On One Year Anniversary of VT, Many Move On But Remember

By Can Tran April 16, 2008

April 16, 2008, marks the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre as Korean student Cho Seung-hui in a fit of madness and depression went on a shooting rampage as he took the lives of thirty-two students and teachers on the Virginia Tech campus, before turning the gun on himself. This day would forever be engraved as a moment of darkness in the history of twenty-first century American let alone for Virginia Tech.

While a year has pasted with many working hard to move away from the dark incident, there are those that are still coping. Many have lost friends and family members in the Virginia Tech shooting.

Bryan Cloyd lost his daughter Austin, in the VT shooting. "I won't be able to walk my daughter down the aisle at her wedding. I won't be able to bounce her children on my knee," Bryan Cloyd said. He added: "And I don't think it's helpful to dwell on that, because where that leads is just more sadness. I think what's helpful to do is to dwell on what can be. What can we do with what we have?"

In the case of Cho, the one responsible for the shooting; there are no public memorials planned.

In related news, eight months after the Virginia Tech shooting, 21-year-old Korean student Daniel Kim had taken his own life. His father, William Kim, said that the school was not taking the warning signs of suicide that serious. In the case of Daniel Kim, he fell into state of depression out of fear that he could be mistaken for Cho Seung-hui.

The scars of the Virginia Tech shooting could extend towards South Korea, whose government had issued an apology for Cho's actions.

On an interesting note, the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting comes on the same day as the Democratic debate in Pennsylvania between Democratic frontrunners Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. On that note, the hot button topic could be gun ownership rights.

In Pennsylvania, there are almost one-million licensed hunters. There are at least 250,000 registered members of the NRA living in the state of Pennsylvania, making it the one state with the largest number of members. However, there is at least one gun-related death a day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For that reason, Philadelphia is known as "Killadelphia."

However, the issue of guns could possibly be overshadowed by "green jobs." The day of the April 22 Democratic primaries is the same day as Earth Day.


Licensed under Creative Commons
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>

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Original Source:
<a href="http://www.groundreport.com/US/On-One-Year-Anniversary-of-VT-Many-Move-On-But-Rem">http://www.groundreport.com/US/On-One-Year-Anniversary-of-VT-Many-Move-On-But-Rem</a>

Can Tran

2008-04-19

Kacey Beddoes

eng

Cho&#39;s World was rooted in a Christian Tradition

In the Aug. 26 Roanoke Times, reporter Duncan Adams had a news story that succinctly wrapped up what we knew about Seung-Hui Cho at that point, before the Virginia Tech Independent Review Panel released its final report. The article, "There was something evil aiding him," answered some old questions and highlighted some that have yet to be answered.

What really struck me, as a medievalist and researcher in the history of religion, was the section titled "Demon spirits" and specifically the comments of Pastor Dong Cheol Lee from One Mind Church in Cho&#39;s hometown of Woodbridge. Cho and his family didn&#39;t attend that church, but the pastor felt compelled to reach out to Cho on the recommendation of a neighbor.

Lee believes Cho was basically a good person but that he was possessed by the devil or some sort of "demonic spirit" when he murdered all those people. This raises a significant point, one thus far generally overlooked in the reporting about the events of April 16 -- the role of religion in motivating Cho to do what he did.

I suggested this in a June 6 commentary, "Cho&#39;s violent crusade ripped from the Middle Ages." Look again through this and the rest of the coverage of Cho&#39;s manifesto. Look how often he evoked God/Jesus. And look again at these new snippets: the Bible as Literature class that he felt so "content" in, his contact with a particular type of Christianity during his upbringing, how he told the literature professor, Nikki Giovanni, she was going to hell.

Reporter Adams may have been more right than he knew when he ended his story with: "During one session, Giovanni described having once eaten turtle soup. Students shared experiences of consuming other unusual animal fare. Cho&#39;s poem the next week lashed Giovanni and the class. &#39;He told us we were going to hell,&#39; said [fellow student Tara] Marciniak-McGuire. During Cho&#39;s short, tortured life, he knew that territory well."

Cho&#39;s mental illness made him live in a world of his own creation, but that world was one with recognizable roots in the Christian tradition -- a world populated by God and the devil, in which they are both still active forces in the world; a world where Cho could choose sides in this struggle and think that he was doing God&#39;s work; a world where violence in the name of religion is justified because the stakes, one&#39;s immortal soul, are so high.

Cho likely thought himself to be a "soldier of Christ," like the crusaders; like the Lord&#39;s Resistance Army in Uganda; like Eric Rudolph and Paul Jennings Hill, who killed to stop abortion. Mainstream Christianity does not -- and the vast majority of Christians may not -- condone such actions, but perhaps it&#39;s time to stop burying our head in the sand, pretending that such ideas aren&#39;t ultimately understandable, if still unfortunately familiar.

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Originally published in <em>The Roanoke Times</em>, 9/11/07

Source: <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-131592">http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-131592</a>

Matthew Gabriele

2008-01-08

Matthew Gabriele

eng

Cho&#39;s Violent Crusade Ripped from the Middle Ages

As a medieval historian, one rarely feels that his expertise can shed some light on a current debate. But I teach at Virginia Tech.

Now that the semester is over and there is time to reflect, I have been struck by how "medieval" the events of this past April seem -- both Seung-Hui Cho&#39;s violence and our collective revulsion to it.

In the snippets of Cho&#39;s "manifesto" that have been released to the public, there is rhetoric of (likely imagined) persecution of the innocent, violent defense of the helpless, and Cho&#39;s perception of himself as a martyr by appropriating explicitly Christian imagery -- Jesus himself, the cross, and even the torments the saints endured for their faith (burning like St. Polycarp, suffocating like St. Cecilia and beheading like St. Denis, etc.).

