Lineaments
Post
12/04/07, Kate Connolly, Militant feminist on trial after 20 years on run, (Source).
19/04/07 , Steve Connor, The prospect of all-female conception, (Source).
12/02/07, BBC, Meinhof gang killer to be freed, (Source).
03/04/07, BBC, Thai prisoner boxes for freedom, (Source).
19/04/07, Andrew Gumbel, Killer sent photographs and video to broadcaster between shootings, (Source).
19/04/07, FOX, Virginia Police Say Killer's Manifesto Has Little Value to Investigation, (Source).
20/04/07, Christopher Whitcomb, Building a Better Lockdown, (Source).
20/04/07, Mark Santora & Christine Hauser, Anger of Killer Was on Exhibit in His Writings , (Source).
20/04/07, Rick Salutin, After VT, a sense of unease, (Source).
12/04/07, Kate Connolly, Militant feminist on trial after 20 years on run, (Back).
· Former Rote Zora member admits role in bombings
· 58-year-old led quiet life after fleeing Germany
Her code name was Lea, and in her 30s she abandoned the safety of her teaching job to take up the fight of oppressed women of the world through a systematic bombing campaign focused on an array of patriarchal targets from sex shops to sweat shops.
But after almost 20 years on the run, Adrienne Gershäuser admitted in court yesterday to her involvement in a 10-year assault by the militant feminist group Rote Zora.
One of the last remaining members of the leftwing group, Gershäuser yesterday told the Berlin court in a statement read by her lawyer that she had "wittingly and willingly" taken part in the bombing of a bio-technology institute and a clothing factory. An offshoot of the Revolutionary Cells, which formed in Frankfurt am Main in the early 70s, Rote Zora unleashed a wave of bomb attacks across Germany, focusing on sex shops, embassies and clothing factories which the group considered responsible for female oppression.
Unlike other far-left terrorist groups, such as the Red Army Faction, whose main ideals were anti-capitalist, Rote Zora members said they did not want to cause death or injury.
Gershäuser, 58, a qualified radio technician, helped build the bombs, buying the alarm clocks for detonators in two cases, neither of which were successful. She went on the run with her lover, Thomas Kram, a leading member of the Revolutionary Cells, in 1987, supposedly after a tip-off from the East German secret police, the Stasi. She emerged last December and gave herself up to the police.
Edith Lunnebach, Gershäuser's lawyer, told a German newspaper that her client wanted to make clear to the court "that the political connections which existed then no longer exist", and that she no longer supported them. Her client would not express remorse, and she had given herself up because she wanted to "bring to an end the situation of illegality which had become a burden".
Among the evidence against her were police surveillance photographs of her in Dortmund buying the type of alarm clock favoured by Rote Zora.
If convicted Gershäuser faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail for being a member of a terrorist organisation and for attempted bombing. But the authorities have indicated that as she turned herself in, and due to the time lapse, she will probably get a two-year suspended sentence.
In her written statement Gershäuser said that her acts had complied with the political views she had at that time. While the Revolutionary Cells focused on issues such as asylum and social welfare policies, Rote Zora concentrated on sex shops, genetic technology and the exploitation of women in developing countries, aiming at companies such as the electronics company Siemens.
Although their deeds were far apart in severity terms, parallels have been drawn between Gershäuser's case and that of the former Red Army Faction guerilla Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who last month, amid much controversy, was released from a 24-year prison sentence for nine murders. Both women have sparked deep interest about the involvement of women in terrorism.
Rote Zora is now little more than a footnote in the history of leftwing German terrorism; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it "an almost forgotten chapter in the anti-imperialist battle".
Gershäuser did not speak in court yesterday. All that has emerged about her time on the run was that she and Kram, who was known as Malte, found refuge abroad for at least 10 years, where they are believed to have led a law-abiding life.
Kram, who is still in custody, has long been wanted in connection with kidnappings, shootings and hijackings, and the bomb attack on Bologna station in August 1980 in which 85 people were killed.
Rote Zora: Targets and tactics
The militant feminist organisation, based in West Germany, stood against patriarchy, including technologies such as nuclear power, and capitalist exploitation. It began as the feminist arm of the more violent Revolutionary Cells but then went its own way. Its last attack was in 1995, on a Bremen shipyard. The name came from Red Zora and Her Gang, a children's book tale about a red-haired Croatian orphan, written by Kurt Kläber in 1941.
Their first action was in 1974, a bombing of a Karlsruhe courthouse in protest at abortion law. Sex shops, landlords' cars, and genetic technical institutes were among their targets. The Philippines embassy was bombed for alleged support of trafficking of women. As was the intention, the bomb attacks never injured anyone.
Members were known as "after-work" terrorists as they often had middle-class jobs by day. When the cold war ended many fled underground. They were believed to have been behind 45 bombings and arson attacks.
19/04/07 , Steve Connor, The prospect of all-female conception, (Back).
Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.
Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.
The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.
But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer.
"Theoretically is it possible," Professor Nayernia said. "The problem is whether the sperm cells are functional or not. I don't think there is an ethical barrier, so long as it's safe. We are in the process of applying for ethical approval. We are preparing now to apply to use the existing bone marrow stem cell bank here in Newcastle. We need permission from the patient who supplied the bone marrow, the ethics committee and the hospital itself."
If sperm cells can be developed from female bone-marrow tissue they will be matured in the laboratory and tested for their ability to penetrate the outer "shell" of a hamster's egg - a standard fertility test for sperm.
"We want to test the functionality of any male and female sperm that is made by this way," Professor Nayernia said. But he said there was no intention at this stage to produce female sperm that would be used to fertilise a human egg, a move that would require the approval of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
The immediate aim is to see if female bone marrow can be lured into developing into the stem cells that can make sperm cells. The ultimate aim is to discover if these secondary stem cells can then be made into other useful tissues of the body, he said.
The latest findings, published in the journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology, show that male bone marrow can be used to make the early "spermatagonial" stem cells that normally mature into fully developed sperm cells.
"Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatagonial stem cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments," Professor Nayernia said.
Last year, Professor Nayernia led scientists at the University of Gottingen in Germany who became the first to produce viable artificial sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells, which were used to produce seven live offspring.
His latest work on stem cells derived from human bone marrow suggests that it could be possible to develop the techniques to help men who cannot produce their own sperm naturally.
"We're very excited about this discovery, particularly as our earlier work in mice suggests that we could develop this work even further," Professor Nayernia said.
Whether the scientists will ever be able to develop the techniques to help real patients - male or female - will depend on future legislation that the Government is preparing as a replacement to the existing Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
A White Paper on genetics suggested that artificial gametes produced from the ordinary "somatic" tissue of the body may be banned from being used to fertilise human eggs by in vitro fertilisation.
Making babies without men - a literary view
LYSISTRATA, Aristophanes (c. 411BC)
After 21 years of war, the women of Athens, led by Lysistrata, take matters into their own hands. Lysistrata suggests every wife and mistress should refuse all sexual favours until peacetime. Before long it proves effective, peace is concluded and the play ends with festivities.
HERLAND, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1914)
On the eve of the First World War, an isolated society entirely comprising Aryan women is discovered by three male explorers. The women reproduce asexually and live in an ideal society without war and domination. This feminist utopia is a 20th-century vehicle for Gilman's then-unconventional views of male and female behaviour, motherhood, individuality, and sexuality. It is said to be based on Gilman's version of utopia through Aryan separatism.
DISAPPEARANCE, Philip Wylie (1978)
At four minutes and 52 seconds past four one afternoon, the world shatters into two parallel universes as men vanish from women and women from men. With families and loved ones separated from one another, life continues very differently as an explosion of violence sweeps one world while stability and peace break down in the other.
THE CLEFT, Doris Lessing (2007)
In her novel, which has made this year's International Man Booker shortlist, Lessing portrays a group of near-amphibious women who have no need of men, known as Squirts, as they are impregnated by the wind, wave or moon. But this is no feminist utopia: the women behave brutally, mutilating male babies before placing them on a rock for eagles to devour. The eagles turn out to be the men's allies, transporting the babies to the forest where they are suckled by does. Lessing reveals she was inspired by a scientific claim that "the primal human stock was probably female, and that males came along later, as a kind of cosmic afterthought".
12/02/07, BBC, Meinhof gang killer to be freed, (Back).
Brigitte Mohnhaupt was once called the most evil woman in Germany.
A former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang is to be freed on probation after serving 24 years for her involvement in kidnappings and murders in the 1970s.
A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.
The group, also known as the Red Army Faction, were behind kidnaps and killings in West Germany.
The prospect of Mohnhaupt's release has sparked a fierce debate in Germany.
Mohnhaupt was convicted of involvement in nine murders. Victims included a judge, a banker and the employers' federation president.
BAADER-MEINHOF: Urban guerrilla group notorious in 1970s and 80s; Also known as the Red Army Faction; Targeted West German capitalist establishment.
The BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Berlin, says she was once described as the most evil and dangerous woman in West Germany.
Separately, another prominent Red Army prisoner, Christian Klar, is seeking early release.
He has applied to the German president for a pardon.
Our correspondent says the prospect of Mohnhaupt and Klar being freed has sparked controversy in Germany and revived memories of one of the bloodiest episodes in the country's post-war history.
