The New York Times says that a faculty member at the University of Alabama killed 3 and wounded 6 others after being denied tenure at the biology department. Circumstantial evidence suggested that she was upset at what she believed was unfair treatment. The suspect apparently “had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure”, and the NYT quoted one source as saying “she began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair.”
What makes people go over the edge? Would failure to get tenure be enough? Or will any little thing do? Henry David Thoreau believed that many people, if not most of mankind, were just holding despair in. Thoreau wrote “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” A word, a look, or a series of unfortunate events can be enough to push someone right over the brink. According to a 2006 study “intermittent explosive disorder” (or IED for short) afflicts more than 7% of people. “A national sample in the United States estimated that 16 million Americans may fit the criteria for IED.”
Individuals diagnosed with IED report their outbursts were brief (lasting less than an hour), with a variety of bodily symptoms (sweating, chest tightness, twitching, palpitations) reported by a third of one sample. The violent acts were frequently reported accompanied by a sensation of relief, and in some cases, pleasure, but accompanied by remorse after the fact.
One of the more common manifestations of IED is road rage. Like other types of IED, road rage is more prevalent among men than women. But environmental factors may play a part too. The top 5 road rage cities in America are New York City, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., a list which is exceedingly suggestive.
Various therapies and medicines can be used to treat this condition. But may none of these may feel as temporarily fulfilling as this failed attempt at trying to dump the contents of a computer monitor to the printer. It’s not sure that works, but it probably didn’t do his career much good. Note to all: in Windows dumping the screen buffer to the memory can be achieved by Alt-Prt Sc. You do not necessarily have to put your monitor on the photocopier.
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Since the MSM probably isn’t going to mention this, apparently she was Harvard trained, and from the comments on her ratemyprofessor site, was liberal and not afraid to openly indoctrinate her students. She also didn’t like Sarah Palin.
Everyone has their moments, to be sure. I’m a fairly laid back dude. (I sometimes refer to myself as the calm, cool center of the universe when people around me are losing it.) So my outbursts have been few and far between. I remember throwing a spelling book at the wall in my room when I was 7 out of frustration over an answer that was printed incorrectly. That’s about the worst of it, so maybe I can’t relate.
It’s one thing to damage some property, but the crime of murder is truly unique. When discussing these temporary outbursts, and even giving medical definition (and I fear, medical cover) to something like this, it’s important to remember the kind of person and personality it takes to even attempt to take another person’s life. Throwing something valuable, or even running a car into something, can’t compare with the act of pointing a gun and pulling the trigger. There is only one particular and terrible purpose.
I know we have a reputation here in Alabama regarding guns, but I think most people down here also have a tremendous respect for them. A faculty meeting is not the place or time to carry, even if you have a license to do so. Something is terribly wrong with this woman, and I think it’s highly likely we’ll be reading about her execution 20 years from now.
The other day I suffered from
Chest tightness, palpitations
Followed by the twitching sweats
And similar sensations
An IED attack I feared
I surely was a wreck, sir
Then realized it only was
Swimsuited Brooklyn Dexter
According to a 2006 study “intermittent explosive disorder” (or IED for short) afflicts more than 7% of people. “A national sample in the United States estimated that 16 million Americans may fit the criteria for IED.”
Intermittent Explosive Disorder. That’s rich.
I suppose jobless Muslim youths turning over cars and setting them on fire in the suburbs of Paris are victims of Sudden Adolescent Pyromaniac Syndrome (SAPS).
The Kamikazes in World War II were victims of Manned Missile Compulsion Disorder (MMCD) which also afflicted the 19 al-Qaeda hijackers on 9-11.
I’m sure a tenured professor somewhere can get a federal grant to study these pathologies.
Once upon a time, not really so long ago, behavior that was absolutely socially unacceptable was classified into a very few simple categories: theft, murder, assault, and trespass. There were gradations on this, hair-splitting if you will, like rape being an especially nasty type of assault, but essentially it was pretty much cut and dried.
But now, in these more enlightened times, these social abnormalities are seen as manifestations of mental illness. Whatever are we to do?
My modest solution? Imprison or execute the mentally ill. Of course, that does sort of put us back to doing what we did to such people before we recognized that they were doing it for mental illness rather than moral turpitude.
Ah well, shit happens.
What are the chances this leftist was on some mild altering drug as prescribed by her shrink?
What are the chances we will hear of it if she were?
One structure for prayer is given by the acronym “ACTS”, representing adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication (or intercession.) This is one order, where we start off focusing on who God is, and praising him for that.
Two of the four elements of ACTS are Adoration / Praise and Thanksgiving.
By starting a time of prayer with adoration and praise, we focus first on God, rather than on ourselves. We think of who God is, and what He has done. In the Summary of the Law (Bible Verses from the NIV) Jesus teaches us to first of all love God with all our heart, mind and soul.
The writer to the Hebrews encourages us to praise God continually : “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name.” (Heb 13:15)
Praise is also an excellent remedy for times when we may perceive that we are under attack from the evil one, or that we are feeling low. In both cases, it brings the nature of God’s power and presence into a situation.
Whilst individual preferences will vary, praise and worship in private prayer may well be quite different to corporate “church” worship styles. Below are some suggestions to get you started…..
Its best to praise and thank God from whom all blessings flow even when it seems there’s not much to praise and thank God for.
Conservative Teacher, you are full of it. I read all the comments on Bishop at Rate My Professor, and I found no mention of indoctrination nor Sarah Palin. The only mention of Bishop’s poltical views stated explicitly that she only expresses them after class. Your post degrades the quality of BC. I say this as a native Alabamian and extreme conservative.
I found lists of ‘top five road rage cities’, but none of them matched the list provided by Richard. The first national survey took place in 2006.
The correct list is
2006: Miami, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles and Boston
2007: Miami, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington DC
2008: Miami, Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C.
2009: New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Atlanta, Minneapolis/St. Paul.
(Google: road rage [year] cities)
The fact that Richard selected his particular incorrect list of cities is ‘exceedingly suggestive’ about the factual reliability of his reports and the motivation behind the inaccuracies.
The citation for the top cities is from http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/accidents-hazardous-conditions/road-rage6.htm
I listed only four of the top five and I do regret the mistake. Here’s the citation in full
Urban B #2
“A faculty meeting is not the place or time to carry, even if you have a license to do so.”
Wrong sir. This situation shows that everytime is the right time to carry. If a squared away armed citizen had been there the body/casualty count would have been much lower. Maybe even just one: the perp.
Instead there was just a room full of victims waiting to be shot. Just like at all other “gun-safe zones.”
Carry everywhere and every time you can. I do, everytime I leave the house. Jogging, that 5 min run to the corner store, EVERYWHERE. I’m a cop so I don’t need a CPL, but if I were a civilian I’d have a CPL.
I speak from the experience of many homicide scenes. WE WILL NOT GET THERE IN TIME TO SAVE YOU!
Arm yourself, train, develop a combat mindset, then train some more. Do this or just say baaaa everytime you look in the mirror.
Be a sheepdog. America needs more sheepdogs. We have enough sheep.
http://www.killology.com/sheep_dog.htm
The words that stand out for me in Bishop’s ratings are “brilliant, disorganized, hard, and hot.” There is only one mention of her being “a socialist, but she only talks about it after class.”
I get a sense of a young woman who worked too hard, perhaps was mentally ill, and lost sight of right and wrong in her quest for self-realization.
Roy M @ Feb 13, 2010 – 2:02 am:
W’s list is:
New York City, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Your lists are:
2006: Miami, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles and Boston
2007: Miami, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington DC
2008: Miami, Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C.
2009: New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Atlanta, Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Looks to me like W’s list is largely consistent with your own. Your post seems to imply that he was attempting to mislead his readers. Instead, it appears that your “correct list” merely reinforces what I took as his fundamental point:
Cities are stressful places to live, and that stress may be a contributor to road rage.
Your magnification of a simple omission into a general questioning of the “factual reliability of his reports and the motivation behind the inaccuracies” is itself “strongly suggestive” of an immoderate temperment.
In other words: relax, dude. There’s no reason to be so snarky. Our host is good peeps.
Cheers,
L3
I expect the movies/blogs/academic reaction… now: she’s another Valerie Solanas. A woman who strikes back the sexist, masculinist establishment whose blindness to her excellence is caused by their genitalia! No doubt the day-to-day oppression of the male establishment drove her to commit her act. Boxed in by stereotypes, she escaped in the only way she could-she thelma’d ‘em! Down with male science. Down with its phallologocentric patriarchy! Not guilty by reason of others’ sexism!
–
Don’t she know we’re civilized: we solve these problems with lawyers, not violence.
Walt/3 — Dang! Jolted awake (5:50am) with the horrible thought that I misspelled the lady’s name. I had. The SI swimsuit edition cover girl is BROOKLYN DECKER, not Brooklyn Dexter. My bad.
No one here knows enough about the details of the interpersonal situation at UAH to comment on that. However, this kind of crime brings up a couple of interesting questions:
1. Does a certain amount of lex talionis in a society encourage better behavior among persons at large who notice that retribution was indeed delivered?
2. How much of the rage in society is generated by cowardly managers who do not openly and honestly state their positions and plans?
During 25 years in an academic institution, I came to expect that those not granted tenure would feel blind-sided. It was infinitely more common for tenured faculty members to make snarky comments to a tenure-track colleague than to take him/her aside for a honest and detailed discussion of his/her tenure prospects. Perhaps it’s this way because of the pervasive fog of paranoia that hangs over academic departments. I once explained to an interim faculty member why he was unlikely to be moved to tenure-track status. He got angry at me, but not at the department head who had no intention of changing his status, yet who told the young fool there was a 50-50 chance of a tenure-track. Treating other people honestly takes guts and incurs costs. I certainly shed no tears for any dishonest coward of an administrator/manager who pays the ultimate price.
So the shooter was a woman? Another stereotype (angry white male) bites the dust.
Root causes for such an outburst come down to a self-righteous personality where one feels better then anyone else. Paranoia plays a part and could have been stoked by the university politics as professors fight to obtain tenure. Apparently, getting tenure has nothing to do with your skills or accomplishments but everything to do with how well you are liked by your peers. It’s a dangerous political game!
Just because your peers screwed you politically at work, doesn’t give you the right to whip out a gun and shoot six of them, killing three and seriously injuring the remaining three! It is premeditated because she brought the firearm to campus. She waited for a faculty meeting. Perhaps they informed her at this meeting that her tenure was denied. Or someone made a snide remark about her tenure position.
Either way, one must be cautious when playing political games of this sort in the work place. Some people carry a grudge and that hatred can brew for a long time. It can consume an individual into believing there is a conspiracy against them. The hate grows until they decide to fight back and take action. Fortunately, there are few people who would actually engage in full blown retribution and retaliation. But some of the signs is someone with a strong will, self motivated, large ego, self-righteous attitude, and large amount of hatred against individuals.
What causes someone to actually snap? To cross over from having those internal thoughts of hatred and malice and a desire for revenge to actually taking action? I don’t think anyone really knows for sure. I do know that the philosophies taught in the Bible’s old and new testaments clearly instruct one to avoid self and to focus on God instead. It is the love of self and the thinking that you are better then others that leads to horrible consequences. In terms of psychology, it is the ID / EGO / SUPER-EGO where something went wrong. In the animal world this is a akin to a spurned male coming back to take out the alpha male using greater intelligence. Her reaction was purely emotional and not logical in any way or form. She may have justified her revenge based on the pleasure of carrying it out but the consequences were not considered as she was blinded by her rage.
Perhaps upon further consideration it was not the absolutely best course of action for the tenure committee to reject her after the job talk by using a barbershop quartet karaoke rendition based on “My Way.”
Speaking of statistics, I believe University of Alabama is a “Gun-Free Zone” which is quite a noble thing. Six out of the seven people killed or wounded were following the rules. One person was not. Hence, there is no logical reason to expect that expanding the “Gun-Free Zone” nationwide will not provide the same results… Or, something like that.
/
Seriously, this was a well planned shooting or there is something very odd about the case.
[Fox news]
Biology professor Amy Bishop was charged Friday night with One count of capital murder, which means she could face the death penalty if convicted. Authorities say Bishop opened fire during an afternoon faculty meeting, killing three fellow biology professors and injuring three other school employees… She was taken Friday night in handcuffs from a police precinct to the county jail and could be heard saying, “It didn’t happen. There’s no way… They are still alive.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585682,00.html
I find it strange that in incidents like this everyone is so interested in why they did it. What difference does it make? For any number or reasons, nature vs nurture, or whatever, from time to time people will be mentally defective and decide to kill. It has always been this way and always will be.
I believe the important question is, why is there a repeated pattern of the victims just standing there waiting to be slaughtered?
Even if the victims couldn’t carry a gun, most offices have a multitude improvised weapons at hand. Someone could have thrown an chair at her while someone else brought the ubiquitous Swingline crashing down on her skull. Nope, just stand there and wait to die. WTF, over.
While I’ll eat crow if they did put up a fight, my money says they probably did nothing.
Baaaa
Intermittent Explosive Disorder? Are you kidding? Sounds like Irritated Bowels. The lady definitely got her head in the wrong department, but to excuse such behavior by calling it Involuntarily Crappy Attitude takes the cake. Why that just isn’t fair, I worked hard for this attitude and you cannot demean it with cheap psychological patois. Why where will it end? Right-wing Attitude Verbally Expressed Disorder (RAVED)? Or Left Over Old Nut Idiomatic Expression Regression(LOONIER)?
Frustration with Microsoft products I can understand, Anger at self important professors of Make Believe Assets, I could even entertain, but using a gun against another being to express that anger or frustration is not the way to win anyone’s heart or mind. It kind of defeats the purpose of academic exercise.
I believe the presence of a Gun or two can have a great calming influence, too.
the syndrome has been with us for some time. it is largely a disorder afflicting Americans. (but not exclusively) going postal.
the illness has been profiled by law enforcement but still hard to know who will blow up and how.
basically boils down to an individual who blames others for their lot in life. a failure to take responsibility for oneself.
In the old days, people tended to believe God had a purpose for you on earth beyond the material world and your job here was to do his work. (As Rabbi Moses Luzzato said we are here to do good.)
Thank God we got over that nonsense and now know tenure is the most important thing evah.
…did she prove that she didn’t deserve tenure ? was she too wacko for the liberal/progressives ?
Inevitably, cases such as the Alabama Tenure Shooter raise the question of the difference between insanity and criminality. The fact is, most of us can’t tell the difference. I think to most people the idea of committing violence on another person looks like insanity, even in cases where there is a clear personal financial gain – the main exceptions being self-defense and military combat.
It is easy for us to believe some form of temporary insanity in such cases, and that implies a need for lenience. But there are other cases that sound crazy but indicate a more serious problem. Shortly after I moved to California in 1978 a man there kidnapped a 14 year old girl, raped her, and tried to kill her by cutting her arms off; she survived. You can say there that he was just trying to avoid punishment for the crime, a clear case of gain for murder. A few years after I moved to Florida the guy got out of prison and moved to Florida too. There were protests in the neighborhood where he moved. And shortly thereafter he raped and killed a woman and then committed suicide. Was he insane and if so did that equate to leniency?
Then there was the case of a man who raped a young girl but was acquitted in court. The mother of the girl walked up to him after his acquittal and shot him dead. Was the mother a victim of IED or rather of TESS – Temporary Extreme Sanity Syndrome? And how do you treat her in the court system?
By the way, trying to put your monitor on the copier is ridiculous! That’s why they make video camcorders. And don’t try to fax a floppy disk – doesn’t work.
Ledger,
Yes, getting 6 people before they got out of the way.
Problem is that running works if everybody runs, but is bad for the first to run. So nobody ran.
Evidently the comments section is being scrubbed. As I read all the comments shown and none spoke of “socialism” nor were there any comments directed at Palin. She was dinged on being disorganized, obtuse in her curricula and was prone to giving tests on minutia. She also was definitely rated “hot” by one commenter. Her “hotness” rating is zero. What that rating has to do with teaching I have no earthly idea. But she isn’t plain or ugly from the picture posted on the news. Just a regular run of the mill woman who felt jilted by the system and most likely singled out by her dept for exclusion. Which will make a weak minded person snap. Too bad the victims weren’t listening to their instincts. I bet you they had a suspicion that she was going to blow.
The Austrian system which is what our higher learning institutions are based upon has become corrupted like many of our other institutions. Tenure was a lofty idea that in theory would allow unfettered exploration of new ideas and provide our country with infinite potential in the quest for knowledge. Unfortunately it has become a tool for suppression and dogmatic cliques. This led to the subversion of peer review and the rise of such perversions as AGW, et al.
There’s some distinctively American version of “running amok,” but I have no idea how to define it. Going postal is a kind of classic running amok, where the killer goes on a general killing binge, but even that is at the workplace. A more general but targeted killing, however, like taking out the Bio department, seems to be something more particular. Maybe it’s just a form of revenge, which is a deep current in American culture. We wouldn’t have any Clint Eastwood movies if it weren’t.
via Wikipedia:
“Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok (also spelled amuck or amuk), is derived from the Malay/Indonesian/Tagalog word amuk, meaning “mad with uncontrollable rage”. The verb form is mengamuk, or in tagalog past tense nag-amok, with nag-aamok as present tense. The word was use by the British to describe to run-a-muck, or murder indiscriminately. [2], [3] It was later used in India during the British Empire, to describe an elephant gone mad, separated from its herd, running wild and causing devastation. The word was made popular by the colonial tales of Rudyard Kipling.
“Although commonly used in a colloquial and less-violent sense, the phrase is particularly associated with a specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome in Malaysian culture. In a typical case of running amok, a male who has shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence will acquire a weapon and, in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters. Amok episodes of this kind normally end with the attacker being killed by bystanders, or committing suicide. The syndrome of “Amok” is found in the DSM-IV TR.
Worm, it takes a little time to get up and grab a chair, and a lot can happen in a few seconds. I’ll defer to experts on how fast trained folks can fight back, but if you picked your seat carefully at the table I’d think you could hit the person next to you and then have your choice of folks across the table who couldn’t reach you in in time. And if they were denying tenure I’d bet that nobody wanted to sit next to her, or had laptops (not staplers) handy to swing.
To me this is labeling the symptom as the disease and even the disease may be just the conflict between civilization and the hardwired fight or flight reflexes.
The struggle to redirect and control inappropriate feelings has been the subject of thought from Plato, Zen, the Military, and the martial arts.
That is one reason that I find the current blather about expressing, getting in touch, and thinking about the feeling you have about your feelings, both annoying and risky to civilized behavior.
The end result of Democracy is anarchy.
More on the shooter here
Seems unsurprising that she didnt get tenure given that she had made herself a pain in the neck to the administration.
Ridgerunner @ 9 – You are basing your assumption re indoctrination on one entry on ratemyprofessor. HMMM.