Even Cho&#39;s oft-repeated statement that "Jesus loves crucifying me" reinforces the idea of martyrdom, suggesting, as countless biographies of the saints have, that God triumphs through the martyr&#39;s sacrifice.

Taken alone, these statements might be interesting from a purely academic standpoint. Unfortunately, we all know what followed Cho&#39;s statements.

So, it&#39;s this combination of language and action that&#39;s most "medieval," since the essential elements of Cho&#39;s manifesto mirror Pope Urban II&#39;s speech at Clermont (in modern France) in 1095 that launched the First Crusade.

From what we can reconstruct of that speech, Urban first railed against the sins of his listeners. But then, when the hellfires beckoned, Urban offered them a way out -- a path to heaven.

Go to Jerusalem. Reclaim the land where Jesus was crucified and where he would return in triumph. This land rightfully belongs to us, Urban continued, so emulate the suffering of Christ and "take up [your] cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).

Defend your fellow Christians who suffer under (an imagined) oppression by God&#39;s enemies. Become a "soldier of Christ" and destroy "the enemy." God would reward you with martyrdom if you died. Jesus. The cross. Suffering. Martyrdom. Defense of the innocent. Violence.

Cries of "God wills it!" rang through the crowd. More than 100,000 people, many of whom had never left their village, decided to walk the 4,000 miles to Jerusalem. Again, we all know what came next.

It&#39;s important to note that neither of the events of 1095 or 2007 "just happened." There are explanations, even if they&#39;re not comfortable ones.

Urban&#39;s message met a receptive audience because long-held ideas and traditions in the West came together just so. So too with Cho.

He created a mental world, which only rarely touched reality, drawn from our culture&#39;s obsession with violence and guns as well as a radical Christianity, likely generated by his upbringing and continued interest in the religion, witnessed by the number of courses on religious topics that he took here at Tech.

This particular Christianity isn&#39;t unlike that unleashed during the First Crusade, even if such language of violence can still be found at places in our own, modern society.

Cho&#39;s mental world divided everything between good and evil and called for the oppressed to rise and take vengeance. Cho&#39;s mental illness made him cross a line and act upon these ideas. Unfortunately, it did not generate the ideas themselves, though.

But just as Cho was, in a way, an heir to the ideas of the First Crusade, so too are the rest of us for, in addition to violence and intolerance, the First Crusade was also about peace -- true, lasting peace.

As conceived in 1095, the violent reconquest of Jerusalem would hasten the arrival of God&#39;s kingdom on Earth, an earthly paradise in which all would share.

Later in the Middle Ages, the influential thought of Joachim of Fiore changed this tradition, stripping away the violence that preceded this kingdom, saying that all would peacefully -- peacefully -- come together.

And just as Urban&#39;s vision has endured, so too has Joachim&#39;s. The world, without hesitation, now condemns actions like Cho&#39;s. Violence is not normative anymore.

If nothing else, the Middle Ages show us how the intellectual path we&#39;re on isn&#39;t the only one available. In 1095, 100,000 people thought that violence could bring peace. In 2007, Cho believed the same and the world cried out in horror.

Cho took one path from 1095 and the vast majority took the other. In and of itself, and in the middle of all this sadness, this is a reason to look forward with hope.

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Originally published in _The Roanoke Times_, 6/2/07

Source: <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-119117">http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-119117</a>

Matthew Gabriele

2008-01-08

Matthew Gabriele

eng

Luto en el país por matanza en Virginia

Identifican al agresor como un estudiante de Corea del Sur.


Publicado por Diario la Raza
04-18-2007


Washington, D.C. — La policía de EE.UU. identificó como el autor de la matanza en la universidad <b>virginia tech</b> al estudiante surcoreano Cho Seung Hui, de 23 años, un joven descrito como "solitario" y cuyos escritos habían suscitado preocupación entre sus profesores.

Hasta el momento se desconocen los motivos que llevaron a Cho, quien vivía en EU desde los 8 años y estudiaba filología inglesa, a matar a 32 personas, entre profesores y estudiantes —al menos dos latinoamericanos— y suicidarse.

Una de sus profesoras recordaba ayer a la prensa el tono perturbador de algunos de sus ejercicios literarios, hasta el punto de que sus instructores le aconsejaron recibir ayuda psicológica.

Según el diario Chicago Tribune, el asesino dejó una nota en su habitación en la que clamaba contra los "niños ricos", "la decadencia" y los "embusteros charlatanes" en el campus y asegura: "Me obligaste a hacerlo".

Al parecer, según la cadena CNN, Cho compró una pistola Glock el mes pasado en una tienda de Roanoke, una ciudad vecina, y pagó por ella 571 dólares con un cheque.

La matanza se produjo en dos fases: en un primer tiroteo murieron dos personas, un hombre y una mujer, en una residencia de estudiantes; y el segundo, en el que murió el resto, tuvo lugar dos horas más tarde, en las aulas de la Facultad de Ingeniería.

Las autoridades han confirmado que las armas empleadas en la matanza fueron al menos dos pistolas y que una de ellas se usó en los dos tiroteos.

"La evidencia no nos ha conducido a decir categóricamente que el mismo autor estuvo implicado en los dos tiroteos", pero "es ciertamente razonable suponer que Cho fue el autor en los dos incidentes", indicó el superintendente de la Policía de Virginia, Steven Flaherty.

Entre los fallecidos se encuentran profesores y estudiantes. La lista completa no se ha dado a conocer pero sí han salido a la luz los nombres de un grupo de víctimas.

Entre ellos se encuentra el peruano Daniel Pérez Cuevas, muerto mientras asistía a una clase de francés y quien había iniciado sus estudios universitarios en Miami pero se cambió a <b>virginia tech</b>, por su mayor prestigio académico.