'No remorse'
The RAF sought to combat what it saw as capitalist oppression of workers and US imperialism.
It was active from about 1970 - having grown out of student anti-Vietnam war protests - until 1992, when it abandoned violence. It formally disbanded in 1998.
One of the group's most prominent targets was the German industrialist Hans Martin Schleyer - who was kidnapped in September 1977 and shot six weeks later.
"This is not a pardon, rather a decision that is based on specific legal considerations," Court statement.
Speaking before the court ruling, Mr Schleyer's son Joerg said members of the group had expressed no remorse for the killing.
"I can't understand that we would take [let] them out because within the last 30 years there's nothing they said - 'OK we're sorry we murdered your father, sorry for that, we murdered policemen, sorry for that.' Absolutely no word."
The court in Stuttgart said Mohnhaupt would be released on five years probation on 27 March.
"This is not a pardon, rather a decision that is based on specific legal considerations," the court said in a statement, Reuters news agency reported.
"The decision for probation was reached based on the determination that no security risk exists."
03/04/07, BBC, Thai prisoner boxes for freedom, (Back).
Siriporn's victory could see her walk free three years early.
A female Thai prisoner has boosted her chances of freedom by winning the world light flyweight boxing title.
Samson Sor Siriporn, a convicted drug dealer, beat Japan's Ayaka Miyano in a bout staged at the mixed Klong Prem jail, known as the "Bangkok Hilton".
Watched by dozens of prison staff, Siriporn won on points after 10 rounds in the ring, kick-starting parole proceedings for her early release.
The 24-year-old took up boxing to protect herself from violent inmates.
"I'm so happy with the way I performed today. I'm very proud. I've been in jail for a long time now, I hope this will see me released early," said Siriporn after the fight.
"When I'm free I'll carry on fighting. I want to fight all over the world."
'Changed woman'
The match took place in a makeshift ring in the grounds of the Klong Prem prison, in front of a crowd of about 700 people, including a few prison inmates.
Siriporn was jailed for selling methamphetamine pills.
Transvestites released from their cells for the event paraded in high heels around the ring with placards.
Siriporn, serving a 10-year sentence for selling small amounts of drugs, dominated the fight, taking the World Boxing Council title 97-93, 98-92, 100-91.
A Thai corrections department official said the parole process would start immediately.
"I think it's very likely she will be released as a result of this victory, maybe in a couple of months. We gave her a chance to show us her talent, and she has done that," said Natti Jitsawang.
"She is a changed woman, and now she has the chance to be free and fight around the world."
Organisers believe the win makes Siriporn the first inmate to clinch a world title in prison.
19/04/07, Andrew Gumbel, Killer sent photographs and video to broadcaster between shootings, (Back).
The man who shot dead 32 people at Virginia Tech took time out after committing the first two murders to post pictures and video to a national television network, police revealed yesterday.
Korean-Born English student Cho Seung-Hui sent a CD-Rom containing video footage of himself reading out an 1,800-word profanity-laced tirade about " getting even" and 29 digital photographs of himself brandishing weapons, 11 of which show him pointing a gun at the camera.
NBC Nightly News last night broadcasted excerpts of the video, in which Cho said: "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to avoid today. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
The package helped answer one of the many mysteries surrounding Cho and his motives why there was a two-hour time lag between the first two killings and the rest of them, which took place in a teaching building housing the engineering department.
It surfaced on a day when numerous warning signs that Cho was psychologically troubled and prone to unusual and alarming behaviour were revealed. Campus police disclosed that he had been investigated for the sexual harassment of two students 17 months ago and was admitted to hospital after he was diagnosed with suicidal depression.
One of his teachers threatened to quit her job if he did not get out of her class. The chair of the English department sat down with him and expressed concern to her superiors. The students who reported him complained he had taken inappropriate photographs of them with his phone.
University officials said that nothing about his behaviour hinted at the kind of criminal enterprise he carried out. The women who complained to the police never filed charges, and one them described his actions as " annoying" rather than threatening.
The police have confirmed he left behind a typed eight-page note in which he railed against "rich kids" and what he saw as double standards on campus. "You caused me to do this," he wrote at one point. This appeared to be same text as read out in the video.
The New York Times also reported that prescription drugs used to treat psychological disorders were found among his effects. Almost every perpetrator of a mass shooting in the United States in recent years had either been on prescription drugs or had stopped taking them shortly before erupting in violence.
Cho's behaviour first became an issue in November 2005, when his angry, profanity-laced creative writing alarmed a number of English faculty members. Lucinda Roy, then the faculty chair, sent samples of his writing to the campus police and counselling services. Professor Roy also encouraged Cho to seek help. "But I couldn't force him to do it," she said. She felt that he might be suicidal. And she described talking to him as " like talking to a hole ... he was not really there".
Nikki Giovanni, a noted poet who teaches at Virginia Tech, said she became alarmed because Cho's behaviour and writing were causing other students to drop out of her class. "I was willing to resign before I was going to continue with him," she told CNN. She told him to stop writing what he was writing. "He said, 'You can't make me'," she said. "He was writing just weird things. I saw the plays, but he was writing poetry, it was intimidating."
After the complaints by the two female students, Cho spoke voluntarily to the police and was escorted to the Carilion Saint Albans Behavioural Health Centre, a mental health institution.
None of that, of course, provides a motive for the shootings. The two women who complained to the campus police were not among the victims. Neither were any immediately obvious classmates or professors. There is still no explanation, either, of why the shootings began in a residential hall and continued, two hours later, in the teaching building. After the first attacks, campus police suspected the boyfriend of the first victim, Emily Hilscher. The boyfriend, Karl Thornhill, was questioned and remains of interest to the investigation, police said. For the moment, though, they continue to presume that Cho acted alone.
Cho's words
* "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option..."
* "I didn't have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled. But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you [expletive]. I did it for them..."
* "When the time came, I did it, I had to ... You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today ... you just want to crucify me ... But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
* "Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats ... Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs. You had everything."
19/04/07, FOX, Virginia Police Say Killer's Manifesto Has Little Value to Investigation, (Back).
Cho Seung-Hui, 23, of South Korea, is identified by Virginia police as the gunman suspected of killing 32 people on April 16.
BLACKSBURG, Va. — The disturbing manifesto and videos of Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC News have some value to police, but they didn't add much that investigators didn't already know, officials said Thursday.
"While there was some marginal value to the package we received, the fact of the matter is, we already had most of this evidence … the package simply confirmed what we already knew in many cases," Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty told reporters Thursday, adding that school officials were "disappointed" at the media's decision to air the video.
"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.
On NBC's "Today" show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly." Some victims' relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.
"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior at Virginia Tech from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."
Meanwhile, Thursday, Virginia Tech officials announced that Cho's victims would be awarded their degrees posthumously during commencement.
Cho apparently took time out Monday morning — possibly after killing two students in a campus dorm room — so he could pose for self-portraits and put together a multi-media manifesto that he then took to the post office and mailed to NBC News in New York City.
The package contained an assortment of video, photo and written documents put together by Cho, the FBI said. In addition to the video, NBC News said the package contained 29 photos he apparently took of himself, 11 of which show him posing with handguns. There also was an 1,800-word written document.
"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he said into the camera, looking down occasionally to read from his manifesto. "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."
"I could have fled, I will no longer run," Cho said.
And then, in a possible indication that he made the recording after the dorm killings and two hours before the murders of 30 others in a campus classroom building, this confession:
"The time came and I did it. ... I had to do what I did."
"But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you (expletive). I did it for them."
The 23-year-old spoke in a harsh monotone as he rambled: "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
He then took aim at his college classmates.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," said Cho, a South Korean immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in Centreville, Va., a Washington suburb. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."
There has been some speculation, especially among online forums, that Cho may have been inspired by the South Korean movie "Oldboy," part of Chan-wook Park's "Vengeance Trilogy." One of the killer's mailed photos shows him brandishing a hammer — the signature weapon of the protagonist — and in a pose similar to one from the film.
The film won the Gran Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. It was the second of Park's "Vengeance Trilogy" and is about a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years. After escaping, he goes on a rampage against his captor.
The connection was spotted by Professor Paul Harris of Virginia Tech, who alerted the authorities, according to London's Evening Standard.
It has become commonplace for movies or music to be linked to especially violent killers. One blogger for the Huffington Post, filmmaker Bob Cesca, dismissed the connection as "the most ridiculous hypothesis yet."
Authorities on Thursday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.
Among other things, Cho's twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.
Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.
He refers to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" — a reference to the teenage killers in the Columbine High School massacre.
NBC News President Steve Capus said the package was sent by overnight delivery but apparently had the wrong ZIP code and wasn't opened until Wednesday, NBC said.
An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath, "Ismail Ax," NBC said.
Capus said that the network notified the FBI around noon, but held off reporting on it at the FBI's request, so that the bureau could look at it first. NBC finally broke the story just before police announced the development at 4:30 p.m.
It was clear Cho videotaped himself, Capus said, because he could be seen leaning in to shut off the camera.
State Police Spokeswoman Corinne Geller cautioned that, while the package was mailed between the two shootings, police have not inspected the footage and have yet to establish exactly when the images were made.
