A major motion picture directed by David Fincher [Alien 3 (1992), Se7en (1995), The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002)] opens across the United States on March 2, 2007, from Paramount Pictures. It stars, among many, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Edwards, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox, Chloë Sevigny and Bijou Phillips. It is based on the self-named serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco area during the late 1960s.
The Zodiac murdered five known victims near the Solano County communities of Benicia and Vallejo, near Napa Valley's Lake Berryessa, and in San Francisco, California, between December 1968 and October 1969. The Zodiac may have murdered others. The Zodiac claimed as much.
On August 1, 1969, three letters written by Zodiac were received at the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and theSan Francisco Examiner. The letters continued being received by the media through 1974.
The Zodiac was never caught and never identified.
Will the new movie cause a Zodiac copycat killer? As documented in The Copycat Effect, some movies have resulted in violent mimics. Minor and television movies, of which there have been a few about the Zodiac, have had little impact on triggering copycat behaviors in violent humans. Major motion pictures appear to have created copycat waves of violence. Recent examples I detail include A Clockwork Orange, Natural Born Killer, The Matrix, and American History X. (I do not advocate censorship, but awareness, and deal with that approach, in depth, in the book.)
The impact of the Zodiac in cinema may be widespread, even when the name Zodiac is not used. For example, the fictional "Gemini Killer" in the movie The Exorcist III (1990) was loosely based on the Zodiac killer.
Movies about the Zodiac have increased lately. Zodiac Killer, (2005, director Ulli Lommel) is about a cat-and-mouse game between the real Zodiac and a young copycat in 2002 Los Angeles.
The Zodiac (2005, director Alex Bulkley) concerns a fictional detective in Vallejo obsessed with investigating the real Zodiac during the timeframe of the real killings. Bulkley's film has been shown often on cable television during the opening months of 2007, probably due to the upcoming Fincher release. It is an intriguing Bay Area mystery, with occult overtones. Strangely, the one suspect they show they tried to track down lived at an address with the street number 2323.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that the original real Zodiac has already resulted in one alleged imitator, the New York Zodiac copycat. Between March 9, 1990 and June 10, 1994 in New York City, a Zodiac copycat murdered three people and wounded five others with a zip gun. He also wrote letters to the police in a fashion similar to the San Francisco Zodiac. The killer knew the astrological signs of his victims.
On June 18, 1996, Heriberto Seda was arrested for shooting his 17-year-old sister in the back, and was later identified as the New York Zodiac. In June 1998, he was sentenced to 236 years in jail, and will not be eligible for parole until 2082.
One of the most famous quotations from the San Francisco-area Zodiac is: "I am waiting for a good movie about me."
Will Fincher's Zodiac cause the Zodiac, if the killer is still alive, to resurface to communicate?
Will this new 2007 movie result in a copycat Zodiac?
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Trolley Square Mirrored Montreal?
Someone asked me overnight, if I would consider the Salt Lake City shootings a copycat of the case in Montreal at Dawson College?
I had to honestly answer that as far as the copycat effect, well, yes, perhaps, maybe, not exactly. The act may fit more comfortably within the context of the greater Columbine cult that still colors most mass shootings by "young people."
The Trolley Square shooting may only compare to Montreal in terms of them both being violent cultural "outsiders" who put the mantle of Columbine on themselves to channel their vulnerability and rage.
Kimveer Gill (July 9, 1981-September 13, 2006), the shooter at Dawson College, was an an Indo-Canadian born in Montreal, whose parents were part of the Sikh community in the Quebec
area. Through Vampirefreaks and other sites, clearly he was obsessed with Columbine. Gill wore a trenchcoat and one of his nicknames was "Trench."
Gill's weapons of choice: a Norinco HP9-1 short barrelled shotgun, a Beretta Cx4 Storm carbine, and a Glock 9mm handgun. He fired 60 times. (There has always been a rumor that Gill first targeted the locally called "Jew Café" at Dawson College. People have been reluctant, beyond right after the shooting, to talk openly about this aspect of the incident.)
Sulejman Talovic, who was responsible for the Trolley Square Mall killings, was an 18-year-old Bosnian Muslim refugee. It is too early to tell what kind of clues he left behind. But his wearing of a trenchcoat
might have been symbolic, as well as his choice of weapons: shotgun, a .38-caliber pistol, and a backpack full of ammunition. Talovic reportedly fired over 50 times. (Why a Muslim attack in a highly Mormon area?)
At almost exactly the same time (6:45 PM Mountain Time) that the Trolley Square Mall shooting were moving into high gear, the Philadelphia Navy Yard shootings (reportedly 8:30 PM Eastern Time) were occurring. That location is associated with the Philadelphia Experiment incidents, as a researcher friend brought to my attention.
Two trenchcoated shooters, with a "foreign" outlook, who both end their rampages by killing themselves: They were cultural mirrors of the Columbine killers (who were pseudo-German, wore trenchcoats, and died by suicides in the end). One hundred percentage of school shooters and rampage killers, I feel, are suicidal. They have nothing to lose by the time they start shooting. Both Gill and Talovic followed the Columbine model rather closely, except for their change of settings. I wonder if Talovic didn't really like Valentine's Day (most of his victims were in a greeting card shop).
I had to honestly answer that as far as the copycat effect, well, yes, perhaps, maybe, not exactly. The act may fit more comfortably within the context of the greater Columbine cult that still colors most mass shootings by "young people."
The Trolley Square shooting may only compare to Montreal in terms of them both being violent cultural "outsiders" who put the mantle of Columbine on themselves to channel their vulnerability and rage.
Kimveer Gill (July 9, 1981-September 13, 2006), the shooter at Dawson College, was an an Indo-Canadian born in Montreal, whose parents were part of the Sikh community in the Quebec
area. Through Vampirefreaks and other sites, clearly he was obsessed with Columbine. Gill wore a trenchcoat and one of his nicknames was "Trench."
Gill's weapons of choice: a Norinco HP9-1 short barrelled shotgun, a Beretta Cx4 Storm carbine, and a Glock 9mm handgun. He fired 60 times. (There has always been a rumor that Gill first targeted the locally called "Jew Café" at Dawson College. People have been reluctant, beyond right after the shooting, to talk openly about this aspect of the incident.)
Sulejman Talovic, who was responsible for the Trolley Square Mall killings, was an 18-year-old Bosnian Muslim refugee. It is too early to tell what kind of clues he left behind. But his wearing of a trenchcoat
might have been symbolic, as well as his choice of weapons: shotgun, a .38-caliber pistol, and a backpack full of ammunition. Talovic reportedly fired over 50 times. (Why a Muslim attack in a highly Mormon area?)
At almost exactly the same time (6:45 PM Mountain Time) that the Trolley Square Mall shooting were moving into high gear, the Philadelphia Navy Yard shootings (reportedly 8:30 PM Eastern Time) were occurring. That location is associated with the Philadelphia Experiment incidents, as a researcher friend brought to my attention.
Two trenchcoated shooters, with a "foreign" outlook, who both end their rampages by killing themselves: They were cultural mirrors of the Columbine killers (who were pseudo-German, wore trenchcoats, and died by suicides in the end). One hundred percentage of school shooters and rampage killers, I feel, are suicidal. They have nothing to lose by the time they start shooting. Both Gill and Talovic followed the Columbine model rather closely, except for their change of settings. I wonder if Talovic didn't really like Valentine's Day (most of his victims were in a greeting card shop).
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
UT/PA Shootings
Monday night, February 12, 2007, in Salt Lake City, Utah, at about 6:45 PM Mountain Time (8:45 PM Eastern), and at the Navy Yard, Philadelphia, at 8:30 PM Eastern, two mass shootings occurred.
The Utah event involved a 18-year-old gunman wearing a trenchcoat who opened fire on shoppers at the Trolley Square shopping mall, killing five and wounding four others before police fatally shot him, was armed with several rounds of ammunition and was carrying two guns. Detectives were trying to figure out what sparked the young man's rampage.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, an armed man opened fire during a company board meeting inside a commercial building at the Navy Yard, killing three men and critically wounding a fourth before turning the gun on himself. It happened during a meeting of the board of directors of a company called Watson International. The board was meeting at 5131 S. 11th St. in a structure known as Building 79, a former Navy procurement office that, like many of the warehouse-type buildings at the former Navy base and shipyard, is now home to private businesses.
