“Isn’t funny how they DELETED or lost all the comments…they seem to have not been able to quash the voting on their own site tho’..
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/debates/scorecard/gop.debate/results.html
Doesnt it strike you as strange that their coverage of him is so skant [sic] – yet he is topping their polls? Why are they not covering him?”
Why?
What kind of a question is that…
This, in an email from Joey Kurtzman, editor at Jewcy (I posted his earlier piece where he sharpened his rather cutting wit on poor Naomi Wolf’s tender neck)
From: “Joey Kurtzman” joey@jewcy.com
To: “Lila Rajiva” <lrajiva@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Blog posting
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 10:00:24 -0700
“I agree with you that neither fundamentalism nor even supremacism is incompatible with democracy. These phenomena aren’t going anywhere, some people will embrace them to a greater or lesser extent in any society…democracy has to be able to accommodate them, just as it accommodates other streams of thought and other dubious political phenomena. Pat Robertson and Louis Farrakhan get to participate in the political system. If not, it’s not a democracy. For the rest of us, our job is to engage them as real people with coherent (if flawed) belief systems, rather than as crackpot caricatures. ”
My Comment:
How about that? Farrakhan and Falwell, even the BJP – they’re all human beings. What a twisted concept!
What next, a garden party with the National Socialists ?
You’ll notice I don’t say Nazi anymore – I am told by an anonymous poster who claimed he was a National Socialist (the blogosphere is notoriously prone to masquerades of all kinds) that they find it slanderous. And being both diverse (per-verse, my friends tell me), and inclusive, I hasten to address them as they wish. …..
But, of course, Mr. K, the more salient point is – since when do we live in a democracy anyway?
Do you see how many of our problems arise not because we don’t have answers but because we don’t have our questions right?
And why is that? Where are we getting our questions from?
How do the parameters of public debate get set? By whom? And why do people go along?
Questions…
And looking for answers, I came across this article in Salon, about Wiliam Buckley, perhaps the man most responsible for pushing conservatives into big government interventionism:
” Buckley sees little reason to accord democratic privileges to Stalinists who plot to overthrow American democracy. Nor does he believe in extending constitutional protections to those who, if they ever came to power, would immediately rescind them. Certain ideas, he believes — such as Nazism and communism — are simply “unassimilable,” and have no place in a liberal society. He voices this sentiment through the character of Columbia professor Willmoore Sherrill (a proxy for Willmoore Kendall, WFB’s mentor and CIA recruiter at Yale), who argued that there are people who don’t fit under the “American tent.”
Of course, few people are going to let you know before they come to power they are going to take apart the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So, how do you tell in advance? You can’t.
In fact, it is Buckley’s intellectual proteges – all of them well within the American tent – who have torn it apart…..from within.
My earlier post, reworked as an article at Dissident Voice:
Chris Cook of the University of Victoria Gorilla Radio (GO-rilla, as in, our furry friends… or cousins…..or descendants, depending on your evolutionary perspective and level of optimism about the human race) writes:
“For American readers who value and feel protected by the 1st Amendment (right to free speech), it may seem strange that a country would enshrine in law the opposite condition; but Hate Crime legislation in this country is widely supported. Canada is an ethnically, and politically diverse country, consisting of minority populations from the world over, and it was deemed fair-minded to ensure all are protected from the “tyranny of the majority.” But it’s a double-edged sword, making possible an abuse of the statutes, allowing an equally odious tyranny, the stifling of dissent and criticism by a dedicated minority.”
Cook’s problem is that one edge of this sword just fell on a web-site he edits, the Peace, Earth & Justice News (PEJ.org), “a non-profit, all-volunteer, non-hierarchical media organization” based in Victoria whose mission (as described in its Constitution) is to report on “climate change and other environmental issues, war and peace in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and human rights and other matters of social justice.”
PEJ has been operating since 1996 and is owned by the small (annual budget of a few hundred dollars and volunteer staff), non-profit Prometheus Institute, British Columbia, where Cook was a senior editor until February this year.
On May 17 PEJ publisher Alan Rycroft received a letter from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, signed by the deputy secretary general Richard Tardiff, claiming that PEJ had violated Canadian law by posting anti-Semitic material, according to a complaint filed with its legal department by Harry Abrams, a Victoria businessman and British Columbia representative for the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith, Canada, which joins him in the complaint.
PEJ publishes materials from activists around the world, including some who have published on American websites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Lew Rockwell. It is an alternative paper that by definition carries news not covered in the mainstream press and those stories are naturally controversial, often criticizing the actions of powerful entities, including governments. Naturally, that includes the Canadian government. And naturally, also, the Israeli government.
As soon as PEJ received the letter, it removed from its web-site the eighteen articles that Harry Abrams alleges were anti-Semitic.
PEJ did this as a matter of courtesy to Abrams and to show goodwill, according to Joan Russow, one of the directors, pending the outcome of an inquiry by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. PEJ does not endorse articles or comments published on it, to begin with. But, PEJ is, in addition, expressly non-discriminatory. As Dr. Russow, said in a letter to Mr. Abrams on December 31, 2006:
“Anti-Semitism and other prejudicial materials are not allowed on our site – after all PEJ News exists to promote equality and freedom for all – we are the Peace, Earth & Justice News. To the best of our knowledge no anti-Semitic or hate material is on PEJ.org.”
Indeed, it was she who invited Mr. Abrams (in December 2006) to inspect the articles on the site and see if anything was anti-Semitic, including comments from the public.
The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) whose “General Expectations of Canada” (as posted on the web, “CJC Brief to DFAIT on UN Human Rights Commission,” Feb 19, 2004 ) is not nearly as objective or non-discriminatory.
The CJC tells Canada’s Jewish citizens to take “constructive interventions against resolutions or motions” made in Canada that:
1.blame only Israel and its policies for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
2. indict Israel’s legitimate counter-terrorism measures with no reference to or condemnation of Palestinian terrorism.
3. deny or undermine Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East (my emphasis).
4. employ existentially threatening language such as referring to Israel as a “racist” or “apartheid” state and apply terms such as [“genocide”(?)], or “ethnic cleansing” to the conflict.
5. are based upon inaccurate media information or Palestinian Authority propaganda.
6. predetermine the outcome of direct, bilateral negotiations in keeping with UN Resolution 242 and 338 or circumvent such a process.
At the same time, Canada’s delegates must support and encourage efforts at the UNCHR that:
1. will ensure a comprehensive accounting of international human rights situations such that grievous international human rights issues are not ignored or soft-pedalled [sic] as a result of a politicized, anti-Israel agenda.
2. highlight the crippling impact of continuing Palestinian terrorism – which has been explicitly legitimized in the CHR resolutions – on the peace process and on attempts to establish a true human rights regime in the Middle East.
3. draw attention to the deficiencies within the Palestinian Authority regarding human rights and the building of a viable civil society for the Palestinian people.”
And B’nai Brith’s positions are even more partisan than this.
Thus it is that Anita Bromberg, in-house legal counsel for B’nai Brith, Canada, has joined Mr. Abrams in the complaint against PEJ’s peace activism, because, she says, the articles “are virulently anti-Israel to the point that they meet the criteria of crossing the line of legitimate criticism of the state straight into anti-Semitism.”
What, according to the complaint, is anti-Semitic?
“The idea that Israel has no right to exist or that Israel is an apartheid state,” says Mr. Abrams. Also, any comparison of Zionists to Nazis.
Were there such articles? In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Lebanon, several pieces did compare Israeli policy with Nazi persecution of Jews. One, by Chris Cook, “We Should Nuke Israel,” for instance, was a parody of a column in The Toronto Sun proposing a tactical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Cook simply replaced the word “Iran” with “Israel,” “Amadinejad” with “Olmert,” “Muslim” with “Jew” and tagged the following paragraph at the end, ironically recommending that the article be acted upon by the Human Rights Commission:
“This amazingly ignorant, hateful, and frankly criminal article has been redacted. “Israel” appears where the murderous and racist author, Michael Coren originally wrote “Iran.” Likewise other slight alterations have been performed. There is, in what remains of this country Canada, hate crime legislation. Unlike Mr. Coren’s, and his Toronto Sun publisher’s heroes in the United States, Canadian media is expected to live up to certain standards. Promoting hatred and proposing the destruction of human life fail miserably to live up to the expected, and legislated, mandates for publishers. I recommend those offended by Mr. Coren’s modest proposal write the Sun, Coren, and the CRTC. Mr. Coren can be reached here”
Now, that’s strong language admittedly. But why, we wonder, does the Canadian Human Rights Commission not also write a letter to the columnist in Toronto Sun, which proposed a real nuclear hit on Iran with a straight face. Why instead attack a column written in transparent satire in response to the former? Are the human rights of Iranians – or of Palestinians – less worthy of attention than the human rights of Israelis?
