Anyone can feel free to just WARN me, please, if you think I could be getting even remotely warm to that special place in hell.
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... but just cuz ya asked so nice-like!
Having fun yet?
-Danny
A Ghost is all that's Left,
Of everything we Swore we Never would Forget,
Tried to bleed the Sickness,
But we drained our Hearts instead,
We are... We are the DEAD!!!!!!!!!!
THRICE RULES!!!!!!!!!
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Thank you sir, may I please have another?!
Whack!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
It's really too bad that they couldn't have hung a " WARNING: ABUSIVE " sign or label around Cho, or all the other Chos out there, past, present & future...
A scarlet letter if you will, to be worn and displayed in humiliating shame in front of all who can stop to mock and judge...
I'm not sure if you're going for irony here, or what, but this is exactly the kind of treatment that creates the Chos of the world.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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That’s interesting missive Jongstraw, but like Sergeantx, I see some amount of irony there as well, or at least a bit of satire…. However, you do raise an important question.
Should we be able to exercise our right of free speech in all forms, or temper our statements so that they are more acceptable to the mainstream? I am going with free speech – and I will steadfastly defend anyone’s right to the same, regardless of whether I am in agreement with that person or not. Now, having said that let me add that abusing the right of free speech is something we need to be aware of. I think there have been times when some people here have instigated arguments, either to gain attention or simply antagonize another person, when reasoned, deliberate debate of the issues would have been the better option – and I don’t exclude myself from that statement, as I have posted some things here that I probably shouldn’t have.
As far as an apology goes, I don’t think asking for one is necessary, but since you have asked, I am happy to accept it. I approve of the idea of the Special Place in Hell Warning – and would ask that any abusive posts on my part be noted in the same manner. I see no reason why this can’t be an interesting, entertaining and informative forum for everyone who visits here, regardless of differing opinions. We are a unique and diverse group of individuals who share a common bond in the appreciation of the works of Mr. Whedon, but that doesn’t mean we will all agree with each other on everything. It’s alright to express our own opinions on issues that matter to us, but we should be willing to respect and listen to different points of view without the conversation always degenerating into an adolescent name calling contest.
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There are so many ways to think about this and so much we don't know. As someone who works with people lableled as mentally ill, it's difficult to really know if and when someone will go to those extremes. I read that he was hospitalized and released. It varies state to state as to how an individual can be involuntarily committed and for how long they can be held. It's a tough call. Balancing individual rights and public safety. We help people with involuntary commitments and try to screen carefully before making a recommendation. You can have a relative or jolted lover who decides to get revenge.
People are afraid of mental illness and sometimes because of that they don't get the help they need. Even those who are suffer from schizophrenic symptoms other types of paranoia or delusions, most often are not dangerous. They are much more likely to be victimized. People that hear voices telling them to hurt themselves or others more often than not resist. I can't imagine how awful it would be to live like that and it's what I do.
Siri
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What do you have to apologize for. You said your mine good for you. I am offended that you think you offended me. Look their is real evil in the world. I sometimes wonder if demons take a person until he or she dies than the demon is released. I worked with more than one murderer, rapist, and bankrobber. One dude I remember was really odd not just like he has different views just look like he was always somewhere else. Just give ya the creeps. Two different dudes where ninjas one goes to a mall with a sword and the other murders his girlfriend with small children. One dude robbed banks during lunch. Cho was just wacked.
"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".
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I don’t buy the “I’m-serial-killer-because-the-world-didn’t-treat-me-right” crap. I was chastised for bad behavior when I was growing up and even chastised unfairly sometimes, I’m not a murderer. So it’s way way too simplistic to say that this was exactly what causes fruitcakes to emerge and kill people for no discernable reason. That’s just feel-good politics. People like to point the finger at someone or something, so in the absence of anyone to blame, but Cho, we blame the “world.” Because the “world” is the perfect scapegoat and perfect way of ignoring the problem. It would be better for everyone if we could identify the chos and deal with them preemptively before they go on their killing sprees. So maybe a more aggressive stance against this kind of thing would be appropriate. That’s probably easier said then done I think. And to be frank, I don’t know how to do it, or if it can always be done, but the first thing we should do, is completely eliminate the notion that it is even remotely acceptable to go on random killing sprees, because the world hurt your feelings.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
And to be frank, I don’t know how to do it, or if it can always be done, but the first thing we should do, is completely eliminate the notion that it is even remotely acceptable to go on random killing sprees, because the world hurt your feelings.
That shouldn't be hard. I've never heard anyone say it is acceptable. But of course that won't make the problem go away.
Check this article out, when you have time. It's fairly long, but worth the read.
http://www.alternet.org/stories/50758/
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Check this article out, when you have time. It's fairly long, but worth the read.
Very interesting article...
King of the Mythical Land that is Iowa
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Quote:No, but I have heard people justify it, by saying that social chastising or hurting people feelings is exactly what causes mass murderers. That’s not true. If it were true, I would be a mass murder, because people have socially chastised me and people have hurt my feelings. Why am I not a mass murderer? Simple, because social chastising or hurting people’s feelings is not what causes people to go on psychotic murdering rampages. I’m not suggesting that it is okay to do it, but it is not what creates murderers, and it should never be accepted as a justification.
Originally posted by SergeantX:
That shouldn't be hard. I've never heard anyone say it is acceptable. But of course that won't make the problem go away.
I’ll read the article later. I downloaded it to my thumbdrive, but right now I have some business to attend to tonight.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
If it were true, I would be a mass murder, because people have socially chastised me and people have hurt my feelings.
But that doesn't follow logically. That's like saying throwing lit matches out the car window don't cause fires, "'cause I did it once and nothing happened!"
You can't honestly be arguing that subjecting people to systematic psychological abuse doesn't make them more likely to lash out. You really don't see a connection there? It's not about 'blame'. It's about looking at the situation rationally and recognizing that we're propagating social institutions that are unnecessarily cruel.
This is 'Revenge of the Nerds', but it's not a bad comedy. It's sick reality.
I figure you'll be against this. Let's just ignore why it's happening and forge ahead on with more of the same. It's the same logic that's fueling the 'war on terror'. If people are cracking under the strain of systematic abuse, we should just turn up the volume. If the terrorists are lashing out because they hate us interfering in their culture, then we should invade. If the geeks are freaking out from alienation, we should work harder to identify them and subject them to more humiliation and shame. This kind of logic is so screwed up I don't even know where to begin.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Why, out of two horribly abused children, does one become a monster, and one become an EMT ? why ?
That is a big question that always plagued Doc Perry, and he means to find out - CITIVAS and the ChildTrauma academy are, quite literally light-years ahead of anyone else in this topic of research.
http://www.childtrauma.org/aboutCTA/CT_Academy.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_D._Perry
This man has my utmost respect, and above all, knows his stuff, period.
Quote:
It's about looking at the situation rationally and recognizing that we're propagating social institutions that are unnecessarily cruel.
Right to the meat of the matter, Sarge, many a times, what we DO to kids in the name of turning them into adults fit for the nightmare america calls society, I am surprised more of em don't turn out like this guy, and very surprised that any of em come out of it without serious trauma to their psyche.
I don't fully subscribe to the "Blank Slate" theorem, becuase genetics and heredity traits do factor in, as well does environment - but to be honest in over three decades I have yet to see a single young child without a better value system and moral scale than most adults, and what do we do about it ?
Instead of treasuring their humanity, we crush it out of them in any way possible, while presenting as heros and role models they very most sociopathic people, upholding the most horrific behavior as examples, and constantly bombarding them with what "Gets you ahead" in corporate america.
We're human beings, and every time we deny what we are, we become less than what we should be - it is that very denial of our humanity that is leading us to a crisis point.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Finn, you fail to make the important distinction that you are not like everyone else. Everyone has hardware, software and firmware and AFA hardware: all traits are created on a contiuum. Babies are born with a neurochemical profile to begin with. And then early life experience- for example, painful illness, abuse, neglect, or constant fear and anxiety- permanently enhance the fear/ pain pathways. (So, it's not the case that early exposure "toughens up" kids. On the contrary- early abuse causes children to be more anxious, angrier, and more gullible than children raised in benign circumstances.)
Through experience I've come to the conclusion that most children can be raised by most people. BUT there are those three standard deviations from the norm that need special circumstances. And then there are those five standard deviations from the norm that need good drugs because they may may not have the hardware/ firmware to allow them to develop acceptably.
---------------------------------
Always look upstream.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
It's really too bad that they couldn't have hung a " WARNING: ABUSIVE " sign or label around Cho
Yes, because that would have *really* helped decrease his feelings of rage at the rest of the world. Not to mention how it would encourage others feeling the same way to get the help they need.
Copied and pasted from the other thread dealing with this issue:
http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=28261
"I've been making light of this subject so far, but there is a serious issue here - the stigma associated with mental illness. Mental illness is not talked about. No one wants to know about it. No one wants to deal people who have it. No one who has it wants to admit they have it and no one related to them wants to admit it either.
Being mentally ill can lose you friends, make you a stranger in your community and get you fired from your job - all because people automatically assume it makes you dangerous or unhinged. When people think of mental illness the first thing that comes to mind is acts like the shooting at Virginia Tech - violent, mindless acts that leave people dead and wounded.
But that's only one tiny fraction of the reality. Statistically, one fifth of the Virginia Tech student population has or has had a mental illness. Hell, that'll go up now that the campus en masse will be facing shock, depression and possibly a few cases of PTSD. Reactionary comments about "locking up the crazies for the public good" won't do anyone any favours. It's lumping all mentally ill people in one big, black box and shoving them out of the way where they can't be seen. It trivialises a hugely complicated issue. And it's unacceptable.
People facing mental health issues need to know that there are people they can trust. They need to know that they will be treated with dignity and respect. They need to know that their cases will be evaluated fairly and that they will have a voice in their treatment. If they don't believe those things, they won't get help. Would you go to your doctor if you thought he might tell your boss you were unstable? Would you visit a psychiatrist if you thought social services were going to take away your kids?
Cleary something went horribly, tragically wrong with the care (or lack thereof) Cho was receiving. It's awful and it's something that needs to be looked at. But comments like this aren't going to help the situation one iota. They're just going to make it even harder for mental health practitioners to do their job."
Banners, avatars and other fun stuff at www.desktophippie.com
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Why, out of two horribly abused children, does one become a monster, and one become an EMT ? why ?
That is a big question that always plagued Doc Perry, and he means to find out - CITIVAS and the ChildTrauma academy are, quite literally light-years ahead of anyone else in this topic of research.
http://www.childtrauma.org/aboutCTA/CT_Academy.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_D._Perry
This man has my utmost respect, and above all, knows his stuff, period.Quote:
It's about looking at the situation rationally and recognizing that we're propagating social institutions that are unnecessarily cruel.
Right to the meat of the matter, Sarge, many a times, what we DO to kids in the name of turning them into adults fit for the nightmare america calls society, I am surprised more of em don't turn out like this guy, and very surprised that any of em come out of it without serious trauma to their psyche.
I don't fully subscribe to the "Blank Slate" theorem, becuase genetics and heredity traits do factor in, as well does environment - but to be honest in over three decades I have yet to see a single young child without a better value system and moral scale than most adults, and what do we do about it ?
Instead of treasuring their humanity, we crush it out of them in any way possible, while presenting as heros and role models they very most sociopathic people, upholding the most horrific behavior as examples, and constantly bombarding them with what "Gets you ahead" in corporate america.
We're human beings, and every time we deny what we are, we become less than what we should be - it is that very denial of our humanity that is leading us to a crisis point.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
Well said. I totally agree with you on this point.
-River
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Quote:That’s right. Throwing a match out a window does not cause fires. A lit match landing on some kind of dry tender might cause a fire, but throwing it out the window does not. Furthermore, you’re just assuming that there was fire. In other words, you’re taking the word of a fruitcake as fact. In reality, however, it’s probably much more likely, that this Cho character went ballistic because HE’S the asshole, not everyone else, but HE'S blaming it all on his innocent victims.