Cho repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.
"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he says, apparently reading from his manifesto. "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."
A law enforcement official said Cho's letter also refers in the same sentence to President Bush and John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed last year to having killed child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media.
Earlier Wednesday, authorities disclosed that in November and December 2005, two women complained to campus police that they had received calls and computer messages from Cho. But the women considered the messages "annoying," not threatening, and neither pressed charges, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.
Neither woman was among the victims in the massacre, police said.
After the second complaint about Cho's behavior, the university obtained a temporary detention order and took Cho away because an acquaintance reported he might be suicidal, authorities said. Police did not identify the acquaintance.
On Dec. 13, 2005, a magistrate ordered Cho to undergo an evaluation at Carilion St. Albans, a private psychiatric hospital. The magistrate signed the order after an initial evaluation found probable cause that Cho was a danger to himself or others as a result of mental illness.
The next day, according to court records, doctors at Carilion conducted further examination and a special justice, Paul M. Barnett, approved outpatient treatment.
A medical examination conducted Dec. 14 reported that that Cho's "affect is flat. ... He denies suicidal ideations. He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment are normal."
The court papers indicate that Barnett checked a box that said Cho "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." Barnett did not check the box that would indicate a danger to others.
It is unclear how long Cho stayed at Carilion, though court papers indicate he was free to leave as of Dec. 14. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Cho had been continually enrolled at Tech and never took a leave of absence.
A spokesman for Carilion St. Albans would not comment.
Though the incidents with the two women did not result in criminal charges, police referred Cho to the university's disciplinary system, Flinchum said. But Ed Spencer, assistant vice president of student affairs, would not comment on any disciplinary proceedings, saying federal law protects students' medical privacy even after death.
Some students refused to second-guess the university.
"Who would've woken up in the morning and said, 'Maybe this student who's just troubled is really going to do something this horrific?"' said Elizabeth Hart, a communications major and a spokeswoman for the student government.
Classes were scheduled to continue at Virginia Tech on Monday. University Provost Mark McNamee said school officials were outlining a way to let students complete their courses, possibly by allowing their work to this point in the semester count as completed.
Disturbing Signs
One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho's problems was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her introduction to creative writing class in late 2005.
Students in Giovanni's class had told their professor that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. Female students refused to come to class. She said she considered him "mean" and "a bully."
Lucinda Roy, professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that she, too, relayed her concerns to campus police and various other college units after Cho displayed antisocial behavior in her class and handed in disturbing writing assignments.
But she said authorities "hit a wall" in terms of what they could do "with a student on campus unless he'd made a very overt threat to himself or others." Cho resisted her repeated suggestion that he undergo counseling, Roy said.
Questions lingered over whether campus police should have issued an immediate campus-wide warning of a killer on the loose and locked down the campus after the first burst of gunfire.
Police said that after the first shooting, in which two students were killed, they believed that it was a domestic dispute, and that the gunman had fled the campus. That man is no longer a suspect.
A dormitory neighbor of the first two victims, Ryan Clark, 22, and Emily Hilscher, 19, described on ABC's "Good Morning America" what she saw that morning in Ambler Johnson Hall.
"I heard a really loud female voice scream. I opened my door and that's when I saw the blood and the footprints, the sneaker-prints, leading in a trail from her room," Molly Donahue said.
That's when she saw Clark, a resident assistant in the dorm, on the floor against a door, she said. A friend later told her he was dead. Donahue she said has since tried to return to the dorm but felt physically ill and is still terrified.
"I got to the point where I can't be alone," she said.
20/04/07, Christopher Whitcomb, Building a Better Lockdown, (Back).
I was at my desk at the F.B.I.’s Critical Incident Response Group on April 20, 1999, when a colleague ducked his head into my office and asked if I’d heard the news. A school shooting in Colorado. Some place called Columbine. At least 10 dead. Columbine, I remember thinking as I clicked on the bank of TVs on the far wall. Where in God’s name is that?
After 13 years as an F.B.I. agent, I’d become somewhat inured to violence: bank robberies, murders, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City. Death had become my business. Yet these images were appalling. Teenagers were dying in a public high school. Almost as disturbing, I saw panic: people running, blue uniforms and black-garbed SWAT officers with rifles pointing at a threat no one yet understood. Confusion. Crisis. Dismay.
Such confusion may have been understandable eight years ago. But that was before a 16-year-old boy killed five students, a teacher and a guard in a Minnesota school; before a recently expelled student turned a gun on officials and students at Appalachian School of Law, killing three; before a truck driver shot 10 girls (killing five) at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania.
It was before the F.B.I.’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime held a symposium of 160 educators, law enforcement professionals and mental health experts from 18 universities in Leesburg, Va., and issued a comprehensive report on causes, mitigation strategies and security considerations of school shootings.
It was before this country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies revised training procedures and adopted crisis-response protocols to deal with similar threats; before the release of dozens of relevant books, academic studies, television programs and documentaries; before high schools, colleges and universities made uniformed security guards a part of campus life.
So how did we end up here, yet again? Why are we still asking how a calamity like the deaths at Virginia Tech could happen?
The most obvious reason, and one that’s been widely discussed in the days since the shootings, is complacency. Well, we can wring our hands all we want, but to some extent complacency is unavoidable: it’s what sneaks in after all the blame has been handed out, the news media have disappeared, the critics have taken their shots and the political knees have stopped jerking.
There’s also a psychological reason for letting our guard down: we all want to return to day-to-day business and focus on things that are most likely to affect us. Deeper down, there is a natural instinct in all of us to block out the idea that anything so unthinkable could happen to us. To stay alert means to acknowledge that horror is just around the corner, and that runs against human nature.
And, to some extent, complacency is a rational response: major crises like Columbine and Blacksburg are statistically unlikely ever to directly involve any of us. Federal agencies like the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security try to maintain focus, dumping hundreds of millions of dollars each year into crisis management programs, but most other agencies are loath to spend hard-fought tax dollars on “frivolous” equipment and training they are unlikely ever to use.
Outside major metropolitan areas, high-level police officers won’t face anything even remotely like Blacksburg during their careers. It simply makes better sense to finance anti-gang operations and drug eradication programs in schools than to pay SWAT operators to sit around waiting for 16-year-old assassins. The solution doesn’t lie in blaming complacency for these events, but in finding a level of preparedness that, for local jurisdictions and large institutions, makes sense in terms of risk and expense.
A far less discussed reason we find ourselves facing another massacre is inexperience. Law enforcement is a noble profession, filled with men and women who devote their lives to protecting our communities; but crisis resolution in most departments is a career path that administrators and those with hopes for promotion avoid like the plague.
Why volunteer for the chance to make split-second choices under the worst possible circumstances, knowing you are going to be second-guessed and perhaps blamed every step of the way? The F.B.I.’s Critical Incident Response Group had to develop a computer-based training program because field office commanders resisted larger interagency training conducted by real people. These people knew that poor performance in simulations could damage their careers for real.
So, how do we move forward and prevent another nightmare like Blacksburg?
For starters, we have to assign blame where it belongs: on those who commit these heinous acts. Then our schools, businesses, hospitals, other institutions and communities must take the simple, commonsense decisions that countless studies recommend. Sure, the sorts of precautionary steps and community awareness being promoted in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings are important, but all the profiling and counseling in the world will not stop every attack. We need to prepare for and deal with the attack itself.
•
Every institution should have a crisis response plan. The scope and complexity will of course depend on factors like population, square footage and the presence of hazardous materials, but most don’t have to be expensive. Often small businesses can get away with simply taping a sheet of paper next to the copier that identifies exits, emergency contacts and safe areas inside the building. Most large corporations and institutions will need to find professional advice. (As someone who provides such advice, I admit it doesn’t come cheap. But the cost of preparation will pay off should disaster strike.)
•
While each plan will be different, the fundamentals remain the same. All should insure that potential victims are able to maintain two-way contact with law enforcement and emergency medical providers. Many people feel that crisis-call stations, which have long been staples at universities and in some communities, are no longer necessary in the age of cellphones. That’s wrong: these brightly marked, well-lighted phone towers not only provide communications when cellular networks are overloaded, but their very presence can deter attackers.
•
Whenever written emergency directions are posted, they should include understandable symbols for foreign-language speakers, children and the visually impaired. That may seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how many “emergency plans” I’ve seen that bogged down in unnecessary verbiage, directed people to nonexistent stairwells and failed to consider non-English speakers.
•
All emergency plans should prominently list a “check in” number that every employee or student should be asked to call in the event of emergency. Even if you feel you are safe, rescue experts need to know where you are and how many people are in the area. (It will also provide relief to your family if the situation drags on.)
•
Large institutions should compile detailed, easily available “site surveys” of buildings and campuses that rescue and law-enforcement officials can use to plan their strategies in a crisis. Site surveys should include blueprints of all buildings and infrastructure, videotapes of interior spaces, lock information, charts of surveillance camera coverage, notes on access to tunnels and other information.
•
I recommend to my clients that they get a professional risk assessment of all their current policies that can, for example, point out improvements to exterior lighting and in their ability to “lock down” all buildings.