By the way, in the US, words such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” have been applied to the torture at Abu Ghraib in academic and law journals, such as Gonzaga University 10 Gonz. J. Int’l L. 370 (2007). If torture of prisoners in Iraq can be described in this way without American human rights activists objecting, it’s hard to see why the killing and dispossession of the civilian population in Palestine shouldn’t be called ethnic cleansing or genocide.
And, would the CHRC also rush so zealously to investigate on behalf of an organization that claimed Canada – or the U.S. – was a Christian country?
After the letter was received at PEJ and the offending articles removed, Ingmar Lee, one of PEJ’s editors posted a piece by a scholar, Shaheed Alam, one that just appeared in Counter Punch and other sites, and makes a scholarly criticism of Jewish exceptionalism as “inseparable from Israeli exceptionalism and Israeli history” (“Chosenness and Israeli Exceptionalism”) in a manner no different from and more measured that any number of dissections of American exceptionalism and some forms of Christian fundamentalism, which PEJ has also published.
The fact that it has shows clearly that PEJ was, in this instance, simply following its mission of attacking injustice wherever it finds it and defending human rights, no matter whose. Its criticism of Israel as a race-based state was simply part of its universal secular defense of human rights.
But defending universal secular human rights, which by the way, is policy in the State Department, turns out now to be the promotion of “ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel,” for in his complaint, Harry Abrams and B’nai Brith state that Abrams has “reasonable grounds for believing that I have been discriminated against.”‘
The only trouble with that statement is that the criticism in the articles is directed at the policies of the state of Israel, not at Mr. Abrams personally.
Should we conclude that Mr. Abrams sees himself as indistinguishable from the Israeli government? Or that B’nai Brith’s interest in human rights is indistinguishable from the vested interests of the Israeli government?
So far, Canada’s Globe and Mail, which published the story on May 24, has also published PEJ’s vigorous characterization of the charges as “calumnies.” But for how long?
Yesterday, Ingmar Lee was forced to resign as editor of PEJ for the bad judgment of publishing Alam’s article after the complaint was received, because the article is “slanderous to all Jews,” uses the word Zionist as a “slander,” like Nazi, and may be a “hate crime” under Canadian law (in the words of PEJ publisher, Rycroft).
A semantic question: Is it also a slander to refer to Nazis as “Nazis”?
Jerry Falwell, the evangelical preacher, who founded the Moral Majority, as well as Liberty University, died on May 15, 2007.
There were many things I liked and respected about Dr. Falwell. He built elementary schools and homes for single mothers; he helped alcoholics, the homeless and AIDS victims. He sent money to help the poor and sick in Africa. He built up a large university. When he debated Larry Flynt on TV, I remember he conducted himself with great dignity, generosity and humor.
I hope that he will be remembered for these things at least as much as for the pain his pronouncements over the years caused homosexuals, pagans, witches, abortionists (in his words), blacks and many other groups of varying ontological status.
Mind you, I say that as a childless divorcee, skeptical occultist, ethical pagan, and heterodox Christian whom Dr. Falwell would no doubt have consigned to the flames of hell.
Like most people today my primary difficulty is not with believing, but with not believing. Believing comes altogether too easily. The world – whether seen through the lens of science or through our own eyes – is so complex, variegated, fluctuating, and contradictory that we are ever more disposed to grope for certainty in areas where it may most be an illusion.
Some would say that Falwell’s fundamentalism was of that nature.
But there are other credulities besides religious ones.
How much easier and more comforting to our perpetually aggrieved sense of fairness, for instance, to think that all beliefs – if held with sufficient good will – are the same, all convictions equally plausible, all systems of economics – if only tried with good faith – equally productive.
How easy and – often – how wrong.
Jerry Falwell, for all his flaws – and they were clear enough – was not flawed in that way.
His beliefs were narrow. But by his lights and the lights of many who are fundamentalists, it was the narrowness of the way to eternal life preached in the gospels.
Progressives, who like to sample only what they find most palatable in Jesus’ teachings — like walnuts in an unfamiliar salad — have a tendency to ignore his words as they have actually come down to us. And no wonder. Taken literally (and that, I suppose, is why they are rarely taken literally), they would stick in our craws.
This is the Jesus who once said the gospel was for “the children” of the house (Israelites) and not for the “dogs.” (Samaritans). He may have stopped the adulteress being stoned, but he didn’t deny she was an adulteress. As for the Pharisees, the liberal, well-educated elite of his day, he routinely called them a nest of vipers for the hundred sophistries and metaphors with which they got around tedious religious rules. Jesus often seemed tiresomely literal to them, as well.
And he seems to have lived in expectation of an apocalypse too, even if he also died without seeing it.
But, of course, you will say — that was Jesus. This is Falwell.
And you would have made your point. Jesus was often deliberately opaque, ironic; he iced the sting of reproof with parables, poured compassion over the wounds his words inflicted and made his point as often with artistic silence – at crucial moments.
Falwell was rarely silent, and even more rarely artistic.
But among the many offensive quotes I see attributed to him, I have so far seen nothing that was much more than a blunt, unlovely articulation of some text of Christian or Jewish scripture.
If that is hate speech and potentially discriminatory under the law, as his many detractors claim, then we must outlaw substantial portions of the major religions.
Certainly those portions of the Old and New Testaments, which classify homosexuality among abominations, advocate killing diviners and witches, and celebrate crushing your enemies’ babies on rocks; which relegate women to subordination even in matters of conscience, and – like Falwell – attribute natural calamities and plagues to the wrath of a touchy deity. As a Christian, I speak of the Bible, but I’ll warrant that there are few scriptures that are entirely innocent in these matters.
Words, whether we think they come only from Jerry or directly from Jahweh, can offend.
They can cause immense pain. Ironically, Falwell himself suffered that pain once, very publicly. Pornographer Larry Flynt published a revoltingly nasty parody of a liquor ad, which had Falwell describing his “first time” with his mother in an outhouse. In 1988, in a seminal decision (Hustler Magazine Inc. Vs. Falwell), the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s decision to award the preacher damages for emotional pain, strengthening even further the protection of free speech about public figures. It was satire, said the justices, and satire has a venerable history, especially in America politics. To limit it would cast a pall over public debate.
Many applaud that decision unhesitatingly. It goes without saying, in our secular world, that pornographic imagery of that sort (I refuse to give it the great, good name of sex) – however maliciously intended – is never harmful in any ‘real’ way, and we are nothing if not realists…..or so we think.
Oddly, the also realistic CIA – whom no one could accuse of swooning sensitivity in these matters – thinks differently. By the 1960s, it had come to regard “no touch” torture – among which sexual humiliation occupies a prominent place – as more damaging than conventional physical torture in the long run. It “leaves deep, searing psychological scars on both victims and — something seldom noted — their interrogators,” writes Alfred McCoy, (The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America’s Road to Abu Ghraib, 2004).
Falwell was not directly injured in the same way, of course. But it seems at least odd, if not downright confused, to argue that the very malicious public humiliation of a religious figure respected by a large segment of the population is not
a real injury to him and his followers, while the strong but not vicious articulation of hoary religious doctrines about pagans and witches, for instance, is a real injury to those groups – one that borders on discrimination so powerful that it needs to be outlawed as hate speech, as some have suggested.
That’s to say, a woman like me – qua believer – is supposed to be devastatingly injured if a Jerry Falwell tells her she can’t get to heaven while reading astrology charts. (His heaven, by the way, is presumably something she either doesn’t believe in, to begin with, or if she does believe in, thinks has different entrance requirements).
Yet, the same woman – qua woman – is supposed to be serenely untouched, if not actually enthused, when a Larry Flynt concocts imagery depicting her violently humiliated in pornographic terms. And this schizophrenia is usually to be found in the same progressives for whom sexuality and gender is supposedly a much more serious business than theological doctrine.
There’s no denying that religion has often had a history of subordinating some people to others nor that we are right to regard religious dogma with suspicion when it imposes itself on non-believers through the mechanism of the state. But there are other dogmas besides religious ones. And, allied to the power of the state, they can become quite as oppressive.
It was not overtly in the name of Christianity, after all, but in the name of secular, universal values that the American government bombed Orthodox Christians and Muslims in their own countries in recent years.
It may be time to recognize that some dogmas, whether religious or secular, might be mutually exclusive and it is our refusal to recognize and respect that exclusivity that has led to the current sorry state of political debate. Yet, respect we must. For, while it is impossible to meld irreconcilable beliefs without changing their natures, what is not impossible is to co-exist peacefully as people, while admitting that our beliefs are irreconcilable.
For that to happen, precisely defining religious belief or artistic expression or political speech is less important than cultivating a will to extend generosity to even our most fervent opponents. Style is more essential here than substance.