Originally posted by SergeantX:
But that doesn't follow logically. That's like saying throwing lit matches out the car window don't cause fires, "'cause I did it once and nothing happened!"
It is not the social chastising that creates mass murders; that is such juvenile logic that it is absurd. A wouldbe mass murder must have something else wired wrong in his head to begin with. It is absolute nonsense to say that social chastisement could possibly justify mass murdering for anyone other then mass murderers to begin with.
And I don't know if I'm like everyone else or not, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people have experiences social chastisement and not gone on killing sprees because of it.
I'm not willing to admit to this desperate demand that mass murderers are the victim's fault, which is not only logically absurd because it is so blatantly obvious that the correlation is wrong, but it is kind of mean. Ironically, if you take that logic to is extreme, it’s somewhat circular. Claiming that it was the victim’s fault that they were murderered is a pretty harsh bit of social chastisement, so therefore how many mass murderers have been created as a result of that? The logic is so juvenile in it’s oversimplicity that it doesn’t make any sense.
Also I still having read your article, but I’ll try to get to it soon.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
It is absolute nonsense to say that social chastisement could possibly justify mass murdering for anyone other then mass murderers to begin with.
ayup, I figured that's what you'd hear. Pay attention. No one is saying the actions were 'justified'. Got it?
Quote:
And I don't know if I'm like everyone else or not, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people have experiences social chastisement and not gone on killing sprees because of it.
*sigh*... we went over this. The vast majority of times someone drives drunk, no one gets hurt. Guess that makes it ok, eh?
Quote:
I'm not willing to admit to this desperate demand that mass murderers are the victim's fault...
Listen, it's obvious who's 'fault' it is. If he were still alive, we could put Cho in jail for life and I'd be all for it. We could even put him in a cage somewhere in some public place so folks could walk by and throw rocks at him or something.
But, once again, that's not the point. The point is that we ought to be looking closely at why our society is producing more and more of these tragedies. I've been to public schools and I've watched my kids try to suffer through it. I pulled them out and I think it's the best decision I've made as a parent. The survival of the fittest mentality that supports the current model makes me sick.
Anyway, I'll admit that the causes of tragedies like the VT massacre are varied and complex. But I can't completely dismiss the pain and frustration cited by the kids who lash out. Yeah, they're nuts, they're anomalies and they've probably got loads of other problems that have nothing to do with their environment. But where's the sense in pushing them to the breaking point? Where's the sense in putting any of our kids through such idiocy?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:If by “idiocy” you mean social chastisement, the sense of it depends a lot on local cultural and “territorial” clicks. Social chastisement is not necessarily a bad thing, and some of it is important to maintain the norms and competition in our society, which whether we will admit it or not, we all want. In some cases, it may go too far, especially when it becomes motivated by social class, physical or mental abnormality, gender or ethnicity. But that’s all something completely different from and has no relevance to the act of going into a crowd of strangers and randomly killing people you don’t know or have probably never met. These two things, the mass murder and social chastisement, have no relation.
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Where's the sense in putting any of our kids through such idiocy?
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
These two things, the mass murder and social chastisement, have no relation.
Of course they do. The fact that Cho and so many of these shooters cite their social frustrations clearly relates them. All too often its the same sort of grievances behind their attacks. You can say it's not a good reason to kill innocent people (and I totally agree), but it doesn't change the fact that there's a very real relationship between their frustrations and the murders. It's dumb to ignore that.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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All mass murderers and serial killers justify their acts by blaming it on the victims. But in the end, you’re taking the word of a mass murderer for the justification of his acts. It’s nonsense.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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I hear what you're saying Finn, but you're completely hung up on the 'justification' angle. It's not like looking seriously at the cause and effect relationships of the situation is going to condone their actions. Doesn't it make sense to look at this from every angle and not just dismiss it with "they're crazy and evil"?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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How many people in this country feel or have felt humiliated or hurt by the unnecessary words or acts of other people? I don’t really know, but if I had to guess, I would expect the number to be very, very large; a sizeable percentage of the country. And now how many of those people go out into a crowd of people they don’t know and start randomly killing people? Off the top of my head I can come up with two. I’m sure there are more but the number pales so miserably in comparison to the hundreds of millions who have felt the “cause” that random mass murder cannot possibly be the “effect.” If you’re interested in looking for a solution (and I’m not even certain that there is one), you could increase of chances of finding one by not searching in areas where logic suggests one does not exist. You seem to be acting as if I dismiss your argument with no contemplation, but that’s not the case. I’ve considered it, and I dismiss it, because there is absolutely no correlation and the only evidence that supports this claim are the predictable words of a mass murdering fruitcake.
So if you wanted to discuss some hypothetical angle to this, then that’s fine, but at least admit the absurdity of accepting a claim based on nothing more cogent then the rambling polemics of fruitcakes. Give me something, because right now, the only one you’ve got on your side is the mass murdering fruitcake!
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Then allow me, in two words, to explain to you the cause and effect Sarge is trying to get across.
Carl Panzram
While an extreme example, probably THE most extreme example, his honesty about his reasons gives us a window to look in and observe our societys affect on many people.
I can put it in no more crystal clear terms than this.
We do unto them, and the moment they get the opportunity, they do unto us.
That isn't always the case, mind you, many of them do harm unto themselves, or each other, but in the case of Carl, he knew exactly why he was the way he was, and retaliated against humanity and their society in every way he could, and on occasion specific individuals like Taft, who we felt were more responsible than others.
Look into that window, look hard.
Not every child in our society will turn out like that, but our means and methods make damn sure every single one of them has the potential.
And all I hear is *tick tick tick* - none of you were in my social circle 10, 15, 20 years ago, but I been calling this one since the mid 80's, just wincing and watching the oncoming freight train while most folk huddled in denial.
It will get worse as the cycle speeds up and closes, and you have no clue just how "worse" it can get, pray you never know - the only way we're ever going to stop it is to break the chain and completely re-evaluate how we treat children from cradle to majority, and how we encourage them to treat each other.
Or, we can simply throw our hands up in the air and say they were born evil and there was nothing we could do, absolving ourselves of guilt and continuing to deny the obvious.
Never occured to any of you that part of why I am an Anarchist is to distance myself from a system and society that is downright horrific from an objective viewpoint, and on a fast course to self-implosion ?
I *know* where the roots of evil lie, it's doin something about it that's the bitch.
-Frem
Suggested Linkage
Today's Victim Could Be Tomorrow's Predator
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_9006_a.html
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If we're going to say that a person becoming violent is directly connected to chastisment & abuse from various quarters...when are we going to start the Don Imus rampage watch?
I'm no psycologist but it occurs to me that we have become so "poliically correct" that we are cutting our own throats.
I don't think its a huge leap to suggest that repressing behavior for "PC" is harmfull. Wheather it be ritelin, or punishing kids for being kids, seriously in recent years kids have been kicked out of school for playing "cops & robbers' on playgrounds.
Going back to Imus for a second...he didn't break any FCC codes, he didn't violate the law...he made an assinine remark. A remark that cost him his job & set off a firestorm of controversy...over an opinion?
Are we at the point where opinion is going to be codified? We already have varying dgrees of legality...consider this:
If a homosexual man kills a straight man it's murder, if a straight man murders a gay man not onnly is it murder...it can also be classed a "hate crime". That's pretty stupid considering the fact that I think murder is a pretty hatefull act already.
We are now classifying some speech as "hate speech" so that the argument can be made that there is some kind of speech that isn't protected by the Constitution...huh?
Just as we can legislte such things as non-discrimination...we cannot legislate a persons emotions. Put another way you can't change the hearts & minds of a people by law.
However such legislation & societal pressures can help to repress the voicing of opinion...repress long enough & eventually you will get a backlash that may not be expressed through speech.
The other issue is the fact that we no longer teach a concrete grasp of right & wrong, without that compass things can go horribly wrong.
Cho got exactly what he wanted...a media event that got him on national TV, his face in virtually every home, & a spot on NBC news.
I wonder if Cho knew the difference between being famous, & infamous?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
You can't honestly be arguing that subjecting people to systematic psychological abuse doesn't make them more likely to lash out.
Actually I deal with that every day. Systematic and continuous pschological and even physical abuse, usually of women or childen.
Its called Domestic Violence and while "the burning bed" might happen once in a while I get cases of "but he loves me this time, so drop the charges" every day.
Its Battered Woman Syndrome (misnamed because it applies to men and children too), a cycle of abuse. Cycle, meaning more then once using intimidation, emotional abuse, financial abuse, threats, isolation, male privilage (although thats a sexist idea since I've seen it the other way around), children (as in making someone feel guilty "for the children"), minimizing, denying, blaming, and finally physical violence.
I've found that most often there is no lashing out, rather its accepted and even expected. Its a rare individual that can break the cycle either by violence or by simply "getting out".
H
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Quote:Wow. You were either a bully or a jock in your youth. It's possible to abhor what Cho did and not defend our whole system of control through fear. So why you INSIST on defending a system that has created a society with the highest child abuse, murder rate, and incarceration rate of the industrialized world? Yep, I can see that it's working for us and we "want" it.
Social chastisement is not necessarily a bad thing, and some of it is important to maintain the norms and competition in our society, which whether we will admit it or not, we all want. In some cases, it may go too far, especially when it becomes motivated by social class, physical or mental abnormality, gender or ethnicity. But that’s all something completely different from and has no relevance to the act of going into a crowd of strangers and randomly killing people you don’t know or have probably never met. These two things, the mass murder and social chastisement, have no relation.
In my humble experience, nobody that I know was ever improved by crticism, punishment, and bullying Bullies are not particularly bright, nor do they enforce "social order" in the schools, they're simply exercising their "need to dominate and subdue other students and to get their own way". The victims are often guilty of nothing more than being shy (which is one of the most stable personal characteristics) and insecure. And because bullying exacerbates these characteristics, these children often become permanent victims. They get to look forward to year after year of being terrorized at hands of antisocial snots with GREAT self esteem who have intimidated an entire class, sometimes even a whole school.
So- what does a child learn by being bullied? What did Cho learn from being bullied? Nothing except that it's somehow an unforgiveable crime to be quiet, shy, and insecure. And what could you threaten Cho with so that he wouldn't commit mass murder? The death penalty? Too late, he did that himself.
I agree that school bullying is not the ONLY cause of Cho's behavior. But in other nations, where corporal punishment is banned (Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Austria, and Germany) bullying does not precipitate murder, it tends to cause suicide. And in fact, those nations- not exactly hotbeds of misbehavior and crime- take bullying very seriously and are doing their best to eliminate it. So much for needing social chatisement to enforce social norms!
again! A special mention about defending "competition": WHY? I see a lot of snide remarks about how today nobody "wins" because nobody "loses". I think a lot of people tend to confuse winning and losing with the notion of unearned self-esteem (see bullies) but it is possible to earn self-esteem without being pitted against other children. The "target" doesn't have to be another kid, it can be ANY difficult task, even one requiring cooperation. Look at Roger Federer, arguably the greatest tennis player ever. He doesn't play against his opponent, he has set himself historic goals and he plays against THAT.
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Always look upstream.
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Quote:It is possible to teach right from wrong without tolerating or engaging in worngful behavior. A person how can't figure out how to do that must be pretty stupid.
The other issue is the fact that we no longer teach a concrete grasp of right & wrong, without that compass things can go horribly wrong.
Quote:Cho got himself killed. Focus on THAT for a moment.
Cho got exactly what he wanted...a media event that got him on national TV, his face in virtually every home, & a spot on NBC news.I wonder if Cho knew the difference between being famous, & infamous?
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Always look upstream.
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Cho got himself killed. Focus on THAT for a moment.
I got that, so did he...he killed himself (at least according to the official story), he knew exactly what he was doing.
He chose the method of his own end & in his own way. There are those who would say his last moments were an unmitigated success.
Not everyone who lives fears death, & is it not said that dying well is the best revenge? Are there not those who believe that death in battle surrounded by ones enemies is a glorious end?
I got that he's dead, did you get that that was what he wanted. Suicide/Homicide bombers are dead after thier glorious moment & they are delighted to do so. Cho saw himself in ways that we don't...in his mind I have no doubt that everything he did was justified & right.
