Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: Ben6789 on 17/04/2007 13:16:32
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Hey, thought I'd make this page for everyone to pay their respects to the lives lost at the Virginia Tech Massacre. [:(] [:-'(]
.....I still can't beileve it... [:(]
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Yes.. I am gutted too!
One confession.. I'm South Korean! [:P]
Yes, fear me all.. [;D]
NB: Not all South Koreans are like that! [;)]
Being a loyal, faithful, South Korean, I feel that I should apologize [;)]
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apologize for what Seany? [???] you didn't shoot anyone..i hope. [;)]
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Na. Just for the fact that the gunman who killed 31 people was a South Korean. And being an extra loyal South Korean, I feel that I should apologize the country!
From S Korea.
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Well, thanks for the apology Seany. You really are extra loyal! [8)] Kudos to you!
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I, as an AAAA, award you the ELSK Award! Congrats!
(darn AAAAAA)
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Heehee. Well, I'm not sure who will compensate for the deaths and injuries. The bloke killed himself after.
*Sighs*. Hope all goes well, with lots of prayers, flowers, respect, duty, tears, but eventual happiness.-- Never will be fixed, but I hope the pain relieve soon - Especially for families.
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I, as an AAAA, award you the ELSK Award! Congrats!
(darn AAAAAA)
What is an AAAA or a ELSK? [???]
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rofl. Acronym Abusing Adolescants of America. Extremly Loyal South Korean. Even though below your posts it says, England.
(darn AAAAAA!)
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Lol why the "Darn AAAAAA!" at the end? [:P]
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Seany, no need to apologise.....after all as Ben says...ewe didn't do anything.....
...and we'd all have to apologise to everybody if we all felt we were responsible (even a little) for cripes knows how many atrocities throughout mankind !
I was thinking about starting a thread about the American right to bear arms etc ..but it has been done here before and is always contentious !!...however, if someone wants to start a new one please do so !
I am just sickened by the whole thing.
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Many countries have a wide spread of freedoms to bear arms - it does not of itself lead to this outcome.
I was talking to Carolyn offline about this, and mentioned that gun crime has increased in the UK since the removal of the right to own handguns in this country.
The question is not why did this guy take a gun and kill people, but why did this guy feel he needed to do this - why was there nobody who could help him find another way to deal with whatever was troubling him?
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There has clearly been a serious lack of assistance to this person else it would have not got this far...but the signs may or may not have been obvious.
If they were obvious then gawwd help us !!
It's a sad state of affairs but a ' state ' can not be expected to police/anyalyse/diagnose every person.
I personally have not read any news articles so I have no idea if there is a history of mental illness or any kind of ' condition' that this person had that may have warranted further investigation.......though...to go and shoot 30+ people just like that indicates some kind of severe mental trauma !
From what I understand the first shooting was at 7:15am ...and then another..and then a whole period of time went by before the massacre began...This was most certainly a definite dereliction of duty by somebody !!
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Yes... Well.. Apparently he was a "loner".
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No-one is totally a loner. He had a family, he attended classes - people saw him, and interacted with him - why did someone not enquire?
No, not the State, but maybe the college authorities?
I am not saying that anybody can be omniscient, but it is not the first such incident, and still people are left to brood on their problems without anybody asking about things.
There are no doubt differences, but in some ways, also some (at least superficial) similarities with the 7th July London bombers - people who were willing to take 50+ lives, and then their own lives as well. It did not need guns for that. And what is our response to that - we justify the shooting of of innocent Brazilian electricians as part of the escalation of violence we use to match violence to violence.
What happened in Virginia Tech was not about guns, it was about violence - the gun was merely an incidental tool. It is about an increasing culture of violence; a culture that is fed by the media, and by politics; and culture that responds to violence with fear and panic rather than with solutions, and that fear merely isolates people more, and with that isolation, breeds more violence.
The standard response the State has to any problem is simply to increase prison sentences, but how do you imprison a person who has taken their own life?
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Yes.. People saw him. They asked him what his name was, and he wrote on a piece of paper "?". Everyone regarded him as the question mark boy.
Their parents tried to commit suicide - too shocked to live any more
Dad died. Mother in hospital - injured.
You said that he interacted, but apparently he seldom spoke, and sat at the back of the classes. When 30 people or so discussed and described themselves, this boy did not respond when it came to his turn in the circle.
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So, why? What was troubling him? Did he have home problems? Was there some part of his past life he was running away from? Was he just finding life in a strange land too difficult (although he apparently had been in the country since an early age)?
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I am curious of that too. He was about 8 when he came to America. I'm not making excuses, but I think he developed his problem in USA, and not in Korea, so maybe something was troubling him there. I believe he would have been a good American speaker, having lived there for about 15 years, but still he did not speak a lot. He hard hardly any friends, well as the news say he was a "loner". But then again, who would want to say that they were a friend of him, even if they were? The video clip of their interview would be broadcasted all over the world.