Miami has a very diverse, dense population, including a large community of senior citizens who have a very different driving style from younger drivers.
“A very different driving style”?
I had to laugh when I read this because Allegheny County is second only to Miami/Dade in the percentage of senior citizens, and in Pittsburgh we are *well* acquainted with that type of driver I have come to term “the Pittsburgh dingbat.”
Pittsburgh drivers are on the whole exceptionally polite. 80%-90% of the time people let another driver into traffic, wait patiently, etc. It doesn’t “drive” like a metro area here, more like a small town … as with so many other things Burgh. (Downtown Pgh at rush hour is a whole other story of craziness, both vehicular and pedestrian, but that’s the exception).
But the Pittsburgh dingbat … look out. They will just STOP in the middle of fast-moving traffic for reasons known only to them (ooh, look! fireworks! … ooh, look! lawn clippings!) … or GO when they should yield … because sight, hearing & reaction time has all degraded, alas. Their unpredictability is very dangerous. It was a Pittsburgh dingbat who nearly killed (stoopidly helmetless and Hayabusa-ridin’) Ben Roethlisberger a few years back.
Walt @ 16:
We knew who ya meant. Trust me. Miss Spellings is charming either way.
James @ 19:
FWIW, “delusions of grandeur” and “delusions of persecution” are, or at least used to be, two of the signature symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. My father, who suffered from this, exhibited both, but as I stated in a previous thread, his break from reality was not a break from morality. An act of this sort he was simply not capable of even in his most reality-detached episodes. He was, by nature (his personality, his upbringing & his faith), a protector, not a predator; a sheepdog, not a wolf.
Craziness alone doesn’t explain an evil act IMO.
We certainly do have a solid percentage of the population who walk around daily with unrealistic expectations and a sense of personal entitlement. Couple those with poor impulse control in a particular personality and you are edging closer to the “capable of violence” line. But then there are a host of other factors that also come into play and can make the difference between whacking a mailbox and whacking your colleagues.
Worm @ 22:
Well, the “why” question in response to evil is an ages-old one. So people are going to speculate in the aftermath because that is what people do. The reaction is soul-deep in the human race and nothing is going to eradicate it.
OTOH I do agree with your observation that there should be more emphasis on doing something about the repeated pattern of stunned-n-helpless-victims-waiting-to-be-slaughtered. That is its own sort of mental illness, in a way … clinging to the belief that engaging homicidal violence with extreme passivity will somehow defuse the violence.
Ace of Spades has a quote up on his site that seems to have been subsequently scrubbed. Anyone know how to access google cache?
TyCobb #5
<>
I refer you to Michael Savage’s book: “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”
A best seller in years gone by.
herb @ 34,
I made no assumption about indoctrination. I reported that I did not see any evidence of it based on Rate My Professor, which was the source that “Conservative Teacher” used to claim that Bishop indoctrinated.
I come to this blog for the analyses of a relatively small number of commenters. What there is too much of here, for my taste, is unoriginal bitching about leftists. When that goes over the line into fabrication, as I perceived in “Conservative Teacher’s” post, someone needs to call bullshit. It is possible that Rate My Professor’s Bishop page was scrubbed in the two hours between “Conservative Teacher’s” post and mine @9; if that can be shown, then I would owe “CT” an admission that he/she was correct after all.
2. Urban B:
Everyone has their moments…………………………….
3 of us were assigned to a large nuclear sub,
excellent sleeping quarters,
dining room, exercise, break TV room.
All of us were in great shape,
even had a lot of seal training.
Then in order to support combat operations in Vietnam we were transferred to a small attack combat sub.
Cramped quarters,
had to step over to let someone walk past, eat what and when you can, someone waiting on you to wake up so they could have the bunk or bathroom.
It reminded me of mice in a cage.
going from luxury to lousy in one month.
All 3 of us joked about which one of us would go to the shrink first or try to open the hatch.
Opening a sub hatch 600 feet underwater is not a great idea.
When I started thinking about becoming claustrophobic and going for the hatch,
I read my scriptures and prayed for a better day thanking God for this wonderful technology and going back to a free country.
The beauty we have all around us and the job I was required to do.
Long story short,
the other two went for the hatch,
had to be put in restraining jackets and taking off the boat.
The sub Captain was a great sailor,
he treated them with kindness and respect,
tried to calm them down telling them it would not be on their records and no loss of pay, time and grade.
2 weeks later our Captain went for the hatch.
As you said it can happen to anyone,
but we usually don’t try to kill each other.
No mystery about this. She just wanted what all socialists want–tenure.
I find the classification of this event as IED not credible. The person had applied for tenure and was turned down. She then appealed the decision and went to the meeting. She also knowingly took a gun to a gun free campus, a violation of existing policy. This is just premeditated murder, nothing more……..Don’t look for something that is not there.
bogie wheel has this bracketed. The facts are discussed by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman in his Introduction to Learned Optimism [my emph.]:
Look for another demonstration of this phenomenon when BHO’s approval numbers drop permanently below 30%.
A lot has to do with a lack of discipline as a child. We grow up with an attitude of doing as we please.
One thing to consider about the Bishop case is that particular faculty meeting was hardly the last word on her tenure: college administrators can and do override faculty recommendations–either by playing the “bad guy” in dismissing marginally qualified faculty sent up by their departments, or, as is perhaps more common these days, reinstating AA hires voted down by their colleagues in order to forestall the inevitable lawsuit(s). A cursory look at her tenure “clock” might be revealing–it seemed to me that Bishop had been at UAH a long time as an assistant prof: perhaps she had simply exhausted her options.
Otherwise, I would hope that none of us would disparage the dead: there’s no evidence that this incident was like the Ecole Polytechnique massacre or even Virginia Tech, where you could argue there was time for considered action on part of the would-be victims. As Fort Hood showed, very few walk around in Jeff Cooper’s “Condition Yellow” 24/7.
The other kind of IED:
Intermittent Explosive Disorder
There are people with IED, and managers
afraid to discipline or discharge them,
but this case does not fit the pattern;
It was premeditated, and the woman did
not believe it had really happened.
Sounds more like a psychological flaw,
perhaps aided and abetted by medication.
Listen to the list of possible side effects
at the end of TV ads for Mind-Meds.
Why has no one pointed out that this is the reaction of someone who has no faith of any kind? One of the primary benefits of religion, both to the believer and to society, is the belief that “vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” A person with faith is taught from birth that there is a higher power which will in the end provide justice, and that until then “all things work together for good for those who believe.” Which is the belief you need to help you pull through the disapointments and tragedies of life. This Faith is the crucial element which has always given our forbears the strength and courage to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Without it, despair and madness are always waiting for the opportunity to slip in and take over.
I have no doubt that those who are not believers will read this and scoff – but consider how Amy Bishop’s reaction flows quite naturally from a lack of belief in any power higher than herself: she obviously had convinced herself that the future course of her life depended on this tenure, and that this would be a setback from which she would never recover. Rather than arguing this point, assume it to be true, as she did. She sees herself as having suffered a grievous wound, and does not believe there will be any justice meted out to her tormentors beyond what she can mete out herself. She also has no conception of the idea that this could still work out for good in ways she cannot see – because she is depending only on her own power and on what *she* can foresee, and cannot concieve of the idea that a power greater than herself could change things in ways unimaginable to her.
So she seeks justice, and she seeks it in the most personal, direct way possible. With no belief in any higher power, the plight of man becomes the constant war of all against all, and she has just epitomized that. I would also add that the current societal practice of transferring all our hopes of justice away from God and onto government is the source of a large part of our current malaise, because government, being a human institution, will always fail to do that effectively. Would anyone here argue that of course government can get it right? And if you believe that you are being tormented *by* representatives of that government (ie, university system in this case) then you *know* you will never receive the justice you believe you deserve, and this kind of violent lashing out becomes very logical.
“If a squared away armed citizen had been there the body/casualty count would have been much lower. Maybe even just one: the perp.”
I gotta agree with James – this idea is nonsense. If you’re sitting at a table with someone you thought you trusted and all of sudden they pull a piece and go blammo, you don’t have time to do anything. Just ask Micheal Corleone – it’s unstoppable.
Say someone did try to pull – they just became the first target. Now in a situation where there’s multiple clips and reloads, then it gets different, but there’s no suggestion of a reload here. Inside the same room, the odds of someone trying to resist are just as good going hand to hand as with a weapon – not very good in either case. Maybe higher hand to hand because you don’t waste time fooling around with trying to get the safety off and chambering a round – since no one carries with a round chambered and the safety off, not unless they want to blow a hole in their own ass whenever they sit down.
In the late roman empire, the threat of assassination become so ever present that supplicants were all forced to approach the Emperor on their knees, with the threat of instant death if they rose to a standing position. I wonder how that same kind of fear will begin to affect our society – will faculty meetings now be done with every participant represented by a video monitor, with the actual person safely cocooned elsewhere? I wouldn’t be surprised.
With 305+ million people now in the USA and a good percentage unassimilated (not the case here) road rage and murderous attacks for unknown reasons are going to occur. That’s why I carry a gun.
But it can occur not just in the big cities.
I’m up in Montana having just finished a very nice workout and feeling those good endorphins when on the way home a biker decides to use my back bumper as a game of “how close can I get, then fall back , accelerate and slam on the brakes and see if I can stop” This went on for about three miles of four lane highway so he could have passed me….but he was simply harassing me. My wife was with me.
Well, after about the tenth time I was pissed and motioned to the side of the road which he enthusiastically accepted. Dismounting his bike and me getting out of the van I was driving seemed comical. I approached him and got right up to his nose and said in low tones, “I bet you still suck you mothers tit” believing this would draw a punch. Nothing (Now you have to understand that I am around 6’2” and go about 270 with large muscles.) Following a few similar insults and getting no reaction I gave him a two handed shoulder chuck, knocking him back about ten feet. Still nothing. I repeated the process and it became apparent he wasn’t going to do anything, so I told him to get on his bike and ride in a civil manner. Road rage …yeah… and he probably learned a valuable lesson as did I …don’t do road rage.
I related the story to a Montana highway patrolman at the gym the next day and he laughed, asking me if I thought the biker would retell the story to his buddies, van driver v bad ass biker ….and he said, no, they would not have arrested me which really surprised me.
I believe one reason our society has become less civil is that the normal citizen, attempting to follow laws that protect the criminal, no longer take the offensive when they should. I rarely leave home without a gun and another larger gun in the car. Should a mall shooting take place or at another venue, I’ll be aiming to kill the perp.
NB @ 41: I find the classification of this event as IED not credible.
I was going to say something like that, but then thought, how much IED is certifiable paranoid-schizophrenics to begin with?
I’ll eat a bug if this woman doesn’t have some very strange incidents in her past.
I’m utterly certain her delusional denials are a conscious strategy so she can claim insanity as a defense.
I’d love to see a sample of her handwriting, betcha it looks like a seismograph of the Haiti earthquake.
White
angry
Liberal
evolutionist
Harvard grad
female
pro abortion
Napalitano, how does this fit your terrorist profile?
Wow, I guess she really did prove her point!
Clearly she deserved tenure!
Everybody will get small moments of rage. The important part is what you do then. Unless you are a schizophrenic you will still be yourself and absolutely in control of your actions. We do not tolerate tantrums in children, why should we excuse it in adults?
Story Time:
My most vivid memory of road rage was driving north on US29 through Maryland. I was driving in the 2nd to left lane and a rented moving truck merged into my lane. Not wanting to get side-swiped I checked the mirrors and saw I could go into the left lane safely and merged. A few seconds later before I could get ahead of the truck a green convertible comes zipping up behind me. I continue at the normal speed of 65(5 over) and this guy passes me on the right. That’s all fine and good and he slams on his brakes, I can’t safely merge so I slow down and he continues going 30 for nearly three minutes. I get the finger and he drives off. I suppose he thought he was teaching me a lesson, I was mostly just confused at his erratic behavior.
Speaking of absolute irrational crazyness, how about POTUS today, bragging about reinstituting “PAYGO”. WHAT? This requires a balanced budget in the first place! It is the most extreme hypocrisy to worry about offsets, when you are running TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICITS.
Folks, if I thought Obama was mathematically illiterate before, this takes it to an even higher level. But, that’s Obama, is everyone in the White House as much of an IDIOT as he is? Really, I am just about beyond words on this.
RR @ 38
The linked article in 34 above provides some background about the shooter. She is apparently one of those people, who, while really, really bright, cant understand why everybody just cant shut up and recognize and go along with their brilliant ideas about how the place should be run. This leads inevitably to fascist socialism because the bushwa will not vote for them twice. Besides she is on a faculty and was educated at Harvard. The conclusion that she is a socialist is statistically reasonable and supported by evidence. That socialism and fascism are evil and oppressive is definitional of both.
Condemnation of evil happens around here.
Your point at 17 is well taken and reflected in Worms link @ 12.
seven:
stupid
right wing
community college dropout
simple minded
creationist
anti-abortuion but loves war
I lived in Huntsville for many years and I doubt there’s much to any political content to this. UAH is one of the least PC universities around; mainly geeks, nerds, Asian students, tech workers going to school at night, etc. It seems to me it’s more about Ms. Bishop crossing over the thin line between genius and madness.
You wonder if it’s something in the water. Huntsville is this dull, high tech town where they have a hard time keeping young people because its so boring, but every now and then there are explosions of violence. A couple weeks ago in the suburbs, a 13 year old wannabe gangsta’ killed another kid in the middle school hallway.
When we were there a kid from an affluent family killed mom and dad Lizzie Borden style, another wannabe gang banger AKA “Doughboy” killed 5 teenagers execution style, in my neighborhood a little thug pulled a tech nine in a neighborhood spat and took out a father anmd two sons. A high school basketball star said hello to a girl in TGI Fridays. Her boyfriend gunned down him and two companions. These come to mind with out a lot of thought.
I think it’s Yeats description of the world in “The Second Coming”,
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood dimmed tide is loosed, everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity”
Society is coming apart at the seams and it will play out strange.
I think it comes down to acceptance when one has percieved that a wrong has been done to them.
When Faith is practiced on a daily basis, it becomes easier to swallow the big disappointments that are inevitable in everyones life.
I’m not talking about any one dogmatic Church taught faith of any re-legion either.
The Faith I’m talking about is this- Shit happens to good people, and the good people grow stronger by having accepted this, and can look back on a bad experience with more of an understanding of the way that God works.
Through Good and bad, Faith CAN carry you through to not make a bad experience worse for those around you.
I may be wrong, but that’s what I believe.
Richard,I don’t think the 7% IED figure would withstand scrutiny. Sounds like someone trying to get published and get tenure. This is a diagnosis that could be used for just about anything, from kids with tantrums to people with a seizure disorder. I’ve probably never used it in my almost 30 years of specializing in psychodiagnosis. My understanding has always been that it’s to be reserved for cases where the explosiveness is of likely neurological origin.
I’d venture to say that most people who blow up in the road rage type of category are basically pissed off narcissists. Much of what we’re talking about here today is the proliferation of narcissism in a culture that prioritizes individual creativity over adherence to the modeling of the “shining example”, who has now been turned into a source of oppression by the cultural marxists among us.
And the references to religion in this thread are sound, given that good religions make the control of narcissism a primary mission. The elevation of the individual, the replication of the Fall if you will, haunts us in many ways these days. That is, after all, the central feature of the religion of secular humanism that has become such an influential force in the modern West and has managed to weasel its way into the position of state-sponsored religion in the U.S.
But I’m guessing that this lady was Bipolar based on the little I’ve gleaned from the entries here.
Ridgerunner@9:
Someone scrubbed the comments on ratemyprofessor (RMP). Last evening, one of the first blogs to have any substantive discussion other than “Someone shot, someone arrested” was Ace of Spades. They had a quote from RMP from around the April time frame. I went to RMP and read all the comments in her file. The quoted comment was there (it is still quoted on AoS). After reading your comment this morning on this blog, I went to RMP and sure enough, the specific comment about her liberal leanings is gone. Surprise, surprise …..
Oops, I meant to say, “bad experience worse for You and those around you.”
WWS @ 46:
“. . .trying to get the safety off and chamber a round. . .” Whaaaaa?
When I carry (which is not all the time as I teach people to fly and there’s not a lot of space for a weapon in a small cockpit) it is ALWAYS with one in the pipe and the safety off. That’s with my PPK-S, which is admittedly a pipsqueak of a weapon, but probably better than nothing at changing the equation when someone else pulls a weapon. My other carry arm is an M-1911, and even then there’s one in the chamber, but I leave the safety on. Dropping the safety does not take much time with the 1911, though. F
The key words of this article to me are “Individuals diagnosed with IED report their outbursts were brief” Emphasis on Diagnosis.
Somewhere in our society we’ve forgotten the difference between Judgement and Discernment. We’ve lost the ability to hold people accountable for their actions, and therfore people feel justified in their outbursts. We add a further salve to this feeling of justification by making it a sikness, it’s not your fault you didn’t maintain control of yourself.
So now we have an entitled liberal, who has grown up in a world of success (regardless of outcome) wherein when she finally ran headlong into the realities of life, she lased out and killed those she held responsible for what may have been the first documented failure of her life. (I say documented because all previous failures were glossed over in some way.)
And now we have other spineless idiots wanting to make amends for the deaths of 3 people and the wounding of more by labeling this woman with a disorder making it the fault of something nebulous rather than her own inability to control herself.
I’m almost certain she started out as one of those little girls you see in the super market, screaming at the top of her lungs, while mother looks on (helpless to do anything worthwhile likd discipline her) and tries to ignore her, but will eventually give in and make her own (mother’s) life easier by giving the brat what she wants.
Failure to be judgemental and teach people self discipline and self control (liberal standards since the 60′s) lead to people who feel justified in taking such actions.
just my thougts
jd
46. wws:
In the late roman empire, the threat of assassination
become so ever present that supplicants were all forced
to approach the Emperor on their knees, with the threat
of instant death if they rose to a standing position.
/////////////
Speaking of Rome, VDH has a great piece up on the reason for the decline of western roman provinces from the 4th-5th centuries onward.
12. Worm
You are exactly correct. You officers represent a very thin line in our society betweem order and chaos.
I had an officer tell me this and it has forever stayed in my mind.
“When seconds count, an officer is just minutes away”
Well in a mall, a Lubi’s, a grocery store when someone goes postal seconds do count.
I live in Florida and Montana and have a carry permit. Since FL is so hot I carry a Ruger LCP 38. Suppressing fire weapon if nothing else; unless I’m close enough to the perp to get off a killing round. If I make it to my car much more firepower is available.
Citizens have the moral duty to protect their society and not in a vigilante style but in these self defense situations we read about all too often. A known gun carrying population is a polite population.
Irony.
She hated Sarah Palin. Because she was a proud gun owner. also respected the right to own guns.