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Of course everything he did was justified and right, but that doesn't mean he was a happy camper about his impending death.
I was in the ER with our kid once when the EMTs brought in a woman who went under the kitchen sink and drank everything she could find: bleach, drain cleaner, dish soap.... whatever was handy She was in the curtained assesment area next to ours, so although she was only semi-coherent I eventually got the whole story: two small children, an abusive boyfriend. no job, no family nearby. She didn't make it of course. Eventually she slipped into a coma and died. What would drive someone to do that?
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Always look upstream.
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I can answer that, and you're looking at it from the wrong angle.
You flat do not understand the pyschology of the people who do this.
Cho had *already* decided to kill himself, that was going to happen, what was different from the largely ignored epidemic of teen suicides is that he chose, quite deliberately and with malice aforethought, to level as much damage as possible against the factors he felt responsible for driving him to that, and he damned well wanted them to know it.
It's an abherrant psychology, that I will give you, but not as uncommon as should be, it's just that most folk who take themselves off the count do so quietly, and nobody beyond their immediate family gives a damn or even notices.
When you crush someone down till there ain't nothin left, it's like compressing gas fumes, most times no, nothing happens, but sometimes... just one spark, and blam.
His primary motives were not what they think you are.
He no longer wanted to live in a world he saw as an endless nightmare.
He wanted retaliation on those he felt made it so.
He wanted them to know how badly he hated them, and why.
These kids, these living time bombs, they can be defused, but the earlier you get to them, the easier that is, and the longer you wait, the harder it is - early intervention is utterly critical, because once the mindset and behavior is calcified, forget it.
Also, part of the problem rests with us - kids see the world the way it *really* is, without all the bullshit rationalisation we cover it up in to make it more palatable when we choke it down, and when they explain it to a counsellor, what do they call it ?
They call it a distorted worldview and often medicate it.
How about instead of trying to force-feed a metric ton of bullshit about our society to a kid and then blaming them when they choke on it, how about changing that society ?
Sarge nails it in an earlier post, Public Schools are a hostile, abusive environment of the worst caliber, and yet in spite of the obvious fucking evidence slamming us in the face, we go into social status-quo denial and blame the kid for seeing it that way.
They hate us because when it comes right down to it, we *ARE* the enemy, constantly mentally, emotionally, and physically battering them down into what WE think they should be, instead of what they believe they should be.
You find me ONE un-abused kid who doesn't have a better moral compass than any adult you know, go on, find me even ONE.
They hate us for a reason, and understanding that hatred of us and our fucked up society is the first step towards admitting they have a point and doing something about it other than blaming them for seeing what we have blinded ourselves to.
Unfortunately, I don't see it happening, it's just too easy to keep lying to ourselves about how good and noble and decent our society is and blaming them for not adjusting.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I was in the ER with our kid once when the EMTs brought in a woman who went under the kitchen sink and drank everything she could find: bleach, drain cleaner, dish soap.... whatever was handy She was in the curtained assesment area next to ours, so although she was only semi-coherent I eventually got the whole story: two small children, an abusive boyfriend. no job, no family nearby. She didn't make it of course. Eventually she slipped into a coma and died. What would drive someone to do that?
Lack of self esteem/self worth. Deep sorrow and feelings of inadequacey. Lonliness and the inability to escape the abusive situation. Now why did she only take her life instead of going on a murderous rampage first?
Posting to stir stuff up.
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Was it death that bothered her...or pain?
I graduated back in the mid 80's we had an unusually high level of suicides then.
The national battle-cry seemed to be "life's a bitch & then you die".
We had suicide councellers, suicide hot lines etc, ad nauseum.
Suicide has always been a part of human existence...now though it would seem that in a world of "I share your pain"...suicides are more inclined to do just that.
"I'm in pain...I want it to end...but I'm taking you with me!"
Doesn't quite seem like we want to share all that much after all, I know I don't.
I'm not being glib here, but think about how much we try to "understand" people like this, think about how whenever something dreadfull happens we want to know "what the motives were".
We blame everything...Guns, Music, TV, Drugs, Sex, you name it. Anything so that an individual isn't responsible for anything. Its "societies fault", his mother didn't breatfeed or whatever some psycologist comes up with.
When 9/11 happened "it was the US's fault", it was "because of Isreal", it was this & it was that.
Well 9/11 happened because terrorism happens & the people of the world have allowed it to flourish, Cho happened because he was evil/nuts (take your pick); the guns didn't do it, the other kids on campus didn't do it, society didn't do it either. (I will allow that sensational media was probably a factor), but the blame/responsibility was his, but we can't have that because he's dead & we need a living scalp on our collective wall!
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Quote:Nope, I was the kid that got picked on. My family moved a lot during my young years, and I never stayed anywhere long enough to learn how to make friends, on top of that I’ve always been a bit of recluse. I often sat by myself reading weird books on science and science fiction, and took long solitary walks were I talked to myself a lot. When we finally did stop moving, it was in Detroit, in a somewhat rough neighborhood. High School was about the most awkward and difficult time of my life.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Wow. You were either a bully or a jock in your youth. It's possible to abhor what Cho did and not defend our whole system of control through fear. So why you INSIST on defending a system that has created a society with the highest child abuse, murder rate, and incarceration rate of the industrialized world? Yep, I can see that it's working for us and we "want" it.
But all that aside, according to you no body that you know of has ever improved by criticism, huh? You don’t get out too much do you? That’s pretty much how the entire professional world works, and it works the same way in a social setting too. Let’s use simple example to get you on the same page: you and some friends are socializing at a party, some guy walks up to you and starts talking about how he wants to have sex with some 8 year old boy in Bangkok. You offer no criticism? You politely and opening accept him for the beautiful inner person that he is?
It’s really not hard to see how social chastisement is a crucial part of society’s method for maintaining its norms or encouraging competition, but that’s not say that it doesn’t go too far especially among those who have not developed a mature set of social norms. A special response to competition: This one should be obvious to you. One possible example is when you and rue and citizen and Frem, etc get together on this board and barrage people you don’t agree with, like Geezer or Hero, with your little ad hominem nicknames and ridiculing comments. Most of which is not intended to further any rational debate, but to silence a voice you don’t want to hear. It reduces a rational debate to direct competition. And many would argue that it helps to improve the arguing skills of the debaters, although in most cases Geezer and Hero are the ones to emerge with the improved skills.
The problem is when it goes it too far and becomes a vehicle to express hatred. But in most cases, the appropriate response to bullies is social chastisement. I’ve seen it work very successfully to put a bully in his place with no violence. It requires someone willing to stand up to the bully though, which can be difficult because the prevailing wisdom is that it is not always successful. Sometimes the hatred can become so invested that the violence becomes the principle source of expression and the bully kills the bullied or visa versa. It has definitely gone too far at that point, and crossed the line to become adherent behavior itself.
But none of this has anything to do with Cho. Because Cho did not do what he did because he got his feelings hurt on the playground, regardless of what Cho tells you. Cho did what he did because he was sick. He did not kill a bully who he felt was threatening his life. He premeditatedly killed random people he did not know and who were of no threat to him. It’s an uncommon event in our society, but it is not unusual. Serial killers and mass murderers exist in all facets of our society. And a scientific examination often reveals differences in brain structure or chemical imbalances that are consistent with severe mental illness and psychotic behavior. Cho did what he did more likely because of who Cho was, not how he was treated. And it seems remarkable to me that so many people believe what Cho tells them. But in the end, it’s just the word of a madman justifying his murdering acts by telling you that ‘they’ deserved it. You can believe that if you want, but you are a long, long way from convincing me to.
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Quote:Quick story: When I was 8 I got a small hunting knife for my birthday, I wanted it 'cause Tarzan had one on TV.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
You flat do not understand the pyschology of the people who do this.
There was a 12 year old bully on my block that regularly picked on all the smaller kids, me included. One day he was targeting me, and it was when I was in posession of my knife- I was showing it to some friends- and he decided to knock me down and take it, only he didn't pull it from my hand in time. I got up and slashed at him, but he was fast enough to avoid my attempt. I then chased him around the block in a rage, fully intending to sink the blade into his back. He lost me going over a chain link fence behind some houses.
Now after this I felt sort of bad (but not THAT bad), thinking that I might have killed him or something...however, he never did bug me again.
Why did it almost come to bloodshed? His dad (talked to by my dad more than once) let him do as he pleased, I guess.
Just a little view into a taste of the psychology behind that kind of rage...and every kid I grew up with had a similar experience from time to time.
No bullys Chrisisall
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Quote:AND he was a f***ing coward. He chose to target who he could get easily, not those (who might have been) directly responsible for his torment.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Cho did what he did because he was sick.
At least his last shot was well-placed.
Harsh Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
When you crush someone down till there ain't nothin left, it's like compressing gas fumes, most times no, nothing happens, but sometimes... just one spark, and blam.
This sums up the point I'm trying to make. I'm just asking, why keep 'compressing' them. Finn's justifications are fairly accurate, I think, as to why we do it. But I still think it's wrong.
Quote:
Also, part of the problem rests with us - kids see the world the way it *really* is, without all the bullshit rationalisation we cover it up in to make it more palatable when we choke it down, and when they explain it to a counsellor, what do they call it ?
This is true to a point, but it's also not. I say that because the picture we paint for kids in school is mostly bullshit. They freak out to the extent that they buy into it. It took me years to understand that the sick, twisted worldview presented by "social chastisement" was bullshit. The real world doesn't work that way. Or, at least when it does, you don't have to play along. The sooner kids understand this, the better chance they have of finding sanity and peace-of-mind.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:Well clearly something is going on beyond the individual because there is a HUGE difference between our society and EVERY other industrialized society in the world. How do you explain that?
We blame everything...Guns, Music, TV, Drugs, Sex, you name it. Anything so that an individual isn't responsible for anything. Its "societies fault", his mother didn't breatfeed or whatever some psycologist comes up with.
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Always look upstream.
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FINN- Quote:
Fortunately for you it didn' start earlier. So what did you "learn" from that experience? Anything useful?
High School was about the most awkward and difficult time of my life.
Quote:I supervise nine chemists, one technician, and a senior chemist and I fired (yep fired) a poor performer from a government position. I'm also a household employer and I've fired some of those folks too. I also parent a neurologically challenged and defiance-prone teen. And I tell you with all honesty that I have NEVER seen anyone motivated by criticism, not once. You can teach people to fear YOU, you might even get them to avoid a particular behavior but you will certainly not get better performance and greater motivation through fear. You get far better performance from instruction and reward. That is not to say that there shouldn't be consequences. I DO fire people, and I don't believe in enabling bad habits. But once the standards are known and the consequences are clear, and you've gone through a performance improvement plan then it's up to the person to decide what they're going to do.
You don’t get out too much do you? That’s pretty much how the entire professional world works, and it works the same way in a social setting too.
Quote:Hey! I do not! Neither (as I recall) does Frem. Nor do I propose or suggest that personal attacks improve debate. So watch who you're sticking with the criticism, OK?
One possible example is when you and rue and citizen and Frem, etc get together on this board and barrage people you don’t agree with, like Geezer or Hero, with your little ad hominem nicknames and ridiculing comments.
CHRIS- AFA Cho is concerned, it sounds to me like he had some sort of dysfunction early on. The things that keep cropping up are exteme shyness, "a troubled boy uncomfortable with affection", "a grandson who was so shy he didn't even know how to run into my arms to be hugged", strangely remote, "docile and well-behaved. But his mother used to say he does not speak, that he only looked at her but did not reply to her. And that symptom got worse when they went to America. It was his mother's greatest heartburning grief that her son did not talk", the odd boy who never spoke who carried around an instrument that earned him the name "Trombone Boy" (and less flattering names). Something was clearly wrong- something that no amount of "social chastisement" would help. I read his plays and I wonder if perhaps he wasn't molested early on, or born with some form of autism.
Vengeance or the threat of vengeance doesn't prevent people like Cho. It just doesn't.