Jerry Falwell, after all, did disavow hatred for any group, even while he characterized them in accordance with his religious beliefs. And, to all appearances, those beliefs were sincerely held.
It is double-think of the worst kind, then, to label this express disavowal of hate as “hate,” unless you have proof of some kind of disingenuousness. And if you misused language in that way, what right would you have to feel injured if you heard the same Orwellism issue from the mouth of some right-wing talk show host who characterized your own viewpoint about gender or economic policy as “man-hating” or “class warfare”?
None at all.
Here is a modus vivendi easily available to anyone willing to try some agon-istic respect. Left-wing critics of Falwell could simply look at what the preacher said as a form of art. Perhaps a subsidy from the government would even be forthcoming. And fundamentalists could simply think of sexual liberalism as a distinct dogma and let it enjoy the protected status of a minor church. They might then be able to argue against a religious establishment in the public sphere with better success than they have until now.
Some of Falwell’s critics would do well to take a leaf out of his book and at least profess to love fundamentalists no matter how much they hate fundamentalism.
.
Carla Blank, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle (reprinted in Counterpunch), points out the way in which the media sensationalized the Virginia Tech story.
Her piece is thoughtful, but it does two things that I think are mistaken — it racializes the issue (what happened to Waco, for instance?), in this case I think in an unwarranted way; and it moves away from incidents involving one or two individual shooters to group confrontations. Intentionally, I suppose.
“The mass media coverage of how 32 students and faculty members were fatally shot and at least 15 injured on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., is punctuated by phrases such as, “the worst massacre in U.S. history,” or, as the New York Times put it, the “Worst U.S. Gun Rampage.” CNN called it the “Deadliest Shooting Rampage in U.S. history.”
This was followed by San Francisco Bay Area’s FOX affiliate KTVU Channel 2’s claim that it was “the worst massacre ever in the United States.” TV commentary did not qualify these claims, and at least one Virginia Tech student, an Asian American himself, echoed the phrase when interviewed on national television, pondering his presence at the “worst massacre in U.S. history.”
In reality, an accurate investigation of mass killings of this magnitude would quickly reveal that the Virginia Tech massacre, as horrendous as it was, was not the worst massacre to occur on U.S. soil.”
There were much bloodier massacres before Blacksburg, she writes, including the Gunther Island Massacre of 60-200 Wiyot Indians, committed on Feb. 26, 1860 and encouraged by a local newspaper; the massacre on April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow, near Memphis, Tenn., by Confederate troops under Gen. Nathan Forrest of 227 black and white Union troops”; the Colfax Massacre on April 13, 1873 of 280 blacks by armed members of the White League and the Ku Klux Klan; the Ludlow Massacre in 1913 that killed more than 66 people, including 11 children, and two women (burned alive) and was sparked by a strike against the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation by the mostly foreign born Serb, Greek and Italian coal miners after one of their union organizers was murdered;the 1921 shooting deaths of at least 40-300 people, most of them black, in an area known as the “Negro’s Wall Street,” home to 15,000 people and 191 businesses. Police eventually dropped bombs from private planes to break it up.
Read more here.
My Comment:
I think it’s fair enough to point out the sensationalism involved in the coverage of V-Tech. But, it’s also fair to say that people really do find crimes committed by identifiably psychotic or evil individuals more interesting, psychologically, than political or social confrontations between groups.
The media plays on that bias and lets something like V- Tech distract us from bigger issues, while also handing the state another excuse for imposing more security laws.
But that said, people are really interested in this case.
We’re always fascinated by stories that combine just enough of the visceral and the violent with the coldly analytical. It’s why Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy still fascinates us, even though statistically, the damage such killers do is miniscule next to more endemic social and political problems, like war.
People like to argue that it’s the violence in our lives that drives this fascination. But I wonder about that.
It might be, instead, that we don’t really run into violence much at all — outside our TV screens; our worlds are fairly antiseptic. We don’t deal routinely with anything as intense, sensual and emotionally raw as violence….which is why we can’t take our eyes off when it finds us.
We have a yearning for deep experience, even when it is savage and even if it is vicarious. That, I suppose, is what accounts for the popularity of war as a spectator sport…
Update: Explanation of why he chose the 2nd floor of Norris – the only classrooms were there…
The rest of the building consisted of labs and offices.
It still doesn’t explain why he chose the engineering building rather where he had no classes and presumably didn’t know his way around as well. Maybe the entrances were easier to chain. See this comment:
Erin Sheehan, a survivor of the shootings in the German class, said “[Cho] peeked in twice, earlier in the lesson, like he was looking for someone, somebody, before he started shooting.” It seems likely that his peeking resulted in spotting the person he was looking for (since he then burst in and started shooting). This means, probably, that another part of the story lies with one of the students in this class. Most likely this student is dead, but there’s a chance he/she is among the wounded/unharmed.
And this (not so certain about its origin):
nytimes failed to report that the mother of Cho Seung-Hui took overdose drug and his father cut his wrists, as reported on chinese tv stations last nite
Update: this report expresses initial doubts about how he was shot….and how many died in the dorm (is that because both victims, Ryan and Emily, were not at the time dead or because initially police thought only person had been shot?)
Update: This account describes how police entered through a side door, since they couldn’t shoot through the chains to the maindoor. The side door had a deadbolt, and someone had to rush and find bolt cutters (the five minute delay?).
OK, my question – how come they didn’t know about the auditorium entrance that some employees used to escape? Or about the basement entrance through which the police escorted others? Also, the construction area was left open by the gunman, it seems. The report also suggests that the police had already decided that the first shooting was an intentional distraction by Cho, who was waiting outside the dorm for Emily and didn’t follow her upstairs (?? – what does that mean?), but apparently shot her inside (on the fourth floor?)….this part is not clear to me. (more here: Jesse Paul, 20, of Warrenton said a friend who lives in the dorm told him she heard an argument, then shots, then saw a man run past along a hallway.That means, he DID go up.
Update: What happened to the second gun in this account? Cho is reported to have been holding one gun with both hands, dressed all in black (no tan vest here). The account also indicates that the auditorium was one way that people could escape. It places the gun fire in the German classroom as roughly 20 minutess after the first email at 9: 26 and close to the 911 call at 9:45 (and, of course, before the second email at 9:50). That means, the gunfire in the German classroom could not have started at 9:46 (as the 911 was called in before that) but must have started a bit earlier at 9:40 – confirmed here (the student counts about 15 shots, which is what the Glock would fire).
The gunfire probably started even earlier, as the chances are that the student was just estimating the 20 minute time frame. That means the shooting likely went on from 9:40-9:55 at least which is 15 minutes, not 9.
Update: More on the timeline. This states that firing in the German class began around 9:50, and that the doors were chained AND padlocked, but that a construction area was open. SWAT teams came in by other means than the door..
Update: use of stun grenades, more confirmation of hesitation by police, and the audibility of the gun fire.This report also shows that students in Torgerson Hall nearby could hear the gun shots. Why didnt the police and administration at Burrus (next to Norris) hear them too?
Update: Further report that the police hesitated outside and used tear gas or something similar to clear the area..
Update: This account says that Cho came back to the classroom where he was found, came right to the survivor, and then walked to the front of the room. Two shots were hears by the survivor and then silence, then the sound of the cops bursting in and saying the shooter was down. Very suggestive.
Update: This report suggests the cops came out of nowhere.. which supports the video evidence that they were hiding around the building and did not immediately rush to break in, as they now argue. There is a description of a man with a machine gun and someone being tackled by the police as well in this account.
Update: The Queen’s visit to V Tech – early May. Also the UK Home Minister visited V Tech recently. He used to be a student.
Update: OK – this new report says that police have cleared Thornhill of connection to the murder.
Highly relevant to the issue of V Tech’s responsibility is that the college defeated a recent state attempt to end its gun free zone school policy. V Tech thus has even greater responsibility and needs to show much more proof that it actually did what it took to protect its students.
V Tech had a 55 man (corrected from 28) police team – no lack of officers. Yet there does not appear to have been an armed security guard near the dorm room. And how did the police verify that the campus was gun free – were there periodic checks or metal detectors around campus?
How did Cho leave the campus and return that morning, while carrying weapons – or did he leave the weapons elsewhere?
The Official Time Line:
This NY Times article is very interesting to me on several counts. It reports the official timeline of what happened on 4/16:
Cho gets to Ambler Johnston Hall a bit before 7 am; he kills his first 2 victims with the Glock 9 mm with two rounds; his second bout of killing (30 people) at Norris Hall takes 9 minutes. Police take 3 minutes to get to the building and 5 minutes to get inside.
Student Recollections:
Now, here is an earlier NY Times article from April 22. It’s not exhaustive, but it quotes what student reported happened at Norris Hall. I am not suggesting that what they descibe happen could not have taken in place in 9 minutes, but it is certainly a tight fit. This article also suggests a longer time period and indicates that the shots were more methodical, with pauses in between and that only one gun was used to fire.