I am sure she will blame the people that were killed. They just weren’t progressive enough. How dare a hawvud grad be denied tenure?
The comment section about this professor was scrubbed. I read the comments about her, and they made it clear that she was a liberal who openly talked about her ideas in class. They said she turned her class into a forum for her to espouse her ideas on ethics and what is right. Those comments are all removed now.
The point is that when a ‘conservative’ shoots someone, that is the story- that the person is a conservative. But when a ‘liberal’ shoots someone, that part of the story is totally not mentioned ever. That demonstrates the media’s lack of fairness and balance.
This is a sad tragedy, and I hate to politize it, but I just wanted to point that out.
PAYGO = stalking horse for mothballed carrier battle groups; probably three, maybe five (got to pay for the new Global Warming Agency, y’know).
G/42; i agree –to flip human nature by unhooking self-esteem from a feeling of accomplishment (the *only* proof of worth –and *only* available *through* accomplishment) is to create a world of fiction that is not supposed to contain objectionable people.
The ‘self-esteem movement’ is induced mental illness, isn’t it.
herb @ 53,
Do I have this straight? Per your link @ 34, Bishop was an idealistic academic who thought that the university administration was not acting in the best interest of students, and she said so. She also earned a degree from Harvard. Ipso facto, she is an evil commie. That is exactly the loose thinking I don’t enjoy here. But I guess everyone else does because they let it go. Or is everyone else here stoned on feeling good about themselves because they –tah, tah, Condemn Evil at the BC.
On the road rage topic, my only experience was being chased for about three miles by a guy trying to kill me. I was driving, with my wife, on the main drag in our town when a pickup with a large closed utility trailer cut right in front of us from a side street. I swung to the other lane and then reentered the lane I had been in, but the next traffic light changed and I had to hit my breaks hard and stop quickly in front of the truck. A block farther on was my turn, so I turned. The truck did also. He passed and raced ahead a couple hundred feet, stopped in the road and got out on the yellow line as if to duke it out. I veered to my left and went by him. He got back in his truck and came after us. The chase was at 50-60 mph through residential streets. Finally when we got on a four-lane road, my new acquaintance took the inside lane and tried to swing the trailer into our car, which I avoided by breaking. I did a u-turn and headed for a police station. This just proves there are people out there crazier than any poster here.
Conservative Teacher, if you say the Rate My Professor page was modified, you are the only one here in a position to know. However, there is a large difference between straight-up leftist propaganda and discussions about the ethics of local campus issues. The one relevant comment that was on Rate My Professor when I looked at it said that Bishop only espoused her socialism outside of class. So tell us, did other comments complain about indoctrination or not? Was Sarah Palin mentioned by a student reviewer?
22. Worm:
Right again.
If this had been a hijacking on a plane nowdays someone would have done something knowing they were going to die anyway. Throw shoes, pencils,anything but don’t just wait for the execution.
My observation of the average American out and about are that they are obese,slovenly, and rude. Not a hearty endorsement for a population.
I’d wager the average 35 year old man can’t do fifty push ups and 100 sit ups and then walk, walk mind you, five miles.
He can however tell you about the Simpsons.
WWS:
One of the primary benefits of religion, both to the believer and to society, is the belief that “vengeance is mine, says the Lord.”
Yes, vengeance is the Lord’s. That’s why the sons of Jacob killed Shechem, Hamor, and all the men of military age in their city, then took the women and children captive, all because Shechem took Jacob’s daughter Dinah for a test drive before asking for her hand in marriage.
she is depending only on her own power and on what *she* can foresee, and cannot concieve of the idea that a power greater than herself could change things in ways unimaginable to her.
Well now she has met a greater power, and it’s the police department and criminal justice system.
In the late roman empire, the threat of assassination become so ever present that supplicants were all forced to approach the Emperor on their knees, with the threat of instant death if they rose to a standing position.
Today our President approaches Communist party hacks and Emirs on his knees on a purely volunteer basis, without even the threat of death hanging over him, because it disfigures the country as a whole.
It’s awful to think of the pain of the families of those 3 faculty murdered. God be with them.
But the wider story here is the “scrubbing” of the comments on this woman’s professor-ratings Facebook page.
A few days ago, some of us were telling a young commenter (named Stephanie?) that she was routinely lied to by her professors. To understand such a blanket assertion, one only needs to have been around these people and know that for them, the agenda — not the truth — is the priority.
“Yes, vengeance is the Lord’s. That’s why the sons of Jacob killed Shechem, Hamor, and all the men of military age in their city, then took the women and children captive, all because Shechem took Jacob’s daughter Dinah for a test drive before asking for her hand in marriage.”
Two points:
1) He FORCIBLY took her for a test drive, as you phrase it. I would be a mite cranky if someone raped my sister, wouldn’t you?
2) Just because the Bible tells of an action does not mean it endorses it. The Bible relates an awful lot of wickedness, and doesn’t always have a whole lot of editorializing about how bad it was – Classical Hebrew is a pretty spare language and doesn’t waste many words. The reader is expected to be able to make those judgements based on other sections of the Bible.
H/69–WADR, as a 55-yr exerciser I can say that 50 pushups/100 situps is too much to expect from an ‘average’ anybody.
I’m guessing the woman was too young for PMS which was defined as a Depressive Disorder in 1993 (around that time) angering many feminists and non-feminists alike.
NV@39: Not laughing at that story. Nor should anybody who hasn’t experienced the effect. I do take note of your ability to mentally control your response to claustrophobia. I consider that a learned ability. I quit smoking – cold turkey – using a similar technique – I told myself I was no longer a smoker which changed the parameters of my behavior. My “understanding” is that the same technique is used to beat lie detector tests. Essentially you end up lying to yourself – and believing it! Hopefully just for the required period of time.
As an old full professor at a large state university who was promoted to full professor at Carnegie Mellon University in 1970 after 7 years on the faculty, I can say something about tenure at first rate and bush league (like where I am now) research universities.
The tenure decision at a first rate research university the tenure decision is based on the quality of the person’s research as judged by the senior faculty, on letters from well established professors in the same field, and by citations of the faculty’s research. The faculty’s teaching record must be sound in the sense that the professor makes a serious attempt to convey to those students who are serious the subjects in the course syllabus. The quality of a university is jueged by the qualitty of the research of the faculty, the quality of the graduate students who come on the market with Ph.D’s and the quality of the best undergraduates who have made some mark in the world after graduating. The quality of the football or basketball team is totally irrelevant to the reputation of a research university, unlike the joint where I am a professor (I admit to making a bad decision to come here and stay here for 27 years but I like the city where I live in).
Note that Bishops husband was a coperp. That is totally bizarre.
Our daughter graduated from Carnegie is physics, spent a year at U Florida as a grad student in physics and returned to Pittsburgh to get married to her physicist boyfriend. She then got a MS in biochemistry at Pitt but when her husband go a postdoc at NIH they moved to Rockville, MD and she stayed home raising our two grand daughters who are now studying math and science at a magnet school.
If my daughter were to enter academe in a few years and was denied tenure she would either stay home or get a biotech job. She would not shoot anyone just as I would never hurt any colleagues even when they hurt me out of envy.
A late friend of mine once told me that he wondered why there are no reported cases of undergrads attacking professors. There was a case at Standord where a grad student in math killed his advisor because the advisor turned down his thesis after agreeing to accept it. I have not heard of another such case.
So I believe that the couple were deranged humans.
SAC @ 24,
“the syndrome has been with us for some time. it is largely a disorder afflicting Americans. (but not exclusively) going postal. So what about Americans who don’t go postral, are they susceptible to IBS?
the illness has been profiled by law enforcement but still hard to know who will blow up and how.
Just curious, is domestic violence considered part of the syndrom, by your definition (below) and mine it appears to fit.
“basically boils down to an individual who blames others for their lot in life. a failure to take responsibility for oneself.”
I am of the opinion that people choose to do or not to do stuff even when mentally challenged or emotionally distressed. Motive for all intents is a form of profiling. It only addresses the probability that a suspect likely committed a crime. It is not proof, it does not stand alone, it is conjecture. It may be however a loose measure of what amount of “stuff” a reasonable person might react to unreasonably.
There is unfortunately a ‘snarky’ varmint that likes to give false information and feed hope’s false labors to see how far a lie will go before being found out. Academia stinks with Snarky food, bitterness reeks of snarky behavior.
Amok- could be SNAP.
Gray Fox: He FORCIBLY took her for a test drive, as you phrase it. I would be a mite cranky if someone raped my sister, wouldn’t you?
The disproportionate use of force is a tactic for the battlefield, not civil society. A professor killing three people and hospitalizing six more because she wasn’t getting tenure is a disproportionate use of force. If a man commits rape he should go to prison for a long time, but even speaking from my position as a one-time rapee the offense does not merit the murder of all the men in a city and the enslavement of all their wives and children and the plunder of all that they have. That sort of thing is how you get crapholes like Somalia or Afghanistan or Sicily, not a superpower like America.
Mention of Sarah Palin and some projection of this woman’s thoughts about her is absurd.
It wouldn’t be hard to believe that Bishop was “on” some psychotropic meds and really didn’t cognize exactly what she’d just done, hence the “they’re still alive, that didn’t happen..” remarks reported.
Remember the columbine shootings and how one of the primary guys had been on/off/on psychotropic meds and how the med manufacturer was brought in as playing some culpable role.
Things like the “postmodernist” emphasis on me me me and “morality is what I say it is” are influencing a lot of sociopathic acts these days.
My advice, don’t engage road rage people. Tinderboxes.
I can’t imagine being armed in a faculty meeting when someone pulls out a piece and it’s over in seconds could do much good, although it was argued, with some credibility, that the Va Tech shooter’s mayhem could have been cut short if someone in the lecture hall had been armed.
A SWPL woman shoots and kills men? I’m waiting for Whiskey’s take on this.
The “Bad Day” link doesn’t work, but this one does: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_DOJzcwB9s
Has a few other bad days as well.
I remember reading a story about an Englishman who came to the US and was surprised about how safe it seemed to him. Crime was low and people were more polite than what he was used to. This was in New York and New Jersey.
It could be that the low situational awareness exhibited by most people is due a relatively low contact with violence.
I’v noticed that when I carry my awareness steps up. But policemen tell me that complacency is a constant problem. “Routine” dulls the edge and if you aren’t careful it catches up with you on traffic stops or when you are off duty going to the convenience store.
70. Teresita:
If you read the life stories of Levi and Simeon you can see that a lot of sin is paid for intergenerationally.
God forgave King David after he took Bathsheba and had her loyal husband killed. However, as God promised the sword never left David’s household. David was a great king but a terrible father.
70. Teresita:
This is how Simeon and Levi were named by their mom.
(Genesis 29:32-35 RSV)
She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because The Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also”; and she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons”; therefore his name was called Levi.
This is how their father Jacob considered them at the end of his life.
“Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. O my soul, come not into their council; O my spirit, be not joined to their company; for in their anger they slay men, and in their wantonness they hamstring oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce; and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.” (Genesis 49:5-7 RSV)
There was a road rage incident in Birmingham a while back involving two office manager type women . There was some sort of incident involving someone getting cut off on the interstate, the one cutoff chased the other one at high speeds for about thirty miles at which point the chased one pulled off at an exit. She stopped her car and when the chaser approached the car she unloaded a 9mm clip on her and shot her dead.
Regarding the story of Levi and Simeon in Shechem. In the next story, the Lord calls Jacob back to Bethel to build an altar. That was because he violated his pilgrim calling in settling in among the pagan Canaanites . By settling in where he shouldn’t he loosed the tragic events which unfolded in his family.
Richard,
Long ago, I read Walden so many times that I had committed to memory a number of passages…
As I recall, just after the line you quoted Thoreau continues:
“…What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things…”
Ah, what has become of such wisdom?
Sorry if someone above has already mentioned this; didn’t have time to read all comments this morning.
Jamie Irons
It seems, her diagnosis should be not IED, but MALIGNANT NARCISSISM. This is psychopathy in extreme. 80% inmates in US prisons convicted for violent crimes have this diagnosis.
About the only thing I’d like to add to the discussion is a little home-made psychology based on nothing but my own experience. First, I think people can flare up for no apparent reason, but there’s often an unknown one. This was captured in the phrase “he’s touchy about …”; or if you are French the word “bete noire” is probably the equivalent.
Maybe it’s a physical defect, or a manner speaking, or insecurity about a job. Somethng evolves into a trigger. And people who are hanging on its edge are obsessed with it. You can often sense what it is and intuitively skirt the subject.
What makes it worse is when this trigger is suppressed. If a person can lash out in relatively harmless way — shout, argue, thump on the desk then he can — and here’s that other old-fashioned phrase again, “blow off steam” or “get it off his chest”. I think one problem in academia or in the office or polite society is that the code of conduct or demeanor is such that you can’t let it off by counter-razzing or getting into a minor but cathartic fistfight in the back of the building. You can’t blow it off by telling a sobs story to your neighborhood baartender. Your dignity won’t allow it until …
I’m sure this is all hogwash, but that’s what I’ve observed.
Charles: If you read the life stories of Levi and Simeon you can see that a lot of sin is paid for intergenerationally.
Yes, and Ezekiel announced a reform in this practice.
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
By the time of the New Covenant, sin was not paid for by sinners, neither individually nor intergenerationally, having been paid for by the death of Christ.
Romans 4:8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
This was not a one-off incident. Amy Bishop has a history of violent behavior.
The University of Alabama biology professor accused of slaying three of her colleagues fatally shot her brother in an apparent accident in Massachusetts more than two decades ago, a local police chief said.
Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier confirmed the 1986 shooting in his town and slated a news conference this afternoon to discuss the incident.
The Globe reported at the time that Amy Bishop had shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth M. Bishop, an accomplished violinist who had won a number of science awards.
John Polio, chief of police at the time, said Amy Bishop, who was 20 at the time, had asked her mother, Judith, in the presence of her brother how to unload a round from the chamber of a 12-gauge shotgun.
Polio told the Globe that while Amy Bishop was handling the weapon, it fired, wounding Seth Bishop in the abdomen. He was pronounced dead at a hospital 46 minutes after the Dec. 6, 1986 shooting.
Teresita,
1) Your use of the phrase “test drive” did not lead me to think that you actually understood what happened. That this was not merely a case of a loving couple getting a little too intimate too early was all I was intending to address in that point.
2) The distinction between civil society and the battlefield loses its validity the further one gets from the modern nation-state. The story of the treachery and vengeance of the sons of Jacob is a lot closer to the latter, anyway.
3) What does the story have to do with modern America, anyway? It is a tale of deceit, treachery, and murder that was not a model for conduct even in its own day, and does nothing to negate the the point that the Judeo-Christian tradition discourages personal revenge.
76. whatdayameanitstoohot:
SAC @ 24,
I didn’t make up the profile …reporting on how the law enforcement reviewed people who went postal and came to those results.
does it mean everybody …only a fool would try to make that connection.
the basic components were …blamed others for their station(lot) in life. did not take responsibility.
and has been largely a problem in the USA.
what do you want me to say. that it wasn’t her fault ? people all over the world go postal when they don’t get a promotion ?
it was her fault.
w/88; it’s all there in the other vids on your vid link –people unable to voice a rising irritation, until whammo, they lose control.
Take a look at the girl in the red-orange dress facing camera and talking on the phone. A guy clearly within earshot and unable to concentrate suddenly blows up, runs over, smashes the phone and throws it across the room. Next, he turns, finds her (she’s off-camera by now), and starts after her. The clip ends there. But, as he starts after her, theres a frame or two of his facial expression. That’s got to be the murder look –gone cold and feral, completely out of control.
the question that comes to mind is, why couldn’t he have simply wandered over sometime prior, and asked he for a favor, that she hold it down for an hour while he solved the problem vexxing him? probably because they had already been treating each other shabbily for ages, and just could not rise to the simplest solution. There’s a lesson our parents and grandparents knew better than we do, betcha bottom dollar. Wonder why? We’re the product of all the previous learnings, how come we forget such basics?
Well, tomorrow’s a new day, hey.
As long as the quotes are flying….
“The entire term of humanity is but a minute episode in a scarcely longer history of life on a cooling planet which for the most of its existence knew no life at all. And that planet in the infinite immensity of the universe is a tiny scrap of matter rushing with all other scraps — and from all other scraps — at colossal speed to heaven knows what destination in the curvature of space.
“In no one knows what time, though it will be soon enough by astronomical clocks, the lonely planet will cool, all life will die, all mind will cease, and it will all be as if it had never happened. That, to be honest, is the goal to which evolution is traveling, that is the “benevolent” end of the furious living and furious dying. . . . All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again. The final result . . . is to deprive it completely of meaning.” –Paul, Leslie, Annihilation of Man
BUT….
“Significance has thus come to be defined either in terms of size (and man is very small relative to the vastness of the universe), or in terms of duration, and what is man’s life relative to the four billion years or more estimated for its age? By every standard of assessment of which science is capable (and its standards can only ever be quantitative) man judges his own worth to be virtually nil.
But this very judgment is self-contradictory, for if man is of no consequence, then neither is his judgment of what is of consequence. His very opinion about the Cosmos can carry little weight in a Cosmos which scarcely recognizes his existence and would be no different if he ceased to exist altogether. These presumptuous statements about the insignificance of man, by writers like G. Gaylord Simpson, can logically be ignored for, by their own admission, if man is of no consequence so, then, are his opinions of no significance even if his knowledge of the “facts” is tremendous. ” –Arthur Custance
Matt Beck @ 90: This was not a one-off incident. Amy Bishop has a history of violent behavior.
Told ya @ 48.
She asked her mom how to unload a shotgun? Sounds like yet another story there …
wretchard wrote: “About the only thing I’d like to add to the discussion is a little home-made psychology based on nothing but my own experience. First, I think people can flare up for no apparent reason, but there’s often an unknown one. This was captured in the phrase “he’s touchy about …”; or if you are French the word “bete noire” is probably the equivalent.”
“Niagara Falls! Slowly I turned… Step by Step… Inch by Inch…”
MB @90,
I continue objecting to the careless way Bishop is being characterized. It is counterproductive for conservatism’s credibility. To term an accidental shooting “a history of violent behavior” is so far off the mark as to damage BC’s credibility. Do you guys care what a newcomer to the site thinks of its objectivity? Are you trying to convince the wavering leftist lurker, or are you trying to score points in the echo chamber?
This is from my post. I found the ratemyprofessor site too and saw she was a leftie from the word go.
—
Three shot dead in school shooting. Suspect? A Haaavard graduate and woman.