•
While the police and medical professionals will eventually take charge, every institution should have set response protocols for its security personnel and employees who will manage the initial stages of the crisis. Where possible, planners should build and hire security staff for safe zones that these people can operate from, and where potential victims can take refuge.
•
And because all threats — natural, criminal or terrorism-related — eventually require evacuation, employers should make sure their people know where and under what circumstance they should move from “bunkering in place” to trying an escape. Often it is safer to find cover where you are than to expose yourself by running away. Helping your workers understand how to make the right decision can mean the difference between life and death.
As I reflect on the Blacksburg shootings and think about ways to keep it from happening again, I look back to that April afternoon in 1999 and the important project I was trying to finish. It was a paper on crisis management — one of the last requirements I needed for the master’s degree I soon received. From Virginia Tech.
20/04/07, Mark Santora & Christine Hauser, Anger of Killer Was on Exhibit in His Writings , (Back).
BLACKSBURG, Va., April 19 — More than anyone else on the Virginia Tech campus, it was the professors and students in the English department who knew of the mental turmoil of Cho Seung-Hui.
Where the Virginia Tech police only heard scattered reports of his harassing behavior, and mental health professionals knew of his suicidal tendencies, it was the English department — where he was a major — that read his writings and saw the images of persecution, revenge and anger that they revealed, many months before he erupted into violence on Monday and killed 32 people, as well as himself.
And those English professors and students appear to have worked harder than anyone to intervene in his life. Trying to balance the freedom needed to be creative against the warning signs of psychosis, as many as eight of his teachers in the last 18 months had formed what one called a “task force” to discuss how to handle him, gathering twice on the subject and frequently communicating among themselves.
On at least two separate occasions they reached out to university officials, telling them as recently as this September that Mr. Cho was trouble. They made little headway, however, and no action was taken by school administrators in response to their concerns.
The students also made their fears known, some even refusing to attend class as long Mr. Cho was there. Others tried to reach out to him.
Ross Alameddine sat a few feet from Mr. Cho for months in a class examining contemporary horror films and literature. Both students were required to keep what were known as “fear journals,” where they chronicled both their reaction to the material covered in class and their own fears.
Mr. Alameddine, according to classmates, made an effort to speak to Mr. Cho on several occasions, trying to draw him out of his closed world and his refusal to interact with other students.
On Monday, Mr. Cho shot and killed Mr. Alameddine.
There is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Cho targeted his classmate, but it is the first time one of the victims has been connected to Mr. Cho before the shootings.
The class they took together was new, offered for the first time last fall. The students studied movies like “Friday the 13th” and read Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft and Patricia Cornwell novels. “We had a whole discussion on serial killers,” said one student, who asked that she not be named because she wanted to avoid a crush of attention from the news media.
Mr. Cho never spoke during the discussion, she said, but he took notes.
The student and Mr. Cho were in another class as well, a small class on playwriting, during which she grew fascinated by him.
“In all honesty, I took a huge interest in him last semester,” she said. “I never heard him speak a word, and I was so curious about him. I actually tried to follow him after class one day, but he got on a bike and I couldn’t keep up. He had a red bicycle.”
In interviews with six members of the English faculty who had Mr. Cho in a class or had been in close contact with him, they described how as early as September 2005 and as recently as September 2006, they found themselves struggling to define the line between a legitimate work of self-expression and one of violent or sick imagery that needed to be restrained.
“Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be,” said Prof. Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the English Department. “But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”
Lisa Norris, an English professor, said that, outside of an explicit threat that was rooted in reality, it would be impossible to have some kind of standard by which to judge whether a student’s work was so alarming as to warrant intervention.
“If the student seems abnormal in his behavior or affect and is writing about violence, then there could be something to worry about — particularly if the resolution of the story includes suicide or murder for major characters or otherwise ends in despair,” she said. “It is not necessarily the work alone that raises concern, but the work plus the student’s affect and behavior.”
In Mr. Cho’s case, she was alarmed before he had written a word.
When he signed up for the 10-person workshop she taught this year, Professor Norris was worried that he simply would not communicate, and in September she reached out to one of her superiors, Mary Ann Lewis, the associate dean at the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. She said Ms. Lewis was helpful but had no information about prior problems, including his hospitalization at a mental health facility in 2005. Ms. Lewis said she had no comment on the conversation.
But Mr. Cho’s bizarre behavior was evident to students, faculty and police going back to 2005.
“Nobody took too much notice of him except for that’s the kinda weird quiet kid who never talks,” said Steven Davis, 23, a senior who was in a drama class with him. “Until we read his work. And then it was like whoa, something is off.”
One woman, an English major who was in a contemporary British fiction class with Mr. Cho in the fall of 2005 and who asked not to be identified, said he sent her unsolicited electronic messages after seeing her in class and then looking her up on the Facebook Web site.
Mr. Cho, she said, also stalked another girl in the class, scaring her so badly that she went to the police that December.
That matches the campus police account of a woman who came to them in December 2005, part of a series of events that culminated with Mr. Cho being held for psychiatric evaluation and later released.
She said Mr. Cho knew things about her family that would be difficult to know without serious effort. For instance, he knew what sports her siblings played in high school.
Beyond that, he simply acted strange. On the first day of class the teacher asked everyone to stand up and introduce themselves.
“When it was his turn, he didn’t stand up and he said his name was Question Mark,” she said.
Professor Lucinda Roy, who was the head of the English Department in the fall of 2005, chose to deal with Mr. Cho by removing him from a group class and tutoring him. She also passed along his writing, which she described as “angry,” to both the Virgnia Tech police and the university counseling service.
Prof. Edward Falco, who last semester had him in a playwrighting class, did not make the other students read or critique two of Mr. Cho’s plays that contained violent images and profane language. But he alerted other faculty members, and learned that they, too, had been concerned.
After the shooting Monday, Professor Falco’s students began sending him messages about how they felt guilty for not doing or saying something earlier. Professor Falco responded in an e-mail message, hoping to help put their minds at ease.
“There was violence in Cho’s writing — but there is a huge difference between writing about violence and behaving violently,” he wrote. “We could not have known what he would do.”
20/04/07, Rick Salutin, After VT, a sense of unease, (Back).
I think it's stupid to say, as the CBC has, that not running Cho Seung-Hui's video will help stop further slaughter. It only shows how desperately unclear everyone is about how to deal with these events. There's nothing new about the potential for violent outbursts in unstable individuals. The trick is preventing them. That's what is in doubt now, in North America.
Even those with the clearest answer -- gun control -- suffer from unease. The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom warns: "But don't assume gun control alone will prevent another school shooting. There is something dark and dangerous going on in North America." On the right, John O'Sullivan says "radical evil" is afoot, to deny God, deny Good. U.S. writer Paul Craig Roberts, who is sort of both left and right, says, "In my day parents and teachers had authority. Today teachers have no authority, which is why they have to call the police to control the kids."
I tend to agree that there are uncomfortable issues about authority here. Take the role of faculty and staff at Virginia Tech. I found them impressive. They showed concern, identified the risky student and got him to a psychiatric facility. His English profs removed him from class but tutored him. Yet they were ineffective in the crucial task of protecting the community from danger compared to the less professional players of earlier eras: family, friends, community, religion. Those societies seemed better than ours at containing the violent, anarchic impulses of individuals.
I know this sounds awfully traditional. Let me try to save myself from nostalgia for the fifties (or 1500s) by saying what I think "worked" in earlier times. The ability to keep the dangerous impulses of individuals under control was based on an entire social fabric that was hierarchical and patriarchal. It included religion, institutionalized in churches; and a moral code that tolerated sex within narrow limits. Parental authority was backed by religion (honour thy parents) and by sanctions such as the threat of hell.
All this was internalized in a sense of guilt and shame over violations. There was reverence for country, and a sense of debt to those who died in war "for us." There was a penal code that didn't stand much tinkering in the name of civil rights, and a set of formal outlets for violent impulses that had been repressed. These included regular wars on a massive scale, as well as institutionalized racism and lynching. In such societies, dissenters -- artists, rebels etc. -- could feel a certain security that their acts would not lead to total social breakdown and chaos frightening even to themselves. It all "worked" in the sense that it largely kept the lid on menacing impulses, or channelled them elsewhere than the local schoolyard or college. With the breakdown in recent decades of this fabric, particular players can try to impose controls and limits -- parents, schools, teachers, courts, governments -- but they will not be nearly as effective as they were within a total framework that no longer exists.
The human and emotional costs were monstrous. People were dulled to their own experience and each other. I would not want to restore this set of constraints if one could, and one can't. You can't put that lid back on again. You can only try and fail, with further disastrous consequences.
The issue is now: Can our society devise a set of social controls that prevent explosions like Virginia Tech, but do not require severe repression and an impossible return to the undesirable traits of earlier eras? A teacher of mine, Herbert Marcuse, phrased this as: Can you have non-repressive desublimation? -- mainly showing how hard it is to even formulate the question. Can you have a non-racist, non-patriarchal, non-sexually repressive, non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian yet orderly society that manages to control its potentially aberrant members? What would it look like and how would you get there? That's the utopian project for our time. The two scripts in the past 50 years that claimed to have an answer -- Marxism and free-market ideology -- have lost most of their legitimacy. The floor is wide open.
