4.4.14: The Winter Soldier, Jinn, and Fort Hood?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014. Remember what happened when the initial Captain America first was released?

The day of neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik's massacre in Norway (July 22, 2011) was the day of the release of the film Captain America (July 22, 2011), with the film's first scene taking place in Norway, to the sound of Nazis' rapid fire machine gunning. A bizarre coincidence, to say the least.

All this lead me to ask on July 19, 2012, "What will happen on July 20, 2012?," with that year's upcoming Friday release of The Dark Knight Rises.

We know, now, don't we? The Aurora theater shooting. 

Predictions are only helpful if people take precautions. A journalist wrote a Dangerous Minds article later, entitled: "The Copycat Effect: Meet The Man Who Predicted The Aurora Shooting." Nothing has really changed, as far as we can tell.

Certainly, we are in different times here in 2014 than we were in 2012. Newtown/Sandy Hook has taken place. The Boston Marathon bombing occurred. Mass shootings are part of the landscape too frequently. The Fort Hood shooting on April 2, 2014 may have already released the jinn from the bottle. Soldiers. Mass Shootings. Fort Hood & the Bell Name Game. BTW, the film Jinn is being released on 4.4.14, too. The purpose of the movie Jinn is to "introduce the accurate mythological concept of the jinn to western audiences."

Something is already in the air. 

Should we expect mass violence this weekend, regarding soldiers, jinn, and shooting sprees? Let's hope not.

Nevertheless, we are heading into April, which has been the month of Copycat Effects. Waco (April 19, 1993), OKBomb (April 19, 1995), Columbine (April 20, 1999), VA Tech (April 16, 2007), Boston Marathon bombings (April 15, 2013) and so many major and minor copycats are tied to this terrible month of violence.

April is the cruellest month... 

by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). 

 From The Waste Land, 1922.

Ozymandias vs Winter Soldier

In antiquity, Ozymandias was an alternative name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, January 11, 1818

Another Fort Hood Mass Shooting

 Ivan Lopez, Fort Hood's newest mass shooter.

Mass shootings sometimes repeat in the same locations. Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, was the site of a mass shooting on November 5, 2009, when Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people. Now there is early news of another multiple shooting at Fort Hood. (See my posting on the 2009 event, here.)

On April 2, 2014, four people were killed, including the gunman, in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, according to law enforcement officials, senior U.S. officials and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The committee chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told CNN he had been briefed on the deadly incident and said there were also 14 injuries. At least two of the injured had multiple gunshot wounds, a hospital spokesman said.

Indications are that the shooter died by suicide. An initial report indicates the shooting incident started as a soldier-on-soldier attack.

A U.S. military official said the shooter was an enlisted soldier named Ivan Lopez, who is dead. He was a 34-year-old Specialist, who was known to have driven trucks.

The Iraq War veteran, suffering from PTSD, Ivan Lopez was initially angry that he was not given permission to attend his mother’s funeral, but had been given a 24-hour pass to attend. A friend said Lopez mentioned he had an argument with someone at the base prior to the shootings.

Spc. Ivan Lopez, Fort Hood, Warrior Transition Brigade.

President Obama said his national security team was "working with folks on the ground to determine exactly what happened and to ensure that everyone is secure."

"The situation is fluid right now. ... Any shooting is troubling," the president said. "We're heartbroken that something like this might have happened again. I don't what on the comment on facts until we know exactly what happened. But just for now I would hope that everyone across the country keep the families of Fort Hood in our thoughts and our prayers. ... We don't yet know what happened tonight but obviously that sense of safety has been broken once again."

Fort Hood officiale identified the soldiers killed in the shooting as Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Ferguson, Sgt. Carlos Lazaney, and Sgt. Timothy Owens.

Fort Hood is a United States military post located in Killeen, Texas, in Bell County. The post is named after Confederate General John Bell Hood. The county is named named for Texas's third Governor Peter Hansborough Bell. What we observe here is a double-Bell power name game focus (see here).

Ivan means "Gift from God," or is seen as a variant of John, also "Yahweh is merciful."

López is a surname of Spanish origin. It was originally a patronymic, meaning Son of Lope, Lope itself being a Spanish given name deriving from Latin lupus, meaning wolf.

Fort Hood is located halfway between Austin and Waco, about 60 miles from each other, within the U.S. state of Texas. Waco in April has certainly been the apex of violence, of course.

After the 2009 shooting, during Hasan's trial, he called himself a "mujahedeen," or Muslim holy warrior. Hasan did not deny he was the shooter. He was convicted and received the death penalty in August 2013.

Lopez reportedly bought his weapon on March 1 at the Guns Galore store in Killeen, Texas — the same shop where Major Nidal Hasan bought the gun used in his 2009 killing spree.