Posted February 13th, 2010 by admin
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061893575915602.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#articleTabs%3Darticle
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/02/12/2010-02-12_shooting_at_university_of_alabamas_huntsville_campus_leaves_3_dead_1_injured_wom.html
Here are the stories. The second has a photo of her being put in a car. She has the “I’m a crazy woman, dont’ “F” with me” look on her face. Too bad for the victims, but it does put a kink into the Haaaavard elite theory that they are incapable of doing anything uncivilized (outside crushing your constitutional rights). I did a little looking around and found her rate my professor link.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=392617&page=1
Note some of the comments here is one-
“This class was great. Bishop makes the class interesting by talking about her research and her friends research. That speaker she had for class was hard to understand but smart. She expects alot and you need to come to every class and study. She is hot but she tries to hide it.And she is a socialist but she only talks about it after class.”
There was another post, not there now, where the student claims she talked about all the leftist stuff. A real Haaavard type. In her defense, if there is one, apparently she invented something with her husband and claims the university stole the idea for their own use. If so she should sue not shoot. However, if they also denied her tenure, something akin to the Holy Grail for professors, AND stole her money making idea, I think I get why she thinned out the academic herd a little. It still doesn’t get past the fact that an educated, liberal, socialist, Haaaavard graduate woman used a gun to solve a conflict. Gee…could it be that no matter how civilized you are, you are still human? That when pushed to the breaking point all people (save Mother Teresa and Gandhi) react basically in the same way?
This will be interesting in the way the MSM handles it. How far with Keith and Chris take this before they spit it out like a bad tasting pill?
Just saying….
—–
There is a saying in our business. If something or someone frustrates you to the point of pondering suicide, kill it. You are probably doing someone else a favor also…
Apparently, she took the saying to heart.
Silliest Road Rage I ever saw was one day on I-95. I got on the freeway in my pickup, accelerated up to a hair over the speed limit of 70 and set the cruise control. Soon I had to ease over in the left lane without even speeding up to go around a guy in an old Chevy stakebed with a tarpaulin on back flappin’ in the wind.
The guy took my passing him as an insult or a challenge or something. He got over in the left lane and tried to pass me. He could not quite make it, hanging just off my left rear and began to accumulate a line of people behind him. I sped up a mile or two more he apparently called down to the engine room and told them to start shovlin’ more coal and hung in with me. This went on for a while, me edging up the speed to get away from the nut and he hanging in there but unable to pass. By the time we hit 75 he had probably 15 very irritated left lane speeders behind him and I had an 18 wheeler 15 feet off my rear bumper.
At this point I decided that this was all bloody dangerous and said “Let’s see if y’all can do 80.” So I moved the cruise control up and in a short period of time the cars in the rearview became Tonka toys.
The kicker was when I looked back and saw that the 18 wheeler was getting off at the next exit. And so was the nut in the stakebed! Or at least he was trying. There was no way the semi was letting him over into the right lane and neither were any of the other people he had P.Oed. When I last saw him he still was frantically trying to get into the right lane.
97/ridgerunner,
Counterproductive for conservatism’s credibility? Trying to score points with the echo chamber?…What the hell are you talking about? I simply linked to a news article, for crying out loud. The fact that this woman shot her brother dead 24 years ago is relevent to an understanding of her psychological development, don’t you think?
Ridgerunner, this stuff is not testimony in a court of law, y’know. It’s just a blog thread. opinions, often (in my case for sure) only partly-formed, and throwing things around, seeing what others think. Maybe you’re expecting too much, eh? Speaking for myself, as far as any concern that you may be a ‘wavering leftist lurker’ who needs deft persuasion, eh, sorry, not up for it. Your mind is your responsibility. if you are wavering, you’re probably gonna come down where you feel like coming down anyway, regardless.
Josh, you are very perceptive.
She apparently shot and killed her brother 24 years ago. The shooting appeared to be an accident so she was not prosecuted.
No MB,you didn’t just link; you titled your link in a biased way. As to whether having killed her brother, supposedly accidentally, is relevant to her psychology, hell yes. But your link title is biased. It’s interesting that you can’t see that. My father had an automobile accident and he almost shot me in the foot once. Did he have a history of violent behavior?
Buddy, if you guys don’t care what the effects are of your comments then you shouldn’t think so well of yourselves as many of the commenters apparently do.
What I wonder is why Wretchard is so hands-off as BC loses its more analytical commenters. Does he feel any responsibility for what I’m concerned about, or is that up to nitpickers like me?
In today’s modern polemic, some people are treated more equal than others. Woman and certain minorities are treated differently. It is a plain fact. If a person is accustomed to never being at fault, never reprimanded, never to be held accountable anything could happen.
A minority ex-marine that works for my IT department has a vicious attitude when it comes to people making more work for him. The first time I ever spoke with him I was experiencing a problem with a program that I had used extensively for 10 years. I had him on the phone and suggested the problem between the program and the graphics driver might need an update. Having owned the software myself there were frequently such problems with new releases and one had to check the updates and incorporate it to solve the problem. His response was this “what did you install that corrupted the drivers?” My response was “not a damn thing, I don’t have administration rights.” His counter response “you don’t know who you are messing with” snf went off on a tirade that lasted what seemed like several minutes. He was right, I didn’t know who I was messing with. The next day in product demo I met him for the first time and he said “if you mess with me I’ll shoot your ass, I have a 44 magnum in the car”.
I am pretty sure that if I tried that on anybody there would be a Sherriff looking through my glove compartment in a New York second and they’d arrest me on the spot, but that is probably because I am a large heterosexual white male. I probably had it coming to me. He later took me aside and told me that I wasn’t going to get squat out of him and it was tough. I later bought some software for an IRAD and when I asked him to install it for me he corrupted my profile which took two computers and two months to sort out. The program never worked though I was able to install it on several other computers. I complained of this and he later drove his vehicle over to me in the parking lot in a menacing way and rolled down the window and shouted “you’re high maintenance!” It may seem funny but I was waiting for him to produce a pistol. He already told me he keeps one in his car. If I had to run a gauntlet like that anywhere else I’d arm myself.
Recently, I had been waiting to have some application software installed on my laptop (since last June) and he has refused to do so. So when I have to meet with DOD brass I need to use Power Point rather than showing them the CAD data that I spent several hundred of their hours on. Needless to say my boss and my bosses’ boss are terrified at the prospect of having to discipline a minority so I am stuck between having my career ruined or having to live with the threat of being shot for doing my job. This fits within the concept of a hostile work environment but those rules weren’t made for everybody, just the usual victims.
PC does that. PC kills and a generation of chickens are just coming home to roost.
ridgerunner/103; it does take some time but odds are that eventually you’ll conclude that ‘lassez-faire’ is not a synonym for ‘lazy-careless’.
Most of the time any other organizing principle will prove inferior, including the principle of it being one’s duty to improve the bystanders.
Yes, i know i’m violating that principle myself right now –but i didn’t, until about your third or fourth complaint. At that point, i thought i’d lend you a hand.
Best regards, and do try to unclinch.
SAC@ 92
Please don’t take it personally, my comment was in no way meant to denigrate your post, just an observation on the information you provided.
“I didn’t make up the profile …reporting on how the law enforcement reviewed people who went postal and came to those results.”
I guess I can and do appear to be “snarky”. I apologize.
The parameters you quoted are broad, which is why I asked if there were a connection drawn between domestic violence and such rage as displayed by the Prof. If the lady was truly ill, others may not have spotted it, been unable to help her work through it or at the very least rethink the size of the problem and her proposed response.
It seems to me that folks, going “postal” plan it out thoroughly. It is a one time affair not an “Intermittent” Explosive Event at all which is more a description of a cycle of violence. Low self esteem is described as a factor in those who perpetuate the cycle of violence. But I would postulate from anecdote and observation, it is not the case that low esteem is due to low or even under achievement but rather to acceptance.
Please, accept my apologies.
ridgerunner,
I can, of course, understand the analytical distinction between an accidental shooting and a history of violent behavior, if the latter is construed to mean only deliberate criminality. However, I do not for one moment believe that the 1986 shooting was really accidental. Since this belief of mine assumes something about the case which isn’t strictly mentioned in the news article, I suppose you could call it a “biased” interpretation; but it is bias I am quite willing to acknowledge and to assert, and here’s why:
Since we all pretty much agree that this woman committed premeditated murder at the University of Alabama, this fact, now in evidence, permits us to draw the Bayesian inference that the 1986 shooting was probably not accidental. A person who committed murder once before is much more likely to pull the trigger a second time. Furthermore, a person who really did kill a close family member in an accidental shooting is highly unlikely to commit premeditated murder, since the vivid memories of death and loss would have given her a keen awareness of the fragility of life. On the view that yesterday’s shootings were deliberate (which no one contests), the notion that the 1986 shooting was accidental becomes the least likely scenario.
Oh good, as long as we are letting the bystanders comment I would like to offer as a little anecdotal story -
That I have handled firearms for over forty years and have not yet managed to kill anybody with them, not even myself. Most shooting “accidents” are a matter of grave suspicion. Unless you do not fit the profile, ie you are male.
This is very, very unusual. The number of these cases suggests a common threat:
1. Assailant is MALE.
2. Assailant is an immigrant, often removed from family and friends.
3. Assailant is mentally ill.
4. Assailant feels whole life is ending, based on “unfair” treatment.
In addition, there are the campus shootings by the male loners, in HS to College, who exhibit rage and frustration, usually linked to a failure to connect romantically or otherwise to the opposite sex. They are often mentally ill, and of course, male.
I do not know how much we can learn from this. It is very, VERY unusual for women to go out shooting people, EVER. In the US the number if probably less than 25 since 1970. Women can and do deal out violence, but it is usually directed at spouses sleeping or incapacitated, children, and so on. Women know their physical disparity, and generally avoid violent confrontations knowing their limitations.
MB @ 107,
Thank you for laying it out like that. I went through the same thought process as you and came to the same conclusion. You have a well-reasoned bias, which any lurking leftist can now understand. Comity reigns.
Buddy, believe me, in real life I don’t try to improve bystanders. I’m so snakebit that I don’t even expect the authorities/legal system to give me justice. I look for work-arounds. I am much more relaxed, at least, than Dr. Bishop.
“….then suddenly Habu runs in with a can of gasoline and pours it on the ridgerunner/buddy/beck/et.al. comments and lights up the zippo throwing it on the gas…then he runs like hell…….”
You’re welcome ridgerunner. “It’s all good.”
I’m thinking of trading my 350Z Nissan Touring convertible with 13k miles for a Mini Cooper S with modification that develops 240 HP…should I?
Wretchard #88:
I think what you say is true, and the other aspect of the “professional” culture is that it is generally a sedentary lifestyle, or at least the workstyle.
As Morgan Freeman said to Jim Cary in “Bruce Almighty,” “Some of the happiest people in the world go home smelling to high heaven.” The modern sedentary workstyle leaves the mind exhausted at the end of the day and the body rarin’ to go do something. I think that one of the greatest benefits of aerobic exercise is that it brings the mind and body more into balance, or at least makes both of them tired about the same amount.
I knew one of those USPS employees that went on a shooting rampage in the early 1980’s. I knew him only slightly and he seemed to be all right, but clearly there was something else going on. Oddly enough, one of the people he shot was related to a guy I worked with, even though I had moved over 1200 miles away.
habu/113; no no, trade for a Toyota, and get in on the Bamboo Lounge classless-action UAW bust-out of the Government Motors rival!
ridgerunner @ 110: I continue objecting to the careless way Bishop is being characterized. It is counterproductive for conservatism’s credibility. To term an accidental shooting “a history of violent behavior” is so far off the mark as to damage BC’s credibility.
OK, I agree, that’s a bad headline, given the facts.
It might be, for example, the accident unhinged her and contributed to the current situation. Or, of course, possibly had nothing whatsoever to do with the current events.
But in the real world, these kinds of things have a depressing pattern of regularities. Wait for more historic events to show up. It may well turn out that the headline, an abductive jump, turns out to be justified.
–
Habu, just save your money for a SmartCar with nitro injection.
archer52: said: “apparently she invented something with her husband and claims the university stole the idea for their own use.”
If I invent something or write some code in my own time that has nothing to do with my company’s line of business, they still own it. That is the agreement I signed when I went to work for them and that kind of contract is not uncommon. I would guess that she had signed such an agreement.
That when pushed to the breaking point all people (save Mother Teresa and Gandhi) react basically in the same way?
Gandhi, a trained lawyer who wrote in lawyerly fashion as to the value of non-violence, also wrote that violence was justified in some situations, as in where a person would be justified in defending himself against an attacker.
(Back in the day when I read Gandhi, I was grateful to learn that I had his blessing if it ever became necessary to fend off an attacker with force)
I have come to suspect Mom Teresa had something of a dark side.
Whereas these individuals did direct their own lives according to deeply held principle, there is a tendency to overly idealize people who have been “iconized” in the popular culture.
(what Amy Bishop is said to have invented, w/her husband, is a way to grow cultures in the lab that does away with petri dishes)
(1) A similar incident occurred some years ago at Carlton University in Canada when an untenured professor killed four of his colleagues when he was denied tenure.
(2) As for tenure: any faculty member who has been teaching for three years should be granted tenure, which is just a guarantee that the professor will not be dismissed without cause. If the department does not know after three years how good a candidate is, then the department is derelict.
The right conferred by tenure are what the lowliest staff members at a university – secretaries, janitors, etc. – get after nine months of probation. These members of staff are not required to prove that there is no one better than them or to get those at other universities to testify how good they are.
The institution of tenure at universities, however, well-intentioned it was at its founding, is an automatic firing device, firing individuals who were good enough to have worked for six years and then hiring other younger ones cheaper. I have known many lives destroyed by being denied tenure.
None of this justifies murder, of course.
116. Josh
At 62 I ain’t sav’n much. I fgure another 8-10 OK years then the old age bug really starts gnawing away ….somewhere..brain..pancreas..wherever so I’m “toying out” now while I still can…yeah I might make it to be 80 or 90 but do you want an 80 year old behind the wheel of a nitro anything?
But thanks for the kind thought
Liberals have been saying for years that we need tighter controls on guns in America for years. Meanwhile, the conservative gun lobby keeps saying we need more guns in order to protect ourselves from those that use guns. As long as it remains an Gas and Match issue…I guess ya get what ya pay for eh?
Maybe one day my country will come to its senses and pass responsible health care and responsible gun legislation….
But I know I am also asking for three feet of snow in Puerto Rico eh?
Not to put a too fine point on it, all I was trying to say is that humans are humans. They will react in ways that should not surprise anyone who has dealt with all types in their lives. What I was trying to get to was how the left will handle this, she being a Harvard grad, female, professor, and socialist. Certainly not the template they are used to, as one of the posters indicated. As far as her not getting credit for an invention. She is a professor of biology, not a researcher. I would think if she and her husband did in fact develop new technology, it is theirs. (He does not work for the university.) Regardless, she obviously snapped and people got hurt, that is the facts.
Again, I’m interested in how the MSM will spin it. Imagine Robert Gibbs showing up to work one day and blasting the press corps (or corpse if you are Obama).
106. whatdayameanitstoohot:
SAC@ 92
no problem …no offense taken.
yes they are broad profiles that many can fit. but from what I have read those are the 2 main reasons. and without those reasons it doesn’t occur. that is why it is hard to know if some one will go to the extreme since so many people fit that criteria.
The sooner the citizenry reeducate themselves with their own form of government and the documents that establishes who can do what they will soon come to realize that the Bill of Rights is totally off limits to the intrusion of the three branches of government or the states.
Those are OUR rights, not to be altered or reinterpreted by anyone. The debates are easily found and read establishing the intent. The first ten amendments aren’t written in Sanskrit and are easy to follow…..It is simply that WE THE PEOPLE have allowed government to intrude where it is specifically denied doing so. That is how the slow erosion of freedom occurs.
As an example no one should be required to get a carry permit issued by a state. The state has no authority to override the Second Amendment but we allowed it to happen. You can go down the list of the Bill of Rights and easily see where the government has usurped power it has no claim to. Shame, shame on all the generations that sat back and allowed it to happen.
#118 tanstaafl:
“Gandhi, a trained lawyer who wrote in lawyerly fashion as to the value of non-violence, also wrote that violence was justified in some situations, as in where a person would be justified in defending himself against an attacker.”
Note that Ghandi stated that his methods in India were based on the basic decency of the British. He said “My methods would not have worked in Nazi Germany.”
One might add also that Dr. King’s methods would not have worked in Nazi Germany, the USSR, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, Communist China, or even modern day Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or any number of other countries.
Gee, I’m glad I’m just a lowly adjunct instructor at that uni I work for.
Under the radar fly I.
Seems like this is not the first time the professor shot someone:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/professor_accus.html
Whiskey is lost, that women don’t only rely on vaudou, and would thus stick niddle into a doll, uh sometimes they can use their fists (or their gun), I would have preferred to use my fists, for a million dollars,just for the satisfaction to see my opponant KO, but probably that this woman was possessed by more evil daemons !
Quite a damning report HERE re the 1986 Braintree shooting.
This will involve Delahunt, whose relection is iffy already.
In reference to the Boston.com article bookmarked above, tonight’ news broadcast of at least one Boston TV station reported that the mother, Judith Bishop, was at that time the “chief of personnel” for the town. The report did not expound on that fact, but at least one sheepdog’s suspicious mind can derive a pattern from that and form the imperfect opinion that the young Ms. Bishop got away with homicide once, and it’s likely easier the second time around.
WWS #46
The idea of defending yourself in such a situation is not nonsense. By your assumptions you show your lack of proper mindset and training. By thinking “there’s nothing you can do” you have already set yourself up to fail. Allow me to elaborate on your incorrect assumptions:
1. You assume that the threat will be faster on the draw.
Proper tactical training can give you an edge. You can be a lot faster than you think. I know guys who can clear leather and put 2 rounds into a 10″x12″ plate at 7 yards in under 1 second (I’m around 1.5 sec, but I’m working on it).
2. You assume that you are the first to be hit and have no time to act.
Once again training is the key. Your OODA loop must kick in quickly.
Move off line as you engage the threat. Seek cover. Become a hard target. Do not stop fighting until the threat is gone or you are off the x.
3. You assume that if you are hit, that you are fatally wounded.
Many gunshot wounds are not fatal nor incapacitating. I’ve seen a lot of non-fatal gunshot wounds. Being wounded does not have to mean you are out of the fight.
4. You assume that if you are fatally wounded, that death is immediate.
There are numerous accounts of criminals, police officers, and soldiers continuing to fight after being fatally wounded. Read the Medal of Honor citations sometime.
True, no one can maintain Condition Yellow 24/7. True, you could catch the first round in CNS and be out of the fight. But so what. That is no reason to resign yourself to defeat and death. You may not be the first hit. If wounded, even fatally, you are not necessarily out of the fight.
Your statements indicate your lack of knowledge of firearms and the tactical use thereof.
“because you don’t waste time fooling around with trying to get the safety off and chambering a round”
Many modern semi-auto handguns do not have a manual external safety, but have passive internal safety mechanisms. If your weapon does have a manual safety you train to immediately disengage the safety as you draw.