(Back)
19/04/07 , Steve Connor, The prospect of all-female conception, (Source).
12/02/07, BBC, Meinhof gang killer to be freed, (Source).
03/04/07, BBC, Thai prisoner boxes for freedom, (Source).
19/04/07, Andrew Gumbel, Killer sent photographs and video to broadcaster between shootings, (Source).
19/04/07, FOX, Virginia Police Say Killer's Manifesto Has Little Value to Investigation, (Source).
20/04/07, Christopher Whitcomb, Building a Better Lockdown, (Source).
20/04/07, Mark Santora & Christine Hauser, Anger of Killer Was on Exhibit in His Writings , (Source).
20/04/07, Rick Salutin, After VT, a sense of unease, (Source).
12/04/07, Kate Connolly, Militant feminist on trial after 20 years on run, (Back).
· Former Rote Zora member admits role in bombings
· 58-year-old led quiet life after fleeing Germany
Her code name was Lea, and in her 30s she abandoned the safety of her teaching job to take up the fight of oppressed women of the world through a systematic bombing campaign focused on an array of patriarchal targets from sex shops to sweat shops.
But after almost 20 years on the run, Adrienne Gershäuser admitted in court yesterday to her involvement in a 10-year assault by the militant feminist group Rote Zora.
One of the last remaining members of the leftwing group, Gershäuser yesterday told the Berlin court in a statement read by her lawyer that she had "wittingly and willingly" taken part in the bombing of a bio-technology institute and a clothing factory. An offshoot of the Revolutionary Cells, which formed in Frankfurt am Main in the early 70s, Rote Zora unleashed a wave of bomb attacks across Germany, focusing on sex shops, embassies and clothing factories which the group considered responsible for female oppression.
Unlike other far-left terrorist groups, such as the Red Army Faction, whose main ideals were anti-capitalist, Rote Zora members said they did not want to cause death or injury.
Gershäuser, 58, a qualified radio technician, helped build the bombs, buying the alarm clocks for detonators in two cases, neither of which were successful. She went on the run with her lover, Thomas Kram, a leading member of the Revolutionary Cells, in 1987, supposedly after a tip-off from the East German secret police, the Stasi. She emerged last December and gave herself up to the police.
Edith Lunnebach, Gershäuser's lawyer, told a German newspaper that her client wanted to make clear to the court "that the political connections which existed then no longer exist", and that she no longer supported them. Her client would not express remorse, and she had given herself up because she wanted to "bring to an end the situation of illegality which had become a burden".
Among the evidence against her were police surveillance photographs of her in Dortmund buying the type of alarm clock favoured by Rote Zora.
If convicted Gershäuser faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail for being a member of a terrorist organisation and for attempted bombing. But the authorities have indicated that as she turned herself in, and due to the time lapse, she will probably get a two-year suspended sentence.
In her written statement Gershäuser said that her acts had complied with the political views she had at that time. While the Revolutionary Cells focused on issues such as asylum and social welfare policies, Rote Zora concentrated on sex shops, genetic technology and the exploitation of women in developing countries, aiming at companies such as the electronics company Siemens.
Although their deeds were far apart in severity terms, parallels have been drawn between Gershäuser's case and that of the former Red Army Faction guerilla Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who last month, amid much controversy, was released from a 24-year prison sentence for nine murders. Both women have sparked deep interest about the involvement of women in terrorism.
Rote Zora is now little more than a footnote in the history of leftwing German terrorism; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it "an almost forgotten chapter in the anti-imperialist battle".
Gershäuser did not speak in court yesterday. All that has emerged about her time on the run was that she and Kram, who was known as Malte, found refuge abroad for at least 10 years, where they are believed to have led a law-abiding life.
Kram, who is still in custody, has long been wanted in connection with kidnappings, shootings and hijackings, and the bomb attack on Bologna station in August 1980 in which 85 people were killed.
Rote Zora: Targets and tactics
The militant feminist organisation, based in West Germany, stood against patriarchy, including technologies such as nuclear power, and capitalist exploitation. It began as the feminist arm of the more violent Revolutionary Cells but then went its own way. Its last attack was in 1995, on a Bremen shipyard. The name came from Red Zora and Her Gang, a children's book tale about a red-haired Croatian orphan, written by Kurt Kläber in 1941.
Their first action was in 1974, a bombing of a Karlsruhe courthouse in protest at abortion law. Sex shops, landlords' cars, and genetic technical institutes were among their targets. The Philippines embassy was bombed for alleged support of trafficking of women. As was the intention, the bomb attacks never injured anyone.
Members were known as "after-work" terrorists as they often had middle-class jobs by day. When the cold war ended many fled underground. They were believed to have been behind 45 bombings and arson attacks.
19/04/07 , Steve Connor, The prospect of all-female conception, (Back).
Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.
Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.
The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.
But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer.
"Theoretically is it possible," Professor Nayernia said. "The problem is whether the sperm cells are functional or not. I don't think there is an ethical barrier, so long as it's safe. We are in the process of applying for ethical approval. We are preparing now to apply to use the existing bone marrow stem cell bank here in Newcastle. We need permission from the patient who supplied the bone marrow, the ethics committee and the hospital itself."
If sperm cells can be developed from female bone-marrow tissue they will be matured in the laboratory and tested for their ability to penetrate the outer "shell" of a hamster's egg - a standard fertility test for sperm.
"We want to test the functionality of any male and female sperm that is made by this way," Professor Nayernia said. But he said there was no intention at this stage to produce female sperm that would be used to fertilise a human egg, a move that would require the approval of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
The immediate aim is to see if female bone marrow can be lured into developing into the stem cells that can make sperm cells. The ultimate aim is to discover if these secondary stem cells can then be made into other useful tissues of the body, he said.
The latest findings, published in the journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology, show that male bone marrow can be used to make the early "spermatagonial" stem cells that normally mature into fully developed sperm cells.
"Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatagonial stem cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments," Professor Nayernia said.
Last year, Professor Nayernia led scientists at the University of Gottingen in Germany who became the first to produce viable artificial sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells, which were used to produce seven live offspring.
His latest work on stem cells derived from human bone marrow suggests that it could be possible to develop the techniques to help men who cannot produce their own sperm naturally.
"We're very excited about this discovery, particularly as our earlier work in mice suggests that we could develop this work even further," Professor Nayernia said.
Whether the scientists will ever be able to develop the techniques to help real patients - male or female - will depend on future legislation that the Government is preparing as a replacement to the existing Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
A White Paper on genetics suggested that artificial gametes produced from the ordinary "somatic" tissue of the body may be banned from being used to fertilise human eggs by in vitro fertilisation.
Making babies without men - a literary view
LYSISTRATA, Aristophanes (c. 411BC)
After 21 years of war, the women of Athens, led by Lysistrata, take matters into their own hands. Lysistrata suggests every wife and mistress should refuse all sexual favours until peacetime. Before long it proves effective, peace is concluded and the play ends with festivities.
HERLAND, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1914)
On the eve of the First World War, an isolated society entirely comprising Aryan women is discovered by three male explorers. The women reproduce asexually and live in an ideal society without war and domination. This feminist utopia is a 20th-century vehicle for Gilman's then-unconventional views of male and female behaviour, motherhood, individuality, and sexuality. It is said to be based on Gilman's version of utopia through Aryan separatism.
DISAPPEARANCE, Philip Wylie (1978)
At four minutes and 52 seconds past four one afternoon, the world shatters into two parallel universes as men vanish from women and women from men. With families and loved ones separated from one another, life continues very differently as an explosion of violence sweeps one world while stability and peace break down in the other.
THE CLEFT, Doris Lessing (2007)
In her novel, which has made this year's International Man Booker shortlist, Lessing portrays a group of near-amphibious women who have no need of men, known as Squirts, as they are impregnated by the wind, wave or moon. But this is no feminist utopia: the women behave brutally, mutilating male babies before placing them on a rock for eagles to devour. The eagles turn out to be the men's allies, transporting the babies to the forest where they are suckled by does. Lessing reveals she was inspired by a scientific claim that "the primal human stock was probably female, and that males came along later, as a kind of cosmic afterthought".
12/02/07, BBC, Meinhof gang killer to be freed, (Back).
Brigitte Mohnhaupt was once called the most evil woman in Germany.
A former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang is to be freed on probation after serving 24 years for her involvement in kidnappings and murders in the 1970s.
A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.
The group, also known as the Red Army Faction, were behind kidnaps and killings in West Germany.
The prospect of Mohnhaupt's release has sparked a fierce debate in Germany.
Mohnhaupt was convicted of involvement in nine murders. Victims included a judge, a banker and the employers' federation president.
BAADER-MEINHOF: Urban guerrilla group notorious in 1970s and 80s; Also known as the Red Army Faction; Targeted West German capitalist establishment.
The BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Berlin, says she was once described as the most evil and dangerous woman in West Germany.
Separately, another prominent Red Army prisoner, Christian Klar, is seeking early release.
He has applied to the German president for a pardon.
Our correspondent says the prospect of Mohnhaupt and Klar being freed has sparked controversy in Germany and revived memories of one of the bloodiest episodes in the country's post-war history.
