Friday, April 20, 2007

When Laws Aren’t Enforced, Innocent People Die.

Va. Tech gunman sent material to NBC, was declared a danger to himself and others in 2005.University Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said his officers confronted Cho in late 2005 after two women complained separately that he had harassed them in person, through phone calls and with instant messages.

After the second incident in December 2005, Cho’s roommate warned police he might be suicidal, prompting them to issue a “temporary detention order” and send him to a nearby mental health facility for evaluation, Flinchum said.Between his first and second bursts of gunfire, the Virginia Tech gunman mailed a package to NBC News containing what authorities said were images of him brandishing weapons and a video of him delivering a diatribe about getting even with rich people.

The package included digital images of him holding weapons and a manifesto that “rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even,” according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case.MSNBC said that the package included a CD-ROM on which Cho read his manifesto.One of his former teachers, poet Nikki Giovanni, said she had insisted Cho be removed from her class in 2005 because he intimidated other students by photographing them and writing obscene, violent poetry. “There was something mean about this boy,” she told CNN. “There was a real mean streak.”

Once again, this time in a campus filled with young men and women military age, a lone bully seemed to have been able to go on a rampage without anyone trying to actively stop him. What did the students and faculty do? They either cowered behind furniture or locked their door. He, of course, went on to shoot the students next door.

Once again, as Bill Bennet noted, heavily armed men were seen swarming OUTSIDE assessing the situation!As this behavior took place on Holocaust memorial day, it is not surprising that the one man who said “Never again” was a 76 year old professor, a holocaust survivor. He did the best he could, blocked the door with his body and told his students to flee. .... it would have been better if had he told them to attack.

Of course, standing up to bullies is no longer the expected even of trained fighters. How can one expect young people at a university to behave more courageously than British marines confronting Iranian bullies? We better. For as Gandhi expected, in the current atmosphere bullies are multiplying and the price of continuing to go as sheep to slaughter is getting higher and higher by the day.

You may find more information about Professor Librescu at his new Wikipedia entry. I was quite happy to find that, because the killer also has one of his own, of course. There is still a little balance left in the world when one of the good people is not forgotten while we have to weather the all-too-typical media frenzy surrounding the evil-doer.

We can not let evil be the center of our world, nor allow great deeds to be forgotten. R.I.P, Professor Librescu.

article abridged - courtesy of Foehammer's Anvil

"Shaikh, Abu Mus’Ab Al-Virgini”Cho Seung Hui wrote "Ishmael Ax" on his arm, signed his package to NBC "A. Ishmael," and criticized Christianity in his video message. Do these things make him a jihadist? No. There is plenty of evidence that he was a deeply disturbed young man, full of rage and murderous fantasies, but none at this point to indicate that he had any actual connection to or interest in Islam or jihad.However, that did not stop some jihadists on Islamic forums from celebrating his deed as if he were one of their own, and even dubbing him "Abu Mus’Ab Al-Virgini," after the late Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi. The blogger Basharee Murtadd caught posts on two Arabic-language Islamic forums; one has been taken down, but the other is still there.

No comments: