Virginia Tech was in the news today. Cho´s mental health records turned up at the home of the director of Virginia Tech´s student clinic – where they´d been for two years while people were searching for them. It´s taken a lawsuit to find them.

It´s interesting that the Kaine commission never turned them up. It didn´t even investigate the director.

As readers of this blog know, I was the first person to suspect V Tech of gross negligence and a cover-up of what happened. I also noted that  it was highly likely that Cho was being given drugs and that there was more to his mental history, which the university was probably concealing.

(You can check out my articles on this site, as well as my blog posts, through the search tab).

It´s satisfying to be vindicated after I got all that nasty mail for “attacking” ‘nice’ university administrators.

“Nice” isn´t good.  Good takes a whole lot more effort .

AP reports:

“Why would he (Miller) take any student mental health records to his home at any time, and why that student?” Robert T. Hall said.

“It certainly is a question of whether there is more to the Seung-Hui Cho mental health history than we’ve been told,” Hall said.

Kaine said he was dismayed that it took two years to find the records.

“That is part of the investigation that I am very interested in and, of course, I’m very concerned about that,” Kaine said.

The discovery calls into question the thoroughness of the ongoing criminal probe and the findings of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, a commission Kaine appointed to review the catastrophe, one victim’s relative said.

“Deception comes to my mind in my first response,” said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was injured.

“To say it doesn’t make sense is an injustice,” she said. “It gives me the impression: ‘What else are they hiding?'”

While a large part of the shooting investigation focused on how university officials and law enforcement responded following the first reports of two deaths in a dormitory, family members of victims have also inquired how the troubled Cho slipped through the cracks at university counseling.

Miller was not listed among the more than 200 people interviewed by the panel. The leader of the investigation, former Virginia State Police Superintendent Gerald Massengill, said Wednesday that investigators interviewed Miller’s successor at Cook Counseling Center, Dr. Christopher Flynn, but not Miller….”

Funny, huh?

Check out Psych Time Line, one of scores of posts on V-Tech. You can get some of the posts by googling V-Tech and Lila Rajiva directly.

The rest can be viewed via the search function. You can also just search the archives for April 2007 and the months thereafter.

I contacted a couple of lawyers who were interested in the case and offered them the information on my blog. One of the victims´relatives was also in contact with me, because she felt strongly that what was happening was a cover-up. I thought so too, but I was involved with financial writing at the time and I couldn´t follow up. Besides, I was sure the students´lawsuits would turn up new evidence.
Which is what happened.

There was also another reason I left the story alone…but it´s not something I want to post on publicly.

Another of those cold windy days when you promise yourself you´ll go out… and then the thought of what it will take to battle the  buses, the  mad motorists, and the wind overcomes you.

I contented myself with sitting on the couch, wrapped up, sipping mate and tapping out a piece on the recent ethics charges levied against Sarah Palin. I didn´t read the charges in any detail. I don´t care to. At this point, it´s clear that every media hack in the country enjoys sticking a knife into her. It´s not pretty.  Since when did small-town flute-playing moms provoke such visceral dislike? I did´t care for Ms. Palin as a candidate for Veep myself. But she´s no worse than many others. And if you think she had no experience,  then what about….oh well, never mind.

Sotomayor is another topic not worth bothering about. The whole debate over how to interpret the constitution is so stale I wonder it´s not on sale at a cheap supermarket. Under half-baked products.

Sotomayor is not going to rend the fabric of the nation. That´s already been done. She´ll probably go along in that muddled way that passes for being a ‘thoughtful´justice.

And that´s as it should be.

I´m all for a period of doing what´s been done. And if the only conservation going on is the conservation of liberal achievements, then so be it. Continuity is still a good thing. The settled law of the land is still the settled law of the land.  We´ve suffered from enough revolution- through- the- courts for me to believe that conservatives should adopt the same judicial activisim in turn.

Libertarians sometimes like to talk about radical capitalism. But to me, capitalism isn´t radical in its essence. It´s conservative. What it conserves is time. The frequent observation that capitalism ¨speeds” up time (you´ll find it in much modern political theory) is true enough at one level. But at another level, capitalism is backward-looking, not just forward looking. It concretizes our past actions, preserves them.

There are many libertarians who like to call  themselves radicals, but I´m not one of them. I like to call myself a tory-bohemian. A traditionalist as to forms. An agnostic and skeptic as to substance.

This makes me fond of style…convention.  Style is not everything, but it´s more than the left realizes. Style is our conversation with the past.

The past is important to me. Very important. And the kind of capitalism that uproots the past and overturns everything in its path is only one face of capitalism — it´s corporatism, gigantism – the out growth of state intervention.

I like to think that  without massive state intervention, capitalism would emerge as something entirely different.

To return to Sotomayor. The court´s been political for decades. Pretending this is something new and not to be tolerated is simply silly. Let the courts go where they wish.

Pat Buchanan gained nothing by opposing Sotomayor for being an activist. I saw him debate Rachel Maddow on her show,  and Maddow cleverly limited her argument to repeating that 108 out of 110 Supreme Court justices had been white males. She knew that one fact was enough.

And she´s right. Demographics have changed, and the court is expected to reflect demographics. Buchanan argued that justices are supposed to be picked for their mastery of legal analysis.  But anyone who´s read case law knows how convoluted the arguments are.  They´re mostly political…and sophistical. And often bogus.

So, arguing for some kind of mastery of bogus ¨legal science¨ isn´t nearly as effective as arguing for what the population wants. And Rachel Maddow is a smart cookie who knows how to argue effectively. It´s as simple as that.

Conservatives would do better to focus on society and forget the courts.

In the news:

“To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.

The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.

Faces glowed more than the rest of the body. This might be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight – the pigment behind skin color, melanin, has fluorescent components that could enhance the body’s miniscule light production.

Since this faint light is linked with the body’s metabolism, this finding suggests cameras that can spot the weak emissions could help spot medical conditions, said researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan….”

More here.

My Comment:

And when yogis, religious teachers, alternative practitioners, spiritualists and psychics for centuries described and even drew auras, they were laughed at and called charlatans and liars out to make a buck.

Many people have trained themselves to pick up on these sorts of emanations. I had a friend, a medical intuitive, who accurately diagnosed diseases from them.

Anyone with a little intuition or even a connection to another human being can pick up thoughts, emotions, images, and ideas from them. I’ve had close friends whose minds I could literally read. It wasn’t a faculty within my control. But I was aware of it. There is nothing “supernatural” about this, as aggressive materialists like to argue. It’s simply the use of faculties that most people ignore, scorn, or suppress. Animals use them. “Primitive” people (who are often far more advanced than the “civilized” on many counts) use them. Artists use them. Great scientists rely on them.

It’s only the chattering class that shapes popular culture with its own naive ideas of ‘science’ that seems oblivious to the existence of these dimensions of our existence.

Time for their brainwashing to end.

In the news:

“BEIJING – Several Chinese Internet sites and parts of popular Web portals went offline Tuesday amid tightening controls that have already left mainland Web users without access to Facebook, Twitter and other well-known social networking sites.

China stepped up its crackdown on social networking sites in March over online allegations surrounding the treatment of Tibetans, and the blockages continued through the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the recent ethnic riots in Xinjiang.

The harsh measures are also thought to be part of efforts to ensure social stability ahead of the 60th anniversary of communist rule on Oct. 1, when Beijing will mark 60 years of communist rule….”

In the news, the arrest of a well-known professor of African-American studies, Henry Louis Gates, who broke into his own house after a long trip abroad:

“Gates said he turned over his driver’s license and Harvard ID — both with his photos — and repeatedly asked for the name and badge number of the officer, who refused. He said he then followed the officer as he left his house onto his front porch, where he was handcuffed in front of other officers, Gates said in a statement released by his attorney, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, on a Web site Gates oversees, TheRoot.com

He was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he “exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior.” He was released later that day on his own recognizance. An arraignment was scheduled for Aug. 26.

