World On Fire: Updates

The Muslim protests have now spread to Australia. Police said that, about 1 pm on Saturday, a group marched from Sydney Town Hall to Martin Place, where a confrontation occurred between protesters and police outside a building housing the US consulate. Police used capsicum spray on the protesters, who at times pelted officers with bottles. Up to 500 people stormed through the city, working their way through Pitt Street before moving to Hyde Park amid a heavy police presence. The crowd ran on to the Australian museum.

Also on Saturday, 9/14/2012, thousands of Chinese besieged the Japanese embassy in Beijing, hurling rocks, eggs and bottles as protests broke out in other major cities in China amid growing tension between Asia's two biggest economies over a group of disputed islands.

Well, we knew this was coming...and more (see Cycles).

Read below, for Friday events.

The Master opens today, September 14th, in LA and New York City. 

Director Paul Thomas Anderson also steered Magnolia to the screen.

Bomb threats hit Texas, North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri on Friday. 

Protests spread from one end of the Mideast all the way across Asia.

The world seemed ablaze on September 14, 2012. 

Here cars in front of the US Embassy in Egypt are on fire.

A Hardee's, a KFC and an Arby’s restaurant were set on fire 

in the city of Tripoli, Lebanon, on Friday.

Thousands of people streamed off university campuses in Texas and North Dakota on Friday after phoned-in bomb threats prompted evacuations and officials warned students and faculty to get away as quickly as possible.

The Texas university received a call about 8:35 a.m. on Friday, September 14th, from a man, allegedly with an Arab accent, claiming to be with al Qaeda who said he had placed bombs all over the 50,000-student University of Texas at Austin campus, according to spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon. He claimed the bombs would go off in 90 minutes and all buildings were evacuated at 9:50 a.m. as a precaution, Weldon said.

UT’s JJ Pickle Research facility in North Austin was also evacuated. The facility houses a a fully functional nuclear reactor operated by the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab department.
No bombs went off. No bombs were found.

Similar events occurred in Fargo. North Dakota State University President Dean Bresciani said 20,000 people were evacuated from his school's main and downtown campuses in Fargo after the school received its bomb threat Friday morning. Officials did not immediately release details about the North Dakota threat.

No bombs went off. No bombs were found.

Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana, posted a campus alert about potential danger during chapel break period, which happens at 11:15 a.m. Friday. The unspecified threat was made via a "graffiti message."

No bombs went off. No bombs were found.

Campus officials say a small college in Hiram, in northeast Ohio were evacuated because of a bomb threat. Hiram College posted a statement on its website saying it received a bomb threat Friday afternoon and was taking the threat seriously.

No bombs went off. No bombs were found.

Hiram is a very Masonic name. President Garfield attended Hiram College. He was a Masonic president. Interesting that he was initiated at the Magnolia Lodge. Very Fortean.

JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD (1831-1881)

Twentieth President (July 2 - September 19, 1881)

MASONIC RECORD Initiated: November 19, 1861, Magnolia Lodge, No. 20, Columbus, Ohio. Owing to Civil War duties, Brother Garfield did not receive the Third Degree until November 22, 1864 in Columbus Lodge No. 30, Columbus, Ohio. On October 10, 1866, he Affiliated with Garrettsville Lodge No. 246, Garrettsville, Ohio, serving as its Chaplain in 1868-1869. Brother Garfield then became a Charter Member of Pentalpha Lodge No. 23 of Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1869; in fact, he was one of the Petitioners for the Lodge Charter.

At noon on Friday, September 14th, a man walked into the Richard Bolling Federal Building, 600 E. 12th Street, Kansas City, Missouri, and said he was a terrorist. A bomb-sniffing dog has detected the presence of some sort of explosives inside the vehicle (above) of the man, which was outside the building. The Kansas City Police Department ordered the bomb and arson squad to his vehicle, located in the Fletcher Daniels State Office Building parking lot, 615 E. 13th Street.

No bombs have gone off. The dog detected explosives. No bombs have been found yet.