I don't think that he would have had home problems - most likely to have been a school one. Maybe bullying.
Before he died, he wrote on his arm with a felt tip pen, "Ismail Ax", but no one seems to understand it. As a Korean, and a bilingual, it isn't Korean, so I do not understand it neither. He also wrote a note before he died, but this has been kept confidential before further is known.
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Looking at some of the blogs on the matter, there is quite a lot of information.
It seems that he had written some quite violent and troubling plays (http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/richard-mcbeef-cover-page/20070417134109990001), and some people were ringing alarm bells about his psychological state, but simply things moved too slowly.
There had also been some recent bomb hoaxes, and it seems this has no been linked to him.
One comment about the Ismail Ax seems to infer an Islamic reference - although there are no direct indications of Muslim sympathies.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/cho_seunghui_le.html
The Prophet Ibrahim destroyed the villagers false idols to wealth and sex with an Ax in order to please Allah. Allah then saves him from the fury of the Babylonians for this act. He grants Ibrahim a gift, a prophet child. Ibrahim names this prophet child "Ismail." Ismail, the Islamic prophet, comes from Ibrahim's act with the Ax. The link I supplied goes into a little detail on the story, but there's more detailed accounts of the event all across the internet.
As well, the story you linked to from the Smoking Gun also has significance. Reading it, there's a few lines that support the idea that Ismail Ax references the founding of Islam and that Cho is a Muslim.
The boy calls his "father" a "Fat piece of pork."
Cho writes later: "No wonder your name is McPork--I mean, McBeef"
When Cho describes how the mother strikes, he describes her with the
line: "Takes off her shoes to strike him"
Pork is of course considered a sin to eat by Muslims, and it is a Islamic insult to beat someone with your shoes.
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Hi. Yes I've heard about the disturbing stories, throwing hammers or something at each other.
I've got to go now. 1:18am here and school tomorrow. I won't be on alot for the next 2 weeks. Have fun [;)]
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OK - good luck with the school.
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Clearly something was troubling him....Big Time !!....
He quite calculatedly shot and killed all those people and then himself.
He had every intention to do what he did. I wonder if somewhere there is written documented plans of his intentions.
Anyone who performs such a despicable atrocity in this fashion is over the edge and in need of severe treatment and should be removed from society.
If he had such a disturbing portfolio then I remain astonished that things moved so slowly !...Alarm bells ring and nothing happened !!....but....it is a sad sad situation that these events are by no means isolated and yet they still do happen.......and it will happen again of course !...unless.....the facility to fine tune the process of recognising this behavior and acting upon it is improved.
I don't think he would have been susceptible to therapy at this stage. It should have been picked up years ago !....
I can not imagine and ever hope to understand what makes a person do something like this but I suspect he must share certain characteristic traits that predisposes him to fail miserable at a ' normal ' way of life and allows him to cross the line where performing the most anti-social of behaviour is acceptable.
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I am truely sorry for all involved here. Many lives destroyed and sadness that never goes away... I am truely sorry for all those suffering now.
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I am truely sorry for all involved here. Many lives destroyed and sadness that never goes away... I am truely sorry for all those suffering now.
Truly Karen, such a useless act. This nut had the words Ishmil's axe written in red on one of his arms. This is a Muslim reference to their belief that Ishmael, and not Isaac, was to be the promised son of Abraham. Could this tragic event be an act of Islamic terror????? I personally think YES!!
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I don't know .. The school had a very large campus They went to alert but because of size etc.. they were unable to carry out the lock down quickly enough after firts two.. I heard something about that earlier, I am sure I don't have the details complete and perhaps not accurate it was as I was leaving work.. It' is too much to handle..so unbelievabl ebringing up horrible memories for me and my family also.. I know how those families feel and it is so devastating so devastating.. and no understandingof why.. so very sad..
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Truly Karen, such a useless act.
Not sure that anybody has suggested there is any use to this act, only that there must be a cause - which is something different altogether.
This nut had the words Ishmil's axe written in red on one of his arms. This is a Muslim reference to their belief that Ishmael, and not Isaac, was to be the promised son of Abraham. Could this tragic event be an act of Islamic terror????? I personally think YES!!
Apart from applying a nice cliche, what does it mean to class this as an act of Muslim terrorism - much less so that the Oklahoma bombing might reasonably classed as an act of Christian terrorism.
There is some evidence that at least some of the killings might have been of targeted individuals, and all were targeted at a particular institution. This was not an act of killing of just anybody in the street, but a selected target.