Police have identified the three men who were fatally shot during a company board meeting last night inside a commercial building at the Navy Yard.
They are:
* Mark Norris, 46, of Piles Grove, N.J.; president and CEO of Zigzag Net, the building's primary occupant.
* Robert Norris, 41, of Newark, Del., vice president of business development for Watson International, the company having the meeting.
* James Reif, 42, of Endicott, N.Y.
Building 79's primary occupant is Zigzag Net Inc., a Web site development company involved in advertising. It was unclear last night what the relationship was between Zigzag and Watson International, but officials indicated that they might have been business partners.
It is too early to determine if a copycat effect will occur, as several factors have to be figured into such an equation such as the forthcoming Valentine's Day superstorm hitting the East Coast and the continuing and overwhelming media attention to the recent sudden death of Anne Nicole Smith.
I have written elsewhere of how "Watson" appears to be a hot twilight language name.
The Utah event involved a 18-year-old gunman wearing a trenchcoat who opened fire on shoppers at the Trolley Square shopping mall, killing five and wounding four others before police fatally shot him, was armed with several rounds of ammunition and was carrying two guns. Detectives were trying to figure out what sparked the young man's rampage.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, an armed man opened fire during a company board meeting inside a commercial building at the Navy Yard, killing three men and critically wounding a fourth before turning the gun on himself. It happened during a meeting of the board of directors of a company called Watson International. The board was meeting at 5131 S. 11th St. in a structure known as Building 79, a former Navy procurement office that, like many of the warehouse-type buildings at the former Navy base and shipyard, is now home to private businesses.
Police have identified the three men who were fatally shot during a company board meeting last night inside a commercial building at the Navy Yard.
They are:
* Mark Norris, 46, of Piles Grove, N.J.; president and CEO of Zigzag Net, the building's primary occupant.
* Robert Norris, 41, of Newark, Del., vice president of business development for Watson International, the company having the meeting.
* James Reif, 42, of Endicott, N.Y.
Building 79's primary occupant is Zigzag Net Inc., a Web site development company involved in advertising. It was unclear last night what the relationship was between Zigzag and Watson International, but officials indicated that they might have been business partners.
It is too early to determine if a copycat effect will occur, as several factors have to be figured into such an equation such as the forthcoming Valentine's Day superstorm hitting the East Coast and the continuing and overwhelming media attention to the recent sudden death of Anne Nicole Smith.
I have written elsewhere of how "Watson" appears to be a hot twilight language name.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Freddie Prinze + 30
From my book, The Copycat Effect (Simon and Schuster, 2004):
"...highly publicized celebrity deaths, such as Freddie Prinze, who at 22, died by shooting himself in his head on January 28, 1977, produced higher rates among individuals who were about the same age, ethnicity, and gender as the famed suicides. After Prinze’s death, several young Latino males took their own lives using guns. These suicidological studies indicated that suicide stories were not and are not precipitating suicides that would have occurred anyway, but are actually creating additional suicides that would not have happened without the media accounts."
"...highly publicized celebrity deaths, such as Freddie Prinze, who at 22, died by shooting himself in his head on January 28, 1977, produced higher rates among individuals who were about the same age, ethnicity, and gender as the famed suicides. After Prinze’s death, several young Latino males took their own lives using guns. These suicidological studies indicated that suicide stories were not and are not precipitating suicides that would have occurred anyway, but are actually creating additional suicides that would not have happened without the media accounts."
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
More Saddam Copycats: Turkey & Yemen
Tracking the news that there have been "more copycat hangings" is not an easy task, as some articles are declaring a low number, forgetting about some past incidents, but at least one article in the Malaysian media talked on January 9th about "almost a dozen" (without backing this up with complete data).
In that context, I've search some more and here are more details on a new copycat in Turkey, and multiple copycats in Yemen.
In Turkey, 12-year-old Alisen Akti hanged himself on Wednesday, January 10, 2007, from a bunk bed after watching TV footage of the Saddam hanging videos. His father, Esat Akti, told a newspaper in the southeastern province of Mus that his son had been affected by the televised images, according to Associated Press writer Anna Johnson.
"After watching Saddam's execution he was constantly asking 'How was Saddam killed?' and 'Did he suffer?'" Akti was quoted as saying. "These television images are responsible for my son's death."
In Yemen, at least two young boys died and another was injured in apparent imitations of Saddam's hanging.
One of the cases involved a 13-year-old junior high school student who hanged himself after watching Saddam's execution on television, a Yemeni security official said.
The breakdown of "known copycats," thus, would be Algeria (12-year-old), India (15-year-old), Pakistan (9-year-old), Saudi Arabia (12-year-old), Turkey (12-year-old), USA (10-year-old, Texas; and 16-year-old, Pennsylvania); and Yemen (two young boys, including one that was a 13-year-old). All of these have been discussed, in more detail, on this blog.
In that context, I've search some more and here are more details on a new copycat in Turkey, and multiple copycats in Yemen.
In Turkey, 12-year-old Alisen Akti hanged himself on Wednesday, January 10, 2007, from a bunk bed after watching TV footage of the Saddam hanging videos. His father, Esat Akti, told a newspaper in the southeastern province of Mus that his son had been affected by the televised images, according to Associated Press writer Anna Johnson.
"After watching Saddam's execution he was constantly asking 'How was Saddam killed?' and 'Did he suffer?'" Akti was quoted as saying. "These television images are responsible for my son's death."
In Yemen, at least two young boys died and another was injured in apparent imitations of Saddam's hanging.
One of the cases involved a 13-year-old junior high school student who hanged himself after watching Saddam's execution on television, a Yemeni security official said.
The breakdown of "known copycats," thus, would be Algeria (12-year-old), India (15-year-old), Pakistan (9-year-old), Saudi Arabia (12-year-old), Turkey (12-year-old), USA (10-year-old, Texas; and 16-year-old, Pennsylvania); and Yemen (two young boys, including one that was a 13-year-old). All of these have been discussed, in more detail, on this blog.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
"Copycat Hangings...Almost A Dozen"
The Malaysia Sunon January 9, 2007, claims that "more copycat hangings" have occurred numbering "almost a dozen."
In an article entitled "New video of Saddam's body emerges, more copycat hangings," in one section, it mentions the two incidents not detailed before:
International condemnation followed the videotaping of the execution and events leading up to it. A tragic side-effect is that almost a dozen children have now died around the world in attempting to work out how the execution was done. The latest incidents include a 12-year-old boy in Saudi Arabia who reportedly watched the execution on television and then tried to simulate the event. In Algeria a group of schoolchidren accidently hanged a 12 year-old Algerian boy in the western village of Oued Rihou. In describing the tragedy, local government radio said, "U.S. policy in Iraq has made an innocent victim in Algeria." Days earlier a young woman hanged herself in her parents apartment in the western Algerian village of Oran, "after she was traumatised by images of Saddam's hanging," a family member said.
Saddam Copycats: 8+
There has been at least eight hanging deaths of young people who have copycatted the Saddam execution videos.
Reporters Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Damien McElroy in the UK, on January 9, 2007, have noted via The Telegraph that a dramatic increase has occurred in Shia hostages being hanged in the streets of Iraq in revenge for Saddam's execution. It is an awful trend, with over hundred hostages being hanged throughout Iraq, some 200 hostages taken. Their article is mostly concerned with those events.
Additionally, at the very end of their article they write:
Seven children are reported to have died worldwide after seeing video footage of the execution of Saddam, many in "play" hangings. In the latest incident a boy of 12 hanged himself in north-east Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the Al-Hayat newspaper reported. His death followed similar hangings in Yemen, India, Algeria and America.
The reporters and Al-Hayat probably are unaware of the reported copycat death of Bobby Martin in Pennsylvania, and its seems, of the one in Pakistan, so I consider the total is at eight or nine or above. Here is my reconstruction of the timeline of hangings:
Saturday, December 30, 2006 - Iraq - Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging at dawn. Within minutes, Arab and Iraqi news sources are showing video of the preparations leading up to the hanging, the noose being placed around his neck, and then still photographs of his body.