RE the bully that you bested- just OOC did he stop bullying altogether, or did he just stop bullying YOU?
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Always look upstream.
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Good stuff Sarge and Frem.
There is a saying that makes a lot of sense to me: "Genetics loads the gun, but environment pulls the trigger."
I am all for taking full individual responsibility for one's choices and actions, but it is rather simplistic to ignore societal pressures and influences. Recognizing the full spectrum of possible causal factors is not the same thing as "justifying" or excusing the actions.
There is simply no need to humiliate, demonize, or crush the spirit of another human being, whether they turn out to be killers or not. Such psychological oppression (especially the preemptive kind that folks are talking about) cannot prevent anything and are likely to make things worse.
Discipline (structure with limits) and kindness are likely to be much more effective as preventive measures.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky 
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Nullius in verba. (Take nobody's word.)
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Quote:I wouldn't say I 'bested' him, I think he just saw me as crazy and maybe dangerous...
Originally posted by SignyM:
RE the bully that you bested- just OOC did he stop bullying altogether, or did he just stop bullying YOU?
He never again bullied me (or in my presence), but I'm sure he found an outlet away from me (we went to different schools).
EDIT: To tell the truth, I remember worrying that he might beat me up for my little wig-out, I wouldn't have my knife with me all the time. Imagine my happy surprise when he just never talked to me again, heh heh.
Crazy, knife-weilding Chrisisall
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Finn, smell what you're shovelling.
I am one of the few who speaks up for PN's right to be here, so be *damned* to you if you think I wanna silence anyone - if anything, imma trying to educate you, or at least get your to understand other viewpoints on a situation, and if I don't think someone is capable of rational debate on a topic, I don't bother debating it with them.
The viewpoint you are expressing, in your post, is *exactly* what creates these people, and exactly what will continue to do so.
Prove to me Cho was *born* like that, go on, try to prove it.
Something happened in between the womb and his suicide, the exact details we don't know, can't know, and likely never will know, but continuing to espouse the belief that people are born like that so it's a waste of effort to do anything about it is lunacy.
Why don't you tell me what the *cause* of those structural and chemical abnormalities are, eh ?
Why don't you ask Doc Perry what causes them ?
You won't like the answers, but it's something we all gotta face up to, cause it's a boomerang WE throw, every day - and sometimes it comes back.
As for bully-types, I would say it depends on how soon you get to them, by the time these punks reach high school, they've calcified in a behavior with almost endless positive reinforcement, that is practically celebrated in our society, you really think mere words are going to change them ?
I will not go into details about it, but yeah, I ran up against them too, and the good ole boys game of being punished by the school for mere self defense to the point where I honestly believed at the age of 11-12 that they were in downright collusion with each other.
The only thing that kept me safe, kept me sane at all, was an absolute willingness to resort to violence far and away beyond anything you would ever even dream could come from the mind and heart of a child - which yes, caused me to be left alone, rather very severely alone, by everyone, but it was preferable to having my ass kicked every day.
And when I finally broke free of that hateful system at sixteen, with GED in hand, it would take more than a decade to slowly emerge from the bitter wall of hate, rage and violence that I kept the rest of humanity at bay with - not sharing the details of that beyond the fact that love really does conquer all, and the strongest force ever on earth is mercy.
And one thought to ponder on, for Chrisisall.
Now suppose, just suppose... that after that incident the cops show up at your house, take the knife, charge you with assault and battery, which goes to court (eventually) and gets you stuck with community service...
And on top of that, the next day, you run up against punk boy and three of his friends laying in wait, mocking your for being disarmed, who then proceed to kick your ass into an ER visit, and when YOU try to make an issue of it, it's dismissed as just boys being boys.
Put yourself back in that moment, just for five minutes, and think about how you would feel towards the people who blamed you, and shamed you, for your own defense, who disarmed you and handed you on a plate to them, and put yourself in that frame of mind for just five minutes.
You'll never again wonder why these folk do what they do - you will know.
Vilification of self-defense is but the smallest part of it, but make no mistake it is a part of it indeed.
If you'd like, I have a set of editorials written shortly after Columbine I could dig up and share, one of which I will post immediately after this.
One might find them quite informative.
-Frem
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(originally written sept 2002)
Death At 3PM
by XXXXXXXX
School lets out at 3pm.
http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/9911_1/vio1.html
http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/9911_1/vio2.html
These charts show without one ounce of doubt, that school is a contributory factor in crime...and here's why, tho no one will admit it.
A student often harrassed by his peers more often than likely...WILL BE ARMED, once he returns home and gets out and about.
But on his way home from school, he will not be, nor will he have neighbor/parental support to back him up...by demanding that our children come to school unarmed (which is rational, and understandable) - we then take some responsibility for protecting them from harm.
The same principle applies at, say...Social Security...the sign on the door clearly indicates you must leave your weapons behind to enter the building, and beside that door is an ARMED guard...the presence of whom I find downright comforting when I have left my weapons in the car.
If I must be defenseless by the rules of the organization I am entering, it is their responsibility, morally...to defend me, period.
The SAME applies to schools...the child appearing at the bus stop to confront six larger kids who are going to kick the shit out of him does so unarmed because it is the schools policy that he not board the bus with a weapon...but where is the school when his safety is now endangered because he is unarmed ?
And on the way home, many times it is a "race" to get "home safe" and more than likely armed....before your aggressors get to you - where is the school then, by who's demands you are unarmed ?
If the school is going to demand compliance with certain rules that cause increased risks to their students (and usually FROM other students) - then the school is going to have to take responsibility for what happens to them....even if it's off school grounds, even if it's after school.
Now, consider well the mindset of the tormented child - the school demands he be certain places at certain times, and unarmed...and his tormenters know where he will be, and that he will be defenseless....and as well most of them know the teachers are going home and the school will not take responsibility for anything that happens after school or off the property.
In the mind of the victim, the school has "set him up" to be abused, and therefore a knowing and willing participant, especially if he's brought it up with them and been told there is nothing they can do after-hours or off the property.
And the sick thing is...the child is correct, the school places him in such situations, and then refuses to take their share of responsibility for what then happens to him.
Yet, now...if it was an adult, a stranger...they might act, but as long as it's students from the same school, they do nothing, how convenient.
What needs be done is to make the school system legally and financially responsible to some degree in cases where harm comes of it, for it is by their mandate the student is in this place, at this time, and not armed - and therefore easier to victimize.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
...according to you no body that you know of has ever improved by criticism, huh? You don’t get out too much do you? That’s pretty much how the entire professional world works, and it works the same way in a social setting too. Let’s use simple example to get you on the same page: you and some friends are socializing at a party, some guy walks up to you and starts talking about how he wants to have sex with some 8 year old boy in Bangkok. You offer no criticism? You politely and opening accept him for the beautiful inner person that he is?
Heh... you make it sounds like schoolyard bullies are the valiant enforcers of our moral code. Give it a break, it's nothing like that. It's about meanness and insecurity and fear. You can find social settings like this in the professional world, companies where many of the people have yet to grow out of the games they played in school. But they're easy enough to avoid for those of us who have moved on.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Finn, I also defend PN's right to be here and have done so in the past.
And thank you Frem for that heartfelt post.
---------------------------------
Perhaps passion will sway where reason cannot.
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Quote:I've done that, Frem- wondered about it, that is.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Put yourself back in that moment, just for five minutes, and think about how you would feel towards the people who blamed you, and shamed you, for your own defense, who disarmed you and handed you on a plate to them, and put yourself in that frame of mind for just five minutes.
What scares me more is, what if I had stabbed that jerk? Even if I did no more than a flesh wound, I might have gone down an entirely different path than I did. But for the grace of Buddha, I might have become an anti-social nutcase, waiting to exact revenge on the system that twisted me. None of us are above straying to the Dark side, given the proper motivation. Peeps that would dismiss society's role in creating Cho's are reacting to the inner fear that they could have become one, IMO.
Nature, nuture, I'm the guy with the gun...Chrisisall
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Quote:
But for the grace of Buddha, I might have become an anti-social nutcase, waiting to exact revenge on the system that twisted me.
Well, I suppose a confession is in order.
You see, I came awful damned close to *doing* exactly that, but... it would not have been enough, and it would not have changed anything - I had a full-on eureaka-class epiphany one day, just out of the blue while thinking dark thoughts on the matter, and decided to exact my revenge in a fashion that had not occured to me before.
Strike at its roots, crush it's evil seed, and break it's ability to create monsters.
I've moved on past revenge as primary motive, but where we are, where we ALL are, even in our disagreements over the details, in this thread, is somewhere I have been hoping to see for nearly twenty years.
I am shocked, stunned, and gratified that this topic can finally be discussed in such a fashion, because for the most part attempting to address this particular topic hasn't exactly been a smashing success getting it across to the general populace, and I still have doubts about most folk being willing to face much of it.
Believe me, the site I originally wrote most of these editorials for was buried in hatemail over it, of the how-dare-you-try-to-understand-them stripe.
Maybe we weren't ready, maybe we are now, I dunno, but a man can hope.
I can hope for the day we don't murder the humanity of our children.
If I live to see that, I'll die a happy man.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Two brief observations.
Closest I've come so far to an irrational shooting was a road rage incident that finished outside an office where I was working. Apparently some guy cut up another guy on the freeway so the "injured party" followed him off the highway, waited until he had stopped at the light outside our office block and shot him.
Now from Sarge's perspective driving around here can be especially vexing, highways don't have consistancy as to the structure of ramps, signs often give little or no notice of required lane changes. It would be true to say that the "system" makes driving more stressfull than it needs to be, and that's before we consider any other pressures in the shooter's life. However, everyone here lives with those pressures and we don't shoot each other that often, which also addresses Finn's point.
If we did what Sarge suggests and change the system, be it high school or high way we could probably reduce the pressure and I believe reduce the incidents. However, I don't think that pressure is the sole cause of these kinds of incidents, I suspect that some people over time build a world view that sees even unrelated events as victimization and they will view almost everything as a slight against them.
I also wouldn't take Cho's view as being definative. There was an incident in my life about 10 years ago, one of those situations where the line between personal and business relationships became blurred and ruined a friendship. Had you asked me about it then I would have been absolutely certain which party was in the wrong and who "victimised" who. I was in an interlectual "black hole" where my conclusion warped reality around it to fit. Viewed now through the wonders of 20-20 hindsight I can see I read more into some situations than the actual data justifies. If you believe yourself to have been "wronged" then the smallest inconsiderate action becomes a "dis" and you no longer believe in honest mistakes. What Cho saw as victimisation may not have been things anyone else would have even considered. Cho could see himself as victimised because he saw himself as a victim, and he believed he was a victim because he was "victimised."
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Quote:Look at movies like Spider-man 2, where Doc Ock isn't merely evil, he's a pawn in forces only partially of his making.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
the site I originally wrote most of these editorials for was buried in hatemail over it, of the how-dare-you-try-to-understand-them stripe.
The pure-evil bad-for-badness-sake guy is getting harder to swallow for many.
Understand the motivation, and you understand (even if you can't condone) the actions.
Humanizing humans has never come this far, as far as I can see. But we do have farther to go.
I was lucky in Junior High to have idolized Bruce Lee, and study martial arts in earnest- bullies we of absolutely no concern to me at the High School level- but I saw my share of picked-on kids go the druggie route to escape...I could be all "Well, I took control of my life...", but I recognize that I was also lucky, too.
'Kicks like a girl' Chrisisall
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Quote:Okay, there was definitely a screw loose, but society could be set up to not loosen more an already loose one... Okay, crappy analogy- but you get what I mean, right?
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Cho could see himself as victimised because he saw himself as a victim, and he believed he was a victim because he was "victimised."
Loose Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:Quote:Okay, there was definitely a screw loose, but society could be set up to not loosen more an already loose one... Okay, crappy analogy- but you get what I mean, right?
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Cho could see himself as victimised because he saw himself as a victim, and he believed he was a victim because he was "victimised."
Loose Chrisisall
Absolutely. The point I was making is that from INSIDE a situation the world can look very different from how it looks outside so Cho's explanation may not reflect general reality, just Cho's reality.