'No remorse'
The RAF sought to combat what it saw as capitalist oppression of workers and US imperialism.
It was active from about 1970 - having grown out of student anti-Vietnam war protests - until 1992, when it abandoned violence. It formally disbanded in 1998.
One of the group's most prominent targets was the German industrialist Hans Martin Schleyer - who was kidnapped in September 1977 and shot six weeks later.
"This is not a pardon, rather a decision that is based on specific legal considerations," Court statement.
Speaking before the court ruling, Mr Schleyer's son Joerg said members of the group had expressed no remorse for the killing.
"I can't understand that we would take [let] them out because within the last 30 years there's nothing they said - 'OK we're sorry we murdered your father, sorry for that, we murdered policemen, sorry for that.' Absolutely no word."
The court in Stuttgart said Mohnhaupt would be released on five years probation on 27 March.
"This is not a pardon, rather a decision that is based on specific legal considerations," the court said in a statement, Reuters news agency reported.
"The decision for probation was reached based on the determination that no security risk exists."
03/04/07, BBC, Thai prisoner boxes for freedom, (Back).
Siriporn's victory could see her walk free three years early.
A female Thai prisoner has boosted her chances of freedom by winning the world light flyweight boxing title.
Samson Sor Siriporn, a convicted drug dealer, beat Japan's Ayaka Miyano in a bout staged at the mixed Klong Prem jail, known as the "Bangkok Hilton".
Watched by dozens of prison staff, Siriporn won on points after 10 rounds in the ring, kick-starting parole proceedings for her early release.
The 24-year-old took up boxing to protect herself from violent inmates.
"I'm so happy with the way I performed today. I'm very proud. I've been in jail for a long time now, I hope this will see me released early," said Siriporn after the fight.
"When I'm free I'll carry on fighting. I want to fight all over the world."
'Changed woman'
The match took place in a makeshift ring in the grounds of the Klong Prem prison, in front of a crowd of about 700 people, including a few prison inmates.
Siriporn was jailed for selling methamphetamine pills.
Transvestites released from their cells for the event paraded in high heels around the ring with placards.
Siriporn, serving a 10-year sentence for selling small amounts of drugs, dominated the fight, taking the World Boxing Council title 97-93, 98-92, 100-91.
A Thai corrections department official said the parole process would start immediately.
"I think it's very likely she will be released as a result of this victory, maybe in a couple of months. We gave her a chance to show us her talent, and she has done that," said Natti Jitsawang.
"She is a changed woman, and now she has the chance to be free and fight around the world."
Organisers believe the win makes Siriporn the first inmate to clinch a world title in prison.
19/04/07, Andrew Gumbel, Killer sent photographs and video to broadcaster between shootings, (Back).
The man who shot dead 32 people at Virginia Tech took time out after committing the first two murders to post pictures and video to a national television network, police revealed yesterday.
Korean-Born English student Cho Seung-Hui sent a CD-Rom containing video footage of himself reading out an 1,800-word profanity-laced tirade about " getting even" and 29 digital photographs of himself brandishing weapons, 11 of which show him pointing a gun at the camera.
NBC Nightly News last night broadcasted excerpts of the video, in which Cho said: "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to avoid today. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
The package helped answer one of the many mysteries surrounding Cho and his motives why there was a two-hour time lag between the first two killings and the rest of them, which took place in a teaching building housing the engineering department.
It surfaced on a day when numerous warning signs that Cho was psychologically troubled and prone to unusual and alarming behaviour were revealed. Campus police disclosed that he had been investigated for the sexual harassment of two students 17 months ago and was admitted to hospital after he was diagnosed with suicidal depression.
One of his teachers threatened to quit her job if he did not get out of her class. The chair of the English department sat down with him and expressed concern to her superiors. The students who reported him complained he had taken inappropriate photographs of them with his phone.
University officials said that nothing about his behaviour hinted at the kind of criminal enterprise he carried out. The women who complained to the police never filed charges, and one them described his actions as " annoying" rather than threatening.
The police have confirmed he left behind a typed eight-page note in which he railed against "rich kids" and what he saw as double standards on campus. "You caused me to do this," he wrote at one point. This appeared to be same text as read out in the video.
The New York Times also reported that prescription drugs used to treat psychological disorders were found among his effects. Almost every perpetrator of a mass shooting in the United States in recent years had either been on prescription drugs or had stopped taking them shortly before erupting in violence.
Cho's behaviour first became an issue in November 2005, when his angry, profanity-laced creative writing alarmed a number of English faculty members. Lucinda Roy, then the faculty chair, sent samples of his writing to the campus police and counselling services. Professor Roy also encouraged Cho to seek help. "But I couldn't force him to do it," she said. She felt that he might be suicidal. And she described talking to him as " like talking to a hole ... he was not really there".
Nikki Giovanni, a noted poet who teaches at Virginia Tech, said she became alarmed because Cho's behaviour and writing were causing other students to drop out of her class. "I was willing to resign before I was going to continue with him," she told CNN. She told him to stop writing what he was writing. "He said, 'You can't make me'," she said. "He was writing just weird things. I saw the plays, but he was writing poetry, it was intimidating."
After the complaints by the two female students, Cho spoke voluntarily to the police and was escorted to the Carilion Saint Albans Behavioural Health Centre, a mental health institution.
None of that, of course, provides a motive for the shootings. The two women who complained to the campus police were not among the victims. Neither were any immediately obvious classmates or professors. There is still no explanation, either, of why the shootings began in a residential hall and continued, two hours later, in the teaching building. After the first attacks, campus police suspected the boyfriend of the first victim, Emily Hilscher. The boyfriend, Karl Thornhill, was questioned and remains of interest to the investigation, police said. For the moment, though, they continue to presume that Cho acted alone.
Cho's words
* "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option..."
* "I didn't have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled. But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you [expletive]. I did it for them..."
* "When the time came, I did it, I had to ... You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today ... you just want to crucify me ... But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
* "Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats ... Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs. You had everything."
19/04/07, FOX, Virginia Police Say Killer's Manifesto Has Little Value to Investigation, (Back).
Cho Seung-Hui, 23, of South Korea, is identified by Virginia police as the gunman suspected of killing 32 people on April 16.
BLACKSBURG, Va. — The disturbing manifesto and videos of Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC News have some value to police, but they didn't add much that investigators didn't already know, officials said Thursday.
"While there was some marginal value to the package we received, the fact of the matter is, we already had most of this evidence … the package simply confirmed what we already knew in many cases," Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty told reporters Thursday, adding that school officials were "disappointed" at the media's decision to air the video.
"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.
On NBC's "Today" show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly." Some victims' relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.
"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior at Virginia Tech from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."
Meanwhile, Thursday, Virginia Tech officials announced that Cho's victims would be awarded their degrees posthumously during commencement.
Cho apparently took time out Monday morning — possibly after killing two students in a campus dorm room — so he could pose for self-portraits and put together a multi-media manifesto that he then took to the post office and mailed to NBC News in New York City.
The package contained an assortment of video, photo and written documents put together by Cho, the FBI said. In addition to the video, NBC News said the package contained 29 photos he apparently took of himself, 11 of which show him posing with handguns. There also was an 1,800-word written document.
"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he said into the camera, looking down occasionally to read from his manifesto. "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."
"I could have fled, I will no longer run," Cho said.
And then, in a possible indication that he made the recording after the dorm killings and two hours before the murders of 30 others in a campus classroom building, this confession:
"The time came and I did it. ... I had to do what I did."
"But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you (expletive). I did it for them."
The 23-year-old spoke in a harsh monotone as he rambled: "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
He then took aim at his college classmates.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," said Cho, a South Korean immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in Centreville, Va., a Washington suburb. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."
There has been some speculation, especially among online forums, that Cho may have been inspired by the South Korean movie "Oldboy," part of Chan-wook Park's "Vengeance Trilogy." One of the killer's mailed photos shows him brandishing a hammer — the signature weapon of the protagonist — and in a pose similar to one from the film.
The film won the Gran Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. It was the second of Park's "Vengeance Trilogy" and is about a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years. After escaping, he goes on a rampage against his captor.
The connection was spotted by Professor Paul Harris of Virginia Tech, who alerted the authorities, according to London's Evening Standard.
It has become commonplace for movies or music to be linked to especially violent killers. One blogger for the Huffington Post, filmmaker Bob Cesca, dismissed the connection as "the most ridiculous hypothesis yet."
Authorities on Thursday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.
Among other things, Cho's twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.
Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.
He refers to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" — a reference to the teenage killers in the Columbine High School massacre.
NBC News President Steve Capus said the package was sent by overnight delivery but apparently had the wrong ZIP code and wasn't opened until Wednesday, NBC said.
An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath, "Ismail Ax," NBC said.
Capus said that the network notified the FBI around noon, but held off reporting on it at the FBI's request, so that the bureau could look at it first. NBC finally broke the story just before police announced the development at 4:30 p.m.
It was clear Cho videotaped himself, Capus said, because he could be seen leaning in to shut off the camera.
State Police Spokeswoman Corinne Geller cautioned that, while the package was mailed between the two shootings, police have not inspected the footage and have yet to establish exactly when the images were made.