También está el puertorriqueño Juan Ramón Ortiz, de 26 años, y que cursaba su primer año de maestría en la universidad, donde se había matriculado junto a su esposa, Liselle Vega, con quien llevaba casado un año.

El gobierno de EU afirmó ayer que está dispuesto a ofrecer la ayuda que sea necesaria para los extranjeros que hayan sido víctimas de la masacre en la Universidad Politécnica de Virginia el lunes.

Según han contado los supervivientes, el asesino cerró varias salidas del edificio con cadenas y candados, y después fue vaciando sus cargadores, aula por aula.

La primera clase, y donde al parecer se han registrado más víctimas, fue una de alemán, en la que el asesino disparó a la cabeza del profesor Chris Bishop antes de abrir fuego sobre los alumnos.

En otras aulas algunos alumnos huyeron por las ventanas. Otros intentaron bloquear las puertas con sus cuerpos, en algunos casos con resultado fatal.

Ese fue el caso del profesor Liviu Librescu, que fue alcanzado por disparos a través de la puerta mientras impedía el paso al agresor y lograba así salvar a sus alumnos.

Doce estudiantes de la universidad se recuperan de sus heridas y permanecen estables en distintos hospitales de la zona de Blackburg, donde se encuentra el centro docente.

La matanza ha conmovido a todo el país y ha suscitado reacciones de condolencia en todo el mundo.

El presidente de EU, George W. Bush, aseguró ayer que se trata de un "día de tristeza para todo el país" e instó a los estudiantes a no dejarse llevar por la ira, en un acto de homenaje a las víctimas en el polideportivo de la universidad.

Bush ordenó que las banderas estadounidenses ondeen a media asta en señal de duelo hasta el domingo.

El incidente ha comenzado a suscitar ya las primeras críticas sobre la reacción de las autoridades tanto policiales como universitarias.

Muchos estudiantes han censurado que, tras el primer incidente, no se suspendieran las clases ni se diera un aviso de peligro hasta dos horas después, y eso sólo a través de un correo electrónico.

La matanza ha vuelto a reabrir el debate sobre la regulación de la tenencia de armas en Estados Unidos, un país en el que las leyes sobre el control de armas de fuego son muy laxas. EFE


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Fuente Original: Diario La Raza - Chicago
<a href="http://www.laraza.com/news.php?nid=43338&clave=a%3A1%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bs%3A13%3A%22virginia+tech%22%3B%7D">http://www.laraza.com/news.php?nid=43338&clave=a%3A1%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bs%3A13%3A%22virginia+tech%22%3B%7D</a>

La Raza Newspaper

2007-08-14

Elva Orozco

Jorge Mederos
Executive Editor
La Raza Chicago Inc.
jorge.mederos@laraza.com
August 13, 2007

spa

The killer of room 2121

It was 7am on Monday. Another week was starting at Virginia Tech. Then the first shots rang out. Within hours, 32 people lay dead and America was left trying to make sense of the carnage. Paul Harris reports from Blacksburg.

<b>Sunday April 22, 2007</b>
<a href="http://www.observer.co.uk/">The Observer</a>

A group of Amish men, all in black, shuffled towards the chapel at one end of the enormous sports field that dominates the centre of Virginia Tech&#39;s campus. They had come to pay their respects after a tragedy they knew all too well. It was only last year that a killer struck their community, shooting dead five young girls in a tiny Amish school. Now they had driven many long hours from their Pennsylvania farms to southern Virginia, to offer solace to another American community devastated by a mass killing.

They spoke in hushed tones to the Reverend Kelly Sisson, one of the pastors of Glade Church in Blacksburg. Then they entered the comforting dark interior to pray and to mourn the dead of Virginia Tech. &#39;They understand what has happened to us in a way few others do,&#39; Sisson said.

Everyone is trying to understand what happened at Blacksburg last week. Impromptu memorials have sprung up on the sports field, covering the grass in flickering candles, pictures of the dead, and flowers. Students, friends and family have written messages, sad, desperate, noble. They speak of loss and love. They vow to remember lives brutally cut short on what should have been just another Monday morning.

But, although there was nothing ordinary about last Monday, there was a dreadful familiarity to it. Cho Seung-hui&#39;s bloody rampage cost the lives of 32 of his fellow students and staff. It was the worst mass shooting in American history, but far from the only one.

There is almost a ritual to such attacks: the fleeing students, the wailing sirens, the mourning survivors, the suicide of the gunman - Cho shot himself in the face. Columbine, the Amish school, Virginia Tech, all are now names that haunt the popular imagination. Yet no one pretends last week&#39;s rite won&#39;t happen again, somewhere else in America on some other seemingly ordinary day.

For now it is Blacksburg&#39;s tragedy that has the attention of the world. What Cho did last week is well known. In two separate attacks, he shot his victims methodically, without any outward show of emotion. It was an assault he had planned for weeks: buying guns, training physically and preparing a &#39;manifesto&#39; of his beliefs in writing, pictures and video. But the real question is not how Cho killed so many. It is why. And that is a much more difficult issue.

What could have caused him to hate so much? If he was ill, should it have been spotted? Why did he pick the targets that he did? These questions could shake the strongest faith. Sisson shook her head at the thought of them: &#39;I am determined to not give easy answers. Cliches are cheap and we are still waking up to this.&#39; Then she thought of Cho. &#39;He was in great pain. Great brokenness,&#39; she said. A faint smile of incomprehension hovered around her lips. She was close to tears.