Sunday, December 31, 2006 - Worldwide - Broadcast media show video taken of Saddam's hanging, via wall-to-wall coverage on cable news and news programs. More graphic footage from a cell-phone appears within hours of the execution on YouTube and other internet site, showing Saddam falling after a level is pulled.
Sunday, December 31, 2006 - Webster (near Houston), Texas - Sergio Pelico, 10, dies by hanging from his bunk bed after watching the news of Saddam's death, mimicking the tape he had watched with several family members. Local time in Texas is Sunday, but the Monday hanging of Mubashar Ali probably had already taken place.
Monday, January 1, 2007 - Multan, Pakistan - Mubashar Ali, 9, becomes the first copycat mentioned in some Mideast media, when he dies by hanging after tying a rope to a ceiling fan. Ali and his sister had been watching the Saddam footage on television and were imitating the hanging, according to their father.
Wednesday, January 2, 2007 - Kolkata, India - Moon Moon Karmarkar, 15, dies by hanging from a ceiling fan after watching the scene of the Saddam hanging over and over again, then not taking any food on Saturday and Sunday to protest the hanging. She was found dead early in the day.
Wednesday, January 2, 2007 - Harborcreek (near Erie), Pennsylvania - Robert Joseph “Bobby” Martin, 16, dies by hanging by stepping off a loft, after may have been viewing the Saddam video during a New Year's Eve party he gave for friends.
Sunday, January 7, 2007 - Hafr Al-Bath, Saudi Arabia - Sultan Abdullah Al-Shammari, 12, dies by hanging from a rope that he had attached to a iron door in his home, while re-enacting the widely publicized execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The Arab News reports that Sultan Abdullah Al-Shammari is copycat #4, but the Martin hanging apparently is not being counted. The UK's Telegraph mentions a total of seven children having died, mentioning India and America, but not Pakistan, then two additional countries as the locations of copycat incidents:
Yemen.
Algeria.
Certainly eight, if not more, of these copycat hanging incidents have unfortunately occurred. The wide and graphic dissemination of the footage of what has become the "public" execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, through the copycat effect, without media moderation or parental supervision, has to be logically considered as the root of this wave of deaths.
Saddam Copycat #5
The Arab News is reporting on Tuesday, 9, January, 2007 (20, Dhul Hijjah, 1427) of another Saddam execution video copycat hanging. This appears to be the fifth one revealed in various local and international media.
Please note in the article posted below, this newly reported incident is said to be the "fourth." But the source appears to be unaware of what we posted here today, of the fourth copycat, last January 3, 2007, in Harborcreek, Pennsylvania, when Bobby Martin, 16 years old, died by hanging who may have been watching the video during a New Year's Day party, (see Saddam Copycat #4).
12-Year-Old Saudi Boy in Copycat Hanging
Arab News
Hafr Al-Batin — A 12-year-old Saudi boy hanged himself on Sunday re-enacting the widely publicized execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
His brother found the boy, Sultan Abdullah Al-Shammari, hanging from a rope that he had fixed on an iron door in their home in Hafr Al-Batin, a small town 400 kilometers north of Riyadh, Okaz newspaper reported yesterday.
By the time Sultan was taken to a nearby hospital he was dead. Two of his younger brothers were watching the apparent accidental hanging.
A police investigation is under way to determine whether the accident was a case of parental negligence.
This marks the fourth youngster that has died imitating the hanging of the former Iraqi strongman. A 10-year-old boy in Houston, Texas, last Thursday hanged from his bunk bed, in a death that was ruled accidental. On the same day, a 15-year-old Indian girl committed suicide by hanging after becoming depressed and expressing outrage over the execution of the former dictator.
A nine-year-old Pakistani boy hanged himself from a ceiling fan on Jan. 1 trying to copy the scenes from the widely distributed video clip of the execution. That death was also ruled accidental.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Saddam Copycat #4
Another young person has died by hanging, in possible imitation of the Saddam execution video.
This occurred on Wednesday, January 3, 2007, in Harborcreek (a section of Erie), Pennsylvania, when a 16 year old died by hanging when he stepped off a loft (apparently with a rope around his nexk).
The young person's standard death notice was published in the Erie Times-News from January 4, 2007 and January 5, 2007.
It reads, in part:
Robert Joseph “Bobby” Martin, 16 of Erie, died Wednesday, January 03, 2007. He was born in Erie, September 28, 1990, a son of Thomas O. and Wendy Mangan Martin. Bobby was a 10th grade student at Harborcreek High School where he played on its Jr. and Varsity football team as both running back and line backer. He also was the assistant on the girls varsity basketball team. He was a member of St. Peter Cathedral, enjoyed the outdoors, school and his many friends.
According to one local resident who left a comment here, Bobby Martin was a popular football player and honors student. He "had a New Year's Eve party for friends and two days later was dead. One cannot help but think that viewing the Saddam video again and again and again and again planted the seed."
Nevertheless, it is unknown if he did view the footage.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Saddam Copycats #2 & #3
The Saddam execution video was shown so often on television and made so available on the internet, that it became a graphic model of behavior for young people to attempt to copycat. Telling in the following stories - and the one posted earlier - are the indications that direct copying of the videotape occurred. The ages of the young people - 9, 10, and 15 - are close enough to have been reflective of the modeling taking place. Furthermore, in the non-American incidents, the behavior contagion was even repeated in the copying of the use of ceiling fans. The copycat effect has been a factor, at least during this short window of contagion. Little restraint seems to have been taken by even the mainstream media who played most of the "official" and "cellphone" footage of Saddam's hanging, over and over, for days.
(Note: I expanded my comments here thanks to a blog by Dave LaMorte. His remarks reminded me that I wanted to come back and be a little more reflective. The above paragraph was added on January 7, 2007. Many people have found there way here due to Xeni Jardin's Boing Boing posting, of course.)
On Monday, I posted here about the death of Mubashar Ali, 9, who hanged himself in Pakistan, on Sunday, December 31, 2006, while copycatting the execution of Saddam Hussein.
Two more copycat hangings of young people have occurred in the wake of the widespread broadcasts of the Saddam hanging video on cable and satellite television, and the entire video on such outlets as YouTube. In Texas, Sergio Pelico, 10, was found Sunday, December 31, 2006, dead from hanging from his bunk bed in an apparent copycat of the Saddam death. In India, early on Wednesday, January 3, 2007, Moon Moon Karmarkar, 15, hanged herself from a ceiling fan.
I am posting extracts from the source articles on the Pelico and Karmarker deaths for archival reasons, as they have a tendency to disappear quickly.
Texas Boy Dies Mimicking Saddam's Hanging
Cops: 10-Year-Old Hung Himself From Bunk After Watching News About Execution
Houston, Jan. 4, 2007
Quote
"I don't think he thought it was real. They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"
(CBS/AP) Police and family members said a 10-year-old boy who died by hanging himself from a bunk bed was apparently mimicking the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Sergio Pelico was found dead Sunday in his apartment bedroom in the Houston-area city of Webster, said Webster police Lt. Tom Claunch. Pelico's mother told police he had previously watched a news report on Saddam's death.
"It appears to be accidental," Claunch said. "Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting."
An autopsy of the fifth-grader's body was pending.
Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle, said the boy was a happy and curious child.
He said Sergio had watched TV news with another uncle on Saturday and asked the uncle about Saddam's death.
"His uncle told him it was because Saddam was real bad," Gustavo said. "He (Sergio) said, 'OK.' And that was it."
Sergio's mother, Sara Pelico DeLeon, was at work Sunday while Sergio and other children were under the care of an uncle, Gustavo said. One of the children found Sergio's body in his bedroom.
Police said the boy had tied a slipknot around his neck while on a bunk bed. Police investigators learned that Sergio had been upset about not getting a Christmas gift from his father, but they don't believe the boy intentionally killed himself.
A 9-year-old Pakistani boy also apparently hanged himself re-enacting Hussein's execution with the help of elder sister by tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home, Agence France-Presse reported.
The boy's father said his children attempted to imitate the hanging while other family members thought they were playing in another room.
Clinical psychologist Edward Bischof, of California, said children Sergio's age mimic risky behaviors they see on TV — such as wrestling or extreme sports — without realizing the dangers. He said TV appeared to be the stimulant in Sergio's case.