Bear in mind that witness accounts are often contradictory and mistaken and an intense situation can, in recollection, seem to have taken much longer than it actually did.
Notice that Cho is described in the student accounts as walking up and down the halls (2, 3 minutes, at least), poking his head into a few classrooms and leaving without doing anything, firing with pauses in between, methodically breaking through doors that have been barricaded (should take a minute each), shooting, leaving and returning at least two classrooms (another minute or so each), standing over shot students and firing individually at each (at least a minute?) in at least two classrooms.. Although the students are trapped inside, they are running away or jumping through windows, so they are moving targets requiring him to aim and move too.
If he fired 170 (or 255, some say) rounds in Norris Hall, as we have learned, we can infer that he fired almost 18 rounds per minute or .3 per second or a round roughly every 3 seconds (I made a mistake earlier and transposed seconds and rounds). I am not a marksman, so I don’t know if that is likely or very difficult. If you also take into account that he was also reloading (as he is described doing) and sometimes not firing, he must have been firing an even higher number of rounds per minute than that most of the time. In any case, would that kind of continuous firing be described as hammering?
I am not sure, and again I don’t doubt the descriptions, I am simply evaluating what is being said.
Here is a report describing the shooter as masked, by the way.
Media Framing:
Now going back to the first article, reporting the official time line . It contains some criticism by other police officers of the 5 minute delay and the significance of this in increasing the number of those killed.
There is also discussion in the report (for the first time in the media) of the ‘active shooter’ paradigm I talked about in my earlier posts on this blog (the post on police response). However, notice that ‘active shooter’ is referenced only in terms of the five minute delay – as though that delay were the dispositive element in the whole tragedy, instead of the previous two hour delay.
What the focus on the time of entry does, of course, is to introduce into the public debate the Immediate Action Rapid Deployment paradigm (which is a new, more aggressive style of tackling such crises that was developed in the nineties and came into prominence after Columbine) but to do that without blaming either the administration or the police for the delay.
IARD is very much a part of the increasing erasure of the boundaries between wartime military actions and domestic policing. Increasingly, domestic crises will be described and tackled in military terms, and conversely, foreign military actions will be described as policing.
Here is how the alleged 5 minute delay is referenced in the article: ”This is a seminal moment for law enforcement as far as I’m concerned because it proves that minutes are critical,” runs a quote in the article.
Now, the 2 hour delay (between the shootings) is subtly being framed too. The V-Tech review panel appointed by Governor Kaine today introduced this meme: that shutting down the campus would not have helped, because the shooter could have gone back into his dorm and shot the 900 or so people who lived there.
“On Thursday, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said that the massacre may not have been averted if the Virginia Tech campus had been locked down after the two shooting deaths at the dorm.
”Well, if the campus had been locked down — because the shooter lived on campus — I mean he could have gone into his dorm with 900 people instead of going into a classroom (and) he could have shot people there,” Kaine said in his monthly listener-question program on WRVA-AM and the Virginia News Network.”
My comment here is – surely this is a strawman? Locking down the campus was not the only option. They could also have made a PA announcement for students to lock themselves into their rooms or not enter campus. A siren could have gone off to alert people, not emails. There is also the matter of why, on a campus where the student population was disarmed by policy, there were no monitoring cameras or armed security guards near the dorms to stop the shooter in the first place. Or how Cho entered a dorm without a security card and why students were entering and leaving Ambler Johnston until 10 am (according to reports) after the shooting at 7:15. That sounds remarkably lax.
To add to this media framing of the timeline, notice this report on 4/27 in the NY Times about students standing behind the V-Tech President and administration on this matter. It contrasts strikingly with earlier reports about students vocally questioning the administration. It appears that this show of student confidence has emerged in reponse to strong alumni response.
“Johnson plans to present the university Board of Visitors on Thursday with an online petition with thousands of signatures of support for Steger and Flinchum.
Steger also received an endorsement from the governor.
”Charlie has been acting as a very, very good president,” Gov. Tim Kaine said this week. ”This kind of event could happen anywhere on any campus, and there has been an innocence taken away from the students. But the positive values, and academic tradition of this university will help the community stay strong, and keep this university attracting students.” (my emphasis).
I have addressed this kind of media framing at length in my writing. First, the media sensationalizes. This is what I call the pulp drama. They report excessively on human interest stories, personal accounts and so on.
Then, when administrative failures are being descibed, the focus shifts to broad questions of law and policy and everything is blamed on lack of proper policy or poor communication. Human error or neglience is minimized or overlooked. That tactic lets upper level officials escape scrutiny or blame.
Political Implications:
That’s exactly the MO that was followed in the media coverage of the torture debate. Questions about what actually happened were quickly framed out. The public debate became a debate about changing or adding to existing laws, and not looking at what top officials did.
In the case of V-Tech, notice how quickly the public debate moved toward advocating more federal laws, more regulation (gun control), and more militarization in the state’s response to any emergency. Of course, this fits in perfectly with the overall direction of the government’s policies.
(See James Bovard’s article on how new legislation has made the imposition of martial law much easier, from The American Conservative Magazine, posted earlier on this blog).
Difficulties with a Potential Lawsuit:
Letting the wider political debate take over also creates a problem for the victims.
Here is an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the possibility of a lawsuit being filed, in which lawyers suggest that the university may have shown gross negligence in this case. That report got little play from the major media, which gave much more coverage to the official response and has spent so much time on intrusive coverage of the human interest angle. And the lack of coverage actually creates a serious problem for the victim. Here’s how:
Victims have a limited time to press claims
Please note that under the doctrine of sovereign immunity which holds good in Virginia, it is quite hard to sue the state. Any plaintiff would have to establish a case of gross negligence – a higher standard than usual – and would have only 6 months to press claims. That means any stalling by the university (or its reported withholding of documents) materially helps it to avert a lawsuit by reducing the amount of time victims have to collect information and prepare a case.
It’s very likely that victims are also unaware of this fact.
From the point of view of the dead and injured, a prolonged official investigation, which the media covers uncritically is not only not helpful, but a potential difficulty as is distracts or complicates independent inquiry.
Uncritical acceptance of the administrations’ explanations end up doing further injustice to the victims of the shooting.
Wiki Time line:
A French class takes cover in Holden Hall / photo by William Chase Damiano
The Original Time Line:
I still have some feelings that there was an accomplice or second gun man, who did the first killing and then helped with the second. If Cho wanted to massacre people, why not at Ambler Johnston? What, if any connection, has been shown between Hilscher’s boyfriend, who also frequented the fire range, and Cho? Is the boyfriend cleared in the first shooting? The last account on this post, from the LA times, has material related to these questions. Here is an Washington Post article from the 18th that shows that the boyfriend, Karl D. Thornhill, was not completely accurate in what he told police. Thornhill told them that his guns were at his parents’ house, but they were found elsewhere. My sense is that Thornhill indeed might have had something to do with the crime. He might, for instance, have helped Cho train at that firing range, without knowing what Cho planned. But we need more information to theorize any further. OK – this new report says that police have cleared Thornhill of connection to the murder.
Two points here interest me:
In an early account of the shootings, a student (see first post on this blog, Columbine in Virginia) noted that police entered Norris Hall at 10.32 AM.
The second point is that the original time line given by Virginia Tech showed that police took only a minute to break in, just after 9:45.
Both accounts seem very different from the latest account.
For comparison, here is the first time line put out by the administration, taken from Salem News archives:
Tragedy at Virginia Tech – [Original] Timeline of Events
7:15 AM
Virginia Tech Police Department (VT PD) receives a 911 call to respond to a dormitory room at West Ambler Johnston Residence Hall.
Within minutes, Virginia Tech Police and Virginia Tech Rescue Squad respond to find two gunshot victims, a male and a female, inside a dormitory room within the Hall. The residence hall was immediately secured by VT PD and students within the hall were notified and asked to remain in their rooms for their safety. VT PD immediately secured the room for evidence collection and began questioning dorm residents and identifying potential witnesses. In the preliminary stages of the investigation, it was believed the deaths were an isolated incident, domestic in nature.
Blacksburg Police Department were also on scene assisting VT PD with establishing a safety perimeter around the residence hall and securing Washington Street.
7:30 AM Investigators were following up on leads concerning a person of interest in relation to the double homicide. Investigators from VT PD and Blacksburg PD were actively following up on various leads.
8:25 AM
Virginia Tech Leadership Team, which includes the university president, executive vice president, and provost, assembled to begin assessing the developing situation at the residence hall and determining a means of notifying students of the homicide.
9:00 AM
Leadership Team was briefed on the situation by VT PD Chief W.R. Flechum [sic – his real name is Flinchum] on the latest developments in the ongoing investigation at the residence hall.