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Quote:Agreed.
Originally posted by Fletch2:
The point I was making is that from INSIDE a situation the world can look very different from how it looks outside so Cho's explanation may not reflect general reality, just Cho's reality.
Agreeable Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Not every child in our society will turn out like that, but our means and methods make damn sure every single one of them has the potential.
This one sentence really jumped out at me. And it really underscores the different ways we think about social systems and physical systems (by physical I am referring to systems that can be reasonably well modeled using the laws of physics).
If it was a physical system we were discussing and we had identified that the design or implementation increased the potential of a negative event occurring we would do something. We would either take steps to decrease the potential or we would satisfy ourselves that the cost of decreasing the potential was greater than the cost of dealing with the negative event given the probability of the event occurring.
Well, social systems are designed and implemented as well. The big difference is that many of the design decisions are masked by culture or history, etc. It's clear that we have a social system that amplifies the negative potential already present in certain individuals. To me, it seems pretty clear that the cost of dealing with the negative events that result from that amplification is way too high. So we have an obligation to take steps to change the system.
But it's more than that. The social system has a negative impact on everyone involved.
Not sure if that makes sense to anyone else but it really helped me. And all of this is with the caveat that I have a tendency to overapply engineering concepts to social systems (which ticks off my partner, who is in the humanities).
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Quote:Make perfect, logical sense, Soup.
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
To me, it seems pretty clear that the cost of dealing with the negative events that result from that amplification is way too high.
Not sure if that makes sense to anyone else
Chrisisall
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Taking the engineering analogy even further no matter how well designed something is you can get one off component failures. I don't know many businesses that would pay the expense to "rework the line" to try to correct 1 failure in 6 Million (which is the chance of a school/college shooting)most would keep the line the same and accept the failure cost.
In more general terms I think 3 things are going on here.
1) Parents are increasingly disconnected from their kids and their kids problems. Some of this is economic some of it societal but it deprives kids of parental support.
2) Pressure has definately increased, both performance pressure and peer pressure.
3) I know that people don't want to hear it bit there is a copycat effect. At one time kids that couldn't take it commited suicide, now culture and reporting of previous shootings suggest that if you take folks out with you then you become a "somebody." I think there are deeply unhappy kids that may kill themselves now TV suggests that if they kill others too they can die as celebrities.
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#1 - Abso-fekkin-lutely, many of our social timebombs are "Latchkey Kids" if anyone remembers that idiocy.
#2 - Definately, often in combination with #1, trying to run a household at the early teen age because your parent or parents are unavailable due to working long hours just to pay the bills is more stressful than those who have never been there could imagine, add in class, grade and peer pressure, and it's quite an unpleasant situation indeed.
#3 - I dunno about the celebrity aspect, it seems more to me a combination of 2 factors.
A- One way or another, the intolerable situation ENDS, right there.
B- They wanna send society at large a message.
Believe me, if there was any way to get it to those considering copycatting, I would put it in neon lights - Message Recieved, You Can Stop Now.... but society doesn't get it, ignores it, and so it continues.
I rather doubt someone facing imminent death really cares all that much for celebrity status, rather more so they want their message carried across loud and clear.
As for how to carry it across to would be copycatters that we've heard it, and wish to act on it ? mere words won't cut it, nor will more draconian measures, those will only reinforce the belief that death and violence are their only escape... we need to *show* them that we've got the point and are willing to work on the problem.
And for that, we have to be honestly willing to do it, not throw a couple quick bandaids on it and go back to ignoring it till the next one.
Don't ever think this cannot eventually devolve into generational warfare.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Name that poet:
Quote:
Nigger
Can you kill
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can a nigger kill the Man
Can you kill nigger
Huh? Nigger can you
kill
Do you know how to draw blood
Can you poison
Can you stab-a-Jew
Can you kill huh? Nigger
Can you kill
Can you run a protestant down with your
‘68 El Dorado
(that’s all they’re good for anyway)
Can you kill
Can you piss on a blond head
Can you cut it off
Can you kill
A nigger can die
We ain’t got to prove we can die
We got to prove we can kill
and
Also a company called Revolution has just issued
A special kit for little boys
Called Burn Baby
I’m told it has full instructions on how to siphon gas
And fill a bottle
and
and it occurred to me
maybe i shouldn't write
at all
but clean my gun
and check my kerosene supply
Answer:
Professor Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, English and Black Studies, Virginia Tech University, teacher of shooter Cho Seung-hui, who gave the eulogy for 33 students murdered by her student.
www.vdare.com/sailer/070422_giovanni.htm
Giovanni taught the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-hui Cho in a poetry class. She described him as troubled and downright "mean" and, when she approached the department chair to have Cho taken out of her class, said she was willing to resign rather than continue teaching him. She also claimed that she immediately suspected that Cho might be the shooter when she heard about the shooting, and would have been shocked otherwise. She has a tattoo with the words "Thug life" to honor Tupac Shakur, whom she admired.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Giovanni
Where is the nigger from?
Answer:
My home town in Tennessee. Also home of Bushes' Skull & Bones mayor/ambassador/boytoy Victor "Victoria" Ashe, introduced on TV as "the openly gay mayor of Knoxville". Also home of Controlled Demolitions Inc, et al.
Mind Control 101...
More "coincidences" - the shooter's Korean sister is employed by CIA and Bush Jr's nappy ho Kinda Sleazy Rice. Bush was in charge of police at VA Tech, after the convenient copkilling there last year, and ordered the local cops to stand down to allow the body count to rise, just like he did on 9/11. VA Tech has CIA contracts for mind control experiments on students. CIA holds recruiting seminars for students on VA Tech campus - and on most college campuses.
www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=28209
"You can't stop the signal!"
-Mr Universe, Pirate TV
FIREFLY SERENITY PILOT MUSIC VIDEO V2
Tangerine Dream - Thief Soundtrack: Confrontation
https://video.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/716.shtml
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=8cd2bd0379340120e7a6ed00f2a53ee5
.1044556
www.myspace.com/piratenewsctv
DRIVE BY MIND CONTROL: FREE TV EPISODES ONLINE
www.myspace.com/driveonfox
Does that seem right to you?
www.scifi.com/onair/
Difficile est saturam non scribere
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Quote:Good for you. Do you want a cookie? I don’t know what kind of work you do or what kind of superior you are to your subordinates. Based on your personality on this board, I would suspect that quite a few people on this board, including me, snickered at the notion that you could possibly be uncritical about anything. But people’s online personalities are generally independent of the realworld personalities. So I take your word for it.
Originally posted by SignyM:
I supervise nine chemists, one technician, and a senior chemist and I fired (yep fired) a poor performer from a government position. I'm also a household employer and I've fired some of those folks too. I also parent a neurologically challenged and defiance-prone teen. And I tell you with all honesty that I have NEVER seen anyone motivated by criticism, not once. You can teach people to fear YOU, you might even get them to avoid a particular behavior but you will certainly not get better performance and greater motivation through fear. You get far better performance from instruction and reward. That is not to say that there shouldn't be consequences. I DO fire people, and I don't believe in enabling bad habits. But once the standards are known and the consequences are clear, and you've gone through a performance improvement plan then it's up to the person to decide what they're going to do.
Speaking hypothetically, it’s dangerous when a superior lacks the self inspection to see their own criticism, because what that means, more often then not, is that the superior will obliviously step over the line more frequently. Meaning that a superior who is unable to see his or her own critical arguments to his subordinates is often and unknowingly overly harsh. I know such a guy. He’s an asshole much of the time and doesn’t even realize it. If you get him away from work, he's really a nice guy. Not that you like that. I’m sure you’re a basket of roses at work. But just as curious is this idea that professional criticism is tantamount to “fear.” In order for you to feel like criticism exists, you must perceive some degree of fear from your subordinates? You can say all kinds of mean and rotten things before you ever get to the point where your subordinates are perceptively afraid of you.
Quote:Of course, you’ve already laid out that you’re never critical of anyone. And as far as Frem is concerned, well some of the comments I’ve read from him about Christians alone exceed anything that might be called criticism. But I’m not going to get into specifics. If for no other reason then that it seems futile. Whether you believe it or not, professional criticism does exist and it is instrumental in the workplace, particularly in fields of medicine and science, and there are few times, that I can think of, in which that criticism should extend to “fear,” but it does exist. I’ve worked professionally in two very different fields, as a medical physicist for a biomaterials and oncology lab and then as an analysis for the Army. In both cases there was a high degree of competitive and constructive criticism, which maintained our professional productivity and precision of product. But these are important jobs in which quite frankly the lives of other people were dependent upon the success of our product, so perhaps that drove us to a higher degree of critical analysis then is perhaps necessary in your work. I don’t know.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Hey! I do not! Neither (as I recall) does Frem. Nor do I propose or suggest that personal attacks improve debate. So watch who you're sticking with the criticism, OK?
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:It seems like most of the harshest Bullying that I dealt with in school ended with me getting my ass kicked, and I got the scars to prove it. It generally ended there though. After that one fight it was over. They didn’t bully me anymore and in at least two instances, the bully ended up being a friend later on. Go figure.
Originally posted by chrisisall:
EDIT: To tell the truth, I remember worrying that he might beat me up for my little wig-out, I wouldn't have my knife with me all the time. Imagine my happy surprise when he just never talked to me again, heh heh.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:except ...
Good for you. Do you want a cookie? I don’t know hat kind of work you do or what kind of superior you are to your subordinates. Based on your personality on this board, I would suspect that quite a few people on this board, including me, snickered at the notion that you could possibly be uncritical about anything. But people’s online personalities are generally independent of the realworld personalities. So I take your word for it.
Quote:hah hah hah! You clearly don't know me! Professional criticism from a supervisor (such as myself) might elicit fear. Criticism between peers is a different situation. Context is important.
Speaking hypothetically, it’s dangerous when a superior lacks the self inspection to see their own criticism, because what that means, more often then not, is that the superior will obliviously step over the line more frequently. Meaning that a superior who is unable to see his or her own critical arguments to his subordinates is often and unknowingly overly harsh. I know such a guy. He’s an asshole much of the time and doesn’t even realize it. If you get him away from work, he's really a nice guy. Not that you like that. I’m sure you’re a basket of roses at work. But just as curious is this idea that professional criticism is tantamount to “fear.” In order for you to feel like criticism exists, you must perceive some degree of fear from your subordinates? You can say all kinds of mean and rotten things before you ever get to the point where your subordinates are perceptively afraid of you.
Quote:No. that's not what I said. I said that motivating through fear doesn't work.
Of course, you’ve already laid out that you’re never critical of anyone.
Quote:I guess I misremembered.
And as far as Frem is concerned, well some of the comments I’ve read from him about Christians alone exceed anything that might be called criticism. But I’m not going to get into specifics. If for no other reason then that it seems futile.
Quote:It's very useful in brainstorming, in looking at problem from all angles (such as we do here on the board)
Whether you believe it or not, professional criticism does exist and it is instrumental in the workplace, particularly in fields of medicine and science,
Quote:Out of curiosity, how was this "competitive and constructive criticism" exchanged? Between peers? Through several levels of hierarchy? Formally? Over the coffeepot?
and there are few times, that I can think of, in which that criticism should extend to “fear,” but it does exist. I’ve worked professionally in two very different fields, as a medical physicist for a biomaterials and oncology lab and then as an analysis for the Army. In both cases there was a high degree of competitive and constructive criticism, which maintained our professional productivity and precision of product. But these are important jobs in which quite frankly the lives of other people were dependent upon the success of our product, so perhaps that drove us to a higher degree of critical analysis then is perhaps necessary in your work. I don’t know.
The problem that I have with my group is that everyone is doing something unique. Altho I try to make sure everyone is cross-trained, right now I'm so short-staffed that I can't afford overlap so person A doesn't get much involved with person B.
---------------------------------
Always look upstream.
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Quote:Not everyone Soup. The moneymakers positively benefit from the fucked up system we live in.
But it's more than that. The social system has a negative impact on everyone involved.
---------------------------------
Always look upstream.