"I would think maybe this kid is trying something that he thinks fun to act out without having the emotional and psychological maturity to think the thing through before he acts on it," Bischof said.
Family members held a memorial for the boy Wednesday in the apartment complex activity center. Gustavo said the family is trying to put together enough money to send Sergio's body to Guatemala for burial.
"I don't think he thought it was real," Gustavo said of Saddam's hanging. "They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"
++++
"Kolkata teenager hangs herself over Saddam's execution"
Kolkata, Jan 4 (ANI): Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's execution has had a mixed reaction in India. While the government expressed its disappointment over his execution, the Left and some sections of the Muslim community accused the US of masterminding the Iraqi leader's killing, and there were the Shiatte population in different Indian towns who expressed jubilation over the hanging.
But nowhere, probably not even in Iraq did an ardent supporter of Saddam express his or her loyalty and sorrow over the execution by taking his or her own life.
So it was quite surprising that a 15 year old girl from Kolkata's suburbs to kill herself in response to Saddam's execution, even though the city is well known for its anti-US feelings and stance.
According to a report by a foreign news agency, the girl, Moon Moon Karmarkar hanged herself for wanting to "feel the pain Saddam did during the execution".
"She said they had hanged a patriot. We didn't take her seriously when she told us that she wanted to feel the pain, Saddam did during the execution," the girl's father Manmohan Karmakar was quoted as saying.
According to Manmohan, Moon Moon had become extremely depressed after watching Saddam's execution on television.
"She kept watching the scene over and again and didn't take food on Saturday and Sunday to protest the hanging," he said.
Police superintendent Pravin Kumar while confirming the suicide, said the girl had strung herself up from a ceiling fan and was found dead early on Wednesday.
Saddam was hanged for crimes against humanity at dawn on Saturday....(ANI)
Monday, January 01, 2007
Saddam Video Copycat
January 1, 2007 opens with the news of the death of a nine-year-old who died by hanging, as he attempted to imitate the widely broadcast Saddam Hussein execution video. This press account, "Boy hangs himself 'like Saddam'", includes the details of the young person's death and the realizations from some media critics that the video being shown is graphic:
Multan - A young boy who tried to copy hanging scenes from the execution video of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein died in central Pakistan, said police on Monday.
Mubashar Ali, 9, hanged himself, while re-enacting Hussein's hanging with the help of elder sister, 10, after tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home in Rahim Yar Khan district on Sunday, said a local police official.
The father of the deceased boy said that his children had been watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution on television and attempted to imitate the hanging as other family members thought they were playing in another room.
"My wife and sister rushed to rescue Mubashar when children cried for help from the adjoining room, but he died due to hanging," said Alamgir Paracha, father of Mubashar.
Police said that the death was accidental and a case of parental negligence.
"It was an accident which happened due to carelessness of parents," said district police chief Sultan Ahmad.
Images of the fallen Iraqi dictator with a strap around his neck, surrounded by executioners in balaclavas, were repeatedly telecast by Pakistani television channels at the weekend.
Commentators and the media across Europe had expressed shock and unease on Sunday at graphic television pictures showing the last moments of Hussein just before his execution.
Multan - A young boy who tried to copy hanging scenes from the execution video of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein died in central Pakistan, said police on Monday.
Mubashar Ali, 9, hanged himself, while re-enacting Hussein's hanging with the help of elder sister, 10, after tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home in Rahim Yar Khan district on Sunday, said a local police official.
The father of the deceased boy said that his children had been watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution on television and attempted to imitate the hanging as other family members thought they were playing in another room.
"My wife and sister rushed to rescue Mubashar when children cried for help from the adjoining room, but he died due to hanging," said Alamgir Paracha, father of Mubashar.
Police said that the death was accidental and a case of parental negligence.
"It was an accident which happened due to carelessness of parents," said district police chief Sultan Ahmad.
Images of the fallen Iraqi dictator with a strap around his neck, surrounded by executioners in balaclavas, were repeatedly telecast by Pakistani television channels at the weekend.
Commentators and the media across Europe had expressed shock and unease on Sunday at graphic television pictures showing the last moments of Hussein just before his execution.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Self-Immolation Attempt
Italian activist's TV suicide try foiled
An Italian fathers' rights activist says he tried unsuccessfully to self-immolate on live television to call attention to dads unable to see their kids. The ANSA news service reported Saturday that Nicola De Martino, who was recently re-united with his son after a 12-year separation, tried to set himself on fire Thursday night while appearing as a guest on the current affairs show, "Dieci Minute," or "Ten Minutes" on state television station RAI. ANSA said that the show's host, along with the distraught man's 18-year-old son "looked on in horror" as De Martino doused himself with gasoline and then threatened to light a match. Host Maurizio Martinelli and the studio crew frantically managed to wrest the lit match from De Martino's hands. He was then led away from the stage.
An Italian fathers' rights activist says he tried unsuccessfully to self-immolate on live television to call attention to dads unable to see their kids. The ANSA news service reported Saturday that Nicola De Martino, who was recently re-united with his son after a 12-year separation, tried to set himself on fire Thursday night while appearing as a guest on the current affairs show, "Dieci Minute," or "Ten Minutes" on state television station RAI. ANSA said that the show's host, along with the distraught man's 18-year-old son "looked on in horror" as De Martino doused himself with gasoline and then threatened to light a match. Host Maurizio Martinelli and the studio crew frantically managed to wrest the lit match from De Martino's hands. He was then led away from the stage.
Sati Surges
The Sunday Boston Globe carries an article by Tim Sullivan, on December 10, 2006, concerning, as his headline states, "Widows' suicides divide India along cultural lines: Rural areas see surge in burnings."
It is a thoughtful treatment about sati, the practice of self-immolation, and personalizes the reportage with a story about a specific recent case.
Near the beginning of the article, Sullivan notes:
While sati cases remain rare , and India normally only has one every year or so, recent months have seen a surge: At least three widows have died on their husband's pyres since August, and another was stopped from burning herself to death when villagers intervened. Specialists can find no explanation for the increase. It's possible that media reports and word-of-mouth lead to a copycat effect.
Historically, records kept by the Bengal Presidency of the British East India Company show that for the period 1813 to 1828, deaths by sati reached 8,135, giving an average of about 600 per year. Sati still occurs occasionally, mostly in rural areas. The common wisdom is that about 40 cases have occurred in India since independence in 1947, the majority in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan.
In my book, I observe that the practice of sati serves as a cultural background when political self-immolations occur:
In 1965 political self-immolations were used in widespread protests in India. As the villagers of Kizhapazhuvur in Tamil Nadu's Tiruchi district looked on in shock, Chinnasamy, a poor farmer, set fire to his gasoline-saturated body on the eve of Republic Day (January 26) in 1965 for the preservation of the Tamil language. After his death, the State became the pioneer of a new, fiery form of political protest: self-immolation. The next night, another Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam volunteer, T. M. Sivalingam of Kodambakkam in Chennai, immolated himself, protesting the government’s imposition of Hindi on Dravidian land. And, the next day, Aranganathan of Virugambakkam in Chennai took the same route to death for the same cause. The spate of suicides over Hindi imposition continued for a week that year leaving as many as nine people dead, and Tamil Nadu came to be labeled the land of self-immolation. In the months that followed, the government withdrew its call to outlaw the Tamil language. (Today, self-immolations in India are said to be caused by the "Chinnasamy effect.")
It is a thoughtful treatment about sati, the practice of self-immolation, and personalizes the reportage with a story about a specific recent case.
Near the beginning of the article, Sullivan notes:
While sati cases remain rare , and India normally only has one every year or so, recent months have seen a surge: At least three widows have died on their husband's pyres since August, and another was stopped from burning herself to death when villagers intervened. Specialists can find no explanation for the increase. It's possible that media reports and word-of-mouth lead to a copycat effect.
Historically, records kept by the Bengal Presidency of the British East India Company show that for the period 1813 to 1828, deaths by sati reached 8,135, giving an average of about 600 per year. Sati still occurs occasionally, mostly in rural areas. The common wisdom is that about 40 cases have occurred in India since independence in 1947, the majority in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan.