The first sign something was wrong last Monday was a scream and &#39;popping&#39; sounds in the West Ambler Johnston dorm building. It was just after 7am: many students slept through the noise. Those who emerged bleary-eyed into the corridors found a dreadful scene. Two bodies lay near Room 4040, in the open space near the lifts. There was no sign of an attacker. The killer had disappeared, leaving a trail of bloody footprints down a hallway.

By the time Cho claimed his first victim, he had already been planning his attack for weeks, possibly months. Not that anyone knew it. Cho was a solitary figure on campus, even among the five students with which he shared a &#39;suite&#39;, Room 2121. He spoke rarely and shunned human contact. His only visitors were his parents. &#39;He never showed any interest in having conversations with anybody. He seemed like a shy person. He never spoke a word when he was around any of us in the suite,&#39; said one room-mate, Karan Grewal.

In the past few weeks, Cho&#39;s routines seem to have shifted. He started going to the gym, beefing up his slight frame. He cut his hair short. He started waking up earlier, rising at 5.30am. He began taking night-time bike rides, disappearing for hours to roam the campus paths.

These were the superficial changes. Unknown to anyone but himself, Cho was plotting mass murder. Nineteen days before he began shooting, he took a road-trip, renting a car and staying a night in a nearby hotel in Christiansburg. It was on this trip that he would film some of his rambling, hate-laden last testament. It is likely that he also used the privacy to take pictures of himself posing with his guns, a knife and a hammer. He also began drafting manuscripts blaming the outside world and decrying the lifestyles of his fellow students.

Cho prepared in private. But police are checking to see if he had mentioned or hinted at his plans, whether by phone or email. He certainly had to buy his guns in public. Tragically, it is neither difficult nor unusual for a 23-year-old student legally to buy powerful weapons in Virginia. On 9 February, Cho purchased a Walther P22 pistol from a pawn shop on Main Street in Blacksburg. He then waited just over a month - in order to comply with Virginia state law - before buying a second weapon. On 16 March, he picked out a Glock semi-automatic from Roanoke Firearms, in a town about 30 miles away. With each purchase Cho filled out the correct forms and passed a background check. No one asked what a 23-year-old English student could possibly want with two powerful hand-guns.

What the sellers did not know was that Cho had once spent a night in a mental hospital in 2005. Nor does Virginia law deem it necessary that anyone divulge such information. Yet it represented, perhaps, the biggest sign Cho was not an ordinary young man, but had at least once been through a very troubled passage in his life.

There were other signs, albeit less definite. In two separate incidents, young women on campus had complained to police he was bothering them with unwanted advances, in person, on the phone or via text messaging. Last autumn, one of Cho&#39;s teachers, poet Nikki Giovanni, had become so disturbed by the violent imagery in Cho&#39;s work that she insisted he be removed from her class. &#39;I am not allowed to say what he was writing,&#39; she explained &#39;But it was not bad poetry. It was intimidating. What I wanted was him out of my class.&#39;

He had also been taking pictures of his fellow students, many of whom had stopped attending class to avoid him. At the same time, Cho - in a rare remark to a dorm mate - said he might kill himself after the police spoke to him about pestering girls. The student reported the remark and Cho was sent for an overnight evaluation at the Carilion St Albans Psychiatric Hospital - the 2005 visit. &#39;Affect is flat and mood is depressed,&#39; a Carilion doctor wrote, but noted that Cho&#39;s &#39;insight and judgment are sound&#39; and that he had denied suicidal intentions. The next day, a judge, following the doctor&#39;s advice that Cho was mentally ill but posed no immediate danger, ordered him to take outpatient treatment.

That was probably the greatest opportunity that presented itself to stop or help Cho. After that, he resumed his solitary existence, a phantom presence at Virginia Tech. Perhaps it was also the moment that Cho&#39;s deep resentment came to fruition.

His stalking - though disturbing - was at least an attempt to reach out to other human beings. That grasp for contact had ended with the police and a stay in a mental hospital. It is not too great a stretch to imagine Cho&#39;s warped rage at such rejection. Perhaps, almost 17 months ago, the first thoughts of revenge began to take shape.

At just after 5am on Monday, Karan Grewal bumped into his flatmate, Cho. Grewal had stayed up all night to finish an assignment and he had been to the bathroom before going, finally, to sleep. Cho looked normal, Grewal thought.

Two hours later Cho killed Emily Hilscher, 18, and Ryan Clark, 23, at Ambler Johnston. Why he chose them - or that building - is not known. But investigators have strong suspicions that Cho may have had some form of contact with Hilscher, and have since been scouring her computer and phone looking for evidence.

Cho&#39;s whereabouts immediately after the attack are unknown. Perhaps he returned to his dorm room; perhaps not. What is certain is that he eventually walked across campus to the post office in Blacksburg, a 15-minute stroll away on Main Street. The post office was busy with people rushing to beat the national tax deadline and Cho did not stand out among the crowd.

He was posting a package - wrongly addressed - to NBC News in New York. It contained his &#39;manifesto&#39;. He finally mailed his package at 9.01am, after a clerk noticed that he had put the wrong postal code on it. Then he made his way back to the campus.

Cho - despite having murdered two fellow students - was still anonymous; the campus was still mostly normal. Unknown to Cho, police and university officials had gone down a disastrous blind alley in their reaction to the Ambler Johnston shootings.

When police broke the news to one of Hilscher&#39;s room-mates that her friend was dead, she told them that Hilscher&#39;s new boyfriend, Karl Thornhill, loved guns and had recently taken them shooting. At 8.25am, university and police officials held a meeting and decided they faced a &#39;domestic&#39;. Thornhill was tracked down in his car and pulled off the road. It was decided not to lock down the campus. They believed the gunman had fled, or that they had already caught him.