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Quote:Between peers and over levels of hierarchy. Rarely over the coffeepot. In fact, I would discourage that kind of criticism and so do my superiors, if it occurred, but the people I work with are professionals, so it doesn’t occur. I encourage all my subordinates to provide criticism where appropriate. Perhaps in your case, where you have no overlap, that might be difficult, but nonetheless, certainly some degree of critical inspection goes into your office, somewhere. But we actively seek to encourage peer review so that when our product goes out, it is free of mistakes. I think it’s a crucial practice, and I couldn’t even begin to number all the corrections we’ve been able to make because of it.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Out of curiosity, how was this "competitive and constructive criticism" exchanged? Between peers? Through several levels of hierarchy? Formally? Over the coffeepot?
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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We have all kinds of cross-checking. In fact we have three levels of checking: at the chemist, senior, and supervisor (me). That's not the same as criticism, tho. At some later date I'd like to get some insight as to how your group functions.
---------------------------------
Always look upstream.
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I'm still confused about what professional criticism has to do with schoolyard bullying.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Yeah, I was wondering that my own self.
If we think of children as raw material that needs to be heated and beaten and combined until they are finally turned into swords then the schoolyard bullying makes a certain amount of sense.
Otherwise I'm not seeing much positive there at all.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
2) Pressure has definately increased, both performance pressure and peer pressure.
Amen to the performance pressure.
I've been tutoring high school students in science and math for a while. I've also tutored on the undergraduate level (from R1 to community college) off and on for the past ten years. It is amazing to me the stress that these students are under and the schedules that they maintain.
It's been a couple of decades since I started high school and it is possible that my memory of that time is purposefully hazy. That said, what these students are going through is at least an order of magnitude greater than what I went through. One of my goals is to improve their learning efficiency because they see no way to slow down the amount they are trying to process.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
I'm still confused about what professional criticism has to do with schoolyard bullying.
When we are younger and in school, the criticism is considered at a rookie level. I guess posters are trying to draw present day comparisons as most of us have been out of school for awhile now.
Posting to stir stuff up.
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Well clearly something is going on beyond the individual because there is a HUGE difference between our society and EVERY other industrialized society in the world. How do you explain that?
I guess that depends on your definitions; or are you honestly suggesting that w're the only country that has murderers?
Or mass murderers?
Or serial killers?
Or terrorist acts? (by the by if Cho had strapped a bomb to himself we'd be calling it that, not a rampage...same effect different politics)
Also there is already a disconnect between the fact that as contries go the US is one of the largest in size, population, culture, & personal freedoms.
Let us not forget that the debate has already mutated out there...the hardware is already becoming the focus, I have a question...how come a non-citizen can obtain the "evil hardware"?
Is anyone suggesting deporting the family (after all there is a history of mental instability in the family?), or is that too "incorrect"?
Let me ask you a question, or anyone for that matter, while the debate about hardware begins again:
Does anyone out there honestly believe that the police can "protect" people on an individual level?
Does anyone out there honestly believe that that is thier job?
Does anyone believe that a 90-year old woman with a walker is going to fend off an 18-28 year old assailent wielding a knife using hand to hand or melee weapons?
Do little old ladies or gentleman only get robbed in the US?
My wife weighs about 108 lbs. She is not trained in martial arts...same assailent what would you suggest she use...harsh language? (And spare me the platitudes about stun guns & pepper spray...stun guns are in close weapons that require Hand-to-hand skills to use effectively in combat & pepper spray is ineffective on many people)
Give me a realistic alternative & I'll be more than happy to listen.
Just keep in mind that the political powers of the world have been trying to take the power of the firearm out of the hands of "the common man" almost since it was introduced.
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Quote:
Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
When we are younger and in school, the criticism is considered at a rookie level. I guess posters are trying to draw present day comparisons as most of us have been out of school for awhile now.
Ahh... well if the point is to find adult social settings analagous with public schools, prisons are a much better example.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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RojBlake
Quote:Of course not. Every population has SOME deviants in it. But the United States has more PER CAPITA than all other industrialized nations: Here are the ones 5+/5- from the USA ranking (per thousand people, to account for differences in poulation size)
I guess that depends on your definitions; or are you honestly suggesting that w're the only country that has murderers? Or mass murderers? Or serial killers? Or terrorist acts? (by the by if Cho had strapped a bomb to himself we'd be calling it that, not a rampage...same effect different politics) Also there is already a disconnect between the fact that as contries go the US is one of the largest in size, population, culture, & personal freedoms.
Costa Rica: 0.061006
Poland: 0.0562789
Georgia: 0.0511011
Uruguay: 0.045082
Bulgaria: 0.0445638
United States: 0.042802
Armenia: 0.0425746
India: 0.0344083
Yemen: 0.0336276
Dominica: 0.0289733
Azerbaijan: 0.0285642
Compared to nations that we're more familiar with:
France 0.0173272 (approx 1/2 of USA)
Australia 0.0150324 (approx 1/3)
Canada 0.0149063 (approx 1/3)
United Kingdom: 0.0140633 (approx 1/3)
Germany 0.0116461 (approx 1/4)
Japan 0.00499933 (approx 1/10)
Among industrialized nations, the USA crime rate sticks out like a sore thumb. What are we doing differently from them?
Gun ownerhsip by nation: Percent of homes with firearms
Australia 16%
Japan 1%
Canada 26%
New Zealand 20%
Finland 50%
Norway 32%
France 23%
Spain 13%
Germany 9%
United Kingdom 4%
---------------------------------
Always look upstream.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Among industrialized nations, the USA crime rate sticks out like a sore thumb. What are we doing differently from them?
I'm gonna go with arresting more people for more crimes.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:Glorifying gun-violence in our movies and TV shows. We need more stuff like Buffy and Dark Angel where the main characters look down on gun use.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Among industrialized nations, the USA crime rate sticks out like a sore thumb. What are we doing differently from them?
Seriously, Chrisisall
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Cho is like a lot of other extreme cases. Whatever might work to deal with people like him is not what will work to deal with most.
The US:
10,105 gun-related homicides out of 14,860 (2005)
16,907 gun-related suicides (2004)
54,447 non-fatal violence-related gunshots (2000)
23,237 non-fatal accidental gunshots (2000)
Cho's approximate relative contribution is 0.3% of all homicides, 0.006% of all suicides, and 0.05% of all non-fatal gunshots.
To eliminate the largest part of the problem, you need to address the OTHER gun owners. I realize there are many responsible people who own guns. But in their quest to retain their legal right to own guns they end up having to answer for the yahoos, macho-shitheads, flakes, bubbas, greedy bastards, abusers, and gangstas who also own guns.
So I put it out there: what would YOU do to clean up the gun owning population, so that everyone would be as well-intended, knowledgeable, moderate and responsible as you?
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Quote:Oh yeah, THAT'LL help!
I'm gonna go with arresting more people for more crimes.
Prisoners per capita- WE'RE NUMBER ONE!
United States: 715 prisoners per 100,000 people
Comparing prisoners per 100,000 (1st number) to murders per 100,000 (2nd number)
United States 715, 43
Russia 584, 202
Belarus 554, 98
Palau 523, unk
Beliz 459, unk
Suriname 437, unk
Dominica 420, 29
Ukraine 416, 94
Bahamas 410, unk
South Africa 402, 496
Prisoners per 100,000 of nations that we know:
Canada 15
Germany 12
UK 43
Japan 5
Clearly, the nations that achieve low murder rates do so w/o resorting to high incarceration rates. And despite an incarceration rate that is more than 20-150X theirs, our murder rate is far higher.
---------------------------------
Always look upstream.
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The problem is that whenever you do statistics you usually get a somewhat skewed result. A few years ago a stydy was done county by county, state by state & the results were pretty interesting.
One of the other problems is that the numbers don't cover non-reported instances of guns/weapons being used in a deterrent capacity.
However the other truth is this, guns do not = violence.
I realize that this is a popular belief, but it simply isn't true.
Also in some of those statistics that were posted...how does one have gun violence in countries that don't allow guns?
For that matter how does one get guns in a "gun-free" zone or state? Simple you disobey the law/rules.
This has always been the crux of the matter, laws punish the law abiding.
The US isn't going to ban guns...it will make it more difficult to obtain, it will make it easier to victimize innocent but it won't ban it outright.
The US tried banning alcohol=faliure.
The US won't ban cigarettes=loss of tax revenue (hell the US subsidises tobacco farmers)
The US will interfere with it's citizens whenever it can. (seriously we have guys like Ted Kennedy trying to tel us how/ what we can eat)
Does anyone have any idea how much money is involved in the gun industry in this country? In tax revenue alone it's probably in the "billions".
Carry permits, hunting licenses, hunter-safety courses, ammunition, holsters, gun cleaning supplies, shooting sports, etc.
One of the fastest growing sports in this country is "Cowboy Action Shooting", which is also one of those "cultural differences" I mentioned before.
The gun in linked to this countries heritage...Culumbus had matchlock muskets back in 1492.
Unlike many other nations our heroes were not only armed with guns, alot of them were outlaws.
The founding fathers were considered traitors weren't they?
Jesse James, Billy the Kid, et al. I bet if you sat down & thought about it you could name far more outlaws & criminals glorified out of our history than the more traditional "hero types".
This site is dedicated to a group of criminals...Mal & company are criminals right?
Mal & company are also based on our rather colorful western history.
Buffy would be considered a vigalante.
How about our other icons...pirates.
Let's be honest here, no peace beyond the line?
Europe left the new world to crate its own rules...& it did.
Blackbeard, Black Bart Roberts, etc.
Hell Europes greatest rouges are some of our greatest "pistol packing" heroes...Henry Morgan for instance (we even named a rum after him).
These are part of our national culture...& yes it's violent & ugly. It was also part of our popular culture long before the advent of TV or cinema. Billy the Kid read about his glorified exploits in his own lifetime.
England imposed taxes & restrictions that allowed piracy & smugglers to flourish as part of our early survival...it's one of the reasons that our national character was defined by such men.
Right now one of the hottest media properties is "Captain Jack Sparrow", I like the movies...but be honest, what characteristics make that character worthy of praise & adoration?
Consider the much vaunted Star Wars franchise...one of the most popular characters...Han Solo (smuggler & pirate).
I'm sure we can all go through many more such examples...so if the argument is that the US culture is different from that of Europe, you're right.
Then again I like pirates & cowboys, I like Cowboy Action Shooting, I like Han Solo, & I think the crew of Serenity is probably one of the great creations of modern science fiction.
Not going to apologize for any of that.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
So I put it out there: what would YOU do to clean up the gun owning population?
I would make any and all kinds of guns legal (to be anally compliant with the NRA's interpretation of ammendment 2) BUT to own a weapon you first have to agree to be shot with it in the extremity of your choice. If you are caught with an illegal weapon that legal requirement is done after arrainment but the police officer gets to choose where to shoot you.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:Oh yeah, THAT'LL help!
I'm gonna go with arresting more people for more crimes.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was just saying that part of the reason our crime stats are so high is that we arrest more people. I was being glib.
In general it's hard for me to take statistical arguments seriously.
** ROJBLAKE -
Is there any reason why your posts all come out double spaced? It makes them a pain in the butt to read and it's wearing out my scroll wheel. :)
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
Originally posted by RojBlake:
Also in some of those statistics that were posted...how does one have gun violence in countries that don't allow guns?
Speaking from a purely Irish point of view - we don't allow explosives either but that never stopped the IRA.
*edit* Getting back to the subject of the post - you can't target the mentally ill, label them as dangerous and expect that to protect people. It won't. It'll make things worse. People people who need help won't get it. They'll avoid it like the plague. The stigma around mental health is bad enough as it is!
Like I said before, one in five people suffer mental illness at some point in their lives. Hell, I've been mentally ill (clinical depression for those who are curious, yeah yeah, the hippie is crazy, don't all fall off your chairs laughing at once) and the chances are you know someone else who has been mentally ill - whether they've chosen to tell you are not. Of that group, a significant percentage will act erratically or violently at some point. It's not because they're dangerous killers - it's because they're sick and they need help. Putting a "warning! abusive!" sign around their necks won't help. In fact, it's likely to cause massive stress and self consciousness and increase feelings of paranoia and isolation - none of which are good things no matter how stable you are. Think for five minutes what it would be like to wear a label like that. You want someone who's mentally ill to go through that???