As all this was happening (and more?) in the US, the following hotspots ignited, according to several media sources:
~ Demonstrators breached the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia;
~ American school in Tunis torched;
~ German Mission in Khartoum, Sudan was set aflame;
~ British Mission in Sudan attacked;
~ Security forces in Yemen block streets near U.S. Embassy and killed two;
~ Fires and rocks being thrown at U.S. embassies in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt;
~ Effigy of Obama burned near Jalalabad, Afghanistan;
~ Thousands demonstrate against the U.S. in Gaza City;
~ Protesters throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy in Libya;
~ Demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;
~ Thousands in Srinagar, Kasimir protest;
~ Hundreds in southern India;
~ Demonstrations in Indonesia;
~ Protests in Qatar;
~ Demonstrations in Kuwait;
~ Protests in Iraq;
~ Crowds continue gathering in Libya;
~ 5000 marched in the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, burning the American flag;
~ Troops fired over demonstrators in Jos, Nigeria; and
~ Hundreds of protesters set fire during attacks on restaurants in Tripoli, Lebanon, resulting in one dead.


Meanwhile, Fox News shares this:

Volcanic ash spews from the Volcan de Fuego or Volcano of Fire as seen from Palin, south of Guatemala City, Thursday, September 13, 2012. The long-simmering volcano exploded into a series of powerful eruptions Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and forcing the evacuation of more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities. Photo: Moises Castillo.

Yes, Fox News said "as seen from Palin." The media gods do have a sense of humor.

Sep 14: Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated in Guatemala after the Fuego volcano eruption, which the specialists estimate to be the most powerful since 1999 in this Central American country, media reports said.

Chinese Cannibal (食人魔)

This is a new cannibal story. Due to the apparent blocking of the word "cannibal" (食人魔) by the Chinese government and/or media, the recent news of a cannibal serial killer has taken some time to be disseminated widely. (Revisit my recent overview of cannibals here.)

According to the Washington Post, on May 27, 2012, an arrest of 56-year-old Zhang Yongming in southwestern China occurred. He was accused of killing 11 people and dismembering, burning and burying their bodies to destroy the evidence. He allegedly attacked male victims walking on the quiet road near his home in Jinning county. The word "cannibal" was not used in the American story.

Details were graphically being given elsewhere (as per the photograph above).

An article in the Daily Telegraph said it all in their headline: "China's 'Cannibal Monster' Detained."

One critical sentence, tied to the headline, was this one:

Zhang, a loner who never talked to his neighbours, had previously served almost 20 years in jail for murder and was known in the village as the "cannibal monster."

Other details emerged in the story:

The man is believed to have chopped up their bodies and sold the flesh to unsuspecting consumers.
Police made the gruesome discovery during an investigation into the disappearances of male teenagers in Yunnan province in recent years, according to reports in Hong Kong and Chinese media…
…residents…had seen green plastic bags hanging from his home, with what appeared to be white bones protruding from the top.
Hong Kong newspaper The Standard said police discovered human eyeballs preserved inside wine bottles - "like snake wine" - and pieces of what appeared to be human flesh hanging up to dry when they entered Zhang's home.
Police feared that Zhang had fed human flesh to his three dogs, while selling other parts on the market, calling it "ostrich meat"...
Cannibalism is a particularly sensitive subject in China, where it was practised as a survival tactic during periods of mass starvation, for example in the wake of a failed industrialisation drive launched in the late 1950s.
Individual cases of cannibalism were also recorded during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, when it was carried out as a symbolic act against perceived enemies of the communist cause.

New Knife Attack

Some reports are calling it the seventh recent knife attack at a school in China. Other media are saying it is the fifth attack in two months. Nevertheless, 7 kids and one teacher are reported to have died in another copycat attack there that, reportedly, ended in the suicide of the attacker.
The Times of London reported:

A knife-wielding man stabbed seven children and a teacher to death at a kindergarten in China earlier today, the latest in a string of attacks on the country’s youngest pupils.
The man wounded 20 others before killing himself. It was the fifth violent assault on schoolchildren in China in less than two months.
The attack occurred about 8am (local time) as the school day was about to start at a Nanzheng County school in northwest China’s Shaanxi province.
The killings took place despite a recent boost in security at school grounds ordered by the local government in keeping with national directives following the recent spate of attacks.

According to the BBC News, this earlier attack, also occurred:

China knife attack 'kills eight'

A Chinese man has been arrested after allegedly stabbing to death eight people, including three family members, China's official news agency said.
Police said that Zhou Yezhong killed his mother, wife, daughter, four neighbours and a migrant worker in eastern China's Jiangxi province.
He was arrested on Saturday evening, less than two hours after the attacks took place, Xinhua news agency said.

