| Wednesday, April 18, 2007 |
| Ismail Ax |
The blogosphere is buzzing with frenzied attempts to ferret out information about Cho Seung Hui, America's latest infamous mass murderer. Much of the focus currently is on the phrase "Ismail Ax," which Hui scrawled in red ink on his forearm sometime before he committed suicide by slaughter at Virginia Tech. That phrase is now a hit on Technorati, and I'm sure on Yahoo! and Google, too. News organizations are scrambling, too, even posting Facebook and MySpace pages trolling for information from anyone who might have known Hui. (The Chicago Tribune appears to have the hot hand at the moment...)
Surprise, surprise, the extremists on the right are taking this case to another (lower) level:
Right-wing reaction to the shootings: The National Review’s John Derbyshire asks, “[W]hy didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake–one of them reportedly a .22.” Right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel speculated that Cho
Seung-Hui, “who had been identified at that point only as a man of Asian descent, might be a ‘Paki’ Muslim and part of ‘a coordinated terrorist attack.’”
Look, Debbie, I made an internal pledge never to mention you again on this blog, because, frankly, I think you're a blithering idiot, and I like to comfort myself with the notion that no one with any sense actually listens to you, but that comment just begs for a response. First of all, dear, Hui was a naturalized American citizen permanent resident who had been in this country for 15 years. He went to high school in the red state of Virginia (Centreville). If he learned how to be an Islamofascist terrorist, he learned it there, not in "Paki"stan. And by the way, that little slur is beneath even you. ... Or then again, maybe it's just your speed.
And as for the Derbyshires and Nathaniel Blakes of the right ring world, I picture you sitting there in your bow ties and specs, probably about 120 pounds soaking wet and with the only fight experience in your life being the several times a week you were beaten up in elementary school for your lunch money, and can't help but snicker at the idea that you are calling out the men of Virginia Tech.
Meanwhile, Europe takes a piece out of America's hide (sorry, Charlton Heston. They don't like you. They really don't like you.)
Also:
Eight years after Columbine, a familiar profile of a killer: angry, alone, depressed. Even his roommates didn't know him.
And Hui's parents are hospitalized, suffering from shock. But reports that they had attempted suicide are apparently untrue.
The gun shop owner feels badly. Well, I'm thinking that a clearly troubled 23-year-old. who would have had difficulty renting a car, should have gotten something more than an instant background check.
Barack Obama goes way, way, way out on a limb ... (Don Imus must be saying "damn! I thought this was going to be my week off!"
An Asian student at VTech goes online to clear his name.
And none other than The Smoking Gun, has Hui's writings.
Related: Ten states see campus threats. All of the schools involve respond with a novel idea: lockdowns.
And Tom Tancredo disputes the "worst school massacre" meme. We had a couple of callers to the morning show yesterday who angrily contested the "worst massacre in U.S. history" too, saying that massacres of Black residents in Oklahoma and Rosewood, Florida were worse. Question: does that really matter? The VTech massacre was bad, man, can we all agree on that?
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Labels: current affairs, gun violence, news, violence, Virginia Tech |
posted by JReid @ 6:48 AM   |
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| Crazytown |
 Virginia Tech becomes the scene of carnage as a gunman, who apparently was a student at the university, shoots two people (apparently, his estranged girlfriend and a student advisor) in a dorm, and then goes berserk, two hours later, killing 30 people across campus at Norris Hall, where students were attending class. The gunman then shot himself.
This is a story of immense tragedy, but it also contains elements of true heroism, such as 75-year-old Liviu Librescu, an Israeli immigrant by way of Romania, who shielded students with his own body, giving students time to escape out a window in Norris Hall before he was fatally shot himself.
There are also stories of apparent incompetence. The shootings began sometime around 7:20, when the gunman, who has been identified only as a Chinese immigrant in his early twenties, shot and killed the girlfriend he was apparently quarreling with, along with 22-year-old Ryan Clark, a student and apparent dorm advisor who tried to break up the argument. The gunman waited two hours before making his way across campus to the classrooms at Norris Hall, where he chained the doors shut and systematically murdered 30 people, according to one report, lining some students up against a wall and executing them. Pannicked students scoured the Internet for information after getting emails from the campus administration that a gunman was loose on campus. Some jumped out of windows to escape. Others played dead. The police weren't called until 9:30, two hours after campus police responded to the dorm shootings. I can't help but wonder where he got the two guns he used. Probably with ease at a local gun store, eh? (Time to turn America's college and high school campuses into gun free zones, wouldn't you say? And increased security and a better warning system would be nice...)
And on the campus, students are reacting with fury to the university's lack of action after the initial shootings, including the failure to make a public address system announcement that a gunman was on the loose: "I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action
after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18. That sentiment is all over the Internet this morning ...
Update: ABC News is reporting that the gunman has been identified as "Seung Hui Cho, a permanent resident of the United States, a Korean national and a Virginia Tech student ..."
The student left a "disturbing note" before killing two people in a dorm room, returning to his own room to re-arm and entering a classroom building on the other side of campus to continue his rampage, sources said.
Cho's identitiy has been confirmed with a positive fingerprint match on the guns used in the rampage and with immigration materials. It is believed that he was the shooter in both incidents yesterday. Sources say Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol, sources said. Witnesses had also told authorities that the shooter was carrying a backpack. Sections of chain similar to those used to lock the main doors at Norris Hall, the site of the second shooting that left 31 dead, were found inside a Virginia Tech dormitory, sources confirmed to ABC News. I wonder when the beef began between Cho and his girlfriend. I wonder if it correllates with when he bought the gun... Also, he's not Chinese, he's Korean...
Update 2: Hours after the massacre at Va Tech, a bomb scare triggers an evacuation at the University of Tennessee.Labels: current affairs, gun violence, news, violence, Virginia Tech |
| posted by JReid @ 7:00 AM |
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