No, it's not the solution. There are no easy answers to this question. But you'll get a hell of a lot further with a well funded, well run mental health service that can provide as much psychiatric assistance and properly prescribed medication as is needed to anyone who needs it for as long as they need it. And having a society that talks openly and honestly about mental health issues won't hurt either!
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too dumb to post - double post sort of
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Prisoners per capita- WE'RE NUMBER ONE!
United States: 715 prisoners per 100,000 people
Comparing prisoners per 100,000 (1st number) to murders per 100,000 (2nd number)
United States 715, 43
Russia 584, 202
Belarus 554, 98
Palau 523, unk
Beliz 459, unk
Suriname 437, unk
Dominica 420, 29
Ukraine 416, 94
Bahamas 410, unk
South Africa 402, 496
Prisoners per 100,000 of nations that we know:
Canada 15
Germany 12
UK 43
Japan 5
Clearly, the nations that achieve low murder rates do so w/o resorting to high incarceration rates. And despite an incarceration rate that is more than 20-150X theirs, our murder rate is far higher.
Really? look at your own numbers.
The UK & US have the same incarceration rate.
Russia is way out there.
Also, these numbers are probably not accurate. There are reports of these events being altered by politicians to suit thier needs.
Firearms charges are often dropped to make political points, also many times suicides are lumped with "handgun deaths" to bolster the numbers etc.
By the way, how many in your numbers are repeat offenders that were released early because of the political correctness that permiates our legal system?
I believe that another statistic is that 90% of the crime in this country is comitted by 7% of the populace.
Also how many of those incarcerated or murders are caused by people of other nationalities, illeagal or otherwise?
We have 2 INS border patrolmen in prison right now for shooting a drug dealer who was in this country illeagally & filed charges from another country. (Reason that the're in prison...politics)
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I think the real and final answer is to let our government become the fascist regime they would like to become; they could outlaw guns, and crush those who would defy them. Most fat, lazy, clumbsy Americans couldn't kill with their bare hands, or even a sword- so murder rates would go down.
Or we could begin honouring our children by keeping them safe in the prisons- er, I mean, the schools.
Bitter? Yep. I resent the whole 'not-my-problem' attitude in the public schools concerning bullies.
I beat the crap out of a bully in History class in 9th grade when the teacher left for a few minutes, and bully-boy thought that was a good moment to attack me.
He was on the wrestling team, he thought he was such hot s**t and never saw it coming. Made me feel good for a few minutes there, but why did I have to do it? Why does the system allow that to happen at all?
Family values my ass.
No Child Left Alone should be the name of THAT program.
Grrr Arghh Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
I think the real and final answer is to let our government become the fascist regime they would like to become; they could outlaw guns, and crush those who would defy them. Most fat, lazy, clumbsy Americans couldn't kill with their bare hands, or even a sword- so murder rates would go down.
Or we could begin honouring our children by keeping them safe in the prisons- er, I mean, the schools.
Bitter? Yep. I resent the whole 'not-my-problem' attitude in the public schools concerning bullies.
I beat the crap out of a bully in History class in 9th grade when the teacher left for a few minutes, and bully-boy thought that was a good moment to attack me.
He was on the wrestling team, he thought he was such hot s**t and never saw it coming. Made me feel good for a few minutes there, but why did I have to do it? Why does the system allow that to happen at all?
Family values my ass.
No Child Left Alone should be the name of THAT program.
Grrr Arghh Chrisisall
I remember boiling with rage when I was given punishment homework after a fight - the first I'd ever been in. Like you, I'd been attacked by a bully - who had tried to start a fight with me for three days running. I was livid because I knew damn well that the teacher knew the girl had been bullying me and hadn't done a damn thing. In fact, when I had complained of being bullied I'd been told that I was too sensitive.
One of my few regrets in life is doing that damn homework. Back then I just wasn't the type to question a teacher, no matter how unfair I thought the situation was. I really wish I'd been able to speak up. But then, it was the very fact that I couldn't that made them label me as "too sensitive" and leave me to get "toughened up" by a couple of years of misery.
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"Speaking from a purely Irish point of view - we don't allow explosives either but that never stopped the IRA."
Exactly, explosives aren't leagal in this country either (without the proper permits) but as I posted earlier you can walk into a grocery store & get the chemicals nessecary to set off a pretty decent size blast.
At Columbine they did just that. Cho could have done the same...it would have actually been cheaper. Cho laid out aroung $1,000 dollars for some upper-end hardware. Glock & Walther are 2 of the most expensive brands around.
Check me on this...the IRA uses guns too right?
Do "terrorist acts" end up in the statistics?
As I pointed out before, Cho's actions could easily be defined as a terrorist act, but because he used guns it never will be.
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"Look at your own numbers."
Ahem. Clearly you can't read.
Comparing prisoners per 100,000 United States 715, UK 43. And you say "The UK & US have the same incarceration rate". Not even close, try again.
Numbers not accurate? Sure ok, but not enough to change themn by a factor of 20.
"many times suicides are lumped with "handgun deaths"" Not true. Specifically, these numbers were separated out.
"Firearms charges are often dropped to make political points ..." So you are saying US number should be higher? How does this help your position?
"released early because of the political correctness" This is just insulting BS. So, to try to not be too insulting back, let me just ask you for some kind of data to back up your BS.
90% of the crime in this country is comitted by 7% ... caused by people of other nationalities, illeagal or otherwise ... politics. More BS.
If you's gonna play wit da big boys, you betta bring you big boy game. Otherwise you end up looking 
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Sorry I misread your numerical posts.
The 90% to 7% I believe is valid, it's either 7% or 14%. Or was about 5 years ago.
As to weather or not handgun deaths/suicides are used in the same stats, where did you get your stats?
The political coprrectness comment was NOT insulting sorry if you took it that way. There is a policy in many parts of this country of letting some truly despicable people back on the streets. The average murderer serves (on average) less that 7 years.
As to your "big boy" comment...now who's being insulting?
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Quote:
Originally posted by RojBlake:
Check me on this...the IRA uses guns too right?
Not any more. A ceasefire was negotiated a few years ago, and now they've officially disbanded and "put their arms beyond use."
Quote:
Do "terrorist acts" end up in the statistics?
Yep. The statistics I'm aware of anyway. You can have a look at the fascinating world of irish statistics at the Central Statistics Office website - www.cso.ie
Quote:
"Speaking from a purely Irish point of view - we don't allow explosives either but that never stopped the IRA."
Exactly, explosives aren't leagal in this country either (without the proper permits) but as I posted earlier you can walk into a grocery store & get the chemicals nessecary to set off a pretty decent size blast.
I have to say that argument doesn't make sense to me. It may be because I'm from a pretty non-gun culture and have a different outlook, but it sounds like your saying that there's no point in banning an effective killing weapon from general public access because if people try hard enough they'll find something else to kill you with. Yes, there are many, varied, inventive ways a human can kill another human, but guns are built to do nothing but kill - that's what they're made for, and they do it at long range.
Buying stuff needed to make a bomb takes time. Making a bomb takes time. Planting a bomb takes time, skill and a certain amount of luck unless you're planning to blow yourselve up with it and therefore don't care about getting caught planting it. The issue you're facing is that people don't have to do any of that stuff. They just walk into a shop and buy a gun. Or borrow a friends'. Or their parents' guns. If it's that easy to get your hards on something that kills people, how can you expect things like this not to happen?
Quote:
At Columbine they did just that. Cho could have done the same...it would have actually been cheaper. Cho laid out aroung $1,000 dollars for some upper-end hardware. Glock & Walther are 2 of the most expensive brands around.
At Columbine they used guns too. You know why? Because, like Cho, they wanted to kill everyone and, like Cho, they knew that guns do the job better.
A bomb will blow you to bits if you're on top of it. I'll blow off bits if you're further away. It'll start fires that burn people, crushes that hurt people and throw out shrapnel that'll rip right through the human body, but unless it's massive it won't kill everyone in a room.
Terrorists here had a brutal tactic. They would plant two bombs. The first one would go off, people who hadn't been hurt would run away, and then the second one would go off near an exit and kill the people trying to get to safety. Even with tactics like that, it's hard to kill a room full of people with a bomb.
When you want to kill everyone you do what Cho did - what the Columbine kids did - you walk around the room and systematically shoot everyone you find. Then you go back, and if anyone is moving, you shoot them again. A bomb can't do that. It can't pick off eveyone in a room one by one. That's why the gun is the mass killer's weapon of choice.
*edit* Also, guns are easy to hide in a shared dorm room. Several bags of fertilizer, lighter fluid and copper wiring? Not so much.
Quote:
As I pointed out before, Cho's actions could easily be defined as a terrorist act, but because he used guns it never will be.
Again this could be a cultural thing, but I'd always assumed terrorist to mean someone who kills as part of a political agenda. I could be wrong though. Is the unabomber considered a terrorist or a serial killer? Are the columbine killers considered terrorists because they used bombs?
http://desktophippie.goo
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The 90% to 7% I believe is valid, it's either 7% or 14%. Or was about 5 years ago. link
As to weather or not handgun deaths/suicides are used in the same stats, where did you get your stats? A CDC
There is a policy in many parts of this country of letting some truly despicable people back on the streets. A But the reason has nothing to do with 'political correctness' and more to do with jail overcrowding, 'cause some people think it's more important to jail non-violent addicts rather than treat them in a non-jail setting, and letting the violent go free.
As to your "big boy" comment...now who's being insulting? A You're kidding, right?
(RojBlake had finally had enough. He took out his semi-automatic and ... JUST KIDDING !)
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Ponder this for a moment, in many years of carrying, I have never had to pop a round at another person, that's a 0.0% addition, and may it stay that way forever.
Statistically speaking, sure, it's unlikely I will find myself facing a situation where that may be needful - however given my employment and location grant me that it's more likely than your average citizen.
Well, statistically speaking, it's unlikely I will have a flat, or that my house will catch fire, but is that a reason to dump the spare from my car, the fire extinguisher from my house ?
It's the same basic reasoning, once you remove the ridiculous fear of an inanimate thing from the equation.
That being said... Hippie ?
I got into a lot of brawls in school before becoming adept *enough* at violence that it was a complete deterrent, and one of the schools I went to had an idiotic policy of suspending BOTH participants in a fight under the bullshit assumption that "It takes two to tango", something STILL espoused by many schools even in light of it's complete idiocy.
Well, this punk by the name of Ian decided to take issue with the fact that I was polluting the white race by dating a mixed girl, and after about ten minutes of racial hate spewing, conveniently ignored by the teacher, in response to finally being told "oh shut it, will you?", takes a swing at me in front of the entire class, the teacher, and the assistant admin who happened to be walking down the hall... and in that freeze frame moment, I decided to let it land, which hurt like a bitch mind you, he blacked my eye but good.
And then stood to it and let him pound on me till the teacher pulled him off.
And they still suspended me, even though I had no part in the fight, even though I did not raise a hand even in my own defense, quoting their asinine "policy".
My mother tried to address this stupidity with the school and was nastily rebuffed, resulting in a "green light" for what happened next, as this punk would not leave it alone, and the NEXT time a swing was thrown, severe ugliness resulted, followed by expulsion, mine.
That blame the victim shit has to go, and they ought to be damned glad I didn't read Enders Game till I was sixteen, or I would have handed out the "Stilson Treatment" to some of these punks myself - so forgive me if when the same rhetoric is applied to CCW, I get a bit snippy about it.
As for the prison anology, Sarge ?
A substantial amount of school personnel, at least in Baltimore City and North AA county is concerned, are former corrections officers, up to and including the principal of one school I went to, who was referred to even by the students as "The Warden" and chose indeed to run her school like that, right down to playing factions against each other to keep them out of HER hair - many admins run their schools like prisons or kennels, with an adversarial relation to the students, considering them less than people, and those admins need to be drummed out of the entire educational system.