9:26 AM
The Virginia Tech community – all faculty and students – were notified by e-mail of the homicide investigation and scene at West Ambler Johnston Residence Hall, and asked to report any suspicious activity to. The Virginia Tech Emergency/Weather Line recordings were also transmitted and a broadcast telephone message was made to campus phones. A press release was drafted and posted on the Virginia Tech Website.
9:45 AM The VT PD received a 911 call of a shooting at Norris Hall, which contains faculty offices, classrooms and laboratories. VT PD and Blacksburg PD immediately responded to Norris Hall. Notice in leadership command center via our police rep of a shooting in Norris.
Upon arrival to Norris Hall, the officers found the front doors barricaded. Within a minute the officers breached the doors, which had been chained shut from the inside.
Once inside the building, the officers heard gunshots. They followed the succession of gunshots to the second floor. Just as the officers reached the second floor, the gunshots stopped.
The officers discovered the gunman, who had taken his own life. There was never any engagement between the responding officers and the gunman.
9:55 AM
By the same means as prior notice, Virginia Tech notified campus community of the second murder scene. Other notifications followed via other means.
*****************************************************
Salem-News.com will have more on this story as soon as it becomes available.
And here is CNN with an account from students:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At about 7:15 this morning, a 911 call came to the university police department concerning an event in West Ambler Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims.
O’BRIEN: Matt Lewis and Matt Green of the campus EMT service were on duty. Their unit was one of the first on the scene.
MATT LEWIS, VIRGINIA TECH CAMPUS EMT: Well, the first call came out for a patient who had fallen out of a loft. And once they got on scene, they noticed that there were two patients with gunshot wounds.
O’BRIEN (on camera): At point, can you tell us if the victim was alive?
LEWIS: Both patients were at that time.
O’BRIEN (voice-over): Police began sweeping the dormitory. The gunman was still on the loose.
WENDELL FLINCHUM, VIRGINIA TECH POLICE CHIEF: It was an isolated event to that building and the decision was made not to cancel classes at that time.
O’BRIEN: Classes had been disrupted three days earlier after a bomb threat, but this time, no false alarm. The shooting left two students dead: 19-year-old Emily Hilscher, a freshman majoring in animal and poultry sciences, and 22-year-old Ryan Clark. His friends called him Stack. He was a resident adviser and played in the marching band. As an R.A., his job was to look at students and his friends speculate he may have been caught in the crossfire.
SHADIE TANIOUS, FRIEND: As an R.A., and a good person, he apparently was going to break up an argument or something like that and wrong place, wrong time. That’s kind of hard to think about.
O’BRIEN: At first, police believe the shooting was a domestic dispute, a romance gone horribly wrong. Their chief suspect, Emily’s boyfriend, Carl Thornhill who attended college nearby and was said to own guns. Investigators related all this to university administrators. By then, morning classes were underway, and Virginia Tech president Charles Steger saw no need to cancel them.
CHARLES STEGER, PRESIDENT, VIRGINIA TECH: The situation was characterized as being confined to that dormitory room. We thought we had it under control.
O’BRIEN: Thornhill would be held all day then released. So students and faculty weren’t told about the shootings. It was business as usual. Engineering student, Ryan Brody, had to be at work at 9:00 a.m.
RYAN BRODIE, ENGINEERING STUDENT, VIRGINIA TECH: I woke up and checked my e-mails because of the bomb threats that we had Friday and the buildings were being closed. So I checked the website and checked the e-mail and there was nothing in there. So I went to work.
O’BRIEN: Leslie Mel’s morning wasn’t off to a good start.
LESLIE MEL, STUDENT, VIRGINIA TECH: That morning I didn’t hear my alarm go off so I overslept.
O’BRIEN: And Laura Massey who lives off campus was facing an unusually chilly spring day.
LAURA MASSEY, STUDENT, VIRGINIA TECH: My roommate and I drive to campus. It was cold and we didn’t want to walk in the cold, so we decided to take the bus.
CLINT GRIFFON, STUDENT, VIRGINIA TECH: From even inside your room, you could hear it. Almost like in the movies, you know, you can tell something bad is going to happen.
O’BRIEN: Reama Samah (ph) and Erin Peterson (ph) bundled up and walked to class.
(on camera): Friends say that at about ten minutes of 9:00, Erin Peterson (ph) and Reama Samaha (ph) would be making their way out of their dorm room straight through this tunnel and off to French class in Norris Hall. The two are friends. They went to high school together and lived next door to each other in the dorm. And the fastest way to class was straight across the drill field.
(voice-over): 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after the shooting, a campus-wide e-mail was finally sent out notifying students and faculty. The e-mail urged caution, told students to call police with anything suspicious. But Reama (ph) and Erin (ph) French class was already under way. Was it too little too late?
STEGER: I don’t think anyone could have predicted that another event was going to take place.
O’BRIEN: But it did. By 9:46, there’s a hail of gunfire in Norris Hall. Coming up, the killer strikes again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
O’BRIEN (voice-over): 9:45 a.m., more gunshots are heard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many shots do you exactly recall hearing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was at least 30 to 40.
O’BRIEN: This time the shots came from Norris Hall Engineering Building.
(on camera): The very first pictures we see come from right here where people are now diving behind these pillars to stay safe. Up on the second floor you could hear the gunfire. People are scrambling inside to get out any way they can. Those who try to get down the stairs discovered chained doors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right after we got that e-mail, we heard five shots from campus. And we could hear the emergency speaker system.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an emergency, this is an emergency.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So we all got down underneath the desks and moved away from the windows.
O’BRIEN: More images of the shooting captured by two Swedish exchange students who had just arrived the night before.
9:50 a.m., the university sends a second campus-wide e-mail warning of a gunman on the loose. Units from three police departments rush to Norris Hall.
NICK MALCO, WITNESSED SHOOTING: And we hear this loud sound out in the hallway. It was just bang, bang, bang, bang out in the hallway and you don’t really recognize what it is at all. It’s just kind out of place on campus.
ERIN SHEEHAN, WITNESSED SHOOTING: He just stepped in five feet from the door and started firing. He seemed very thorough about it.
MALCO: Not five, 10 seconds later, he tried to come into our room and tried to shove the door open. And at that point, we were like, OK, this is very, very serious, and he shot the door twice. We heard him reload outside and shot the door again and then just continued on.
O’BRIEN: 10:17, a third e-mail, this time ordering a campus lockdown.
BRODIE: They told us to stay inside. The gunman is on the loose on campus. He’s still at large and to stay in any buildings, or wherever you are, stay away from doors and windows, to try to keep everybody safe and to keep him from being attracted to other buildings.
REBECCA MACDANIEL, STUDENT, VIRGINIA TECH: They locked all of us in the bookstore and kept us in the center of the bookstore.
STEGER: Upon arrival to Norris, the officers found the front doors barricaded. Within a minute, the officers breached the doors which had been chained shut from the inside. Once inside the building, the officers heard gunshots. They followed the succession of gunshots to the second floor. Just as officers reached the second floor, the gunshots stopped. The officers discovered the gunman who had taken his own life.
O’BRIEN: Police discovered the gruesome crime scene, students and faculty, dead, in four classrooms and in a stairway. The wounded were carried outside to emergency medical teams.
SARAH WALKER, EMT: There were five very seriously injured people in front of me and they needed to get out and they were my priority.
O’BRIEN: One of the injured was Emily Haas. Two bullets grazed her head.
EMILY HAAS, SHOOTING VICTIM: When I got hit, I felt it, and I didn’t know if I was hurt, if I was shot, and I did try to keep really still and hoping that he would think I was already dead.
O’BRIEN: 12:22 p.m., university officials announce the campus was secured. But still the enormity of the tragedy was still not clear.
From the LA Times, an account of what happened:
April 18, 2007
As community mourns dead, details of gunman’s rampage, background emerge. A dark day: Sequence of events paints tragic picture
BLACKSBURG, Va. — It was still dark at 5:30 a.m. when Karan Grewal bumped into his roommate in the bathroom of their suite in Virginia Tech’s Harper Hall. Grewal had been up all night studying, but he knew better than to grumble to Cho Sueng-Hui.
None of the guys in the suite talked to Cho. They had tried, at first, but Cho never answered; he rarely responded even to a simple, “Hi.” His roommates figured he didn’t speak much English.
On this blustery Monday, Cho was in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, getting ready for the day. Grewal, 21, washed up and went back to his bedroom to get some rest. He fell asleep about 7 a.m.
Twelve hours later, police would come knocking.
The first shots
The 911 call came in at 7:15 a.m.: Gunshots at a college dorm.
Campus police rushed to West Ambler Johnston Hall, a century-old stone building on the east side of the expansive campus. On the fourth floor, officers found two bodies.
|
There was no weapon and no sign of the gunman. There was also little panic. Several of the nearly 900 students in the co-ed dorm said they slept through the gunfire. Some noticed police outside; a few heard ambulance sirens. But many went about their morning as usual, bundling in warm clothes as they headed off to class in the swirling snow.