3 Days, 3 Attacks

I have pointed out that in China (and Japan), due to their strict firearms laws, such countries tend to manifest their "copycat school violence" in terms of "stabbing" series. Will this current stabbing spree spread to Japan or other Asian nations?

April 2010 appears to be turning into a prime example. The media has referred to these, very openly, as "copycats." Of course, the underlying theme of these events ending in suicides or parasuicidal incidents is no surprise for readers here.










Here's is a summary of the latest news:

Five incidents in a little over a month and three attacks in three days have left at least 9 children dead in China, all by knife-wielding older males.

1) Wang Yonglai

Friday, April 30, 2010

This attack occurred in the small village of Shangzhuang, near the city of Weifang in the northern province of Shandong. Just before eight o'clock in the morning, April 30, 2010, a man named as Wang Yonglai, a local farmer, age unknown, broke through the side door of the local pre-school, according to Xinhua, the government news agency.

Armed with a hammer and carrying a can of petrol, he struck a teacher and then lashed out at five children before he picked two up, doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. Teachers at the school managed to grab the children from him, but Wang was reported to have died. The five victims are said to be in stable condition in the local hospital and none have life-threatening injuries.

2) Xu Yuyuan, 47

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Another attack involved a knife-wielding man stabbed 29 children at a kindergarten on Thursday in Taixing of East China's Jiangsu province. Five of the children are in critical condition and the rest are stable. No deaths had been reported as of Thursday night, said Sun Yun, deputy mayor of Taixing. Two teachers and one security guard were also injured after the 9:40 am attack. Witnesses report that he taunted onlookers, daring them to stop him as he carried out his rampage.

An initial police investigation said the suspect, 47-year-old Xu Yuyuan, was an unemployed local resident who had been fired from a local insurance company in 2001.

3) Chen Kangbing, 33

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A mentally ill teacher on sick leave for the past four years broke into a school and wounded 18 students and a teacher in southern China’s Leizhou city in Guangdong province on April 28. The man in Wednesday's attack managed to slip into the school with a group of visiting teachers, Xinhua reported. Chen Kangbing,33, had been a teacher himself. Xinhua said he suffered from mental illness and had been on sick leave since February 2006.

4) Yang Jiaqin, 40

Monday, April 12, 2010

An attack occurred on April 12, 2010, when a man hacked to death a second grader and an elderly woman with a meat cleaver, near a school in southern Guangxi, and wounded five other people, including students. Yang Jiaqin, 40, chased his victims through Xizhen village of the southern Guangxi region not long after classes ended Monday afternoon. A 7-year-old girl and the 81-year-old woman later died.

5) Zheng Minsheng, 42

Tuesday, March 23, 2010; executed, Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Chen Kangbing attack came the same day a man was executed for stabbing eight children to death outside their elementary school last month in the southeastern city of Nanping. The attack on March 23, 2010, at around 7:20 am local time, shocked China because eight children died and the assailant had no known history of mental illness. At his trial, Zheng Minsheng, 42, said he killed because he had been upset after being jilted by a woman and treated badly by her wealthy family. He was executed by firing squad on Wednesday, April 28, just a little over a month after his crime.

2004 Attacks

These attacks have officials looking into a similar wave of knife-related violence on children that occurred in 2004. After the 2004 attack at a school in Beijing that left nine students dead, the central government ordered tighter school security nationwide. Regulations that took effect in 2006 require schools to register or inspect visitors and keep out people who have no reason to come inside.

The list of 2004 stabbings in China (which eventually spread to Japan) may be found by clicking here.

There were also stabbings in 2008, associated with the Autumn Festivals in China and Japan (see here).

Bus Rampage: China

A bus dispatcher in northern China killed nine people and injured 11 others when he hijacked a company vehicle after a feud with his boss.

The man, surnamed Zhang, got into a fight with his boss and injured him with a dagger before stealing the bus and driving away into the streets of the city of Tianjin, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The 40-year-old motored through the streets, ramming into people and killing nine bystanders, the report said.

Police dispatched dozens of police cars to the scene, and Zhang ran into three of them, injuring four policemen, before finally being caught.

Authorities were investigating the case, the report said.

Source: Monday, February 1, 2010, Geelong Advertiser, Australia.