And Roj ?
The folks you are speaking of are called "Lifestyle Violent Offenders", crossreference with the work of Andrew Vachss and you might find the statistics in question, I know he's mentioned them a time or two.
And this horror of a society creates them, which is the main point of a lot of what I am saying here.
-Frem
EDIT
Quote:
There is a policy in many parts of this country of letting some truly despicable people back on the streets. A But the reason has nothing to do with 'political correctness' and more to do with jail overcrowding, 'cause some people think it's more important to jail non-violent addicts rather than treat them in a non-jail setting, and letting the violent go free.
Agreed, this war on drugs madness eats up prison space that should be used for those violent offenders that simply can not, or will not, be rehabilitated... the only thing I've ever seen a pothead viciously assault was my fridge.
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Actuaally I would consider Cho's a terrorist act because of his "manifesto" sending the stuff to NBC etc. Columbine had no such elements, the stuff they found later wasn't planned as a part of ant "statement". Also Cho's stuff didn't come accross as a "suicide note", to me anyway.
As I pointed out in another post there are indeed other uses for firearms, Cowboy Action Shooting is a sport, hunting, relaxation (yes I actually find shooting paper targets relaxing), etc.
Swords were made to kill exclusively too, & yet in the 1500's Spain tried to impliment :dagger control".
Also you don't "just walk into a shop & buy a gun", not anymore. There are background checks, waiting periods etc. Cho managed his act with legally obtained firearms...a rarity actually.
At Columbine thos 2 had "illeagal" guns...if memory serves they were obtained by a third party & given to the loons. As far as I'm concerned that 3rd party was as guilty (if not more so) than the shooters themselves.
And to all, if you go back a couple of my posts you will find that I agree that our culture is different, I wasn't arguing that at all.
Prison overcrowding is also a measure of politics (if not exactly PC), people have a real problem with NIMBY in this country.
Also as to all of the stats, how does the number of "gun deaths" even stack up with "per capita" number of guns owned?
Remember too that many of those stats include accidental discharges, hunting accidents etc.
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FremD
You are one of the few people I KNOW I am comfortable with the idea of owning a gun. But in your argument to keep them accessible you have to account for the idiots and miscreants out there.
How would you weed them out?
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Quote:
How would you weed them out?
Well, basic background check would weed out a lot of them right there, and in truth does, although the process could use some refinement, specifically to the occasional bogus claims made by pissed off ex's as a retaliatory gesture against CCW holders.
(True, it's uncommon, but such allegations need to be questioned and substantiated quickly, and if found baseless, then expunged.)
Primarily however, I do believe we need a standard competency test, not for mere ownership, but for carry-right, which is something I dislike, but see the need for - for home defense, fine and dandy, but if you're going to carry on person, you really should know what the hell you're doing.
And I don't mean the pathetic one they give the police, many depts satisfy themselves with 8/10 at 10-15 meters, twice a year.
I mean something that covers firearm safety, basic gun handling and retention, proper reloading, fire/no-fire decisionmaking and proper maintainence in addition to mere accuracy.
There's a guy by the name of Ayoob, I think, who really knows his stuff, whom I would have if not design the test, at least get him to put his input on it.
And none of this come back tomorrow with the fee again if you flunk it, you flunk it, you wait a YEAR before you can take it again.
That would prolly sort most of it, in my opinion.
One reason I don't care for the idea of discarding them entire, beyond the fact that criminals will still get them somehow, is that a handgun really does level the field when it comes to self defense, in the hands of a competent user, be it a young vigorous 22 year old, or in the hands of a diabetic 80 year old lady, it's an equal defense against even a determined assailant.
Even so, it's not a magic wand, as the Tueller Drill clearly shows, but it's hands down the second most effective self defense weapon there is.
The first ?
That thing between your ears - use that well enough and you often won't *need* the second.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Quote:Maybe you should look at the numbers again. The 43 for the UK is prisoners per 100,000, and US 43 is murders per 100,000. The comparable numbers are US:715, UK:43.
Originally posted by RojBlake:
Comparing prisoners per 100,000 (1st number) to murders per 100,000 (2nd number)
United States 715, 43
Prisoners per 100,000 of nations that we know:
UK 43
Really? look at your own numbers.
The UK & US have the same incarceration rate.
EDIT:
But I see that's been mentioned, never mind.
EDIT again:
Quote:Not entirely true. Most governments control/monitor the things that can be used to make explosives. Buy enough of any chemicals that can be used to make explosives and kindly Agent whatshisname will hear about it.
Exactly, explosives aren't leagal in this country either (without the proper permits) but as I posted earlier you can walk into a grocery store & get the chemicals nessecary to set off a pretty decent size blast.
You know what is really easy to build, Nuclear weapons. Gun type fission devices could be built be an 8 year old, but you have to find the fissionable material first. Good luck
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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By the way as long as we're blaming America first...here's another fact that many people don't like to hear about.
America has one of the highest number of terrorist groups within her borders throughout the world.
One of the "cost's of freedom" I guess. We're so focused on "Islamic Terrorism" that the others are conveniently forgotten about.
The IRA was metioned, at one time the US was one of the best sources of funding, the difference is that it wasn't the US government. The US citizen can do a lot of good, or not. The US citizen has always been good for funding "causes" all over the world.
Again a byproduct of the US stance on "personal freedom", there are costs, many rival groups object. I once attended a concert by the "Highland Blackwatch" & a fight broke out because of the number of IRA supporters outside protesting.
How would we classify that if there would have been a fatality?
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RojBlake - Swords are made to kill, sure, but they're not nearly as effective as guns.
Two incidents spring to mind - two crazy guys walking into schools in England and starting a random attack. The first guy had two guns and lots of ammo. He killed sixteen kids, a teacher and then himself.
The second guy had a machete. He injured a teacher, who successfully kept him from her kids until he was subdued.
Most of the guns out there aren't made for hunting or shooting paper targets. They're made to kill. Who hunts deer with a glock? If weapons like that are going to be available to the public then you have to have stricter controls to stop any yahoo from buying it. Clearly background checks and waiting periods - while a great help - aren't doing enough.
As for Cho's "manifesto" - it wasn't political. It was the demented ramblings of someone who had utterly lost his mind. Even the unabomber's manifesto, which was more political, would fit into this category in my view.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:Quote:Not entirely true. Most governments control/monitor the things that can be used to make explosives. Buy enough of any chemicals that can be used to make explosives and kindly Agent whatshisname will hear about it.
Originally posted by RojBlake:
Exactly, explosives aren't leagal in this country either (without the proper permits) but as I posted earlier you can walk into a grocery store & get the chemicals nessecary to set off a pretty decent size blast.
How is kindly Agent whathisname? He hasn't been calling around to my house so much these days.
Quote:
You know what is really easy to build, Nuclear weapons. Gun type fission devices could be built be an 8 year old, but you have to find the fissionable material first. Good luck
http://www.unitednuclear.com
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Here's a warning sign for YOU:
Quote:
"The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. Using Leape's 1997 medical and drug error rate would add another 216,000 deaths, for a total of 999,936 deaths annually. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US."
—Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; Dorothy Smith, PhD, Life Extension Magazine, "Death by Medicine", March 2004
www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm
Plus 1.5-Million annual aborticides in USA.
A high percentage of these murders were perped by college students in University "teaching" hospitals.
So medical doctors use their license to kill to genocide over 2.5-million US citizens in death camps every year, with virtual immunity from prosecution by the homicidal republic.
In related news, Hollywood movie shows exactly how Uncle Scam frames innocent shooters, aided and abetted by the Media Mafia, via CIA covert operations.
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VIDEO TRAILER: "SHOOTER"
Starring Jewish stripper "Marky" Mark Wahlberg
www.infowars.com/articles/media/shooter_review_if_you_are_truther_see_
shooter.htm
Note that zero video evidence has been released proving Cho was the actual shooter who fired nearly 250 bullets with expert precision. No surveilance video exists proving Cho mailed the video confessions to NBC.
Just like 9/11, where zero video exists proving any Arab hijackers walked through any airports or boarded any airliners hijacked on 9/11. And half of the "official suicide hijackers" are still alive and giving interviews to BBC News. Many of the others died on US military bases during US Air Force flight training. Bin Laden, FBI, Pentagon, Bush and Cheney all agree on the public record that USAma Bin Laden had NOTHING to do with 9/11.
www.piratenews.org/911con.html
News photos appear to show 2 different Chos. Eyewitness reports testify that the actual shooter was 6-feet tall, but Cho was only 5-foot 8-inches tall. Koreans have roundish eyes, but Communist Chinese have more slanted eyes. Cho NEVER talked to roommates or teachers (but suspiciously did not flunk), yet the video rants were very well-spoken (where did he learn how to talk?).
Why does the Media Mafia claim Cho's family "ran a small dry cleaning business", but Cho and his Ivy League CIA-employed sister graduated from the 2nd wealthiest high school in USA? A high school which produced TWO mass-murdering shooters within 12 months...
As for Joss the Censored Whistleblower (govt's mind-controlled serial killers ie River), everyone here knows Firefly was killed by Fox. But Angel was also killed in sudden death. Coincidentally, Angle's final series-ending episode included Charles Gunn assassinating Senator Hillary Clinton's evil twin - the blonde "Hellspawn" - to snuff "the senator's presidential victory in 2008 and prevent her secret society's Apocalypse to destroy the world"... Starring, of course, the evil Adam "Jayne" Baldwin, in his famous death scene.
www.cityofangel.com/episodes/summaries/ep5_22.html
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ANGLE SCRIPT FINAL EPISODE OF THE APOCALYPSE
Episode 22, Season 5
Title: "Not Fade Away"
Written by: Jeffrey Bell & Joss Whedon
Original Air Date: May 19th, 2004
www.twiztv.com/scripts/angel/season5/angel-522.htm
To join this Black Thorn secret society, it's mandatory to "kill your own people".
Sir Rupert Murdock Jewish Australian Comminist Chinese Knight of the British Empire dines weekly with Senator Hillary Clinton Blythe Rockefeller to discuss her current presidential campaign in 2008.
"Reavers - They MADE them!"
-Wash, Serenity
FIREFLY SERENITY PILOT MUSIC VIDEO V2
Tangerine Dream - Thief Soundtrack: Confrontation
https://video.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/716.shtml
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=8cd2bd0379340120e7a6ed00f2a53ee5
.1044556
www.myspace.com/piratenewsctv
DRI
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Quote:
Originally posted by RojBlake:
By the way as long as we're blaming America first...
That phrase always make me chuckle.
So how did this turn into a US vs. Other Countries argument? And why does anyone give a rat's ass?
The one thing I've read here that makes total sense is the notion that Cho was a terrorist. That much I'm in total agreement with. And we should treat these schoolyard terrorists in exactly the same way that we should be treating the Islamic terrorists - in other words, not at all like we currently are.
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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
As for Cho's "manifesto" - it wasn't political. It was the demented ramblings of someone who had utterly lost his mind.
Have to disagree there. It was absolutely political. Most of these school shootings are. That fact that he'd lost it doesn't change that fact.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Nope, SergeantX, I don't buy it. Okay, I didn't watch the whole video, but of what I saw he didn't even make any political statements. He just ranted about spoiled brats who had "brutilized" him in various ways.
I'm curious though. What makes you think his video was political? And forgive me if I don't reply - have to leave here in a minute.
EDIT: While we're on the subject of labels, how come Piratenews isn't tagged? As offensive, I mean. Not awesome. *Haken's so gonna kill me for that*
Banners, Avatars, LJ Icons and other fun stuff at www.desktophippie.com
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Quote:
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Nope, SergeantX, I don't buy it. Okay, I didn't watch the whole video, but of what I saw he didn't even make any political statements. He just ranted about spoiled brats who had "brutilized" him in various ways.
I'm curious though. What makes you think his video was political?
Because he did it specifically to make a public statement. That makes it political. I'm not saying it's a coherent political statement, but it's not just a suicide/murder spree either.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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