Cho repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.
"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he says, apparently reading from his manifesto. "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."
A law enforcement official said Cho's letter also refers in the same sentence to President Bush and John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed last year to having killed child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media.
Earlier Wednesday, authorities disclosed that in November and December 2005, two women complained to campus police that they had received calls and computer messages from Cho. But the women considered the messages "annoying," not threatening, and neither pressed charges, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.
Neither woman was among the victims in the massacre, police said.
After the second complaint about Cho's behavior, the university obtained a temporary detention order and took Cho away because an acquaintance reported he might be suicidal, authorities said. Police did not identify the acquaintance.
On Dec. 13, 2005, a magistrate ordered Cho to undergo an evaluation at Carilion St. Albans, a private psychiatric hospital. The magistrate signed the order after an initial evaluation found probable cause that Cho was a danger to himself or others as a result of mental illness.
The next day, according to court records, doctors at Carilion conducted further examination and a special justice, Paul M. Barnett, approved outpatient treatment.
A medical examination conducted Dec. 14 reported that that Cho's "affect is flat. ... He denies suicidal ideations. He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment are normal."
The court papers indicate that Barnett checked a box that said Cho "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." Barnett did not check the box that would indicate a danger to others.
It is unclear how long Cho stayed at Carilion, though court papers indicate he was free to leave as of Dec. 14. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Cho had been continually enrolled at Tech and never took a leave of absence.
A spokesman for Carilion St. Albans would not comment.
Though the incidents with the two women did not result in criminal charges, police referred Cho to the university's disciplinary system, Flinchum said. But Ed Spencer, assistant vice president of student affairs, would not comment on any disciplinary proceedings, saying federal law protects students' medical privacy even after death.
Some students refused to second-guess the university.
"Who would've woken up in the morning and said, 'Maybe this student who's just troubled is really going to do something this horrific?"' said Elizabeth Hart, a communications major and a spokeswoman for the student government.
Classes were scheduled to continue at Virginia Tech on Monday. University Provost Mark McNamee said school officials were outlining a way to let students complete their courses, possibly by allowing their work to this point in the semester count as completed.
Disturbing Signs
One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho's problems was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her introduction to creative writing class in late 2005.
Students in Giovanni's class had told their professor that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. Female students refused to come to class. She said she considered him "mean" and "a bully."
Lucinda Roy, professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that she, too, relayed her concerns to campus police and various other college units after Cho displayed antisocial behavior in her class and handed in disturbing writing assignments.
But she said authorities "hit a wall" in terms of what they could do "with a student on campus unless he'd made a very overt threat to himself or others." Cho resisted her repeated suggestion that he undergo counseling, Roy said.
Questions lingered over whether campus police should have issued an immediate campus-wide warning of a killer on the loose and locked down the campus after the first burst of gunfire.
Police said that after the first shooting, in which two students were killed, they believed that it was a domestic dispute, and that the gunman had fled the campus. That man is no longer a suspect.
A dormitory neighbor of the first two victims, Ryan Clark, 22, and Emily Hilscher, 19, described on ABC's "Good Morning America" what she saw that morning in Ambler Johnson Hall.
"I heard a really loud female voice scream. I opened my door and that's when I saw the blood and the footprints, the sneaker-prints, leading in a trail from her room," Molly Donahue said.
That's when she saw Clark, a resident assistant in the dorm, on the floor against a door, she said. A friend later told her he was dead. Donahue she said has since tried to return to the dorm but felt physically ill and is still terrified.
"I got to the point where I can't be alone," she said.
20/04/07, Christopher Whitcomb, Building a Better Lockdown, (Back).
I was at my desk at the F.B.I.’s Critical Incident Response Group on April 20, 1999, when a colleague ducked his head into my office and asked if I’d heard the news. A school shooting in Colorado. Some place called Columbine. At least 10 dead. Columbine, I remember thinking as I clicked on the bank of TVs on the far wall. Where in God’s name is that?
After 13 years as an F.B.I. agent, I’d become somewhat inured to violence: bank robberies, murders, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City. Death had become my business. Yet these images were appalling. Teenagers were dying in a public high school. Almost as disturbing, I saw panic: people running, blue uniforms and black-garbed SWAT officers with rifles pointing at a threat no one yet understood. Confusion. Crisis. Dismay.
Such confusion may have been understandable eight years ago. But that was before a 16-year-old boy killed five students, a teacher and a guard in a Minnesota school; before a recently expelled student turned a gun on officials and students at Appalachian School of Law, killing three; before a truck driver shot 10 girls (killing five) at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania.
It was before the F.B.I.’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime held a symposium of 160 educators, law enforcement professionals and mental health experts from 18 universities in Leesburg, Va., and issued a comprehensive report on causes, mitigation strategies and security considerations of school shootings.
It was before this country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies revised training procedures and adopted crisis-response protocols to deal with similar threats; before the release of dozens of relevant books, academic studies, television programs and documentaries; before high schools, colleges and universities made uniformed security guards a part of campus life.
So how did we end up here, yet again? Why are we still asking how a calamity like the deaths at Virginia Tech could happen?
The most obvious reason, and one that’s been widely discussed in the days since the shootings, is complacency. Well, we can wring our hands all we want, but to some extent complacency is unavoidable: it’s what sneaks in after all the blame has been handed out, the news media have disappeared, the critics have taken their shots and the political knees have stopped jerking.
There’s also a psychological reason for letting our guard down: we all want to return to day-to-day business and focus on things that are most likely to affect us. Deeper down, there is a natural instinct in all of us to block out the idea that anything so unthinkable could happen to us. To stay alert means to acknowledge that horror is just around the corner, and that runs against human nature.
And, to some extent, complacency is a rational response: major crises like Columbine and Blacksburg are statistically unlikely ever to directly involve any of us. Federal agencies like the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security try to maintain focus, dumping hundreds of millions of dollars each year into crisis management programs, but most other agencies are loath to spend hard-fought tax dollars on “frivolous” equipment and training they are unlikely ever to use.
Outside major metropolitan areas, high-level police officers won’t face anything even remotely like Blacksburg during their careers. It simply makes better sense to finance anti-gang operations and drug eradication programs in schools than to pay SWAT operators to sit around waiting for 16-year-old assassins. The solution doesn’t lie in blaming complacency for these events, but in finding a level of preparedness that, for local jurisdictions and large institutions, makes sense in terms of risk and expense.
A far less discussed reason we find ourselves facing another massacre is inexperience. Law enforcement is a noble profession, filled with men and women who devote their lives to protecting our communities; but crisis resolution in most departments is a career path that administrators and those with hopes for promotion avoid like the plague.
Why volunteer for the chance to make split-second choices under the worst possible circumstances, knowing you are going to be second-guessed and perhaps blamed every step of the way? The F.B.I.’s Critical Incident Response Group had to develop a computer-based training program because field office commanders resisted larger interagency training conducted by real people. These people knew that poor performance in simulations could damage their careers for real.
So, how do we move forward and prevent another nightmare like Blacksburg?
For starters, we have to assign blame where it belongs: on those who commit these heinous acts. Then our schools, businesses, hospitals, other institutions and communities must take the simple, commonsense decisions that countless studies recommend. Sure, the sorts of precautionary steps and community awareness being promoted in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings are important, but all the profiling and counseling in the world will not stop every attack. We need to prepare for and deal with the attack itself.
•
Every institution should have a crisis response plan. The scope and complexity will of course depend on factors like population, square footage and the presence of hazardous materials, but most don’t have to be expensive. Often small businesses can get away with simply taping a sheet of paper next to the copier that identifies exits, emergency contacts and safe areas inside the building. Most large corporations and institutions will need to find professional advice. (As someone who provides such advice, I admit it doesn’t come cheap. But the cost of preparation will pay off should disaster strike.)
•
While each plan will be different, the fundamentals remain the same. All should insure that potential victims are able to maintain two-way contact with law enforcement and emergency medical providers. Many people feel that crisis-call stations, which have long been staples at universities and in some communities, are no longer necessary in the age of cellphones. That’s wrong: these brightly marked, well-lighted phone towers not only provide communications when cellular networks are overloaded, but their very presence can deter attackers.
•
Whenever written emergency directions are posted, they should include understandable symbols for foreign-language speakers, children and the visually impaired. That may seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how many “emergency plans” I’ve seen that bogged down in unnecessary verbiage, directed people to nonexistent stairwells and failed to consider non-English speakers.
•
All emergency plans should prominently list a “check in” number that every employee or student should be asked to call in the event of emergency. Even if you feel you are safe, rescue experts need to know where you are and how many people are in the area. (It will also provide relief to your family if the situation drags on.)
•
Large institutions should compile detailed, easily available “site surveys” of buildings and campuses that rescue and law-enforcement officials can use to plan their strategies in a crisis. Site surveys should include blueprints of all buildings and infrastructure, videotapes of interior spaces, lock information, charts of surveillance camera coverage, notes on access to tunnels and other information.
•
I recommend to my clients that they get a professional risk assessment of all their current policies that can, for example, point out improvements to exterior lighting and in their ability to “lock down” all buildings.