“since no one carries with a round chambered and the safety off, not unless they want to blow a hole in their own ass whenever they sit down”
No competent gunfighter carries with an empty chamber. Redundant passive internal safety mechanisms prevent unintentional discharges while holstered. Drawing and racking the slide is Hollywood BS. Turn off the TV.
You should take a trip to a professional tactical training center sometime. It makes for a hell of a good vacation. I personally recommend Blackwater, Storm Mountain, and Combat Shooting and Tactics (CSAT). CSAT is run by Paul Howe, former Delta. Paul is the real deal. Great teacher and and all around good guy. He will square you away.
118. tanstaafl: and 125. RWE:
Gandhi not only acknowledged that violence was sometimes justified in self-defense, he also acknowledged that an armed people, who would thus be empowered to make that defense, was justified:
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.” — Mahatma Ghandi, ‘Gandhi, An Autobiography’, page 446
He understood that pacifism should be employed as a useful tool, not be a blind obsession. Gandhi the man was a much more hard-bitten pragmatist than Gandhi the myth.
Police: Did UAH shooting suspect Amy Bishop mean to kill her brother?
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/police_chief_says_uah_shooting.html
The number of women using guns to kill people not their husbands or lovers, or children, is vanishingly small. Thankfully. Women just don’t do that sort of thing.
Though as someone pointed out, girl fights even among young White girls is a common, and new, phenomena in Youtube.
But other than serial killer Eileen Wormous, I cannot think of a woman who shot and killed someone not her husband, lover, family member, etc. in an act of murder.
As such, I do not believe this case has much of use to tell us, other than the obvious that it is better policy to arm many, than try to disarm most. It was common for men and women to carry small revolvers on their persons in urban areas from the 1870′s onwards. Indeed, Smith and Wesson marketed small revolvers handy enough to be used by women and featuring safety levers (the so-called lemon squeezer) in the 1890′s through the 1920′s. It was common even until the 1950s for ROTC cadets to take their rifles to school with them … on the NYC subways. There are pictures of HS girls in the 1940′s squeezing off rounds in the basement shooting ranges of LA area HS in the WPA picture archives available online. To modern eyes it is shocking how “old” these then-16 year olds appear btw.
Guns were far more common, in times past, with far less people running amok and killing folk. The Henry rifle held something like 16 shots, far over the “assault weapon category” back in 1866.
What is interesting about the girl-fights on Youtube, is that the seem to be prompted by one of two issues: jealousy over a boy (suggesting that only a few boys will do, and a few are more valuable than many), or inter-girl-group jealousy. In turn this seems to say that modern society for girls as well as boys produces torments not seen in times past, even though today’s society is far more wealthier and secure.
It is not normal for 14 year old girls to fight, and post the results on Youtube. Any more than “sexting” by the same is normal. Girls that age should be playing with dolls or jump-rope.
129.longjack and 130.fonman,
Thank you for the links. The information puts the entire incident into an entirely different light. In fact, they suggest that the problem in fact has NOTHING to do with gun control, and EVERYTHING to do with the special allowances and preferences that are given to people who already enjoy positions of privilege.
So, it would be interesting to know who embroidered the information of the earlier incident, and phrased it to suggest the shooting was accidental, when the recollection of the arresting officer is that she shot three times, and deliberately. She may not have been able to see her brother when she fired, but evidently fired through a bedroom wall and struck him. She then (according to the account of the Braintree Police Chief in his news conference yesterday) ran out of the house with the firearm, pointed the weapon at a passing vehicle as though trying to force it to stop. Finally she was found hiding behind a business and arrested at gunpoint.
As to the interrupted booking for the shooting, here are the words of Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier as they appeared on the website boston.com today:
“I (Chief Frazier) spoke with the retired Deputy Chief who was then a Lieutenant and was responsible for booking Ms. Bishop. He said he had started the process when he received a phone call he believes was from then Police Chief John Polio or possibly from a captain on Chief Polio’s behalf. He was instructed to stop the booking process. At some point Ms. Bishop was turned over to her mother and they left the building via a rear exit.”
(To Whiskey, just tween you and me: The culture in which we find ourselves is INSANE! Just thought this note might help you make sense of things when you assume otherwise…)
HERE is a WBZ-TV article that has the DA reports of the incident from 1987.
You have to scroll down to get to the PDF links.
Habu, I was just kidding around on the choice of the Mini Cooper 240hp, so I went with something smaller and hotter yet – and imaginary, I hope, a SmartCar with that horsepower would probably just fall over anyway. What I drive here in Los Angeles is intentionally modest horsepower, spend most of the time crawling in traffic anyway. And I’d rather have more sheet metal around me, and better visibility. Dull, but there it is. LA driving these days is either highly pragmatic or highly flashy, not much in between.
whiskey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFBcjII3QAE
that woman had balls, like her I dispise the men who abused her
137. Josh
Ah yes the 405 LA crawl. Now I haven’t done it in years but I use to commute from my condo on Vista del Mar in Playa del Rey to 1801 Century Park East in Century City, the local IBM office.
At the time I was driving a Lotus and it truly killed me to poke along.
On the weekends I’d hit the coast road or head toward Vegas or Big Bear….or simply walk a block to the beach and play volleyball.
Of course a bike ride to the Venice freak show on the weekends was always a delight.
Hey, if you’re single there’s a great place to take a date called the Sherman Institute in Newport Beach. It’s an arboretum with a very nice coffee and tea bar w/pastries.
Now it’s Montana where I do my serious driving. No traffic outside of town and tons of beauty to fill the eye.
Best,
Habu
131. Worm
Great points Worm and all on point for maintaining the proper mindset to survive, adapt, improvise, and overcome in a tight situation. I got a bit of training at Quantico and a nice out of the way spot called Harvey Point. It served me well immediately (back in the 70’s) and for years to come…..right up to today’s uncivil civilians and infiltrat’n bad guys. There’s more than the public is aware of going on inside our wire and it’s all bad.
One case in point is that few Americans are aware that the Spetsnaz cached tons of gear during the cold war in the northwestern US for future use. By now I’m sure the muzzies know the whereabouts of the caches and will use them when they need them….ugh.
Marie Claude:
During World War II, it was a very high compliment within the Greek resistance to say that someone “fights like a woman”.
As a rule, once women decide to fight, they won’t stop fighting until they win.
“Red Dawn”
The Boston Globe is reporting:
”According to the current Braintree police chief, Paul H. Frazier, Amy Bishop fatally shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth, on Dec. 6, 1986, but was set free the same day by Braintree Police under orders from then-Police Chief John Polio. In news accounts at the time, Polio called the death an accident that happened when Bishop was learning how to unload a shotgun.
Frazier challenged that account today, saying instead that Bishop shot her brother during an argument and fled on foot with the 12-gauge shotgun before being captured by police, who handcuffed her and took her to the station. The case file, including the report of the incident, disappeared shortly thereafter, he said.
‘‘I don’t want to use the word ‘coverup,’’’ Frazier said. ‘‘I don’t know what the thought process was of the police chief at the time.’’
…
Frazier said at a press conference this afternoon that he was a patrolman at the time of the shooting, but was not one of the officers who responded to the Bishop home. He based his account on an officer who was at the scene.
At his home in Braintree today, Polio, who is retired, disputed Frazier’s version.
‘‘That’s a joke. That’s got to be a joke. If anybody knows history, I never covered anything up,’’ he said. He said he thought that the Bishop family’s explanation of an accident was murky and that he wanted the district attorney to hold an inquiry.
But just one day after the shooting, Polio told the Globe, ‘‘every indication at this point in time leads us to believe it was an accidental shooting.’’
The district attorney at the time, current US Representative William D. Delahunt, is out of the country and could not be reached for comment.
Frazier said that the Bishop case file was missing from the records today and that he was told by an officer that it had been missing since at least 1988. “
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/professor_accus.html
Habu, yes, I’ve long lived up in Nichole Simpson’s old neighborhood, have my own personal ruts worn into the 405, and back in the day made many a tour of the Venice freak show. And yes on the Lotus – exactly the kind of lightweight screamer – that I don’t drive. Sigh.
Recall yeeears ago driving my old Fiat 124 through Vegas up towards Saint George on the way cross country to Massachusetts. Driving that little buzzbomb through the open country was a whole other thing. Though, there are yet some nice drives nearby to Los Angeles, as close as the Malibu hills, PCH in the OC, even the depths of the 57 or 2 freeways as they approach the hills.
Automobile technology today is really fantastic, compared to back when, even my factory-issue Accord is a helluva nice vehicle, actually. American assembled so some of the bodywork doesn’t *quite* align, but I guess it’s within specs.
Rage! The Joy of Murderous Rage! It’s made quite the comback, hasn’t it? It seems to be all around us. Yesterday’s news brought us not only the saga of our celebrated professor, Ms. Bishop (why does she have a different last name than her husband, btw?), but also the story of Daniel Greene. Mr. Greene walked into Pheonix Sky Harbor airport with a knife, then took off all his clothes and ran amok. Nobody was injured in that caper, at least. He claims to be bipolar and off his meds, and freaking out after having lost his job.
Strangely, another man coming out of Phoenix a few months back also diverted a good bit of air traffic when he took off all his clothes on an airplane. He, too, claimed to be a bipolar individual off his meds.
All this is backwards, too. It ought to be the guys who are going on shooting sprees, and the women taking off their clothes. Strange times.
Yesterday I faced an incident of road rage, too, on the highway through the Yuma Proving Ground. I was in an obvious military convoy, a line of about 4 vehicles, and our highway speed was limited to about 45mph. We caused an incredible backup on the two-lane highway running through the base that’s shared with civilians (road construction didn’t help). We only had about 40 miles to travel on it, but apparently this was too much and people just couldn’t deal. One guy in a Mustang went banannas on us, flipping us off repeatedly, decidedly, vehicle by vehicle as he passed, all the while screaming out obscenities at us.
This caused a reverse-road rage incident. One of our men said, “Can’t that guy see we’re in a convoy through the base? Man I’d love to shoot out one of his tires out right now.”
My grandma would have simply “tanned everybody’s hide” in all of these situations, for being so stupid. You want the thrill of luxuriating in your self-righteousness? That’s for kids – grow up. I have the distinct impression some very basic, essential wisdom is not being handed down these days. The modern society is ridden with aggreived little powderkegs just itching to be set off, and over the most foolish things.
Hey, is that you looking at me funny?
Whiskey,
Do a search for Jennifer San Marco. She was a former post office employee who returned to her workplace in 2006 and killed six employees with a handgun.
You’re right, though. This sort of violence where the perpetrator is a woman is quite rare.
habu/140; there’s a guy –supposedly a helpful feller, a so-called ‘kollapsnik’ who “survived the ‘Russian collapse’ of the 90s”, who runs a blog –anyhoo one of his entries got a little carried away with joy & delight and said that folks who thought they could band together in the Montana/Northwest were in for a nasty surprise when organized units –who’ve data-mined and know who’s got valuable stashes –come at their compounds ‘with grenades and perhaps air cover’. The guy’s name is Dimitri Orlov –i’m sure you can find the blog –or i’ll dig it up for you –but anyhoo what you said in 140 kinda rang that bell.
Most of the commenters here, as well as the post, are the kind of ignorant small minded trash who make up the base of the Base. 3 people were murdered and all we get here are gun nuts and morons who act like only Harvard female profs ever went postal. Like some theo-tard ranting about how believing in Evolution and despising Palin is some marker for mass murder. This blog is a virtual cesspool.
I have lived in Huntsville for the past 18 years and want to correct a few mis-statements from trangbang68 and then comment on the thread in general.
“Huntsville is this dull, high tech town where they have a hard time keeping young people because its so boring, but every now and then there are explosions of violence.”
Pure libel and nonsense. There have NEVER been recurring explosions of violence. Furthermore, Huntsville is only dull to effete metrosexuals who hate sports and outdoor recreation while *also* being too dim to find Dolce’ and similar fine dining, the bountiful shopping, the artist and craftsman bazaar, the local Symphony, the local Broadway Theatre League, etc.
“A couple weeks ago in the suburbs, a 13 year old wannabe gangsta’ killed another kid in the middle school hallway.”
It happened exactly one week before the UAH murders.
And again, nothing remotely like these two freak incidents have occured in Huntsville while I’ve lived here. We have recurring, violent tornadoes. It would be a HUGE news story if a student was caught on school property with a weapon, much less coldly assasinating a schoolmate. The entire community is in a state of shock over both tragedies.
Finally, the speculation and tone of this thread has been a bit of a shock to me. You’ve all taken this in a weird direction, especially for the Belmont Club.
Granted North Alabama is a very conservative, libertarian region politically. Granted, Amy Bishop was a Harvard Commie. Even so, none of the local speculation has tied national-level politics to what was either a personal grudge or pure, insane, evil. Do you really see the world that way?
This is not a criticism of Wretchard’s original post, per se. But the commentary is off the reservation. Does “road rage” theory apply when murder is pre-planned *and* you have an accomplice? What was Mr Bishop’s Rage Du Jour? That McCain carried almost a 70% majority in Madison county? Is that really motivation to blot our the fact your *four* young kids will now most likely grow up without parents?
LOL.
Yes, Morrisminor, yes, do continue to throw that smack down.
So, do you feel better now?
Habu
Thanks for the support. Never heard of the Spetsnaz caches, very interesting. Do you have any links for good reading on that?
Morrisminor
I guess I’m one of gun-nuts you’re trashing. Sorry, not taking the bait though. Run along little troll.
When this story first broke, the last thing in the world I expected was that this story would lead to the fall of another Massachusetts Congressman. Only a raving lunatic with a political fixation would have predicted that. But apparently Delahunt’s record is going to be eviscerated by the Boston papers tomorrow, and the odds of him choosing not to run for re-election in the fall are increasing by the minute.
This world is getting unbelievably weird.
Tocque works. If someone walks into our house to insult us they can disappear. Life should always be so good.
Regarding female violence I am willing to see the reasonableness of recruiting exceptional women into elite units but I am not comfortable with women in general combat arms assignments. The reason is that I think that women once committed to violence are much harder to get back under control. Men have the benefit of thousands of years of culture to rely on in knowing how to behave under stress. All of the traditions, almost all of the team games, most of the stories, and many of the songs have for thousands of years shared the same messages and they were usually explicitly directed at men. What they taught was how to obey orders, how to sublimate your desires to the needs of a team, how to accept a binding commitment to even a hostile other, how to protect an captured enemy, and even how to surrender. All of these are difficult and all of these reduce the loss of life in combat. Women can undoubtedly learn these concepts as intellectual constructs but they do not have the deep inner knowledge that comes from almost 20 years of pervasive cultural training that most men swim in from birth before they enter military service. If anyone has ever seen adolescent girls fight then they understand that the problem is that women once unleashed tend to be much more violent then men are. Women, with apologies to Mrs Miniver, do not take prisoners.
HsvToolFool — I second your defense of Huntsville. I found it to be a charming place, and one of great beauty.
I do think the road rage application is apropriate, however. The faculty executions were crimes of passion. Strangely so, too, given the degree of premeditation. No thought about an “out” or a clean getaway seems present. It’s hard to imagine an alibi. Disposal of the murder weapon was not thought out, along with leaving tons of witnesses, etc. All in all it was a very sloppily done crime.
The goal was simply to kill, to stoke the libido of the gun, and that was the point of the crime. Nothing else was gained. The plan, and there does seem to be one, was simply orgiastic release of bloodshed and mayhem, and there it ended. In that way it does resemble road rage, which is conducted for exactly the same purpose.
At least road rage is sporadic and episodic by nature. What we have in the Bishop case (among others) is planned rage. It is a nursing and a cultivation of grievance for the simple joy of releasing it on others’ doom.
It is sick and unhealthy, and it seems to be a regularly growing phenomenon. The oddity of Bishop’s case (female, ethically conscious, highly educated mother of four gone haywire) only underscores the fecundity of the malignancy. The ‘system’ got you screwed? The man got you down? What’s the answer? — increasingly for some it seems to be “go natural born killa”.
As much as I respect those with training in firearms and quick response. I seriously doubt that if armed one of those attacked would have been able to respond quick enough. It apparently, was a meeting, which means sitting at a conference room table. The victims did not see it coming. I suspect the tenure deprived professor stood up while pulling the 9MM from a purse and squeezed off until the gun was empty. The first three didn’t have a chance the next two are critically wounded and the last just wounded. She then left the room, dumped the gun in the bathroom and exited the building. The police picked her up moments later. There were others in the room who barred the door when she left (either the wounded survivors or others who were witnesses).
It’s been proven that a man with a knife who knows how to use it can react quicker then a person with a holstered handgun gun at close range. Most people do not have the combat training nor reflexes to say duck under the table and pull a pistol from their ankle, release the safety and return fire. We all like to believe we could do it but very few would be able to pull it off. I’ve heard of the off duty IDF soldier who was near the Israeli religious school when that terrorist shot a bunch of students and he was one of the first responders. It was this highly skilled combat experienced soldier who took out the bad guy before the police could. God bless him!
Dr Bishop apparently killed her younger brother with a shotgun and actually fired the weapon 3 times! From various reports, one shot killed her brother, another hit the ceiling and no one said what happened to the third. It does not sound like an accident. There appears to either be quite the cover-up as the original files are “missing”. That could just be really bad paperwork handling by the Boston PD or someone walked with the file. There is now an investigation about what happened twenty-four years ago with some serious political fallout. One of the responding officers states she was arrested and it was indeed a likely murder but word came down on high to release her to her mother. I had to do a little math and work the ages out. Dr. Bishop was 20 or 21 years old and her brother was 18. That would be highly unlikely for the police to just release her. A guess would be a matriarch mother figure, who just lost one son and didn’t want to lose her daughter as well; called in a favor with a high ranking police chief or commissioner and got her released. Then someone at the police station disposed of the paperwork once it was all filed away.
Things just keep getting more interesting with this story…
Whatever else can be said about her, Amy Bishop appears to be a brave woman. She stuck up for students of UA-Huntsville at the Faculty Senate when the university president made a policy to force all freshmen and sophomores to live on campus. That was a gutsy move.
Her reputation as a teacher appears to be good. Her reputation as a researcher appears to be excellent. She invented a new technology for culturing cells. She appears to be a world authority on how neurons use and respond to nitric oxide. She has also been working on a neuroengineering project to use neuron tissue to create a working computer.
From outside appearances, the only legitimate reason to deny tenure to Amy Bishop would have been an ethical disagreement with her neuroengineering project. She appears to have been on the verge of a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence. On the other hand, her engineering project could be seen legitimately as the kind of experiment one would definitely expect from a “Modern Prometheus”.
If it were my decision, Amy Bishop would have gotten tenure. Sadly, I think her so-called “Neuristor” (neurological computer) would have made that decision more difficult than it would have been otherwise.