Heather Haugh, who had been off campus for the weekend, walked up to the dorm shortly before 7:30 a.m. She was planning to meet her roommate, Emily Hilscher, so they could walk to chemistry class together. But police pulled her aside at the door.
Investigators told Haugh, 18, that her roommate had been shot. They began asking about Hilscher’s romances. Haugh told them what she knew: Her roommate had spent the weekend on another college campus with her boyfriend, Karl Thornhill.
The police asked about guns; Haugh told them Thornhill recently had taken both girls to a shooting range for fun. She told police she believed he kept the weapons at his home in Blacksburg.
Though Haugh described her roommate as having “a perfect relationship with her boyfriend,” investigators suspected the shooting was prompted by a lovers’ quarrel. They relayed their theory to university administrators at an 8:25 a.m. meeting. By then, classes were under way, and President Charles W. Steger saw no need to cancel them. “We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur,” he said.
Investigators, meanwhile, had pulled Thornhill over as he was driving off campus. He raised their suspicion at once by contradicting Haugh’s account. His guns were not at his home, he said; he had taken them to his parents’ house in Boston, Va., about 370 miles away. He also denied that he and Hilscher had spent the weekend at Longwood University in Farmville, about 140 miles from Blacksburg.
Campus Police Det. Stephanie Henley requested a search warrant for a residence believed to be linked to Thornhill. She was looking, she wrote, for “firearms, ammunition, bloody clothing … ”
Authorities are as yet unwilling to clear Thornhill; he “remains a person of interest,” according to the state police superintendent, Col. Steven Flaherty.
But Flaherty also said it’s “reasonable to assume” that Cho committed the murders at Ambler Johnston Hall. Why he might have targeted that dorm, that room, is murky. There’s no evidence that he knew Hilscher. He was a 23-year-old English major, a taciturn loner; she was an upbeat 19-year-old studying animal sciences, so close to her family, she called her mom every day.
If Cho had planned a massacre, he had ample opportunity to shoot other victims; the dorm was filled with sleeping students. But only one other student, 22-year-old senior Ryan Clark, was shot in the dorm, known as AJ. Then the gunman fled.
Nearly 21/2 hours later, Cho turned up in Norris Hall, a science and engineering building a half-mile from AJ. ….
Cho bought a Glock 9 mm pistol here for $535, 30 rounds (other reports say 50?) of ammunition included…………
As required by law, he presented identification: A Virginia driver’s license, checks that matched the address on the license and a federal immigration card to prove he’s a legal U.S. resident. He passed a background check and left the store with his gun.
*********
At the end of the semester, Giovanni gave him an A- not for talent or effort, but because she feared angering him.
“I think he liked the idea that he was a scary guy,” Giovanni said…………..
…. Ian MacFarlane, now an AOL employee, wrote in a blog posted on an AOL Web site. He said he and other students “were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter.”
His five roommates found him hard to read. He worked out in the gym. He downloaded music. Other than that, they could identify few of his habits, except that he sometimes just sat in his room, staring vacantly ahead.
Norris Hall rampage
The shootings inside Norris Hall unfolded in fragments of sounds.
The clank of an empty ammunition clip falling to the floor. A scream. A siren. The scrape of a desk being pushed to barricade a classroom door.
And the shots, an unrelenting staccato. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
It started about 9:40 a.m., about 15 minutes after campus administrators sent a brief e-mail to all students and staff titled: “Shooting on campus.” The e-mail made note of “a shooting incident” in the AJ dorm and urged everyone “to be cautious.” But it raised no specific alarm.
The students in Herr Bishop’s German class, in Room 207, didn’t feel particularly concerned when a young man poked his head into their classroom. He took a look and left.
Moments later, he was back.
He shot the professor, Christopher James Bishop, in the head. Students screamed and hid under desks; Cho kept shooting. He said nothing. (LR: early account says he said “Hello, how are you?”) He did not appear to be looking for anyone in particular. He just fired and fired again.
***************
At 9:45 a.m., police responded to a 911 call from Norris Hall. Officers found the front doors blockaded. A second e-mail went out to students and staff: “A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows.”
Police began blaring warnings over loudspeakers: (Should have been done at 7:15) This is an emergency. Take shelter. Resident advisers went door to door in the dorms, pounding on walls, yelling at students to stay in their rooms — or in some cases, to come down to a common area where they could wait out the lockdown together.
The scene outside Norris was chaotic. Within moments of arriving, heavily armed officers had broken through the chained doors (LR – New reports say they took 5 minutes) and stormed up the stairs, following the sound of gunshots. Law-enforcement personnel lined the street outside, carrying rifles and assault weapons.
They screamed at any student who wandered close: “Get back! Get back!”
But from outside, the terror was not obvious. Chris Hinkel, 18, heard the bang-bang-bang and assumed the noise had something to do with the construction work going on nearby. “Nobody,” he said, “was as worried as they should’ve been.”
Students, escorted by officers, began fleeing Norris Hall, hands in the air. An ambulance was pulled up to the sidewalk and a still body, strapped to a gurney, was loaded.
Finally secure
The scale of the tragedy would not emerge for several hours.
At 10:16 a.m., students and staff got a third e-mail telling them that classes had been canceled. “Those on campus are asked to remain where they are, lock their doors and stay away from windows.”
At 10:52, a fourth e-mail described “multiple shooting with victims in Norris Hall.” Again, everyone was asked to stay inside.
It was not until shortly after 1 p.m. that Campus Police Chief Wendell R. Flinchum made this announcement: “We believe campus is secure.” Slowly, students came out of their rooms.
Some went to Norris Hall. The sidewalk outside was stained with blood. Others headed to counseling sessions held inside the AJ dorm. ROTC cadets gathered to pray at the War Memorial Chapel, on the vast green field at the heart of campus.
At 7 p.m., law-enforcement officers rapped on the door of Harper Hall 2121. (LR: Seems very late to get to Cho)
They went into Cho’s bedroom and began packing his belongings into brown bags.
According to the search warrant, police were seeking, “tools, documents, computer hardware … weapons, ammunition, explosives … instructional manuals for criminal acts of mass destruction and acts of terror.”
The police spent five hours examining Cho’s room and interviewing roommates. When they left at midnight, they told Grewal that Cho was suspected in the mass shooting. He had been found dead in Norris Hall, apparently of a self-inflicted wound, the guns at his side, a receipt for one still in his backpack.
I am trying to keep track of early reporting.
Update: This article from April 17th night (the day after)
talks about the NY Times and Washington Post reporting on two notes – one next to the body and one in the dorm, but also says that the police so far have found no suicide note – after they just went through the dorm. Now, of course, there is a suicide note, only it’s not entirely sure where it was found. That’s besides the bomb threat note next to Cho. Quite the author. Video clips, photos, web posting, manifestos, 1 or more bomb threat notes, 8-page confessional, a suicide note…
Here is the most significant divergence I can find. Chen is the Chinese student whose interview seems to have been the source of the early report that the gunman had been shot in the back of the head which had blown apart his face and also of the report that the first killing had been sparked by jealousy. Here there is also Steger’s comment that two gunmen had been involved and that the two incidents were unrelated.
Here is a blog post that suggests evidence for a second shooter. The evidence that is cited could be interpreted otherwise. Some of the discrepancies are likely due to confusion. The only parts that are strong are the alleged statement of the last survivor in the room that the shooter ran away, the nature of the wounds Cho received (not confirmed), differences observed between the video Cho and the photo we have, the tightness of the schedule of events that day, and a statement that Cho was seen with 3 Americans in the days preceding (no confirming report). Also the killer was not descibed having a backpack. whereas Cho’s was found in the hall. This is easily explained. Cho simply put his book bag down before shooting. This Richmond Times article also contradicts the theory as it states that Cho was shot in the temple. Here is another report. This also describes a single shot to the head that left the face unrecognizable. But it says nothing about Cho bringing a book bag, whereas this one says he had a ruck sack with knives and the ammo as well as chains I suppose. Another report also contends that he did not have books with him. I don’t know if this was just the reporter’s inference or whether it was based on an eyewitness account.
In any case, Cho did not seem to have classes in Norris. The Richmond Times account also describes Cho having had two speeding tickets (not one, as later reports have stated) and photographing the women’s basketball team (he was reportedly an avid basketball player). It also describes his routine in the previous days — that he had been getting up earlier and earlier. I am not sure if it is Grewal who pulled the all-nighter that Sunday or Cho. Cho is descibed as taking his usual medication in the bathroom, though what medication is not specified. He is also described elsewhere as applying acne medicine. We learn from the report that according to the time stamp on the video, parts of it were shot (probably in his room) at around 7: 45 just after the shooting. Yet, his roommates do no recall him remembering to Harper. The packet was received at the post office just after 9 and he entered Norris at 9:15 it seems.