In my book, I observe that the practice of sati serves as a cultural background when political self-immolations occur:
In 1965 political self-immolations were used in widespread protests in India. As the villagers of Kizhapazhuvur in Tamil Nadu's Tiruchi district looked on in shock, Chinnasamy, a poor farmer, set fire to his gasoline-saturated body on the eve of Republic Day (January 26) in 1965 for the preservation of the Tamil language. After his death, the State became the pioneer of a new, fiery form of political protest: self-immolation. The next night, another Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam volunteer, T. M. Sivalingam of Kodambakkam in Chennai, immolated himself, protesting the government’s imposition of Hindi on Dravidian land. And, the next day, Aranganathan of Virugambakkam in Chennai took the same route to death for the same cause. The spate of suicides over Hindi imposition continued for a week that year leaving as many as nine people dead, and Tamil Nadu came to be labeled the land of self-immolation. In the months that followed, the government withdrew its call to outlaw the Tamil language. (Today, self-immolations in India are said to be caused by the "Chinnasamy effect.")
Saturday, December 09, 2006
3700 Police In Schools
Copycat Hysteria Hits Germany
Germany Gripped by Epidemic of Threatened School Shootings
Crime | 08.12.2006
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Some 3,700 police officers have been deployed in Baden-Württemberg's schools
Hysteria hit high schools across Germany this week as police struggle to deal with a wave of threatened copycat crimes triggered by a student's storming of his school in late November. Is the country overreacting?
Weeks after an armed 18-year-old attacked the Scholl secondary school in Emsdetten, wounding five people before killing himself, Germany is in the grip of a security scare.
The panic was unleashed Wednesday when Baden-Württemberg's education minister, Helmut Rau, sent the region's schools a chilling e-mail.
"An anonymous person has threatened a killing spree in his school in Baden-Württemberg on Dec. 6," it read. "The person has confirmed his intention is serious."
By Friday, some 4,800 local schools had been placed under police protection; many parents kept their children at home, and a spate of copycat threats had swept the country.
Schleswig-Holstein's interior minister, Social Democrat Ralf Stegner, announced that copycat callers would face stiff penalties. "Police and prosecutors will do everything in their power to investigate these people," he said. "Anyone who claims they intend to perpetrate violence is punishable."
* * *
"The warning spread fear and uncertainty among the population and created a framework for copycat callers," said Ute Vogt, leader of Baden-Württemberg's opposition SPD.
Jürgen Giessler from the Offenburg police department predicted that the number of copycat incidents would continue to climb over the next few weeks and stressed the entailing financial burden.
"It could add up to a figure it will take a lifetime to pay off," he said.
* * *
Media panic-mongering
Inevitably, the threats have hit Germany's headlines. But many are wondering if the media interest does not in fact serve to spur on disaffected young people rather than to deter them.
"Some people use the media interest to draw attention to themselves," Federal Police Union President Wolfgang Speck told the daily Die Welt.
Micha Hilgers, a psychoanalyst based in Aachen, agreed. "The enormous public attention -- if not hysteria -- is nothing less than balm to the damaged souls of these potential spree killers," she said on radio station SWR2.
Youth violence expert Adolf Gallwitz pointed out in an interview with the daily tageszeitung that media revelations about characters such as the Emsdetten student also prompt young people to sympathize with them.
"The surfeit of intimate details encourages teenagers to identify with the culprit," he said. "They think: he was as old as me, he goes to the same sort of school I do -- all I need now is my grandfather's firearm."
To read the complete article, see: Germany Gripped by Epidemic of Threatened School Shootings
+++
According to some online chatter, the "anonymous person" who sent the "killing spree" threat has been found, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Germany Gripped by Epidemic of Threatened School Shootings
Crime | 08.12.2006
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Some 3,700 police officers have been deployed in Baden-Württemberg's schools
Hysteria hit high schools across Germany this week as police struggle to deal with a wave of threatened copycat crimes triggered by a student's storming of his school in late November. Is the country overreacting?
Weeks after an armed 18-year-old attacked the Scholl secondary school in Emsdetten, wounding five people before killing himself, Germany is in the grip of a security scare.
The panic was unleashed Wednesday when Baden-Württemberg's education minister, Helmut Rau, sent the region's schools a chilling e-mail.
"An anonymous person has threatened a killing spree in his school in Baden-Württemberg on Dec. 6," it read. "The person has confirmed his intention is serious."
By Friday, some 4,800 local schools had been placed under police protection; many parents kept their children at home, and a spate of copycat threats had swept the country.
Schleswig-Holstein's interior minister, Social Democrat Ralf Stegner, announced that copycat callers would face stiff penalties. "Police and prosecutors will do everything in their power to investigate these people," he said. "Anyone who claims they intend to perpetrate violence is punishable."
* * *
"The warning spread fear and uncertainty among the population and created a framework for copycat callers," said Ute Vogt, leader of Baden-Württemberg's opposition SPD.
Jürgen Giessler from the Offenburg police department predicted that the number of copycat incidents would continue to climb over the next few weeks and stressed the entailing financial burden.
"It could add up to a figure it will take a lifetime to pay off," he said.
* * *
Media panic-mongering
Inevitably, the threats have hit Germany's headlines. But many are wondering if the media interest does not in fact serve to spur on disaffected young people rather than to deter them.
"Some people use the media interest to draw attention to themselves," Federal Police Union President Wolfgang Speck told the daily Die Welt.
Micha Hilgers, a psychoanalyst based in Aachen, agreed. "The enormous public attention -- if not hysteria -- is nothing less than balm to the damaged souls of these potential spree killers," she said on radio station SWR2.
Youth violence expert Adolf Gallwitz pointed out in an interview with the daily tageszeitung that media revelations about characters such as the Emsdetten student also prompt young people to sympathize with them.
"The surfeit of intimate details encourages teenagers to identify with the culprit," he said. "They think: he was as old as me, he goes to the same sort of school I do -- all I need now is my grandfather's firearm."
To read the complete article, see: Germany Gripped by Epidemic of Threatened School Shootings
+++
According to some online chatter, the "anonymous person" who sent the "killing spree" threat has been found, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Iraq War's Fiery Protest
"I Dreamt That I Was Dreaming." - Malachi Ritscher
CBS News - Chicago
Fiery Anti-War Suicide Goes Unnoticed
He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a friend, created to-do lists for his family. On his Web site, the 52-year-old experimental musician who'd fought with depression even penned his obituary.
At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 — four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics — Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.
Aglow for the crush of morning commuters, his flaming body was supposed to be a call to the nation, a symbol of his rage and discontent with the U.S. war in Iraq.
"Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country," he wrote in his suicide note. "... If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."
There was only one problem: No one was listening.
The rest of the article is here.
In an intriguing news blackout that may have been due to several parts politics and some portions circumstances has occurred regarding the fiery immolation death of anti-Iraq war protester Malachi Ritscher. The event has gone mostly unreported in the mass media since his death in Chicago on November 3, 2006.
I don't think it is a coincidence, however, that Ritscher's death happened so closely to the date of Norman Morrison's immolation on November 2, 1965, which took place underneath the window of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon, Washington, D. C.
Here's how the media is reporting the news of Malachi Ritscher's death on November 27, 2006, with large doses of popular psychological phrasing near the end to lead one to the conclusion that Ritscher's protest was more about a mental illness than it was a political protest:
CBS News - Chicago
Fiery Anti-War Suicide Goes Unnoticed
He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a friend, created to-do lists for his family. On his Web site, the 52-year-old experimental musician who'd fought with depression even penned his obituary.
At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 — four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics — Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.
Aglow for the crush of morning commuters, his flaming body was supposed to be a call to the nation, a symbol of his rage and discontent with the U.S. war in Iraq.
"Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country," he wrote in his suicide note. "... If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."
There was only one problem: No one was listening.
The rest of the article is here.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
German Copycat
The AFP News Service disseminated an article, "Police foil plans to attack school" on November 25, 2006.
German law enforcement officials said on Friday, November 24,
...that they had foiled an attack by a teenage boy on a high school in Berlin just days after a firearms fanatic shot and wounded 11 people at his old school in western Germany before committing suicide.
The police said that they were tipped off by fellow students whom the 17-year-old had told that he planned to storm the Bertha-von-Suttner High School in Reinickendorf in northern Berlin.