Some time before 9.40am, Cho walked into Norris Hall, on the other side of the sports field from Ambler Johnston. Once inside, he closed the doors with metal chains. He wandered the corridors, even poking his head into the German class in Room 207. Students inside assumed he was lost and late for a lecture. Cho shut the door and resumed his wandering. He may have been dealing with last-minute regrets, mulling whether it was too late to turn back. More likely he was selecting his first target.

He choose Room 206, where Professor Give Loganathan was giving a hydrology class. Cho simply walked in and started shooting. Aiming his two guns methodically around the class, he shot people repeatedly, wordlessly and without any hurry. Only four people survived in Room 207, by playing dead or being shielded by the bodies of their dead friends. Then Cho walked out. Yesterday, Loganathan was buried.

In other classes, the popping sounds were greeted with confusion and fear. Some appeared to know exactly what they were; others thought it was noise from a nearby construction site. Cho walked into Room 207. He fired a bullet into the head of the German teacher, James Bishop, a well-liked 35-year-old. Cho then stood at the front of the class, killing students in the first rows and then moving to the rear. He fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded. Students fell dead or wounded. Others cowered behind desks.

He went next into the French class in Room 211. Alarmed by the initial bangs, the teacher, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, had asked her class in disbelief: &#39;That&#39;s not what I think it is?&#39; It was. She told her students to get to the back of the class and began putting desks against the door. It was heroism on her part. But it was not enough. Cho barged in, shot her dead and then worked his way through her class.

Cho then returned to Room 207. By then, students had blocked the door. Cho tried to force and shoot his way through. But, fighting for their lives, the students - some gravely wounded - held him off this time.

It was the same in a computer class. Those students also fought off Cho, even though he fired at the door. There were many acts of heroism. Some staunched their friends&#39; wounds and tied tourniquets around shattered limbs. Many blockaded doors despite having been shot. By now students and staff were fleeing through windows. As Cho walked from room to room, trying to find more people to shoot, he killed Kevin Granata, a biomechanics teacher who had served in the US armed forces. Granata had rushed downstairs and confronted Cho. He shot him dead.

Then Cho tried to get into Room 204, where Professor Liviu Librescu was giving an engineering class. Librescu, a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor, had been urging his students to flee out of the windows. Most of them did. As Cho tried to enter the room, the ageing teacher flung himself against the door, buying vital time for more students to leave. But Librescu could not hold him off forever. Cho murdered him and entered the room.

By now, it was almost over. Cho had fired more than 200 rounds, reloading an estimated 15 times. The police arrived, eventually smashing open the chained doors. Bodies lay everywhere in slicks of blood. Cho had shot many of them repeatedly in his determination to kill. Armed police moved from room to room, ordering wounded survivors to hold up their hands to show they had no weapons. Cho knew the end was near. He put one of his guns to his head and pulled the trigger. The shot almost tore off his face. When police found him, his guns at his side, they knew he was dead. &#39;Shooter down! Black tag!&#39; they screamed. Cho&#39;s killing spree was over. The story of the horror he left behind had barely begun.

When Cho&#39;s identity was first released, it came as no surprise to a few who had had contact with the loner. It confirmed their worst fears. But to most, the reaction was simply: who? Gradually, piece by piece, a picture of Cho&#39;s life has emerged. It is a disturbing one. Just as his time on campus was marked by solitude and anger, so was his school and childhood. Cho seemed to have been born in a personal mental prison from which he either could not escape or chose not to. The one true surprise was that this perpetrator of such an American crime originally came from many thousands of miles away.

Cho was born in South Korea. His parents ran a small, second-hand book store in Seoul, the capital, and lived in a cramped apartment. They had been a reluctant husband and wife. Cho&#39;s father was from a poor southern family, while his mother&#39;s kin were landowners from the north, dispossessed during the Korean War.

The marriage was arranged against the wife-to-be&#39;s wishes, but she had little choice. The family struggled to build a life and eventually moved to America at the invitation of relatives. They arrived in 1992, hoping for the best for their two children. They worked hard, in a laundry and a restaurant. And, like so many determined immigrants, they made it. They lived in a pleasant Washington DC suburb. Cho&#39;s sister, Sun, went to Princeton.

But there was one cloud on this heart-warming story of success: Cho himself. Back in South Korea, the family had noticed his deep, sullen silences as an infant. His grandfather worried he might be mute; his mother thought he was mentally ill. A committed Christian, she tried to involve her church in reaching out to the boy after his silences grew worse on the move to America. She prayed for him regularly. It did not make for a happy teenage existence.

Clearly depressed and struggling with English, Cho became a target for bullies at Westfield High School in nearby Chantilly. Once, after refusing to read aloud in an English class, Cho was forced to speak. When he did, students laughed at his strange voice and told him to &#39;go back to China&#39;. He was teased as the &#39;trombone kid&#39; for his habit of walking to school alone carrying his musical instrument. He rarely spoke, playing solitary basketball in his home&#39;s quiet cul-de-sac and ignoring the hellos of his neighbours.

Things got worse in college. His fellow students remember reaching out to him at the start of class or when they moved into a dorm with him. He was invited to dine with them at local restaurants. But Cho showed little interest in talking. He would ignore them or answer in one-word replies. It was the same in class: Cho sat at the back, wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap.

In one now notorious incident, when he filled out a sign-in sheet at the start of a literature class, he refused to write his name. Instead he put a question mark. In campus banter, Cho had turned from the &#39;trombone kid&#39; to the &#39;question mark kid&#39;. It became his totem. One of the girls he stalked awoke one morning to find a large question mark written on her room&#39;s message board.