It would be quite understandable if the monster Amy Bishop has been creating spooks other members of her department, and the rest of the faculty generally. Although her engineering project is near and dear to her heart and she may have been offended by ethical objections to her research, any ethical objections to her research should have been raised to her firmly, gently, honestly, and professionally. I doubt that anybody ever did.
Faculty meetings can be notoriously contentious, especially within a department with fractious faculty and a weak chairman and particularly when that department has become a bone of contention among rival deans. (Amy Bishop is basically an engineer within a science department.) The real wonder isn’t whether someone has pulled a gun at a faculty meeting, but why it hasn’t happened more often. Faculty strife is rarely pleasant.
Dishonesty poisons the atmosphere. If Amy Bishop were denied tenure for spurious reasons, that would have been infuriating. It doesn’t excuse murder, though.
If her mom covered for her murder of their son and brother, then there’s something terrible in the line, and Amy Bishop’s kids have just been granted a HUGE reprieve. Now get them to Utah under assumed names, pronto. I hope there’s someone to take it on and keep them together. How incredibly awful for all the families of all the people involved. seven generations of very careful very correct living needed to fully repair.
James #155
“I seriously doubt that if armed one of those attacked would have been able to respond quick enough.”
So this nerdy, deranged, un-trained college professor is Doc Holiday lightning fast? Hmmm… no. More likely she calmly pulled her pistol while they sat frozen in disbelief just waiting to die. Then she methodically shot them and walked out.
“It’s been proven that a man with a knife who knows how to use it can react quicker then a person with a holstered handgun gun at close range.”
Yeah, a guy with a knife inside 21′ can get to you and cut you. So what? Does that mean you just let him keep cutting you, or do you fight? You can take multiple knife wounds and still survive.
“Most people do not have the combat training nor reflexes to say duck under the table and pull a pistol from their ankle, release the safety and return fire.”
Most people do not have the training because they CHOOSE not to. There are lots of places to get training. It takes time, money, and discipline like anything else. People waste time and money on all manner of useless pursuits, but won’t spend a dime or a second on something that could save their own life or the lives of their loved ones. Sad.
James, the one thing you are right about is the ankle holster. Stupid place to carry a pistol. Slow and awkward. Strong-side, just behind the hip in a quality holster on a sturdy belt. Oh, spare mag is a good idea too.
Here’s a guy who understands: Lance Thomas the watchmaker/gunfighter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkWgp2abM2w
PS – What’s with all you guys and “releasing the safety” like it takes an hour or something? WTF, over. Besides, carry a Glock – no manual safety. The lack of firearms knowledge of the average American is truly amazing. Wow.
I stand by my assertion that Huntsville is a pretty dull place. It’s
a pleasant enough place for family life, but ask young people if there’s much going on .
As far as violent incidents, I never asserted it was Birmingham or Detroit, but there have been a number of violent incidents there over the years (including while you lived there)
The boy whose name I forgot who was a student at Grissom killed his mother and father and traumatically injured his sisters with an ax. This occurred in the mid ’90′s.
A couple of years later Joey “Doughboy” Wilson and a couple of his homeboys executed 5 young adults on highway 72 in what was known as the “Cell Phone murders”
About 5 years ago Tangueray “Tank” Beavers .a star basketball player at Athens High School who played one year at Memphis and two of his companions were murdered standing at the bar at TGIF Fridays by a violent guy whose girl Tank said hello to.
On McVay Street in southwest Huntsville in about 2000 a young man gunned down
a father and two sons after a neighborhood altercation. I’m very familiar with
that one because the shooter ran through my yard on Penny Street and my property values went in the crapper after the media painted the neighborhood as South Central.
I could go on but all I’m saying is Huntsville ain’t Mayberry. Who you calling
an effete metrosexual who hates sports? That ain’t what your mama says (just kidding) Actually I spent a lot time in the bleachers at Butler High watching the Rebels dismantle all comers. I liked my seventeen years in Huntsville, but I don’t subscribe to the saying “If Heaven ain’t like Dixie I don’t want to go there”
As someone who tried to kill herself last December and ended up in the ER barely surviving her stupid attempt at death, I have no right to judge this woman except to just say this:
If you feel bad enough to kill yourself, don’t take others with you. It’s bad enough to try and take your own life, but you sure as hell have no right to take someone else’s. EVER. Not to mention the lives affected by the ones you killed because of your rage or whatever.
I’ll never understand that?
I’ve always been more abusive to myself than anyone and I’d NEVER want to hurt anyone but me. I’m struggling with a resurgence of anorexia right now and it scares me because I’ve never been this thin in years but I can’t fight the feeling of helplessness and depression as I’m sure many are right now. Part of me just feels exceedingly sad.
I’m not looking for pity in that regards though. I’m struggling just to have the will to live. There are days when I’m so happy just to see another morning. I pray for everyone on PJM and I wonder if there are not others like me, secretly buried in depression.
There are times I come to PJM just for strength. So many of you really do help! It’s amazing what a few kind words or words of fortitude and strength can do for you when the chips are down.
Thank you so much to all of you who keep a stiff upper lip and keep posting positive and uplifting words. It means more than you can even fathom.
((HUGS)),
Angel AKA Delia
I am pretty sure that Amy Bishop was isolated within her own department, but not principally because of her alma mater. Her doctorate was from the Harvard Division of Medical Sciences; she didn’t get her doctorate from a Biology Department within a college of Arts and Sciences. Medical schools are essentially engineering schools, not schools of “pure science”. At UA-Huntsville, she was closely aligned with the College of Nursing, and most of her students were probably nursing students. Hence, her economic base was probably independent of departmental control. Moreover, she is clearly an engineer. Within a department dominated by natural scientists and natural philosophers, her focus on engineering would have isolated her in departmental politics.
Within academia, the political division between science and engineering is almost as important as the political division between the sciences and the humanities. UA-Huntsville has separate Chemistry (within the college of Science) and Chemical Engineering (within the college of Engineering) departments, yet the scientists and engineers live under the same tent within the Department of Biological Sciences. I think political and philosophical divisions within academe (that are usually hidden from the view of outsiders) can cause problems for people who don’t fit into neat academic pigeonholes.
By the way, I see nothing particularly amazing about a Socialist from Harvard also being a pistol packin’ mama.
delia, someone who can help even on the web:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=viktor+frankl&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
He might say that by writing alone there’s hope embodied. Hopelessness won’t write. He has a stunning first question he asks his new patients. Please read about his life, and then go to his website and answer the question.
sadness is rough for sure –some folks fight it with country music, which encourages you to just dive right on into it and splash around –and let it float some of the weight. Maggie’s just put up a Valentine song that’s right sad and happy both at the same time.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/13032-If-I-needed-You,-for-St.-Valentines-weekend.html
Part of the problem, of the ‘why’, I think, is the sense of isolation, of being alone, by choice or circumstance.
I looked at the video of the office worker who went nuts, and the first thing that came to me was: why didn’t he ask for help? Because he was unwilling to look weak? Yeah right, because blowing up is so much better for your public image. Because nobody would help him? Really? Has society become that self-centered that people don’t help each other?
I also found it interesting the two ladies near the printer didn’t seem to notice his distress. As somebody who once sat at a cubicle near a printer, the moment somebody took out the print cartridge, I would always pop up and ask, ‘what’s wrong?’, and we would try to brainstorm solutions and discuss the problem. Are those ladies that self-absorbed?
Talking to another human being always helps. Dunno why, but there it is. This part of being a social animal is very much hardwired into our genes, I think.
Did Bishop have a supportive network that could control her worst excesses?
All the talk about faculty competition and what a pressure cooker it is kinda pales in harsh light of these crimes. The essence of Bishop’s actions boils down to a simple principle easily understood by the street: they dissed her, so she put a cap in them.
Here is an intrusion of an honor/shame dynamic into a realm that prides itself on merit/reward. This is a giant leap backwards, but, again, one we see with increasing frequency in so many realms. The dissed losers in the Trenchcoat Mafia took the same road, as did the Virginia Tech killer. Or, take all the problems we’ve talked about so much regarding all the manifestations of Islam’s problem with modernity, on how honor killings have come to Amsterdam, or how engineers like Mohammed Atta wind up flying planes into buildings, or the Army major being sent down from Walter Reed going crazy in Ft. Hood. All these incidents indicate a return of that old honor/shame dynamic. Blood vengeance settles scores. Heck, even now street protesters are smashing windows now in Vancoover for reasons nobody can really explain except that “they have a beef, they do this.” Those who resort to violence will keep doing so until they are checked, with increasing boldness and in increasing realms.
Interestingly, Bishop’s case plops the problem straight down on the Academe. Obstensibly this realm is a results-bound meritocracy girded with objective standards, peer review, and not least the hallowed scientific method. The auora of “universitas” is essential for scientific progress, even if, as some allude to, it is something of an artifice. Big egos have always dominated the sciences to a greater extent than the most ardent promoters of science’s renown epistemology will ever admit.
The Bishop episode is the latest assault against that universitas edifice, the latest signal flare that something is going wrong. As the AGW fiasco and other scandals mount, predictable as rain really if you look at it this way, a mere thug with a PhD has jumped into the breech with a gun.
Add science to the growing list of institutions whose fundamental operation has come under attack. This Bishop tragedy is a symptomatic example of a larger philosophical conflict, one that seeks to upend the foundations of a Western Civilization it disregards.
Talking to another human being always helps. Dunno why, but there it is. This part of being a social animal is very much hardwired into our genes, I think.
I think this is one reason why 12-step groups help so many people. What follows is for Delia, too. I think there is a lot of pressure in contemporary society to be self-sufficient; therefore, asking for help appears to many people like asking for trouble, even if “trouble” is just a snarky verbal put-down rather than the kind of office politicking that can lead to losing your job (or tenure). It took a lot of courage for Delia to post her comment about her present struggles. Been there myself– I struggled for several years in grad school with an eating disorder, only in my case it was bulimia. What helped me were three things– Church; music (buddy may be amused to know it was Bach for me rather than country); and going to Al-Anon.
Now the funny thing about that last was that I did not go to Al-Anon meetings to deal with the eating disorder; I went to learn how to cope with an alcoholic stepfather and a mother who denied that he had a drinking problem. But in the process of learning to cope with the family alcoholic, I found that the bulimia slowly began to resolve. There was something about the human contact in those 12-step meetings– particularly seeing people change over the course of time and move in positive directions– that was tremendously encouraging. The group also helped people to recognize that they could contribute to one another, that they weren’t helpless or worthless. So many of us had been beaten down by years of criticism (usually from the alcoholics we were dealing with) that we had come to discount our various good qualities and talents. Delia, if you are still online and reading BC– please don’t ever forget that you have much to offer the rest of us. Your courage in posting here is a gift. I will keep you in my prayers.
Buddy Larson,
Thank you, hon. You’ve always been such a sweetheart to me when you’ve interacted with me on PJM and I appreciate your kindness. I will bookmark the links you gave me for future reference. I know better than to think I’m out of the woods yet so any little bit certainly does help. I sought counseling In early Jan. but at 100 bux an hour that might cause me to be MORE apt to depression (not to mention most of ‘em are Liberals). lol
PA Cat,
What a precious post and I can so relate to so much of what you wrote. After over 24 years of being ‘over’ anorexia I never thought I’d see it rear its ugly head again in my life but it has to do with a lot of unmentionable personal issues that I think brought my old demons back to the surface. I’m only as strong as my weakest link and it seems I didn’t shore up my weak link good enough the last time I dealt with it.
Thank you for your prayers and right back atchya too! I can use all the prayers I can get as I’m sure you and everyone can too in this climate of uncertainty, American dissent/regret and economic frailty.
My prayers extend to everyone here (even the trolls whom have actually been leaving me alone for the most part of 2010 amazingly enough and iffin’ that ain’t a miracle I dunno what is he-he).
I so need to keep the faith. We ALL DO!
Delia– as a pastor friend of mine likes to say: Keep the faith and the faith will keep you. God bless!
151. Worm
Not sure how I conveyed the idea I was trashing you as a gun nut. I support everything you said. Apologies for any mix up.
Delia, I’ve never had an eating disorder but I’ve struggled with depression most all my life. Still do, but it’s much easier now to overcome. I pray you will find that will to live because the gentle, intelligent, sensitive person that your posts show you to be is just the sort we need MORE of, not fewer of. So no more of this suicide stuff, ya hear? When the darkness comes you must find a way to reject it. Though you may not realize it, this world still needs you, is not done with you yet. And it is not for you to say when it is. You said that you “pray for everyone on PJM,” but do you ever pray for yourself? It’s okay to pray for yourself, you know. Ask him. He saved my life in 1992 when I asked him and he can do the same for you. I know it.
Alexis @ 156 & 160, Cowboy @ 164,
Finally, someone on the thread gets to the heart of the matter. I tried in 17, but for 150 comments everyone wanted to deal with socialism and self-defense. The point is that our institutions and culture itself have become inhumane; they crush individuals who are outside the mold. Probably this is due to both to creeping socialism and excessive materialism.
The department that I was tenured in and suffered through until retirement was dominated by sadists. I have looked into the eyes of pure evil at faculty meetings. Bishop is probably unbalanced, but I seriously doubt that her former department is a beacon of Christian love. Murder cannot be justified legally. Whether it can be morally is a more open question. In this case, to me, the issue is whether the persons shot were random members of the department or had they tormented Bishop. If the former, then I see this as road rage. If the latter, then I would say Bishop was in too much of a hurry.
#141 Alexis
I suppose you were referring to the Amazones
Khadafi’s got women as private guards, he said that women are more fidel and won’t betray.
I find him right, once you’ve chosen your “chief” (or ideal) no ambitious temptations can derail you from him/her/it
Delia, my thoughts are with you
Delia,
The following comes of course with no professional qualification.
To me the secret for a person with an eating disorder is to simply look, I mean really look, at the world outside. We spend a lot of time focusing on either our own problems or what seems dysfunctional in the world. The great thing about music, whether Country or Classical is that it is reminds us that the Universe is harmonious. If I ever feel something like Depression causing me to doubt my self worth, and times certainly are bad now and getting worse, I remember that I am part of something larger and that something is magnificent. Faith can be the avenue for many to appreciate the sheer beauty, order and complexity beyond our comprehension of the larger system we are part of. It is possible for people who are secular to approach this perspective also. Science when done right does that. Ms Bishop had contributed to understanding a portion of the greater complexity we are in and then she lashed out and destroyed it. Perhaps she had a crisis of her Faith.
When I see images of nature, hear great music, have a satisfying meal, or touch a woman I know that there is a vast and wonderful existence that I can experience. That knowledge makes me hungry to consume it. It makes for a tasty banquet.
To be blogged under the title “Feast.”
Habu
Re: #151
Sorry bro, my mix-up. I know you weren’t trashing me.
That part of my post was directed at the asshat troll Morrisminor #148, he was trashing me. That douchebag troll got me steamed, and I might have muddled up my post.
I apologize if you thought that was directed you. It was surely not sir.
The department that I was tenured in and suffered through until retirement was dominated by sadists. I have looked into the eyes of pure evil at faculty meetings.
RR – I have two advanced degrees so I once spent considerable time as a student at universities, but as far as full-time work goes, I have always worked in the non-academic private sector. I’ve had one boss who was most likely certifiably crazy, but essentially harmless in the physical sense. I also worked for a large Hollywood studio in a department whose executives were almost all some combination of sadists, toadies, and two-faced ambitious climbers. The atmosphere was *extremely* brittle because of the office politics — who was allied with whom, who was plotting, who was ripe for overthrow or getting canned, who dared not criticize this or that decision because of politics, payback, etc. That and all the sleeping around made it an extremely unpleasant place to work. A high-level executive in my department was not just driven from the studio but from Hollywood itself while I was working there, and the way it was handled was exceedingly ugly (to the degree that few if any people will ever know the truth of what happened, there were so many layers of BS and vitriol heaped on).
But I have to say that otherwise my work environments have been pretty normal … just the usual & expected level of office politics, i.e. not dominated by sadists, no eyes of “pure evil” at staff meetings.
Which leads me to ask … what is it about academia (and Hollywood, for that matter) that draws these psychopathic personalities to collect there? What institutional ways of doing things allow the unbalanced not just to converge but to entrench themselves in these places?
LOTM, one thing to keep in mind about eating disorders is that they are almost always linked to early age “unmentionable personal issues”, as Delia called them. No need to say what those are, since any adult in this day and age should know. But this is why eating disorders are so difficult to deal with for those who suffer from them – they are masks for much deeper wounds. Until those deep and ancient wounds are dealt with professionally, the surface manifestations (eating disorders) will always keep coming back at any time of stress. I say this as someone who’s been involved in the long term treatment of someone close to me who has suffered from this.
Virtually everyone with an eating disorder has suffered some very dark and personal pain at the hands of another when they were young and vulnerable – this is how it manifests. They all have my deepest sympathy and hopes for recovery – it is never easy.
wws –if there’s a sin that won’t be washed away, it is mistreatment of a child. what sets it apart may be that so often the sinner just goes on oblivious, and the wrong done stays on the child as a life of round-the-clock PTSD ‘damage control’. no wonder at times it just gets too tiring. but always, ‘where there’s life there’s hope!’
wws –if there’s a sin that won’t be washed away, it is mistreatment of a child.
The other thing that leaps out re: child molestation (as opposed to child abuse in which a parent beats their kid) is that the offender-to-victim ratio frequently runs in the scores, or even hundreds. A child molester can demolish the lives of 50, 100, or 200 children before he or she (though frequently it’s a he) is caught.
These people are predators to the Nth and there is no rehabilitating them IMO. If I were in charge of the justice system I would go Old Testament. So maybe it’s a good thing I’m not king.
“Gandhi the man was a much more hard-bitten pragmatist than Gandhi the myth.”
Well stated, tharkun #132.
When I got around to reading Gandhi, I was surprised at the pragmatism, the logic, since previous to that I’d only been exposed to the myth.
Lots of different impressions ensue when you go to original sources about anything or anyone.
s/mythbuster
Delia, #160, that can’t be you.
You’re our go-to girl for fresh and original snark.
A rare gift, keep it intact
GAH! I didn’t intend to hijack this thread towards the end and make it all about ME_ME-ME_ME-ME-MEEEEEE ME MEEEEEEE. Pfft! *points at self and gives raspberries*
That being said, thank you from my heart and soul, Buddy, PA-Cat, Karen Yvonne, Marie Claude(my buttery leetle croissant),Lifeofthemind, Bogie Wheel, WWS(spot-on), tanstaafl (yeah, I’ll get back to my snarkin’ weight soon ha-ha) for the input and support. We are humans behind these here machines after all!
I’m not a regular to BC and if it weren’t for PJM I would have never known of the handsome and intelligent Richard aka Wretchard and his band of merry followers and high-up-on-the-food-chain intellectuals. So, viva BC and PJM!