Police arrested the boy on Thursday and searched his home. They found evidence pointing to an attack, including a list of names of people he wanted to kill or spare, but no firearms or explosives. He has been sent for psychiatric observation.
AFP reviewed the Sebastian Bosse incident, and then also mentioned:
In April 2002, a former pupil at a school in the eastern German city of Erfurt massacred 16 people before turning the gun on himself.
The triggering of the German copycats has begun.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Gill-Bosse Links
A Trenchcoat Chronicles writer opens with a less-than-surprising observation about the German school shooter Sebastian Bosse and the Montreal Dawson College shooter Kimveer Gill sharing "similarities." These are the trenchcoat clothing, fascination with guns, taking photographs of themselves with their guns, and being outsiders. Of course, there is mention of isolation (which is an underlying factor in every school shooter, as they are all suicidal). "Bullying" is also noted, although people quickly forget that the ultimate form of bullying is killing your classmates, former classmates, or school children in general!
The TC blogger uses an article upon which they are basing their comments, and that news item gets sidetracked on the "video game" excuse. The media looks away from itself and the copycat effect, instead trying to blame the gamer personality, which in and of itself is symbolic and reflective of the cult of Columbine followers who appear to be Goth, but are not. They are the violent death worships who mirror their behavior contagion on the killers at Columbine, but they, in the end, have more to do with a separate cliche developing versus Goths who share a lifestyle that merely freaks out and is misunderstood by the mainstream status quo society.
The following is the German article TC points to as having extensive information, in English, about Bosse. Read it critically:
Spiegel Online
November 21, 2006
GERMAN SCHOOL SHOOTING
Armed to the Teeth and Crying for Help
By Julia Jüttner in Emsdetten
When he strode into school wearing a flowing black coat and a gas mask the children laughed at him. But the shooting rampage that followed has shocked Germany. The 18-year-old former pupil, named only as Sebastian B., wounded 37 before killing himself. He left a farewell message vowing revenge for a life of frustration.
It was shortly before 9:30 a.m., in the middle of the first break of the day when he strode into the schoolyard dressed in a long black coat and wearing a black gas mask.
"At first we all laughed at him, the way he was standing there. He looked totally ridiculous," said Dennis, a pupil in the seventh grade of the Geschwister Scholl secondary school in Emsdetten, a small town of 36,000 in northwestern Germany, near the city of Münster.
"Then he suddenly started firing and it scared us." Dennis ran to safety with his friend Jannick, 12. The bullets wounded a pregnant teacher, the janitor and seven pupils. Other people were injured through smoke inhalation from the smoke canisters he set off in his rampage around the school on Monday morning. None of the injuries are life-threatening.
Fellow pupils used to call Sebastian "Man in Black." "He was always totally dressed in black." He often hid his bright blue eyes behind sunglasses "even when the sun wasn't shining." "No one liked him," said Jannick. "But we didn't think he'd be capable of something like this. He somehow always seemed so shy, never laughed and always stood on his own in the schoolyard."
Sebastian killed himself at the end of his rampage and his body wasn't recovered until late on Monday night after experts had removed the explosive packs strapped to him. A total of 13 pipe bombs were found distributed around the school and in his car.
There's no school today and probably not tomorrow either but Dennis and Jannick aren't happy about it. "I'd rather never have a holiday again than go through something like this again."
Filled with hate
It's the same pattern as with the many other school shootings that have shocked communities around the world for years: Lonely teenagers obsessed with guns and violent computer games venting their frustration.
Sebastian was a good example. He was a gun freak who filmed himself posing in full combat gear wielding an array of weapons, setting off small bombs and carrying out a mock execution in the woods with a friend. He posted photos and video clips of himself in the Internet. He was due in court on Tuesday for illegal possession of a Walther P38 pistol.
Sebastian had planned his rampage long in advance, as a final showdown with all the people who he felt had humiliated him over the years. Guns blazing like in the computer video games he played, he wanted to eradicate himself and take his former fellow pupils and teachers with him.
"If you realize you'll never find happiness in your life and the reasons for this pile up day by day, the only option you have is to disappear from this life," he wrote in a farewell message he posted on the Internet. "The only thing I learned intensively at school was that I'm a loser," he wrote.
Peer pressure seems to have plagued him throughout his adolescence. He said he realized he lived in a "world in which money rules everything, even in school it was only about that. You had to have the latest cell phone, the latest clothes and the right 'friends.' If you didn't, you weren't worth any attention. I loathe these people, no, I loathe people," wrote Sebastian. "What's it all for? Why should I work? To break myself and retire at 65 and kick the bucket five years later?"
He entered his old school with two rifles with sawn-off barrels, a pistol, a gas-powered handgun, three bombs strapped to his body, a knife attached to his leg, 10 further homemade bombs and a petrol bomb in his backpack.
"It was clear he would flip out at some point, the way he used to talk," said a 17-year-old pupil who knew Sebastian. He was known as someone who spent all day at his computer playing games such as "Counterstrike", a game in which the player moves down corridors trying to shoot as many people as possible.
Obsessed with computer games
"He had a huge hatred of the world. Of his school, the teachers, everything," said the young man who declined to be named. "He was boiling with rage." He vented some of his aggression by listening to aggressive Death Metal music, and he dreamt of an army career. "He thought that was cool, going into battle in a uniform or combat gear. He liked to wear camouflage gear, no one objected to it."
In school breaks, Sebastian, generally known as Bastian, used to stand on his own, possibly because he was ashamed of having had to repeat two school years due to poor grades, and because he felt alienated from his new classmates.
In June 2004 he had posted a message in the Internet making his intentions clear. "This fear is slowly turning to rage. I am consuming all this rage and will let it all out at some point to take revenge on all the arseholes who wrecked my life! For those who haven't understood it exactly: Yes, this is about a shooting."
Yet he finished school with good grades in 2005 and even got an A in arithmetic. His rage remained, though. "Much of my revenge will be directed at the teachers, because they are people who intervened in my life against my will and helped put me where I am now: On the battlefield!" he wrote in his farewell note.
"I hate you and the way you are! You've all got to die! Since I was 6 you've all been taking the piss out of me! Now you're going to pay. Finally, I want to apologise for all this to the people who mean something to me or who were ever good to me! I'm gone ..."
Rudolf Egg, a criminal psychologist, described the letter as a "harrowing document" that marked a last appeal for help. It's unknown what relationship he had with his parents. He often went hunting with his father, a postman. Both collapsed after hearing the news and were treated in hospital for shock. His 16-year-old brother and 15-year-old sister are also receiving counselling.
In Berlin, the shooting provoked new calls for a ban on violent computer games, reigniting a debate that followed the Erfurt school massacre in April 2002 when former pupil Robert Steinhäuser shot dead 13 teachers, two pupils, a police officer and himself in Germany's worst shooting since World War II.
Gun controls were tightened in Germany after Erfurt with stricter checks on gun buyers. Pump-action shotguns with pistol grips were outlawed and the minimum age for gun purchasing was raised to 21 years from 18. Certain types of knives have also been banned.
Steinhäuser too was a games fanatic. Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy parliamentary group leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, said: "If it's true that the 18-year-old perpetrator intensively played so-called killer games, it's finally time for parliament to take action."
The interior minister of the eastern state of Brandenburg, Jörg Schönbohm, said: "Killer games make a fatal contribution to a growing tendency towards violence and they promote aggressive behavior. That's why strict action is needed against games that glorify violence."
The opposition Greens said the real problem had been the man's isolation rather than his obsession with computer games.
"We need to discuss this growing readiness to behave violently," said Jürgen Rüttgers, premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where Emsdetten is located. "We can't allow our children to be confronted with violence in their daily lives."
"A lot of these students had a guardian angel yesterday and it will take them time to come to terms with what happened. One boy told me about how he slammed a classroom door shut and a bullet came flying though it."
The TC blogger uses an article upon which they are basing their comments, and that news item gets sidetracked on the "video game" excuse. The media looks away from itself and the copycat effect, instead trying to blame the gamer personality, which in and of itself is symbolic and reflective of the cult of Columbine followers who appear to be Goth, but are not. They are the violent death worships who mirror their behavior contagion on the killers at Columbine, but they, in the end, have more to do with a separate cliche developing versus Goths who share a lifestyle that merely freaks out and is misunderstood by the mainstream status quo society.