Gates, 58, also refused to speak publicly Monday, referring calls to Ogletree.

“He was shocked to find himself being questioned and shocked that the conversation continued after he showed his identification,” Ogletree said.”

My Comment:

The initial questioning seems alright to me. It was natural for a bystander to wonder about two men (no matter of what race) trying to break into a house. I’d hope any neighbor of mine would do the same, if I were away.

But what happened after that seems odd. After Gates produced his ID, why was he treated so discourteously? The story about “disorderly” conduct also seems shady. It would be natural for someone to be upset in those circumstances. And if Gates was obliged to show ID in his own house, why did the officers decline to show theirs? Why arrest him?

All this sounds like typical bullying to me.

PS:

I changed the title of this post – since the first title seemed to imply a racial motive and the more I look at this, the more it seems like the usual police officiousness.

In the news:

“The nuclear deal would give American companies exclusive rights to sell nuclear power plants at specified locations in India — an opportunity that could be worth $10 billion for U.S. sellers. A second deal, which officials said they hoped would also be ready for signing Monday, is known as an end-use monitoring agreement that would give the U.S. the right to ensure that U.S. arms sold to India are used for their intended purpose and that the technology is not resold or otherwise provided to third countries.”

My Comment:

I haven’t been following the Indian press, so I hesitate to write about this, but this is all bad news to my ears. Any deal with the US – with its premise of increased cooperation between the two countries in the so-called War on Terror – is a mixed bag at best. And when the deal comes with carrots (more nukes from the US) and sticks (caps on carbon emissions as part of the new climate control agenda, pushed by those environmental philanthropists, Goldman Sachs) that are equally repulsive and globalist in intent, and is accompanied by a nicely-timed and comprehensive confession (?) from the lone Mumbai gunman to survive the attacks on Jewish and Indian targets in Mumbai last year – I have to wonder. How neat.

India is giving up its autonomy. For what?

The country that side-stepped Goldman’s financial nukes and stopped them blowing up her banks is now going to let the real thing in?

India is NOT a super-power. It’s a potential power — with vast social and economic problems that no amount of technological advancement can completely hide.

A nuclear buildup in India will be a huge drain on its economy – nuclear power is simply too expensive for a developing nation.

Even worse, it will be a surrender of Indian autonomy. US intrusiveness toward even its so-called allies is well-documented.

And a free hand for the US prosecution of the WoT in Pakistan means increased instability on the Indo- Pak border. That will spill over into further attacks on Indian soil.

Which will exacerbate the violence.

Which will entail more government control.

I see nothing good coming from this…

“I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of Him.”
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.”

– Boris Pasternak

I told myself I’d ignore politics for a while and comment – if and when I could – only on things that might help people figure out what to do financially.

But two recent stories call for comment.

The first was yesterday’s story about mob violence between Uighur Muslims and Han Chinese in China. The violence was said to have been triggered by the influx of Han into the oil-rich Uighur lands, which has led to resentment from the Uighurs. They see themselves as less well-off… and also as exploited by the Han. The Han regard these feelings as a sign of the Uighurs’ backwardness and stupidity.

Apparently, photos were circulated on the net of Han gloating over dead Uighur. That seems have led to violent confrontations between Han, Uighur and police. Chinese authorities also blame a nonresident Uighur activist for instigating violence over the photos. “Activists,” demands for disclosure of photos, and the web, all came in for blame.

The second story is in today’s news. Apparently, US Treasury and other web sites were subjected to Denial of Service Attacks that had them down for a long time.  The same thing happened to some South Korean banking sites. The attacks are said to have been very sophisticated and to have originated with North Korea, which has been firing missiles defiantly over the past couple of weeks.

My first worry is – is this all posturing or is something bigger afoot?