Undoubtedly Cho&#39;s stone-like facade hid a mind in deep distress. A few signs broke the surface. Once, at a party, Cho revealed to room-mates that he had a girlfriend, presumably imaginary. She was called Jelly, he said. She was a model and she called him Spanky. It was a brief and bizarre glimpse into Cho&#39;s inner world. Another incident occurred after he had been reprimanded for bothering a girl student. In a quiet moment, he told one room-mate that he had wanted to look in her eyes and see if she was as &#39;cool&#39; as he thought. But he had been disappointed. He had gone to her dorm room and seen only &#39;promiscuity&#39;.

Such insights were few and far between. Some students joked about him being a possible college shooter. One teacher had a codeword she could use when teaching him if she became fearful for herself. It sounds dramatic, but she never used it. Cho continued to keep to himself. He wore sunglasses in class. He had no friends. His room had no pictures or posters. He often just stared blankly at the walls or ceiling. He slept with the light on and never shut his door. He was a walking void.

The silence Cho maintained in life was broken after his death. The package he sent to NBC contained 29 photographs, 27 short videos and an 1,800-word diatribe. In the clips, Cho is hard-eyed, his voice a tense, controlled staccato of rage. He speaks quickly but clearly. He is no longer silent. The pent-up emotions of his damaged psyche boil to the surface. Cho finally revealed himself.

Cho was severely mentally ill: no sane person murders 32 people. But such sicknesses vary greatly. Cho was no serial killer. He was not a sociopath. In fact, experts say, Cho&#39;s rampage was a form of suicide. He killed because he considered himself the victim; those he killed he saw as villains. &#39;This was revenge. He wanted to kill himself, but first he was going to take others with him, people he saw as persecuting him,&#39; said Professor Jack Levin, an expert on mass murderers at Northeastern University in Boston.

Certainly that was what emerged from Cho&#39;s own words. He felt himself utterly victimised. &#39;You have vandalised my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenceless people,&#39; he said. &#39;You&#39; was the world as a whole, especially the students who he felt ignored him.

He claimed he had not chosen to kill but had been forced into it. The coming massacre, he warned, was not his fault. &#39;You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.&#39; Such transference of blame is rare among serial killers, for whom blame or guilt are alien concepts. &#39;It is a very elaborate blaming system. These people come from a sense of powerlessness,&#39; said Gregg McCrary, a former FBI profiler.

Cho also railed against what he saw as hedonism and materialism all around, perhaps revealing a deep resentment of his poorer background. &#39;Your Mercedes wasn&#39;t enough, you brats,&#39; he cried &#39;Your golden necklaces weren&#39;t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn&#39;t enough. Your vodka and cognac weren&#39;t enough. All your debaucheries weren&#39;t enough. Those weren&#39;t enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs.&#39;

It was the product of a diseased mind, but the words strike a tone horribly familiar to those who had shared creative writing classes with Cho. In poetry and drama classes, Cho had consistently produced work whose violence, sexual imagery and anger had upset classmates and teachers. One former student, Ian MacFarlane, had kept copies of Cho&#39;s two plays and posted them on-line. They are deeply disturbing. One, Richard McBeef, deals with a young man confronting his step-father about murder and child abuse. The second - Mr Brownstone - has three students describing their desire to kill a sadistic teacher. Reading the plays is not easy. They are violent, profane and obsessed with scatological sex. They are not like reading the mind of a deranged 23-year-old: they are like reading the mind of a deranged 13-year-old. MacFarlane said he had thought of what he would do if Cho were ever to bring a gun to class. &#39;I was that freaked about him,&#39; he said.

As people struggle to understand Cho, many experts think the specifics are not important. It is the tone of persecution and victimhood that matter. &#39;He is clearly clinically depressed, probably delusional, and has been so for a very long period of time,&#39; said Levin.

There are other tantalising clues the meaning of which may never be known. Cho was found with the words &#39;Ismail Ax&#39; in red ink on his arm. The return address on the NBC package was &#39;A. Ishmael&#39;. It is impossible to know what that means, but suggestions have varied from the Bible to the Koran to Moby Dick to a Turkish hip hop artist. One literary reference Cho used was obvious. He quoted Romeo and Juliet. &#39;My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,&#39; he wrote. Cho picked out the words about forbidden love and turned them against his own identity. It was morbidly fitting. He had denied his own name in class. His last act in life was to blast off his own face.

Cho Seung-hui did not exist in a vacuum. His actions sprang from the gun-drenched culture of America where buying a rifle can be as easy as buying groceries. The shop where Cho bought his Glock is Roanoke Firearms, standing on a busy road about half an hour&#39;s drive from Blacksburg. A bumper sticker on one wall declares, &#39;Buy A Gun For America&#39;.

America is a highly armed society. Gun rights groups argue that citizens have to be able to defend themselves. Yet it is also easy for deranged people to obtain powerful firearms.

The statistics speak for themselves. There are 200 million privately held guns in America. Each year, they cause roughly 30,000 deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults.

Cho&#39;s massacre is just a drop in a very bloody pool. &#39;It is long overdue for us to take some commonsense actions to prevent tragedies like this from continuing to occur,&#39; said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

That such steps have not been taken yet is the result of the power of the National Rifle Association and the popular worship of gun use it encourages. The NRA is one of the most effective lobbying groups in American politics. It is motivated by a desire to protect the right of any American to own, carry and use firearms. It has an annual budget of $180m and 3.8 million members. The NRA also contributes about nine times more money to politicians&#39; campaign coffers than gun control groups.

Even now, even after Cho and his two hours of carnage, few politicians dare speak out against gun rights, despite the fact that Congress is now controlled by the Democrats. In fact, the one thing that seems certain in a post-Cho America is that another such massacre will happen again, and that it may possibly be even worse, as each perpetrator attempts to &#39;beat&#39; the last.