The following is the German article TC points to as having extensive information, in English, about Bosse. Read it critically:
Spiegel Online
November 21, 2006
GERMAN SCHOOL SHOOTING
Armed to the Teeth and Crying for Help
By Julia Jüttner in Emsdetten
When he strode into school wearing a flowing black coat and a gas mask the children laughed at him. But the shooting rampage that followed has shocked Germany. The 18-year-old former pupil, named only as Sebastian B., wounded 37 before killing himself. He left a farewell message vowing revenge for a life of frustration.
It was shortly before 9:30 a.m., in the middle of the first break of the day when he strode into the schoolyard dressed in a long black coat and wearing a black gas mask.
"At first we all laughed at him, the way he was standing there. He looked totally ridiculous," said Dennis, a pupil in the seventh grade of the Geschwister Scholl secondary school in Emsdetten, a small town of 36,000 in northwestern Germany, near the city of Münster.
"Then he suddenly started firing and it scared us." Dennis ran to safety with his friend Jannick, 12. The bullets wounded a pregnant teacher, the janitor and seven pupils. Other people were injured through smoke inhalation from the smoke canisters he set off in his rampage around the school on Monday morning. None of the injuries are life-threatening.
Fellow pupils used to call Sebastian "Man in Black." "He was always totally dressed in black." He often hid his bright blue eyes behind sunglasses "even when the sun wasn't shining." "No one liked him," said Jannick. "But we didn't think he'd be capable of something like this. He somehow always seemed so shy, never laughed and always stood on his own in the schoolyard."
Sebastian killed himself at the end of his rampage and his body wasn't recovered until late on Monday night after experts had removed the explosive packs strapped to him. A total of 13 pipe bombs were found distributed around the school and in his car.
There's no school today and probably not tomorrow either but Dennis and Jannick aren't happy about it. "I'd rather never have a holiday again than go through something like this again."
Filled with hate
It's the same pattern as with the many other school shootings that have shocked communities around the world for years: Lonely teenagers obsessed with guns and violent computer games venting their frustration.
Sebastian was a good example. He was a gun freak who filmed himself posing in full combat gear wielding an array of weapons, setting off small bombs and carrying out a mock execution in the woods with a friend. He posted photos and video clips of himself in the Internet. He was due in court on Tuesday for illegal possession of a Walther P38 pistol.
Sebastian had planned his rampage long in advance, as a final showdown with all the people who he felt had humiliated him over the years. Guns blazing like in the computer video games he played, he wanted to eradicate himself and take his former fellow pupils and teachers with him.
"If you realize you'll never find happiness in your life and the reasons for this pile up day by day, the only option you have is to disappear from this life," he wrote in a farewell message he posted on the Internet. "The only thing I learned intensively at school was that I'm a loser," he wrote.
Peer pressure seems to have plagued him throughout his adolescence. He said he realized he lived in a "world in which money rules everything, even in school it was only about that. You had to have the latest cell phone, the latest clothes and the right 'friends.' If you didn't, you weren't worth any attention. I loathe these people, no, I loathe people," wrote Sebastian. "What's it all for? Why should I work? To break myself and retire at 65 and kick the bucket five years later?"
He entered his old school with two rifles with sawn-off barrels, a pistol, a gas-powered handgun, three bombs strapped to his body, a knife attached to his leg, 10 further homemade bombs and a petrol bomb in his backpack.
"It was clear he would flip out at some point, the way he used to talk," said a 17-year-old pupil who knew Sebastian. He was known as someone who spent all day at his computer playing games such as "Counterstrike", a game in which the player moves down corridors trying to shoot as many people as possible.
Obsessed with computer games
"He had a huge hatred of the world. Of his school, the teachers, everything," said the young man who declined to be named. "He was boiling with rage." He vented some of his aggression by listening to aggressive Death Metal music, and he dreamt of an army career. "He thought that was cool, going into battle in a uniform or combat gear. He liked to wear camouflage gear, no one objected to it."
In school breaks, Sebastian, generally known as Bastian, used to stand on his own, possibly because he was ashamed of having had to repeat two school years due to poor grades, and because he felt alienated from his new classmates.
In June 2004 he had posted a message in the Internet making his intentions clear. "This fear is slowly turning to rage. I am consuming all this rage and will let it all out at some point to take revenge on all the arseholes who wrecked my life! For those who haven't understood it exactly: Yes, this is about a shooting."
Yet he finished school with good grades in 2005 and even got an A in arithmetic. His rage remained, though. "Much of my revenge will be directed at the teachers, because they are people who intervened in my life against my will and helped put me where I am now: On the battlefield!" he wrote in his farewell note.
"I hate you and the way you are! You've all got to die! Since I was 6 you've all been taking the piss out of me! Now you're going to pay. Finally, I want to apologise for all this to the people who mean something to me or who were ever good to me! I'm gone ..."
Rudolf Egg, a criminal psychologist, described the letter as a "harrowing document" that marked a last appeal for help. It's unknown what relationship he had with his parents. He often went hunting with his father, a postman. Both collapsed after hearing the news and were treated in hospital for shock. His 16-year-old brother and 15-year-old sister are also receiving counselling.
In Berlin, the shooting provoked new calls for a ban on violent computer games, reigniting a debate that followed the Erfurt school massacre in April 2002 when former pupil Robert Steinhäuser shot dead 13 teachers, two pupils, a police officer and himself in Germany's worst shooting since World War II.
Gun controls were tightened in Germany after Erfurt with stricter checks on gun buyers. Pump-action shotguns with pistol grips were outlawed and the minimum age for gun purchasing was raised to 21 years from 18. Certain types of knives have also been banned.
Steinhäuser too was a games fanatic. Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy parliamentary group leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, said: "If it's true that the 18-year-old perpetrator intensively played so-called killer games, it's finally time for parliament to take action."
The interior minister of the eastern state of Brandenburg, Jörg Schönbohm, said: "Killer games make a fatal contribution to a growing tendency towards violence and they promote aggressive behavior. That's why strict action is needed against games that glorify violence."
The opposition Greens said the real problem had been the man's isolation rather than his obsession with computer games.
"We need to discuss this growing readiness to behave violently," said Jürgen Rüttgers, premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where Emsdetten is located. "We can't allow our children to be confronted with violence in their daily lives."
"A lot of these students had a guardian angel yesterday and it will take them time to come to terms with what happened. One boy told me about how he slammed a classroom door shut and a bullet came flying though it."
Monday, November 20, 2006
German School Shooting
A masked man, now dead, stormed a German school at about 9:30 am (8.30 GMT), Monday, November 20, 2006, in the town of Emsdetten, near the Dutch border, and injured eight people when he opened fire. Among the injured were several students and a teacher, though a police spokesman said the injuries were all minor. Apparently hostages were taken for two hours, per recent media accounts, before the crisis ended with the death of the gunman.
According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur:
Emsdetten, Germany - A masked ex-pupil opened fire in the playground of his former high school in Germany Monday, wounding at least nine people before apparently killing himself with his pistol.
Police had to delay an inspection of his prone body because it appeared to have explosives attached to it. A school caretaker and two pupils were in serious condition, said Ingo Wolf, interior minister of North Rhine Westphalia state.
The youth, 18, left a farewell message on the internet that suggested the attack was retaliation for being mocked at the school in the town of Emsdetten near the Dutch border.
Several students were grazed by bullets, but it remained unclear if the youth had taken any hostages during the two hours when the ex-pupil was holed up in a school building ringed by armed police.
School children scattered as the youth arrived and fired his pistol, just under two hours after the start of school. Most took refuge in another building or on nearby premises. The youth later threw smoke bombs.
Police said web pages which contained photos of the youth holding weapons including a sub-machine-gun appeared to be the youth's own.
Criticising his former high school, the Geschwister Scholl School (GSS), the youth said, 'The only thing I was properly taught at GSS was that I'm a loser.' The message contained the words, 'I hate people,' and ended with the words, 'I'm outta here.'
Teachers in Emsdetten, 150 kilometres north of Cologne in North Rhine Westphalia state, said the attacker had been a loner who had been interested in Satanism and gothic music.