•
While the police and medical professionals will eventually take charge, every institution should have set response protocols for its security personnel and employees who will manage the initial stages of the crisis. Where possible, planners should build and hire security staff for safe zones that these people can operate from, and where potential victims can take refuge.
•
And because all threats — natural, criminal or terrorism-related — eventually require evacuation, employers should make sure their people know where and under what circumstance they should move from “bunkering in place” to trying an escape. Often it is safer to find cover where you are than to expose yourself by running away. Helping your workers understand how to make the right decision can mean the difference between life and death.
As I reflect on the Blacksburg shootings and think about ways to keep it from happening again, I look back to that April afternoon in 1999 and the important project I was trying to finish. It was a paper on crisis management — one of the last requirements I needed for the master’s degree I soon received. From Virginia Tech.
20/04/07, Mark Santora & Christine Hauser, Anger of Killer Was on Exhibit in His Writings , (Back).
BLACKSBURG, Va., April 19 — More than anyone else on the Virginia Tech campus, it was the professors and students in the English department who knew of the mental turmoil of Cho Seung-Hui.
Where the Virginia Tech police only heard scattered reports of his harassing behavior, and mental health professionals knew of his suicidal tendencies, it was the English department — where he was a major — that read his writings and saw the images of persecution, revenge and anger that they revealed, many months before he erupted into violence on Monday and killed 32 people, as well as himself.
And those English professors and students appear to have worked harder than anyone to intervene in his life. Trying to balance the freedom needed to be creative against the warning signs of psychosis, as many as eight of his teachers in the last 18 months had formed what one called a “task force” to discuss how to handle him, gathering twice on the subject and frequently communicating among themselves.
On at least two separate occasions they reached out to university officials, telling them as recently as this September that Mr. Cho was trouble. They made little headway, however, and no action was taken by school administrators in response to their concerns.
The students also made their fears known, some even refusing to attend class as long Mr. Cho was there. Others tried to reach out to him.
Ross Alameddine sat a few feet from Mr. Cho for months in a class examining contemporary horror films and literature. Both students were required to keep what were known as “fear journals,” where they chronicled both their reaction to the material covered in class and their own fears.
Mr. Alameddine, according to classmates, made an effort to speak to Mr. Cho on several occasions, trying to draw him out of his closed world and his refusal to interact with other students.
On Monday, Mr. Cho shot and killed Mr. Alameddine.
There is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Cho targeted his classmate, but it is the first time one of the victims has been connected to Mr. Cho before the shootings.
The class they took together was new, offered for the first time last fall. The students studied movies like “Friday the 13th” and read Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft and Patricia Cornwell novels. “We had a whole discussion on serial killers,” said one student, who asked that she not be named because she wanted to avoid a crush of attention from the news media.
Mr. Cho never spoke during the discussion, she said, but he took notes.
The student and Mr. Cho were in another class as well, a small class on playwriting, during which she grew fascinated by him.
“In all honesty, I took a huge interest in him last semester,” she said. “I never heard him speak a word, and I was so curious about him. I actually tried to follow him after class one day, but he got on a bike and I couldn’t keep up. He had a red bicycle.”
In interviews with six members of the English faculty who had Mr. Cho in a class or had been in close contact with him, they described how as early as September 2005 and as recently as September 2006, they found themselves struggling to define the line between a legitimate work of self-expression and one of violent or sick imagery that needed to be restrained.
“Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be,” said Prof. Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the English Department. “But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”
Lisa Norris, an English professor, said that, outside of an explicit threat that was rooted in reality, it would be impossible to have some kind of standard by which to judge whether a student’s work was so alarming as to warrant intervention.
“If the student seems abnormal in his behavior or affect and is writing about violence, then there could be something to worry about — particularly if the resolution of the story includes suicide or murder for major characters or otherwise ends in despair,” she said. “It is not necessarily the work alone that raises concern, but the work plus the student’s affect and behavior.”
In Mr. Cho’s case, she was alarmed before he had written a word.
When he signed up for the 10-person workshop she taught this year, Professor Norris was worried that he simply would not communicate, and in September she reached out to one of her superiors, Mary Ann Lewis, the associate dean at the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. She said Ms. Lewis was helpful but had no information about prior problems, including his hospitalization at a mental health facility in 2005. Ms. Lewis said she had no comment on the conversation.
But Mr. Cho’s bizarre behavior was evident to students, faculty and police going back to 2005.
“Nobody took too much notice of him except for that’s the kinda weird quiet kid who never talks,” said Steven Davis, 23, a senior who was in a drama class with him. “Until we read his work. And then it was like whoa, something is off.”
One woman, an English major who was in a contemporary British fiction class with Mr. Cho in the fall of 2005 and who asked not to be identified, said he sent her unsolicited electronic messages after seeing her in class and then looking her up on the Facebook Web site.
Mr. Cho, she said, also stalked another girl in the class, scaring her so badly that she went to the police that December.
That matches the campus police account of a woman who came to them in December 2005, part of a series of events that culminated with Mr. Cho being held for psychiatric evaluation and later released.
She said Mr. Cho knew things about her family that would be difficult to know without serious effort. For instance, he knew what sports her siblings played in high school.
Beyond that, he simply acted strange. On the first day of class the teacher asked everyone to stand up and introduce themselves.
“When it was his turn, he didn’t stand up and he said his name was Question Mark,” she said.
Professor Lucinda Roy, who was the head of the English Department in the fall of 2005, chose to deal with Mr. Cho by removing him from a group class and tutoring him. She also passed along his writing, which she described as “angry,” to both the Virgnia Tech police and the university counseling service.
Prof. Edward Falco, who last semester had him in a playwrighting class, did not make the other students read or critique two of Mr. Cho’s plays that contained violent images and profane language. But he alerted other faculty members, and learned that they, too, had been concerned.
After the shooting Monday, Professor Falco’s students began sending him messages about how they felt guilty for not doing or saying something earlier. Professor Falco responded in an e-mail message, hoping to help put their minds at ease.
“There was violence in Cho’s writing — but there is a huge difference between writing about violence and behaving violently,” he wrote. “We could not have known what he would do.”
20/04/07, Rick Salutin, After VT, a sense of unease, (Back).
I think it's stupid to say, as the CBC has, that not running Cho Seung-Hui's video will help stop further slaughter. It only shows how desperately unclear everyone is about how to deal with these events. There's nothing new about the potential for violent outbursts in unstable individuals. The trick is preventing them. That's what is in doubt now, in North America.
Even those with the clearest answer -- gun control -- suffer from unease. The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom warns: "But don't assume gun control alone will prevent another school shooting. There is something dark and dangerous going on in North America." On the right, John O'Sullivan says "radical evil" is afoot, to deny God, deny Good. U.S. writer Paul Craig Roberts, who is sort of both left and right, says, "In my day parents and teachers had authority. Today teachers have no authority, which is why they have to call the police to control the kids."
I tend to agree that there are uncomfortable issues about authority here. Take the role of faculty and staff at Virginia Tech. I found them impressive. They showed concern, identified the risky student and got him to a psychiatric facility. His English profs removed him from class but tutored him. Yet they were ineffective in the crucial task of protecting the community from danger compared to the less professional players of earlier eras: family, friends, community, religion. Those societies seemed better than ours at containing the violent, anarchic impulses of individuals.
I know this sounds awfully traditional. Let me try to save myself from nostalgia for the fifties (or 1500s) by saying what I think "worked" in earlier times. The ability to keep the dangerous impulses of individuals under control was based on an entire social fabric that was hierarchical and patriarchal. It included religion, institutionalized in churches; and a moral code that tolerated sex within narrow limits. Parental authority was backed by religion (honour thy parents) and by sanctions such as the threat of hell.
All this was internalized in a sense of guilt and shame over violations. There was reverence for country, and a sense of debt to those who died in war "for us." There was a penal code that didn't stand much tinkering in the name of civil rights, and a set of formal outlets for violent impulses that had been repressed. These included regular wars on a massive scale, as well as institutionalized racism and lynching. In such societies, dissenters -- artists, rebels etc. -- could feel a certain security that their acts would not lead to total social breakdown and chaos frightening even to themselves. It all "worked" in the sense that it largely kept the lid on menacing impulses, or channelled them elsewhere than the local schoolyard or college. With the breakdown in recent decades of this fabric, particular players can try to impose controls and limits -- parents, schools, teachers, courts, governments -- but they will not be nearly as effective as they were within a total framework that no longer exists.
The human and emotional costs were monstrous. People were dulled to their own experience and each other. I would not want to restore this set of constraints if one could, and one can't. You can't put that lid back on again. You can only try and fail, with further disastrous consequences.
The issue is now: Can our society devise a set of social controls that prevent explosions like Virginia Tech, but do not require severe repression and an impossible return to the undesirable traits of earlier eras? A teacher of mine, Herbert Marcuse, phrased this as: Can you have non-repressive desublimation? -- mainly showing how hard it is to even formulate the question. Can you have a non-racist, non-patriarchal, non-sexually repressive, non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian yet orderly society that manages to control its potentially aberrant members? What would it look like and how would you get there? That's the utopian project for our time. The two scripts in the past 50 years that claimed to have an answer -- Marxism and free-market ideology -- have lost most of their legitimacy. The floor is wide open.
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