At this point, it just seems like the usual confusion when a story breaks, but I am keeping note of the changes.
1. Cho was first reported as being Chinese and here is a report that he was 6 ft and in a boy scout outfit – tan vest and black jacket. No book bag carried. This report also says 6 ft. Cho was actually 5 ft. 8″ – much smaller. That could be confusion of course.Here’s an article in the Chicago Sun Times with hat information. This is reportedly the google cache of the original story which is now off the web. It appears to have caused a flurry in the Chinese media and some speculation on how or why the mistake was made. There is also a theory that I saw posted on a Korean blog, which includes more details of the crime scene, and speculates that Cho was killed himself and had an accomplice. It says he was killed with 1 shot to the back of the head and 2 to the chest (haven’t seen this elsewhere), that the real killer was 6 ft and was seen running away (that is supported by other early reports that describe 2 shooters either running away or being apprehended. It also compares Columbine where 3 guns, 2 shooters and 900 bullets were involved in the death of 13 people and notes Cho’s remarkable performance as incompatible with what we know of his firearm skill.
2. He was first reported as having had a relationship with Emily Hilscher, later denied.
3. There was also the early report about his obsession with Counterstrike, subsequently denied by a suite mate.
4. A report on the package – clarifies what the number 43 referred to – the photos. 28 (or 29) seems to be the number of the video clips.
It contained an 1,800-word diatribe and 43 photos, 11 of them showing Cho aiming handguns at the camera. He also sent 28 video clips.
5. Cho described in later reports as laughing after each shot…but early witness reports that he was impassive.
6. The chains with which he locked three entrances to Norris Hall (the number was from later reports) are not from Home Depot has reported.
7. I haven’t seen any correction of the reporting of this as the worst school shooting, which it is not.
8. This is a report of the second time CIA recruiters visited the campus in 2005, Nov 16. Students were planning a teach in to protest the visit because of the news of the CIA torture policies just then published in the Washington Post (including the outsourcing of torture). No evidence linking Cho to the visit or the teach in though. Cho’s behavior however had been sullen and/or mean prior to the recruitment visit, from the testimony of teachers that fall.
Just in case, it’s pulled, here it is:
CIA recruiting at Virginia Tech
The Truth Will Set You Free
Tuesday April 17, 2007
“The single shooter was unusally effective at killing, almost as if he had been trained to do so.” –mparent7777
From November 2005 . . .
For the second time this year, the Central Intelligence Agency will be coming to Virginia Tech to recruit students.
And for the second time this year, they will be met with protests from students who view the CIA as an immoral organization that engages in torture and murder.
Nicholas Kiersey organized a protest last spring when the CIA came to campus. He released the following statement Monday about the CIA’s trip to Torgeson 3100 Thursday at 7 p.m.:
“Blacksburg, VA November 13, 2005 – A coalition of concerned graduate students and campus organizations at Virginia Tech are this Thursday staging a ‘teach in’ to protest CIA recruitment on campus. Planned events also include the protest of a ‘career information’ session to be held by the CIA later that evening.
On November 2nd, 2005 the Washington Post published an article entitled “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons”. The article reported that the CIA has set up a covert network of secret prisons and interrogation centers, known as “black sites”, in several countries around the world, including several democracies in Eastern Europe and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Prisoners at these facilities are held indefinitely and often in isolation, without due process of the law. Moreover, CIA interrogators working at these sites are permitted to use the CIA’s approved “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. Among the tactics approved for use are “waterboarding”, intended to induce in prisoners the idea that they are drowning.
While intelligence officials defend the unrestricted operation of these sites as necessary for the successful defense of the country, it should be noted that both the sites and the suspected practices carried out at them would be illegal if operated within the USA, which is a signatory to the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Importantly, the same is true for the democratic host states in Eastern Europe where some of these sites are located.
The ‘Teach In’ will take place on Thursday, Nov. 17, 5-6.30pm, in Torgerson 3100. The event will feature talks by Virginia Tech instructors and the presentation of a draft letter to President Steger’s office, signed by a number of concerned Virginia Tech faculty and students.
The letter will request that Virginia Tech place a moratorium on all CIA activities on Virginia Tech’s campus until such time as a thorough and independent investigation certifies that the organization has been thoroughly reformed and no longer engages in practices that contravene international law and basic standards of human rights.
The CIA’s scheduled ‘career information’ session will take place at 7pm in the same location.
Sponsoring campus organizations include: The International Club and Amnesty International at Virginia Tech.”
Lucinda Roy, a co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech, taught Cho in a poetry class in fall of 2005 and later worked with him one-on-one after she became concerned about his behavior and themes in his writings.
Roy spoke outside her home Tuesday afternoon, saying that there was nothing explicit in Cho’s writings, but that threats were there under the surface.
Roy told ABC News that Cho seemed “extraordinarily lonely–the loneliest person I have ever met in my life.” She said he wore sunglasses indoors, with a cap pulled low over his eyes. He whispered, took 20 seconds to answer questions, and took cellphone pictures of her in class. Roy said she was concerned for her safety when she met with him.”
Note that Cho accordint to this never spoke above whispers..many of his suite mates had never heard him speak. He is said to have had a form of autism or speech impediment. But yet, he spoke clearly on the videotape and the psychologist made no mention on his evaluation of a speech problem.
Here are the plays that Cho wrote in ?? that were posted
One play attributed to him, called “Richard McBeef,” describes a 13-year-old boy who accuses his stepfather of pedophilia, and ends with the boy’s death.
In another, called “Mr. Brownstone,” three high-school students face an abusive teacher.
“I wanna kill him,” says one character.
“I wanna watch him bleed like the way he made us kids bleed,” says another.
The two plays were posted on AOL after a staffer named Ian MacFarlane, a December 2006 graduate of Virginia Tech, brought them to his editors’ attention.
MacFarlane said he was in a class with Cho in which students were required to post their plays online for peer review and comment.” ( so that places the plays also in the fall of 2005)
My Comment: If something caused this much rage (assuming this is not just imagination or fantasy at work)
why were Cho’s earlier creative efforts (he must have taken creative writing in high school or something earlier in college) not filled with stuff like this? Could the triggering event have occurred in 2005?
Under Virginia law, state residents can only buy one handgun in any 30-day period, suggesting Cho bought his second weapon after April 13 or sometime over the weekend.
“He clearly spent some time figuring out how he was going to take care of business once classes began on Monday morning,” said Garrett.
The date of the first gun purchase will likely serve as the time of “some triggering mechanism that was very important” to Cho said Garrett, an expert on profiling murderers. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/massacre_gun_57.html
http://blogs.roanoke.com/campuswatch/archives/cia_recruiting.html
Also, information that Cho’s uncle was a contractor to the state department.
More contradictions in the archives of the Salem news
http://salem-news.com/articles/april162007/shooting_update_41607.php
Here’s the original explanation:
When he was asked why students weren’t alerted to the imminent danger from a man with a gun, he said, “They had reason to believe the shooter had left the campus.”
Now, they say, the campus was too big, they were afraid people would run into the shooter and what if he had gone into his dorm room anyway.
Sadly, many of the students failed to see the email and as a consequence, walked into the gunman’s line of fire. Many are saying that the school should have closed immediately, and that they were far from prepared for this kind of a situation. That, in spite of a shooting on the campus on the first day of the school year and the recent bomb threats.
These are the emails that were sent to student from the University:
E-MAIL 1
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 9:26 AM
To: Multiple recipients
Subject: Shooting on campus.
A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning.
Police are on the scene and are investigating.
The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case. Contact Virginia Tech Police at XXX – XXXX
Stay attuned to the www.vt.edu. We will post as soon as we have more information.
E-MAIL 2
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 9:50 AM
To: Multiple recipients
Subject: PLease stay put
A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows
Subject: PLease stay put
A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows
E-MAIL 3
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 10:17 AM
To: Multiple recipients
Subject: All Classes Canceled; Stay where you are
Virginia Tech has canceled all classes. Those on campus are asked to remain where there are, lock their doors and stay away from windows. Persons off campus are asked not to come to campus.
E-MAIL 4
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 10:53 AM
To: Multiple recipients
Subject: Second Shooting Reported; Police have one gunman in custody
In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.
Police and EMS are on the scene.
Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.
All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.
All entrances to campus are closed.
They first thought it was Morva:
Media outlets are reporting the name of the accused gunman as William Morva. Again, there are conflicting reports at this time, but most indicate that the gunman is dead.
Chris Wallace on FOX this morning ( 9 AM) on how universities are ham strung with regard to psychiatric illness and privacy laws.