A prosecutor in the nearby city of Muenster said the youth appeared to have shot himself, but how he died could only be proved by an autopsy. Police said they had not shot him.
Explosives experts were called to remove what might be bombs attached to his body.
A teacher told the TV broadcaster WDR the attacker was not a dropout but had graduated from the Scholl school.
According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur:
Emsdetten, Germany - A masked ex-pupil opened fire in the playground of his former high school in Germany Monday, wounding at least nine people before apparently killing himself with his pistol.
Police had to delay an inspection of his prone body because it appeared to have explosives attached to it. A school caretaker and two pupils were in serious condition, said Ingo Wolf, interior minister of North Rhine Westphalia state.
The youth, 18, left a farewell message on the internet that suggested the attack was retaliation for being mocked at the school in the town of Emsdetten near the Dutch border.
Several students were grazed by bullets, but it remained unclear if the youth had taken any hostages during the two hours when the ex-pupil was holed up in a school building ringed by armed police.
School children scattered as the youth arrived and fired his pistol, just under two hours after the start of school. Most took refuge in another building or on nearby premises. The youth later threw smoke bombs.
Police said web pages which contained photos of the youth holding weapons including a sub-machine-gun appeared to be the youth's own.
Criticising his former high school, the Geschwister Scholl School (GSS), the youth said, 'The only thing I was properly taught at GSS was that I'm a loser.' The message contained the words, 'I hate people,' and ended with the words, 'I'm outta here.'
Teachers in Emsdetten, 150 kilometres north of Cologne in North Rhine Westphalia state, said the attacker had been a loner who had been interested in Satanism and gothic music.
A prosecutor in the nearby city of Muenster said the youth appeared to have shot himself, but how he died could only be proved by an autopsy. Police said they had not shot him.
Explosives experts were called to remove what might be bombs attached to his body.
A teacher told the TV broadcaster WDR the attacker was not a dropout but had graduated from the Scholl school.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Six-Day War: Bobby
Bobby is a 2006 motion picture written and directed by Emilio Estevez. The film is a fictional account of the lives of several people during the final hours in the life of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), an active candidate for President of the United States, at the time of his assassination. RFK won the California primary that occurred on June 4, was shot in the early morning hours of June 5, and died on June 6, 1968.
The movie Bobby was set for release on November 17, 2006, but apparently the general release date is now Thanksgiving Day 2006.
What few have pointed out is the importance of the date of RFK's assassination. As I detail in my 2004 book, the date has twilight connotations.
On June 5, 1968, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, 24, who is generally described in quick historical overviews as a "Jordanian Arab," shot RFK in the Hotel Ambassador in Los Angeles. RFK died the following day, but the actual day he was shot – and this is a significant fact overlooked time and time again - was the first anniversary of the first day of the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors that began on June 5, 1967 (or as Charles Bishara Bishop, the young man who flew into the Tampa bank building on January 5, 2002, labeled it in his suicide note as "the 1967 Israeli-Syrian war").
The Six-Day War, also known as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Third Arab-Israeli War, Six Days' War, an-Naksah (The Setback), or the June War, was fought between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, from June 5 through June 10, 1967.
Sirhan Sirhan's shooting down of a successful presidential candidate is often characterized as one of the first acts of Palestine or Arab terrorism to take place on American soil, with 9/11 being the most recent example. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan saw himself as a Palestinian militant.
In a diary police found at Sirhan's home, he allegedly wrote: "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more the more [sic] of an unshakable obsession. RFK must die. RFK must be killed. Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated. .... Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 1968."
Sirhan and his family had been uprooted from their home in Jordan by the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, and prosecutors at his trial claimed Sirhan, who was a Christian Arab, was vehemently anti-Israel. Charles Bishara Bishop, whose suicide note clearly indicated he was a student of the 1967 Israeli-Arab conflict, may have also read what another Bishara, as America's first Palestinian assassin, had done because of it.
I don't expect to find anything about the Six-Day War in the new movie, Bobby, but at least now you know.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
The Bridge's Copycats
The Bridge, about the Golden Gate Bridge's suicides, clearly could be a source of copycat suicides.
It is good to see there is already a discussion about this occurring.
The UPI carried an article, on October 21, 2006, "Suicide documentary haunts audiences" that mentions:
Suicide experts say Eric Steel's The Bridge, which shows six people killing themselves, glamorizes his subjects and could trigger copycat deaths.
"All research suggests that showing, in detail, methods of suicide does result in an increase of those methods immediately afterwards, so portrayal of methods of suicide is ill-advised," Professor Keith Hawton of the Center for Suicide Research at Oxford University tells The Times of London.
Steel, 42, says the most popular suicide spot in the world "already has a copycat problem." He says the real issue is dealing with mental illness.
The film, screened at The Times BFI London Film Festival, gives brief portraits of the six people's tragic lives, pieced together from interviews with family and friends.
But it is the footage of the jumpers that haunts audiences long after the credits have rolled, the Times said.
ABC News also published an online article about this new documentary on October 20th, "The Bridge of Death."
Some extracts:
From January through December 2004, Steel used 10-to-12-person crews to train his cameras day and night on this landmark -- using both close-up lenses and wide angle shots to see the full expanse of the bridge.
By the time he finished, he had taped 23 of the 24 suicides that occurred that year. Now he has released a documentary called "The Bridge" that shows some of the jumps. The film has produced both praise and condemnation for his choices.
And ...the documentary has raised hackles over the appropriateness of documenting suicide, and heightened fears that it could encourage copycat suicide acts. Celia Kupersmith, CEO and general manager of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District said that when Steel's film first began to get publicity in festivals earlier this year, there was an increase in suicide attempts at the bridge.
"I don't think it's just his movie," Kupersmith said. "Any sort of press coverage of this phenomenon here causes people to get ideas."
Some critics are also worried because they believe that seeing suicides often prompts others, but Steel doesn't believe that the causal chain is that direct.
"Most suicides are the end product of a long struggle with mental illness," Steel said. "They're not the end product of seeing images of people killing themselves. We don't show anything that people don't already know. The images themselves I don't think are the things that are driving people to the bridge."
Steel seems unaware of the research on the copycat effect.
It is good to see there is already a discussion about this occurring.
The UPI carried an article, on October 21, 2006, "Suicide documentary haunts audiences" that mentions:
Suicide experts say Eric Steel's The Bridge, which shows six people killing themselves, glamorizes his subjects and could trigger copycat deaths.
"All research suggests that showing, in detail, methods of suicide does result in an increase of those methods immediately afterwards, so portrayal of methods of suicide is ill-advised," Professor Keith Hawton of the Center for Suicide Research at Oxford University tells The Times of London.
Steel, 42, says the most popular suicide spot in the world "already has a copycat problem." He says the real issue is dealing with mental illness.
The film, screened at The Times BFI London Film Festival, gives brief portraits of the six people's tragic lives, pieced together from interviews with family and friends.
But it is the footage of the jumpers that haunts audiences long after the credits have rolled, the Times said.
ABC News also published an online article about this new documentary on October 20th, "The Bridge of Death."
Some extracts:
From January through December 2004, Steel used 10-to-12-person crews to train his cameras day and night on this landmark -- using both close-up lenses and wide angle shots to see the full expanse of the bridge.
By the time he finished, he had taped 23 of the 24 suicides that occurred that year. Now he has released a documentary called "The Bridge" that shows some of the jumps. The film has produced both praise and condemnation for his choices.
And ...the documentary has raised hackles over the appropriateness of documenting suicide, and heightened fears that it could encourage copycat suicide acts. Celia Kupersmith, CEO and general manager of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District said that when Steel's film first began to get publicity in festivals earlier this year, there was an increase in suicide attempts at the bridge.
"I don't think it's just his movie," Kupersmith said. "Any sort of press coverage of this phenomenon here causes people to get ideas."
Some critics are also worried because they believe that seeing suicides often prompts others, but Steel doesn't believe that the causal chain is that direct.
"Most suicides are the end product of a long struggle with mental illness," Steel said. "They're not the end product of seeing images of people killing themselves. We don't show anything that people don't already know. The images themselves I don't think are the things that are driving people to the bridge."
Steel seems unaware of the research on the copycat effect.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)