My second worry is – is this going to be used to clamp down on the net and on net activists? After all, yours truly has written several articles since 2005 demanding that the US government disclose photos of torture of Iraqi women – those articles could also be seen as inflammatory. Am I inciting jihadists with articles like that? I have no idea. My thinking is that people brainwashed into jihad probably don’t need much of a motive beyond the history of US policy to get them going.

But I’m willing to admit that it probably adds a bit of gasoline to some fires.

What to do? Should one NOT demand disclosure and assume the state has its reasons that reason knows nothing of?

But what if the state is circulating its own fiery propaganda with lethal results? Don’t you sometimes fight fire with fire?

Fight fire with fire and the whole world turns to coal, says Mahatma moralist.

George Herbert said something better though. He said the whole world turns to coal anyway.

Only a “sweet and virtuous soul still chiefly lives.”

The question is how does a virtuous soul act in such times and in such complexities?

I have no answer.

It rained the whole of yesterday. I walked out a bit at 10 AM to see if I could see a few things, but the wind here is strong and drives the temperature, from around 8-10 degrees to zero. It’s too humid to freeze or snow, though. Small mercies.

The first week I was down here – the last week of June – the weather was chilly and damp – the kind of damp that makes your knees and knuckles ache.

At first, I shrugged it off. Nothing’s perfect, I told myself.

Then a particularly cold blast from the ocean sent me scuttling to the provinces in search of warmer weather. But after a couple of days, I realized that with only English, a small town can pose problems, and I came back, sheepishly.

You can’t have beautiful old colonial houses, pristine air and water, safe streets… and complain because the weather is a bit chilly for a few months in the year. What kind of a pioneering attitude is that, I told myself.

Then again, I don’t fool myself I’m pioneer material. At heart, I’m a traditionalist. Even a bit of stick-in-the-mud. It’s an accident that I end up in the vanguard of things.

And the reason for that…the problem.. is rationality. I tend to argue things to their logical conclusions and then follow those conclusions – even when they don’t necessarily come easily. I call this a problem, because I’m not convinced that rationality is the best way to arrive at decisions. Instinct – gut – is better in most cases. And in some, just doing what the other fellow’s doing seems to work just fine. But I’ve always had a tendency to fall for beautiful symmetries – even when they’re misleading. Especially when they’re misleading.

And the beautiful, symmetrical argument is that the safest bet for most people is land.

They aren’t making cheap farmland in the US. There was still some in places like Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee, until recently. But now it’s all been bought up. And what’s left is probably the dregs, as far as fertility goes.

Holing up in the Ozarks with a cache of ammunition probably works for some Americans. But somehow, I think a foreign born citizen taking to moonshine country might not work. It would be a shame to survive the Feds – and then succumb to the locals.

No offense meant.

In times of difficulty, people tend to stick to race and faith. I think it’s to be expected. I’ve begun to grow suspicious of everything foreign too – although personally, I’m nothing but a patchwork of foreign and borrowed.

It also sits much better with many people  – morally – to hold a piece of dirt than to cling to ingots ….or scraps…of precious metal. Maybe childhood stories about golden calves…about Midas turning his little girl into gold…bother us at a certain level.

And gold mining is one of the worst businesses when it comes to water usage and damage to the environment.

Even if no one wants your piece of dirt…even if it crumbles with every other asset class into nothingness…..you can always scrape in the dust for turnips and roots. There’s something reassuring about that. Something solid.

You can’t eat wind – which is what we have an oversupply of now.

So – it’s land for many people.

And that’s what I’m seeing. Americans and Canadians are moving down here in something stronger than a trickle. Some of them, on a temporary basis. But the temporary seems to change into longer term for many.

My interest is both personal and professional. I came down to see for myself how the economic crisis is playing out in this part of the globe. And why Soros…among many other investors…is down here….

I’m on an assignment, it goes without saying. But one I’ve set myself.

I hope to leverage the information. How, I don’t know..