Already a spate of copycat incidents have occurred across the country. In Houston, a man killed a hostage and himself at the Nasa space centre. In Florida, a teenager was arrested after threatening in an email to kill 100 people. Near Seattle, another high school student was arrested while in possession of three loaded guns. Classes in a Nevada university were cancelled after a man sent a text message saying: &#39;The Korean is my hero.&#39;

The saturation media coverage, and especially the controversial broadcast of Cho&#39;s videos, will provide an anti-hero for some disturbed youth. Somewhere in America, in some school or college, a future Cho may already be allowing themselves to think along the same lines: loneliness, victimhood, revenge and suicide - and all on a world stage. They will not find it hard to find guns with which to kill. &#39;We are in trouble. This is not the end of it,&#39; said Levin.

But, just as Cho&#39;s actions reveal the dark heart of an American society at home with firearms, it also reveals the other country, the emotional America, the America of positives. The America of his victims.

The roll call of the dead speaks of a land of variety and opportunity. The dead should not be defined by dying at Cho&#39;s hands, but by their own lives and deeds. They came from everywhere. There was Minal Panchal from Mumbai, a graduate student in architecture. There was Juan Ortiz Ortiz from Puerto Rico, who loved to dance salsa and played the timbales. There was Waleed Shaalan, 32, from Egypt, who leaves behind a widow and three fatherless children. Professor Librescu had escaped the Nazis and Romanian communism only to give up his life for his students.

There were also young American women, full of hope and prospects - girls like Hilscher, whose small frame led her to name herself &#39;Pixie&#39;. Or Reema Samaha, 18, who loved dancing and planned to spend the summer in France, working at a children&#39;s camp. Or Austin Cloyd, 18, the daughter of a Virginia Tech professor, who went on Christian mission trips in the Appalachian mountains, repairing the roofs and plumbing of the poorest of the poor. Or Erin Peterson, 18, a star basketball player who was as gentle off court as she was ferocious on it.

They were also young men such as Jarrett Lan, 28, who was about to graduate in civil engineering and had been a four-sport athlete at his high school. Or Henry Lee, who had come to the US from China barely able to speak English. He belonged to an internet socialising group called &#39;My name is Henry Lee&#39; with other people sharing his name. In a recent online post, he had joked about having a convention. &#39;We wouldn&#39;t need name tags,&#39; he wrote.

Cho&#39;s victims spanned a vast spectrum of life. They were young, middle-aged, elderly. They were students and professors. They were men and women. They were biologists, engineers and linguists. They were black, white, Middle Eastern, Jewish and Asian. They were Christian. Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. They were American and foreign-born. They had all started that terrible Monday in the expectation that their lives would continue. Cho cut them short, suddenly and inexplicably, leaving behind unimaginable grief for husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, colleagues and friends.

But Cho also ensured they were honoured in their deaths. Their lives were celebrated by a mourning nation. Amid all the tributes springing up on campus, the tone is one of happy remembrance as well as grief. Perhaps one example among the thousands can stand for them all. It was written to Reema Samaha: &#39;Reema, wherever you are, I know that your smile and your dancing is joyous.&#39;

Cho&#39;s own family are in hiding under police protection. They are also shattered and despairing. Late last Friday, Cho&#39;s sister, Sun, released a statement for the family as a whole. It mentioned each victim by name. &#39;Each of these people had so much love, talent and gifts to offer, and their lives were cut short by a horrible and senseless act,&#39; Sun said. &#39;My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence.&#39;

There is still a long way, a marathon, for this college, town and country to travel on the road to recovery. And incredibly many are determined to take Cho along with them. There is very little anger at Cho on campus, just disbelief and despair. He is not hated: he is pitied by many who wonder how someone can commit such evil, and slaughter 32 fellow human beings. Steven Dellinger, 20, stood on a rise in front of the main memorial. He thought about Cho all the time, he said. &#39;I just wish someone had got to him. If only he had been able to have a friend who could have helped him out.&#39;

Behind Dellinger, a row of stone blocks - a memorial - has been laid out in a semi-circle, hugging a cluster of candles and messages. Each unmarked stone is topped with a flower and a Virginia Tech pennant. They represent the dead. There are 33 stones.

Cho, whose lonely life turned his mind in ways one can hardly imagine, finally has company.


<B>On Guardian Unlimited</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/virginiashooting/">Full coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/0,,182056,00.html">Gun violence in the US</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/gun/0,,178412,00.html">Gun violence in Britain</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/0,,759893,00.html">Full US coverage</A><BR><BR><B>Related articles</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2059217,00.html">Virginia massacre gunman named</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2059103,00.html">Unofficial list of shooting victims emerges</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2058887,00.html">Massacre on campus</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2059250,00.html">Q&A: US gun laws</A><BR><BR><B>World news guide</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldnewsguide/northamerica/0,,618255,00.html">North American Media</A><BR><BR><B>Media</B><BR><A HREF="http://edition.cnn.com/">CNN</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/">Washington Post</A><BR><BR><B>Government</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.state.va.us/cmsportal2/">Virginia state government portal</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.usa.gov/">US government portal</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.whitehouse.gov/">White House</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.senate.gov/">Senate</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.house.gov/">House of Representatives</A>

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Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2007.

Original Source: Guardian Unlimited / EducationGuardian.co.uk
<a href="http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2063553,00.html">http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2063553,00.html</a>

Paul Harris

2007-08-13

Adriana Seagle

In consideration of the fee of GBP 0.00 ("the Fee") Guardian News & Media Limited ("GNM") grants the Licensee the right to: publish on its website for 10 years.