I’m ALIVEEEEEEEEEE and you all make me even ‘gladder’ so!
First love or religious awakening?
Perhaps it’s very much the same.
Either way, it involves joy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko-HqLqGBGA&NR=1
LOL –good ole sunny side o de street –we likes it –we tries to foller the sun and jaywalk befo’ we gets caught walkin’ on dat cold side –and sometimes –whoops! a bus runs over us!
I gotta laugh at all those posting here who are trying to come up with some exculpatory BS psychological or sociological defense for poor Amy.
However, this was not the first time that li’l ol’ Amy has killed someone.
According to the Braintree, MA police Chief Paul H. Frazier at a press conference yesterday, back in 1986 Amy fired three rounds from a 12 gauge shotgun at her brother during an argument, and the one shot that hit him in the torso killed him.
Amy and her mother explained this at the time as a “tragic gun accident”—no mention of an argument–saying that while poor Amy was asking her mother how to unload the shotgun, it somehow discharged three times. Count ‘em, folks, three times and, according to one account, shots fired on two different levels of the family house (http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/professor_accus.html) man, that Amy sure was a slow learner.
Thing is, news reports say Amy fled the scene of this “tragic accident” with the 12-gauge, unsuccessfully tried to jack a passing car with her shotgun, and was arrested at gunpoint by cops later that day. But, as she was in the process of being booked and charged, the then Chief of Police, John Polio, called to say to “cancel the whole thing,” and Amy left the station by the back exit with her mother, who just happened to be an official on the town’s personnel board. So, Amy just skated, Scot free, and was never charged with anything and had no record, and all the files that had been created on this case just somehow disappeared soon afterward, and what remained was just a notation of the start of the booking and the memories of policemen who were working in the department at the time–it seems like this incident has stuck in the craw of a lot of Braintree’s cops ever since.
It does seem, too, like there has been a lot of this sort of thing going around in Massachusetts the last few decades.
The current police chief says the word “coverup” at a press conference, the retired chief who sprung Amy says “the DA told him to do it.”
And who was the DA?
Current Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9829701 .
.
@182. heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn,
Great oldie!
Something about ‘joy’ struck me…
I was thinking about how small children are so excited and enamored of something ‘new’ to ‘learn/discover’. Learning something ‘new’ is such a precious gift isn’t it? I have often joked to my family that the moment I know I’m dead before I die is when I stop learning.
)
The only part of death that really saddens me is all of the stuff that will happen when I’m gone that I won’t get to be privy of and learn more of. When I go, my ‘time-line’ and personal ‘progress’ goes with me.
The key to being ‘forever young’ I truly believe is always ‘knowing’ er ‘understanding’ that you don’t ‘know’ everything (or EVER WILL) and in fact the very idea of ‘knowing’ something is only knowledge in its ‘current’ form and can ‘change’ at any given time. Well, except for math…then again… who knows? With these Liberals takin’ over, there might be a new math where 3+3=7! Just ‘believe’!
Further perusal of various news accounts turns up the fact that one of the investigating officers remembers that the shotgun in question was a pump shotgun, so it had to be racked before each shot during this “tragic accident.”
Almost forgot. Apparently the cops didn’t actually interview Miss Amy or her mother until 11 days after the tragic accident, ’cause they were too “emotional” on the day of the “accident” to be interviewed.
If there is anything I like, it is a cop who is investigating a possible murder who is so considerate and sensitive about “feelings.”
It is reported that, when they were–at last– interviewed, there were some “inconsistencies” in their separate stories, but I would have thought that 11 days would have been enough time to “get their stories straight,” so maybe there was good reason for poor Amy to be denied tenure.
Wolla Dalbo:
Hon, Richard [Wretchard] addressed these very questions and concerns almost immediately last evening and that topic is now the main discussion:
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/02/13/the-shadows-of-the-past/
Late to the party, but….
All of you out there who are parents, PLEASE teach your kids the following:
1. Just because you want something, doesn’t mean you can or should get it.
2. If your don’t do as well as someone else, they’ll have more stuff than you do. Get over it.
3. The world doesn’t owe you a paycheck or freedom from worrying about same.
That is all.
“And now we have other spineless idiots wanting to make amends for the deaths of 3 people and the wounding of more by labeling this woman with a disorder making it the fault of something nebulous rather than her own inability to control herself.”
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! Here is a “hate” crime–a woman’s hatred toward subjecting herself to the machinations of a tenure committee, hatred she chose to express in a calculated manner with a firearm, and by doing so, recklessly abandoning four children.
“The National Institute of Mental Health reports that One in four adults-approximately 57.7 million Americans-experience a mental health disorder in a given year.”–NAMI website. (Tcobb @5, perhaps, would channel Che and preside over the imprisonments and executions?? No doubt certain trolls would volunteer services as diagnosticians and medication managers.)
Wouldn’t these horrible shootings be much more prevalent if the cause were simply mental illness? Is it really reasonable to ignore the numbers (inflated though they be by IED and other disorders du jour)? But then again, certain youthful political pundits like to, yes, liberally apply the diagnosis of schizophrenia to society’s dire, pressing issues–naturally large versus surgically-enhanced breasts. Yet, see also http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/36/9/10.full.
Moral turpitude is another matter entirely. Can it exist independently of mental illness? That’s the money question–pun intended. Power and position (and all the perks they entail) certainly are mind-altering substances…
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bogie asks
Which leads me to ask … what is it about academia (and Hollywood, for that matter) that draws these psychopathic personalities to collect there? What institutional ways of doing things allow the unbalanced not just to converge but to entrench themselves in these places?
Add DC and you’ve asked the question of the age.
one thought is that all three involve true performance –not the everyday quotidian means-to-an-end performance AKA one’s ‘public face’, but the work product itself being the performance in public.
Ergo, ‘rehearsal’ is needed, and as always done out of sight. So from insular inner circle out onto the stage and then back into the bunker and then back into the spotlight and then back into the cloak room –as a way of life, as ‘normal’.
Turning self inside-out for an anonymous crowd, all the while “I vant to be left alone”.
I’m tellin’ ya, Elmer, it just ain’t holistic!
buddy,
You cite a potentially unhealthy aspect of those professions that is probably real, although from my experience there are plenty of natural showmen among the professoriate, as well as persons like myself who more modestly enjoyed transmitting their knowledge. But you are right, the nastiest of my colleagues wanted to be left alone, free of any responsibility to the mass of taxpayers whose support kept the doors open.
What I always thought attracted the nutcases to academia was that they didn’t have to be team players. My big disappointment when I joined a faculty in 1976 was that we were apparently expected to behave as scorpions in a bottle. I would have been happier in a little private enterprise as part of a team figuring out how to turn out more widgets. The absence of widgets, the nebulous nature of academia’s products, is what allows the egocentric viewpoint. Ditto politicians? I would be interested in bogie’s evaluation about whether this applies in Hollywood.
RR, right on the widgets –count ‘em at 5, and know your score –kinda nice in its own claustrophobia-inducing way –LOL. Say, if you want to see a film which ‘really’ gets into the question, take a look at “Barton Fink” sometime when you have a chance. Barton Fink (with his asscociates) lives in that ‘high world’ floating free of widget-producing, but he’s subject to intense pressure from the unmeasurable –his own sense of his ‘talent’. His conceit is that he’s a champion of the widget-producers –until he runs into what he thinks is a perfect example of one. To say more is to spoil the flik –but it’s a beaut –
In a country that gives everyone access to guns but almost nobody access to opportunity such tragedies should be expected. Outside of the Fortune 500 boardroom, the threat of homelessness and starvation are only a paycheck away. For a woman who must bear the additional oppression of sexism, the situation is even worse. America is the land that gives people freedom to own devices of death but denies food, housing and health care to all but a small coterie of billionaires to whom the rest of us must grovel for only a few crumbs. In such a situation, career insecurity could lead to a death of exposure and starvation. It is arguable her decision was rational, for upon failing to get tenure, prison became the only place she can be food secure.
#140 Habu and #151 Worm
Late to the thread [been busy, it being the start of what to my family is the real New Year and not the calendar stuff] but if I may, I’ll throw in a couple of points.
The sogannante Cold War war was not always cold. Long ago when the world was new, the age was Golden, and amongst other things I had a sideline writing for defense journals and sometimes editors would honor me with the 5 words that are the highest accolade ["Pay to the order of"] I was pondering an article about some things I had heard of. There were unclassified reports of the Alaska Scouts [National Guard unit consisting of Native Alaskans who can and do live off the land. The Alaskan NG is/was far more on the real front lines as part of their regular routine than other NG units.] finding arms caches on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea SW of Nome. Arms caches were Soviet equipment, and indications were of them being planted there by the Главное Разведывательное Управление and their “Troops of Special Designation” or Войска специального назначения. We call them Spetsnaz.
I pondered doing an article about it, and in the process found myself doing a telephone interview with the CO of the Alaska Scouts. He confirmed what I had heard, added some interesting details, and offered to let me come up and run a patrol with his Scouts on St. Lawrence Island. I could not get the time off from dealing with felons, so I had to pass on that. I admit that I probably would not have been able to keep up and if I had tried I would probably have frozen something important off. Like many articles, this one did not work out [there is a reason that there is not much written about it] and I went on to another.
On another track, I got confirmation [not enough to print, but I believe it] about a place on the Alaska mainland where there is a deposit of Soviet aircraft grade aluminum. Up until the fall of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Air Force would run intrusions into our airspace near Alaska with bombers carrying cruise missiles every few days. Their flight profiles would be identical to those that would be used for nuclear strikes on our bases in Alaska or on the lower 48.
Our fighters would meet them as they got into our Air Defense Zone and shoo them away. I was given to understand that at least once, one of their bombers would not be shoo-ed. I assume that it was a deliberate test. The bomber failed the test, and crossed over the Alaska Mainland. I was further given to understand that if they were monitoring our frequencies, the last thing they heard was “FOX-2″.
The Soviet probes ended shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. They resumed a couple of years ago under Putin. Just saying.
A few years later, I got an officer on my shift and in my crew who was recently out of the Marines. One of his senior NCO assignments was on Iceland, and part of his duties involved finding and dealing with the same kind of caches on Iceland. When you get away from Keflavik/Reykjavik the island has a lot of cold and empty. I suspect that some of that dealing involved leaving nasty surprises for when the caches were reclaimed.
Worm [and others. Habu already knows the truth of it all too well.], Grey Tribe Sheepdogs have been guarding against the Wolves for generations, and still are. The Sheep have no idea.
Subotai Bahadur
When I used to drink coffee or tea or soda with caffeine, I had something that looked a lot like IED. When I quit drinking those things, it went away. I suspect this would be true of a lot of other people.
Hmm. We must be hitting a nerve with this Bishop critter. Leftists making excuses, her background and connections being [unsuccessfully] concealed, websites being “sanitized” and now an infestation of Chiroptera Lunarii.
Long ago, when dealing with felons; I learned that if the first and only thing out of their mouths was a loud claim that they were being stopped only because of discrimination about whatever protected class status they had, and an absolute refusal to talk about whatever factual situation that had occurred, that if I just looked hard enough [and it usually at that point did not take much effort] I probably would find the connection between them and the crime. [One of my favorites was a variation of "that dope in my pocket is not mine".] If someone of whatever background was willing to discuss the facts of the case, rationally and with reasonable specifics, there was a reasonable chance they were not lying. Not a guarantee, but a chance. When you wear a badge, people lie to you even when the only thing that will save them is the truth. In any case, Moonbattery indicates we are on the track of the truth.
I would also note that you are known by the quality of your enemies.
Subotai Bahadur
this women was a nut. she is a sociopathic nutter.
the real story is what played out years ago that alowed her to shoot a shotgun three times resulting in her brothers death, run from the scene and point the shotgun at another mans chest and demand a car. and have all this calleed an accident and shuffled under a rug.
later she was a suspect in a pipe bomb attempt.
this one was allways unhinged and waiting a new trigger event to tragic consequences for others.
this is rep. delahunts tarbaby
Subotai/196; take a look at the 05/13/04 entry: Grey Terror.
***
This is fun, too.
***
The great Judi McLeod, one of the stalwarts against the IPCC, has weighed in with among other things this:
“According to U.S. Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md), Yamantau is “the largest nuclear-secure project in the world.”
The Yamantau mountain complex covers an area of some 400 sq. miles, or as Rick Lowry (National Review, Feb. 25, 2002) puts it, “as large as the area inside the Washington Beltway”.
Construction of the mammoth facility began during the 1970s during the Soviet Union era of the Leonid Brezhnev administration.
Geographically located in a closed zone near the city of Mezhgorye, in the Russian Republic of Bashkortostan, north of the Kazakhstan border, it’s a huge underground facility, complete with railways, in a huge underground facility embedded deep within Yamantau mountain. Costing over $7-billion, the complex is supported by some 60,000 workers who live in the nearby towns of Beloretsk and Tirlyanskiy.
Ever pressed for more details by the guys who sign their pay cheques, spies with the National Security Agency (NSA) are nonplussed about the intriguing absence of notable telecommunications support facilities for the complex. An underground network, KGB style Yamantau is believed to be an alternate “doomsday” command center for the Russian government and military in the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.
U.S. intelligence agencies are reportedly under order to make Yamantau a top priority. Evil Mountain has intrigued the likes of President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield, UN ambassador nominee John Bolton and representatives Curt Weldon (R-Pa) and the previously mentioned Bartlett
***
Note in this WSJ article on the deal underway this sentence:
“…monitoring of a key ballistic-missile site in Russia, which ended in 2008, won’t resume, according to officials familiar with the accord.”
***
(that’s gonna be Yamantau, is it?)
Subotai—Many years ago, and thanks to the wonders of NEXIS, I found one or two short, interesting open source stories that I would not otherwise have found, about such Spetsnaz arms caches on U.S. territory, and it is possible that they included the supposedly mythical but possibly real Russian “suitcase nukes.” A lot of effort and denial has gone into making the existence of such weapons hard to verify.
The Russians are notorious for sloppy record keeping and laxity in keeping track of and protecting their nuclear weapons and materials. Their “suitcase nukes” were for use by their special forces, the Spetsnaz. I can well believe that in the chaos of the disintegration of the old U.S.S.R. some of these suitcase nukes disappeared, and a former Russian General testified to this effect before Congress. If I were tracking Muslim terrorists–who would live to get their hands on such an easily transported weapon—I would be very concerned about such suitcase nukes if they were floating around.
From what I read, there is the possibility that during the Cold War such suitcase nukes could have been pre-positioned in the U.S. for use by the U.S.S.R.’s Special Forces, their Spetsnaz, as part of a very large-scale and elaborate plan for the sabotage of U.S. infrastructure in certain war scenarios. Yes, I know that nuclear weapons have to be refurbished every so often to insure that they will detonate and do so with the intended amount of force but, they are still a worry, and who says that Soviet technicians or know-how and refurbishing supplies aren’t possibly available if the price is right.
That the Soviets, during the Cold War, had pre-positioned communications, conventional explosives and other supplies for their Spetsnaz in booby-trapped caches at many locations around the world, including in the U.S., was revealed when Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist for many years (who, along with his family, was smuggled out of the U.S.S. R. in the early 1990’s by Britain’s MI-5, along with many thousands of notes he had transcribed over a thirty year period, duplicating or summarizing documents from the KGB archives) wrote his first book about the contents of that archive. Mitrokhin claimed that, although documents about this cache placement operation were not of particular interest to him, he had glanced at them and remembered that such caches were to be set up in several different geographic areas in the U.S., but he did not note the precise location of each cache. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive
The Federal government has studiously avoided discussing this issue but, years ago, after Mitrokhin published his first book about the contents of his archive, I did find one newspaper article stating that federal authorities in the U.S., using the information that Mitrokhin had remembered, had found one such cache in the Northwest, and it detonated when they tried to open it. I believe that this article also said that because many landscapes in the U.S. had changed so radically, it was impossible to find other caches, given the few landmarks that Mitrokhin had remembered; the article also noted that at least one cache elsewhere in the world, in Switzerland near Berne, had been located and neutralized.
WD/201; if the scenario is the logic of the “Surikov document” then the goal would be as described in this WSJ article –that is, a USA broken up into five or so separate (less powerful) regions. So these caches, if they exist, would correspondingly be pretty well scattered, something for each region, perhaps (see map in the WSJ article).
buddy @201
Prof. Panarin’s brilliance is shown by his clustering of South Carolina with New York, and Georgia with New Mexico. The Russians had an empire; Americans have a nation.
#200 Wolla Dalbo:
Thanks for the update. Did not know about the caches they found. IF, and I emphasize IF there were SADM’s involved, AND IF they have not been maintained in the 20-30 years since they were cached, I would assume that they will not go bang as designed. They may go bang and make a dirty bomb, but I don’t think there would be mushrooms involved.
I would note that contrary to the sacred Panglossian theology of the Democrats and those few that are even farther Left than the current American Democrats, Russia in any form; Soviet, Commonwealth, or Federation is neither a friend, friendly, nor non-hostile. They act against us consistently. They arm our enemies reflexively [There is a reason that you can tell who the enemy is when the American military is engaged. All our enemies carry Russian AK's which have a distinctive sound and Russian RPG's, etc.] and are responsible for the Iranian nuclear weapons program having furnished the processing equipment, designs, nuclear materials [already enriched beyond the 3-4% necessary for the reactors they claim they are for], and the diplomatic and military defense of the Iranian program. Any WMD attack by Iran on ourselves or our allies, directly or by proxy, using nuclear materials is in reality a deliberate and premeditated attack by Russia. It should be responded to appropriately. They know that under our current regime, they are safe. Deterrence is not operational.
I expect our GRU/SVR minders’ heads to explode at that last.
Within that strategic situation; there is absolutely no assurance that further arms caches have not been established by the Russians within our borders, those of our allies, or that they have not been covertly maintained. So yes, we might have both conventional weapons and small nuclear weapons [if such in fact were deployed by the Soviets] available for the use of either Russian forces operating in our or allied territory; or ready for the use of Islamic terrorists sponsored by the Russians in the same geographical frame.
Is everybody happy in their hearts?
Subotai Bahadur
SB, WD, add to that that the story of Chechens having over-run a military base (the Nyquist site somewhere has an account of it, iirc including sources) and stolen several nuclear weapons is both highly unlikely (look at the danger to the makers to have left such items so vulnerable) and convenient cover (for the Kremlin as well as any manchurian-candidate president) for the weapon’s fallout signature.
No, heck no, not saying that the Chechen wars were to effect the ruse, just saying that that fallout signature would prove a big problem under certain circumstances, and there’s nothing like the jihad to explain everything short of an ICBM launch.
RR/203, right –you can take the theory out of the soviet, but you can’t take the soviet out of the theory.
ahhg –it just gets worse.
# 205 buddy larsen
Wo3 de5 ma1 he2 ta1 de5 feng1kuang2 de5 wai4sheng5 dou1
English does not suffice. I have been saying that NATO ceased to exist on January 1. Seems to be true. Here is what I think was the equivalent of the French used car dealer letting the customer kick the tires before purchasing, last November in St. Petersburg:
http://en.rian.ru/photolents/20091124/156967239.html
France, NATO, and the EU which has subsumed the first and killed the second are jing1chang2 mei2yong4 de5 and dai1ruo4mu4ji1 on a good day. They have not had a good day since September 2, 1870.
Our resident French commentator has often attacked the US for making peace with Britain after the Revolution and trading in civilian goods with them while France was at war with Britain. If she is representative of France, they have held the grudge for 200 years.
We did not sell warships to Britain to use against France and her allies. At a time when Russia is enabling an Iranian nuclear weapons program aimed at us, France is enhancing Russian ability to project power against us.
Mind you, it is legal. But is is also legal to regard France and the EU as the enemy, and keep that in mind for the future. The survival of our own country is in doubt. But if we survive and actually ever again get a government that cares for the United States and looks out for its interests, there will be a great deal of unfinished business to be transacted around the world.
I obviously do not speak for anything beyond myself. But I am in mind of a quote by Arnaud Amalric, Inquisitor for Innocent III in 1209 at Beziers, Languedoc, France.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai,
Bian1da3 ta1men5 de5 bei4 jiu4 gou4 le5.
Except that switching their backsides might mean “swapping” not “swatting.”
the quoted Almaric
is somewhat barbaric
to an innocent victim
killed off by a dictum
Burma Shave!
I was wondering when would that come on board !
olright, little boys, Russia ain’t our enemy, the WS journalist said it, but doesn’t like the idea !
uh, you don’t know too that Israel sells drones to Turkey,
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Israeli_drones_bound_for_Turkey_999.html Israeli drones bound for Turkey OK, who said they were enemies
The world has changed so much since the last months, nothing fits with Bush policies anymore ! so sad, nah ?
sh*t, Russia is goin to buy our tanks too !
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2010/02/16/01011-20100216FILWWW00359-la-russie-negocie-des-blindes-francais.php
http://fr.novopress.info/49017/la-marine-russe-a-la-rescousse-de-la-navale-a-saint-nazaire/
uh Russia cares for our employment rates !
Well, I’m not commenting how many arms you sold to Saudi Arabia and to many rogue states too !
What an Ukrainian thinks of the US policies in eatern republics :
“Fortunately, more people in Europe know the true story of what has been happening in Ukraine, Georgia and other Eurasian countries. I am Ukrainian myself and I invite you to learn more about how we live here.
Some people want us to hate our big neighbor Russia. Luckily, fewer of them today than a couple of years ago. Russians are our neighbors with who we have a long history of mutual respect and support. We want to live in peace and harmony with them and all other countries around us. Your approach is either us or them. Our response is let us decide what we want and when. Two thirds of people in my country do not want to join NATO at this time. It’s not in our interests right now, maybe later. However, NATO has been pushing “the road to membership” into our throats. Why? Most intelligent people in Europe know by now that it’s in the US geo-strategic interest to “to keep Europe in and Russia down.” It’s a classic policy of containment. US uses us, people of Ukraine and other countries around Russia, as tools in its geo-political game and makes us suffer in the process. (By the way, other Europeans are on this list too.) In fact, US political analysts acknowledged that it doesn’t matter whether Russia is communist or capitalist. They would fund anybody who is ready to undermine its development.
About your Greece example. That’s correct – the EU countries are trying to help each other. Similarly, the Russian Federation has subsidized our energy cost in the amount of several billion US dollars per year for more than a decade. US and EU lectured us how we should live and the Russians kept paying our bills…, until US/EU got involved and encouraged our “president” to yell at our big neighbor. Of course, you don’t help people who yell at you, so it’s not a surprise that our energy bill had gone up. And it’s not because Russia is bad, but because we were stupid enough to listen to people like you.
The EU countries trade with each other and their economies are closely integrated. In the same way, Ukrainian and Russian economies are closely interrelated. We are not asking EU countries not to work with each other. So who gives you the right to push us away from our neighbor? The EU mass media are full of stories about how bad it is that the new Ukrainian president will bring Ukraine closer to Russia. Why?
Then, your statement about Russia wanting to control her neighbors. We didn’t have this problem until NATO pushed its borders to the East. Of course, when you have a military alliance getting closer to your border (the alliance that you are not a part of), then you get nervous. And Russia’s history reminds its people that it’s wise to be nervous in these kinds of situations.
Finally, you mentioned Georgia war. Not sure we need to talk about something already well know to the entire world. Stalin (Georgian himself) cut the republic of Ossetia in half and gave its southern part to Georgia. Ossetians didn’t feel Georgians (can’t blame them) and announced independence in 1991. Georgia started war and the UN Security Council put Russian peacekeepers on the border. Georgia started war (again) and killed them. I wonder…, what would have US done if, let’s say, Panama, killed US peacekeepers? Saakashvili should feel lucky he is alive. Unfortunately, many of his fellow Georgians are not. At some point in history, Georgian will take their stylish president to court. Abhazians and Ossetians kept asking the Russian government to recognize their independence for years. The Russian answer was we will help you economically but we can’t recognize your independence. It’s until Saakashvili got American weapons and support and started his hopeless war. Can’t help but consider US gevernment also resposible for death of Georgian and Russian people in that war.
Life is not black -and-white. It pays to listen to what local people say about their lives and aspirations.”
http://atlantic-community.org/index/articles/view/Time_for_the_EU_to_Work_with_Russia
Now my dear Subotai,
“We did not sell warships to Britain to use against France and her allies.”
you didn’t, because you hadn’t any, besides Brits ships would still have been much more performant
“At a time when Russia is enabling an Iranian nuclear weapons program aimed at us, France is enhancing Russian ability to project power against us.”
not what I read on papers (since the reset button), say, it’s more China !
we aren’t your enemies, you yourselves manage quite well to be your very own enemies
Besides Gates knew about the trades when he was lately in Paris, and made no comment about it, what does count for him, is that we’re still with the US in Afghanistan
and please Arnaud Amalric has nothing to do with the actual world, it ain’t any albigian crusade in the topic, but your own deceiption to not being the one world that count on earth !
and 1870 hasn’t anything to do too
I’m sure if you had had the opportunity to sell something like arms to Russia, any of your governments would have done it, too bad you managed to turn Russia into an enemy during the last years of Bush mendate ! but that that wasn’t Putin agenda first !
Subotai, are you considering Chineses as your true next enemies ?
he Subotai, if you want to kill us out, I’m waiting you on the ring, I’m not bad at punching mouthy guis !
what you hold as a Reagan victory : to make URSS collapse, it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of france
In early 1980, Vladimir Vetrov, lieutenant-colonel of the KGB, became a double agent. Under the codename “Farewell”, he sent more than 4,000 documents to the French DST, which was forwarded to U.S. intelligence agencies.From the very headquarters of the KGB information Buro, Vetrov allowed the French President François Mitterrand to expel 47 Soviet diplomats for “espionage”. Following this major incident, the KGB had put its antennas Western dormant for several crucial years.
http://tinyurl.com/ybrb5xe
don’t forget to click on “documentary” (videos)
and “source” (interview of Konstantin Preobrazhensky, Service of Foreign Intelligence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (KGB) between 1976 and 1991)
ol right, Gogoule traduction doesn’t allow the right page here it is in french, just click on the english flag, then turn to 28 august 2008, scroll down until “Exceptionnel : plongez dans “l’affaire Farewell”
might be OK
http://www.drzz.info/article-35361021.html
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2008/0815.html
(excerpt below –note date of article and date of Pravda article mentioned in it)
Russia’s Concept for Dominating Europe
by J. R. Nyquist
Weekly Column Published: 08.15.2008
Moscow’s blitzkrieg in Georgia is more than a military campaign. It is designed to empower Russia’s diplomatic strategy, which seeks to make the European Union (EU) the West’s chief representative in future negotiations with Russia. Quite naturally the Kremlin wants to escape the logic of U.S. and NATO policy, which is to contain Russia within her national borders. Meanwhile, the European Union is an entirely different animal: toothless, utopian and ready to please.
The Kremlin strategists believe that the United States is on the brink of a crippling dislocation. According to a July 29 Pravda article, an anonymous Russian diplomat revealed that the “Russian administration believes the United States may soon suffer from a serious political crisis.” The sequence begins with a financial crash, advances to political unrest and finally to the dissolution of American military power. As the Russian diplomat warned, “America is standing on the verge of a large-scale crisis of its own existence.”
Last month Russia’s ambassadors were called back to Moscow. On July 15 President Dmitry Medvedev spoke to them at the Foreign Ministry. “I would like to use this opportunity for an open and pragmatic conversation,” explained Medvedev to the assembled diplomats. “Russia is indeed stronger and able to assume greater responsibility for solving problems on a regional and global scale.” You see, the Cold War was not an American victory. Medvedev reminded his colleagues that they had “survived the Cold War.” And now Russia is prepared to establish “a new equilibrium.”
Medvedev’s speech was prescient: “the habit … of resorting to force … is increasing…. In such circumstances it is important to maintain restraint and to evaluate situations carefully.” When wars break out, it’s best to know what you’re fighting for; so Medvedev wanted his ambassadors to familiarize themselves with the party line before they headed back to their embassies. We should not worry about Cold War style confrontations, Medvedev lectured. “I am convinced that with the end of the Cold War the underlying reasons for most of the bloc politics and bloc discipline simply disappeared.” In other words, NATO is divided. And NATO’s violation of Yugoslavian sovereignty in 1999 now enables a devastating Russian response.
History ought to be remembered, said Medvedev. “We simply cannot accept the attempts taking place in individual countries to highlight the ‘civilizing, liberating mission’ of the fascists and their accomplices.” He was obliquely referring to anti-Communist patriots in Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic States, and to the way they’d welcomed the German invaders in 1941. “Characteristically,” he continued, “it is those states that have such a passion for rewriting history and domestic and foreign policies that are at the same time the most zealous advocates of illegal acts, like the Kosovo precedent…. And those same states are the ones who have become ultra-nationalist in their policies, harassing national minorities and denying rights to the so-called ‘stateless’ citizens in their countries.”
Here was an obvious reference to Georgia, which was about to be invaded by Russian motorized and airborne divisions. “For us, this task is particularly important, since in many cases we are talking about abuses against Russians and Russian-speaking populations. And protecting and defending those rights is obviously one of our responsibilities.” And then, Medvedev explained Russia’s overall diplomatic strategy: “I have focused on these aspects because Europe today needs a positive rather than negative agenda.” In other words, the invasion of Georgia is not an end in itself. The real purpose of this operation, the Russian president hinted, was to highlight the dangerous obsolescence of NATO and Europe’s unrealistic expectations with regard to Russia. The old treaties will not keep the peace, he said, because they are unfair. Russia is a great power and deserves greater influence. “I’m absolutely convinced that this requires new approaches,” he explained. “That is why we proposed to conclude a new treaty on European security and to start this process at a European-wide summit.”
The invasion of Georgia now comes into focus.
***
(Close quote –read the rest of the article at the top link)
Here are two more pertinent reports from the many in these archives.
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2010/0129.html
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/1002.html
speculation informed by much reading & brooding:
KSA, as OPEC leader, as biggest exporter of best light sweet raised at lowest cost-per-barrel, is the point.
“Whose foreign policy will OPEC pricing, production, and future allocation –will KSA support?”
Russia’s, or USA’s?
This is the question in play at the bottom. In the immediate foreground, this explains Mistral, explains Bibi’s trips to Moscow, explains Kremlin’s coming betrayal of Fool Achmadinejad, explains that the One World wants to be ruled from the center and not the periphery –from the middle of the ‘world-island’ just north of the ‘world fuel tank’. This is why Gorby went green, why Medvedyev went green (remembering that a little global warming could make Russia fabulously wealthy as a food producer) –the idea is that through political hamstringing of north American energy production, the control of the new world order would default to Kremlin from the NY/DC axis.
Just one more:
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/1204.html
(a huge clue, tying in the cat’s paw of discrediting (literally) of the western system, Citibank that is, is Phibro, its role in the financial crisis set-up via oil markets of spring/summer 2008, and its recent virtual gifting to the same Occidental mentioned in the link)
The ten year direct-action phase began with a half dozen commercial/financial/legislative/political events in 1998. Western political ideals to flip via elections which elect criminals, western financial systems to create bubble after bubble, ultimately to destroy confidence –on the basis that confidence IS vulnerable to control by its nemesis, ‘fear’.
this also explains Palin. Fearless, exuberant, and Drill, Baby, Drill. The American people are not overthinking all this –she is showing us how that is done, how it used to be done, before paralysis-by-analysis as a weapon aimed at the settlers by the old world, was snuck inside the walls of Fort Defiance.
Budddy, you already passed these dishes, this time, i’m telling “enough, thank you” these are wornout bainstormings of a old fellow that wants to gain founds with his site. This is his hallali call to mobilise the left Mohicans that still take the dream of the great powerful America for granted, but with paralysed albatros wings.
Now I’m presenting you a different menu :
ENTREES :
Blinis à la sauce Tartar
so Nato a provincial army or a global army, actually the discussions are on
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/nato-caught-between-russia-and-the-world/399914.html
Caviar sur lit de glaces
Bizarre Russia joined US and France on pressing on Iran
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-us-and-france-warn-iran/399923.html
trou russe: Smirnoff cul sec
Greece bailed out with Putin pipeline
http://bit.ly/9z1Evv
Vinegar in the mayonnaise</B
(not black and or white, nor you're with us or against us, but donnant donnat, qu'est-ce que je gagne ?)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LB17Ak03.html
Hmmm, the thread seems to have wandered into Jack Bauer territory…and about as believable.
As for our nutso-murderess, it appears that the authorities really blew it back in Braintree.
Regarding the idea that we would all be safer if more people were carrying, I think that I would be safer if I were carrying, but given the already mentioned examples of road rage and other wide-spread anger management issues in the general population, I’m thinking that it is a good thing that only a relatively small number of people carry. And such dynamics have to be considered when one is establishing..or not…gun-free zones.
Spring Roll, sauce Niokman
China: Veto or abstention ?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LB13Ak03.html
#195 Apostle of Brain Damage
-This country was not founded on the principal of outcome egalitarianism, but on the principal of opportunity egalitarianism. Outcome egalitarianism is inherently un-American and is not-so-coincidentally the official dogma of every brutal, murdering, collectivist dictatorship of the last 150 years. The same collectivism you promote.
Obsession with outcome egalitarianism and worship at the altar of the false god of perfect income security, and the promotion of these concepts by leftist politcians, are the reasons why Ms Bishop shot these people. Learn it.
-Please don’t embarass yourself further with that tired old saw about “one paycheck away….” Statistically incorrect, doncha know. Besides, a little worry about keeping one’s job is a good thing, it promotes a better work ethic.
-Sexism had nothing to do with her state of mind;. She shot female professors. More women go college than men in the U.S. and have for quite some time. Women are not oppressed in America. End of story.
-Everyone except corporate CEOs is starving without health care and housing? Statistics, please? I guess the polls that say 80%+ of Americans are happy with their health insurance, that hearly half of Americans own their own homes, and that the primary nutritional problem in the U.S. is obesity are all fabrications in your shitty little narrative.
-If you understood that which is authentically American at all, you’d know that the access to guns is what keeps us from becoming vassals of the state like the bulk of the populations of most other countries in the world.
-I’ll excerpt from my above post:
“1. Just because you want something, doesn’t mean you can or should get it.
2. If your don’t do as well as someone else, they’ll have more stuff than you do. Get over it.
3. The world doesn’t owe you a paycheck or freedom from worrying about same.
That is all.”
Octopus sauce BBQ
CEO of Goldman Sachs seems to meet CIA’s reqs when it selects targets for drone attacks i.e legal auth to kill http://bit.ly/beenXR
les Villans !
Jello au kirsch
too weak for biting
http://tinyurl.com/yk2bz5c
Pudding etouffe-belle-mère
the laundry machine for evading taxes
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Citigroup_-_a_culture_and_history_of_tax_evasion.pdf
uh may-be some establishments like goldman Sachs, Citibank
misused of the EFFET CANILLON, the Sherry on the top
http://www.eauli.net/decouvrir/mots/effet_cantillon.htm
forget the Mistral,it’s a normal trade, like any other affairs of that type, besides the emirates are interested too, do you mind ?
#195 Apostle of Love Certainly you cannot believe this stuff….can you? To be that far detached from reality, is scary. Maybe you, too, should buy some guns, or condoms, and head for some wide open spaces where you can start a militia or tea party of love or looniness. Murder is murder; don’t try to rationalize it, although “rationalize” would hardly be the word here. If righty loons have made you crazy, you are still crazy.
MC –thanks for the links –am reading as i can –will reply –
nmu/226; the big hearted person you address should realize that most people for most of human history have lived lifetimes (short, very short lifetimes) not ‘a paycheck from disaster’ but a meal or two from disaster. And now this person wants all of that history to go *poof* and be replaced by a weird time warp where the future utopia America prevents is proven by the past utopia which America prevented for a hundred thousand years before America even existed.
Again we see willful ahistoricism being used to cover comfortably contented moral idiocy.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/business/2010-02/16/c_13177277.htm
so be careful, you should watch at your East ! Putin is just an amuse-gueule pour gogos !
MC, “amuse-gueule pour gogos” –LOL –AKA “bait” –but you did mean, watch our West –across the Pacific –?
also, i wanted to say, about that Nyquist site, i can see that you might think i’m hooked on a guru –but that is not the case –it’s the links inside the articles –which he then interprets classically –but whether or not one agrees with his conclusions, he is good at locating important documents and speeches –and presenting them to people who would not likely oterwise take note.
IOW, if one believes that somewhere in the world there are people dedicated to bringing down the classic western system, then one knows that USA must be the target of that, and one then will value aggregators that assemble information toward understanding what is happening on that front.
I am so tired of people getting killed because they do not arm themselves. Gun free zones my butt. Please liberals.
I hold liberals as responsible for these deaths as any shooter. If people were able to conceal carry a gun, this liberal wacko could have been stopped.
We all know criminals on the streets have guns, such as Washington and Chicago. But if law abiding citizens had a concealed weapon to protect themselves things like this would not happen.
It is simple thing to go to school and then spend all your time thinking up an excuse for any sort of behavior then getting a grant for you and some cohorts to study it for years to come up with illogical conclusions and while at it become an expert in say the study of why some people cuss you out and give it a name like Tourette syndrome then you are in the money for life till you retire with all sorts of benefits for life.
I personally am an expert in Badmitten you can see some of my students at work in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER_SECCeJrE