It may well possibly be that there was some religious inspiration to the act, but that does not mean that the act was political in nature (which is usually the definition of terrorism). Many acts of violence often have some notion of religious righteousness associated with them (even a husband who kills his adulterous wife might think himself to have a religious justification for his act - but that does not make it religious terrorism).
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Could this tragic event be an act of Islamic terror????? I personally think YES!!
With all due respect, I have the impression that Americans see this Islamic terror a bit everywhere.
NRA keeps telling us that "it is not the firearms that kill", but the people. They forget to say that it is "people with firearms".
If I'm not mistaken, the Swiss take their firearms at home with them after military service (still compulsory), yet you very rarely hear about shootings in Switzerland. Obviously, there must a substantial difference in the attitude of the Swiss towards firearms as compared with the attitude of Americans. The fact that the killer was a "resident alien" does not change this, I bet he would not have the same easy access to firearms in his own country.
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Lol why the "Darn AAAAAA!" at the end? [:P]
American Association Against Acronym Abuse of America!
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Wow, I read all this stuff about the shooter and it makes me sad that he rejected himself that way, they didn't even know his name.
..Some of the students HAD to have noticed his behaviour, why didn't at least ONE of them try to help...?
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Clearly something was troubling him....Big Time !!....
He quite calculatedly shot and killed all those people and then himself.
He had every intention to do what he did. I wonder if somewhere there is written documented plans of his intentions.
Anyone who performs such a despicable atrocity in this fashion is over the edge and in need of severe treatment and should be removed from society.
If he had such a disturbing portfolio then I remain astonished that things moved so slowly !...Alarm bells ring and nothing happened !!....but....it is a sad sad situation that these events are by no means isolated and yet they still do happen.......and it will happen again of course !...unless.....the facility to fine tune the process of recognising this behavior and acting upon it is improved.
I don't think he would have been susceptible to therapy at this stage. It should have been picked up years ago !....
I can not imagine and ever hope to understand what makes a person do something like this but I suspect he must share certain characteristic traits that predisposes him to fail miserable at a ' normal ' way of life and allows him to cross the line where performing the most anti-social of behaviour is acceptable.
Neil, there was a note, about 9 pages long left behind which he had wrote before dying. The whole content has not been publicized yet, but they have mentioned that he was forced to do what he did and wrote "you made me do this". So I think that he was forced, by the school basically, to commit suicide and hate the school. He was constantly bullied, maybe teased a loner, everyone would hate such an act upon yourself. However, I think that the kid did not manage his tempers or depression well, which led to such an act of terror.
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Clearly something was troubling him....Big Time !!....
He quite calculatedly shot and killed all those people and then himself.
He had every intention to do what he did. I wonder if somewhere there is written documented plans of his intentions.
Anyone who performs such a despicable atrocity in this fashion is over the edge and in need of severe treatment and should be removed from society.
If he had such a disturbing portfolio then I remain astonished that things moved so slowly !...Alarm bells ring and nothing happened !!....but....it is a sad sad situation that these events are by no means isolated and yet they still do happen.......and it will happen again of course !...unless.....the facility to fine tune the process of recognising this behavior and acting upon it is improved.
I don't think he would have been susceptible to therapy at this stage. It should have been picked up years ago !....
I can not imagine and ever hope to understand what makes a person do something like this but I suspect he must share certain characteristic traits that predisposes him to fail miserable at a ' normal ' way of life and allows him to cross the line where performing the most anti-social of behaviour is acceptable.
Neil, there was a note, about 9 pages long left behind which he had wrote before dying. The whole content has not been publicized yet, but they have mentioned that he was forced to do what he did and wrote "you made me do this". So I think that he was forced, by the school basically, to commit suicide and hate the school. He was constantly bullied, maybe teased a loner, everyone would hate such an act upon yourself. However, I think that the kid did not manage his tempers or depression well, which led to such an act of terror.
Hi Sean..good to see ewe this evening .
Thanks for enlightening me with the documentation that he did leave.
it's very chilling to know the preparation he was doing.
he clearly was susceptible to some form of influence and yes,,,he certainly did not manage his depression...he effectively crossed the line and calmly set out to do what he did.....but it was HIM who did it.....he was not forced....though......he might say (if he was alive to tell us) that he was made to do it...though I suspect his saying that we was forced may be metaphorical !....
The fact is.........he was Ill.....and he was just one of many who slip through the net until it's too late...
such a terrible terrible shame and loss !
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Yep.. Even myself, I have to admit that he was a madman, mental and idiotic. He did not think of others, before doing the action. Also, the action he did, was far more than violence we see in the modern world.
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Well the thoery that his g/f broke up with him is bogus, all he did was stalk the girl, not really go out with him.
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Technically he stalked TWO girls.