Lt Gov. Bill Bolling is talking about Va. law and how it conflicts with federal law on guns. Bolling has previously supported concealed weapons on campus and Wallace asks if that would have prevented the V. Tech shooting.
Bolling replies that he is unwilling – probably wisely – to take on the gun debate at this point.
The George Washington University (in Washington, DC) president is on. Notes that GW security police is unarmed (??).
Arlen Specter (Republican Senator from Pennsylvania) suggests that state law should be brought into conformity with federal law and that a national repository of information should exist. He admits there was a definite failure of communication between state and federal agents. He proposed national legislation to this end. (Needs further clarification)
Charles Schumer (Democrat Senator from New York) is on. He has legislation in the works to give money to states to update their registry to fit federal requirements. NRA advocates have teamed up with Democrats on this previously.
Chris Wallace asks why not push for a renewal of the assault weapons ban which expired. Asks if Schumer hasn’t done so because it is a political loser.
Again, here is the review panel appointed to study what happened at V Tech:
Independent review panel (appointed by Governor Timothy Kaine of Virginia)
1.Headed by Retired Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Gerald Massengill.Massengill, 64, led the state’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington area, says this Washington Post story.
2. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge
3. Gordon Davies, Director for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia for 20 years.
4. Diane Strickland, who served as a judge of the 23rd Judicial Circuit Court in Roanoke County, Roanoke and Salem between 1989 and 2003 and a victim assistance expert from Fairfax county5. Carroll Ann Ellis, director of the Fairfax County Police Department’s Victim Services Division on the review panel.
6. FBI retiree Roger L. Depue, former administrator of the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.
7. Child and adolescent psychiatrist Aradhana A. “Bela” Sood.
8. Dr. Marcus L. Martin of the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/breaking/wb/113294
On Friday, Richard Bonnie, chairman of the Virginia Supreme Court’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, stated that a special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him.
Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the FBI said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the NICS system, the statement said.
But Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify the state police about a mental health disqualification only addresses the state criteria, which lists two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police – someone who was “involuntarily committed” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”
My Comment:
So, the problem was that Cho went “voluntarily” and wasn’t ruled incapacitated.
But didn’t anyone realize the potential danger here. OK. the two VTech students didn’t press stalking charges, but what happened to the arson charge? How does that not pose a threat to anyone else? Didn’t any of the teachers, like Nikki Giovanni, who found him so intimidating in class, want to find out where he was with his treatment?
Here’s a comment from one of the students (I think he was in Edward Falco’s class):
“Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn’t pressure him to give closing comments.
After hearing about the mass shootings, I sent one of my friends a Facebook message asking him if he knew anything about Seung Cho and if he could have been involved. He replied: “dude that’s EXACTLY what I was thinking! No, I haven’t heard anything, but seriously, that was the first thing I thought when I heard he was Asian.”
While I “knew” Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn’t think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn’t (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say “Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!” If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday’s tragedy more than anything.”
My Comment:
Cho went voluntarily to police, and they referred him to a mental health agency off campus, Flinchum said. A counselor recommended involuntary commitment, and a judge signed an order saying he “presents an imminent danger to self or others” and sent him to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
Sounds like bureaucratic confusion and disconnect.
More in this Time article about the responsibility of the University and possible questions with Virginia state law:
“But Virginia Tech is a state institution, and Virginia is a state where the doctrine of sovereign immunity remains quite robust. That doctrine, a relic of English common law, essentially says the state can do no wrong because the state creates the law and thus cannot be subject to it. Many states have relaxed sovereign immunity and made it possible for victims of, say, botched operations to sue state hospitals. But Krauss of George Mason University says the Virginia Tech victims’ families would probably have to seek an exception to sovereign immunity from the Supreme Court of Virginia in order to sue the school. There’s a simpler way: Steger, the university president, should stop withholding documents on how the university mishandled Cho and take responsibility for his school’s lax approach. And then he should resign.”
The media ought to be held to some standards for the way they cover such incidents. There’s a public interest in reporting information, but it’s got to be done analytically, seriously.
Unending sensationalism that pointlessly multiplies electronic imagery is good for ratings, it has a fall-out:
1. It endangers the lives of the survivors and violates their privacy. That’s why I am not posting video footage of people at the scene, unless it’s specifically about the police response.
I that notice photos of university officials have been posted on the net. I’ve avoided that because photos and unnecessary personal information posted publicly could pose a threat to their safety or their family’s. I’ve posted their names – that’s more than enough for public information.
2. It disregards the privacy of the dead and the privacy and feelings of the injured,
3. It unfairly makes a kind of folk anti-hero of the perpetrator, thus further victimizing the dead and injured, which is why I am not posting the Cho video or photographs. Included in this are sensational statements such as those made by Geraldo Rivero, defending the right to publish the Cho video, as necessary to inform the public of his exceptional evil. This is simply disingenuous. The heinousness of the crime is evident, as is Cho’s mental condition. Additional lurid imagery only sensationalizes the story. And knowing, as we do, the violent effect of such media overkill, it’s also reprehensible.
Some experts have spoken up on this, too late, unfortunately.
4. It incites other deranged or attention-seeking individuals to imitate the crime.
5. It obscures or distracts from the larger questions of law and power involved.
6. It blurs the line between entertainment and reality in a very dangerous way. News reporting becomes primarily a commodity rather than a service with professional standards.
7. And most importantly, by presenting often traumatic images of crisis, state power and citizen helplessness, it provokes the terrorized siege mentality that will call for greater state power (protection, it will be termed) AND the nervous exhaustion, bewilderment and compliance that surrenders critical thinking and self-reliance.
The ultimate result is to strengthen the warfare-welfare state.
Traumatic imagery is used by states to manipulate their own and foreign populations during war time or in the run-up to war. That is the rationale behind Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, National Defense University Press, October 1996.
Here is something I wrote in my book on Abu Ghraib about the use of such imagery in the service of the warfare state:
“Instead, it is at the public’s imagination that the new war is directed, with its black psychological operations that erase the boundary between civilian and military, war and peace, state and non-state.” (p. 189, The Tower of BabeAfter the Columbine shootings 8 years ago, there were 450 copycat threats, plots or shootings, according to Loren Coleman, a suicide prevention and school violence consultant, who is also the author of the Copy Cat Effect, a book about the effect of mass media coverage and the replication of violence.
Here is a rough summary of the outbreak of copy cat threats since Tuesday (posting and correcting as I go along):
Washington State University, Vancouver (graffiti threatening V Tech type violence, 4/17)
St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas (nonspecific threat, location not specified, 4/17)
University of Oklahoma, Norman (scare over man later identified, 4/17).
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (telephone bomb threat, no mention of V. Tech, 4/17)
University of California at Hastings, College of Law, San Francisco ( online shooting threat 4/18).
Canyon Middle School, Alameida County (bomb threat on hotline by 13 yr old on 4/18).
Provo High School, Utah (at least one bomb threat, 4/20)
Cranbrook High School, Bloomfield, Michigan (scare over unidentified man)
Central High School in Rapid City, South Dakota (reports of a man with a gun in a parking lot)
North Dakota State University, Fresno, North Dakota (duffel bag found outside bus shelter)
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota (bomb threat in Smith, specific times and locations, mentions VTech, 4/19)
Bogalusa Middle and High School, Louisiana (man threatening mass killing in a note mentioning V Tech, 4/17)
Schools in Greenbay, Washington.
University of Maine, Bangor, Maine (telephone bomb threat 4/18)
Riverton High School, Riverton, Kansas (5 students held in shooting threat posted on MySpace in commemoration of Columbine, 4/19)
Kalamazoo Community College, Kalamazoo, Michigan
(online bomb threats, 4/20)
Commerce City, Colorado
San Diego State University
Reno, Nevada
Estrella Mountain Community College, Arizona
(shooting threat, 4/17)
University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado (Student arrest for verbal remark suggesting sypamthy for V Tech killings 4/17)
University of Missouri, Missouri (two shot and hospitalized, 4/19)
Great Falls High School, Great Falls, Montana (phone bomb threats and note threatening shooting worse than VTech, 4/17)
(Hostage situation, perpetrator and hostage killed, 4/21)
l).
I am not making this stuff up. I just heard him on his April 20 show.
Yesterday, he blamed it on critics of Walmart.
Here’s the link to Limbaugh’s website http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_041907/content/01125113.guest.html
“He’s been in the United States for 14 years. Who is it that made this guy hate the rich? Why, there’s only one answer to this! The Democrat Party, the American left and their willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media, routinely portray the rich as a bunch of evil, rotten SOBs who are out to steal everybody else’s money. Wal-Mart’s an example. Big Oil is another. This guy is genuinely angry. “
Seriously. This guy is a misunderstood humorist. I wish all you lefties out there would stop criticizing him. Nothing you guys say is ever half as funny as this…………………..