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eng

Mother prayed as son brooded in silence

<b>Jonathan Watts in Goyang
Friday April 20, 2007</b>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2061777,00.html">The Guardian</a>

The brooding silence of Cho Seung-hui was so impenetrable it disturbed his family even when he was growing up in South Korea, relatives of the Virginia killer told the Guardian yesterday. His grandfather feared that at the age of eight he might be mute; the boy&#39;s great aunt worried that he had mental problems. And his mother, Kim Hyang-im, spent much of her time in church praying for him to snap out of his unhealthy taciturnity.

"She was heartbroken," said his mother&#39;s aunt, Kim Yang-soon. "After they moved to America, she hoped his silences would ease as he grew older. But in fact they got worse."

The poor family had a difficult start. Cho&#39;s mother was forced into an arranged marriage with a man 10 years her senior - Cho Sung-tae, who came from a poor family in the south but had worked in Saudi Arabia for 10 years on construction sites and oilfields. Hyang-im was from a well-educated family of North Korean landowners who had fled during the Korean war. "She didn&#39;t want to marry, but she gave in," said Yang-soon.

No one in the family recalls any violent behaviour from Cho that might have hinted at later carnage. But they were unnerved by his sullenness. "My grandson was shy even as a little boy and he would never run to me like my other grandchildren," his maternal grandfather, Kim Hyong-shik, told the Hankyoreh Daily. "I thought he might be deaf and dumb." Schoolmates told local media they remembered Cho as quiet.

But the father doted on his children. "He would have done anything for them," the grandfather said. "But now this has happened. It&#39;s as if everything they&#39;ve done, the reason for their whole existence has been for nothing."

The family moved to the US in 1992. During their eight-year wait for a visa, they fell short of money, selling their second-hand shop and home to make ends meet. They had visited Hyang-im&#39;s family before they left, an occasion that was only the second time the grandparents had seen Cho. Yang-soon said of the boy: "He would not talk even when I called to him. He was so quiet I remarked he must have a very gentle nature. But his mother told me he was too quiet. Soon after they got to America, he was diagnosed as being clinically withdrawn. It amazes me he ever [got] into university. I guess he must have had some mental problems from birth."

Cho&#39;s family worked hard in the US. His father worked in a laundry, to fund his children&#39;s education. His mother, a part-time waitress, attended the Korean church in Centreville, where she implored the pastor to help her son. When Cho started at Virginia Tech, his mother took his dormitory mates to one side to explain his character and asked them to help. "She was worried that he spent all his time in his room, lost in a world of video games," the paper quoted the pastor as saying. "[Cho] came to bible studies for a couple of years, but rarely spoke and never got along with the other youths."

"I just wish he would have talked," said Yang-soon. "There is an old saying in Korea that people who won&#39;t talk will end up killing themselves. That is what happens when the resentment builds up."

<B>On Guardian Unlimited</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/virginiashooting/">Full coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/0,,182056,00.html">Gun violence in the US</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/gun/0,,178412,00.html">Gun violence in Britain</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/0,,759893,00.html">Full US coverage</A><BR><BR><B>Related articles</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2059217,00.html">Virginia massacre gunman named</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2059103,00.html">Unofficial list of shooting victims emerges</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2058887,00.html">Massacre on campus</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2059250,00.html">Q&A: US gun laws</A><BR><BR><B>World news guide</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldnewsguide/northamerica/0,,618255,00.html">North American Media</A><BR><BR><B>Media</B><BR><A HREF="http://edition.cnn.com/">CNN</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/">Washington Post</A><BR><BR><B>Government</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.state.va.us/cmsportal2/">Virginia state government portal</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.usa.gov/">US government portal</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.whitehouse.gov/">White House</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.senate.gov/">Senate</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.house.gov/">House of Representatives</A>

Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2007.
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Original Source: Guardian Unlimited
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2061777,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2061777,00.html</a>

Adriana Seagle

2007-08-10

Adriana Seagle

In consideration of the fee of GBP 0.00 ("the Fee") Guardian News & Media Limited ("GNM") grants the Licensee the right to: publish on its website for 10 years.

Contact info: Eve Thompson; permissions.syndication@guardian.co.uk

eng

Cho is no emblem of America

<b>Leader
Sunday April 22, 2007</b>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2062898,00.html">The Observer</a>

Julia Pryde is not a household name. She was a 23-year-old graduate biology student who wanted to encourage recycling at the cafeteria at Virginia Tech University. Her face is not as universally known as that of Cho Seung-hui, the man who shot her and 31 others on campus last week. Cho secured his status as an icon of infamy by taking time, amid the massacre, to send a video manifesto to a TV network. Cho wanted not only to terrorise his fellow students, but to stare the world in the face, or rather, to force the world to look him in the eye.
NBC has been criticised for showing the footage. Although there was a legitimate public interest in airing the material - it helped explain the dark motivation of the killer - the decision to run it on a constant loop within hours of the killings was clearly not taken with any consideration of sensitivity to survivors or victims&#39; relatives. NBC apologised and toned down their coverage. But in the modern media age, Cho&#39;s broadcast would always have found a worldwide audience. He would still, one way or another, have forced everyone to hear his awful message: it is you who are responsible for this, not me.

That is not true, of course. Cho was a psychopath, determined to kill. It may be the case that his determination was expedited by easy access to guns. But that is a feature of American society and American politics with its own strange logic, immune to comment by outsiders.

The image of Cho striking murderous poses crosses all cultures. It is the face of modern, media-literate terror. That is not a fair emblem of modern American society. A truer symbol is found in the packed classrooms and lecture theatres of Virginia Tech, filled, just days after the massacre, with students who were determined to get on with their education - a triumph of youthful optimism over deadly nihilism.

Pickleme

April 22, 2007 8:16 AM

Tragic though this all is , one has had a media onslaught day after relentless day,whilst ignoring 200+ killed/maimed/injured etc etc etc ad nauseum, a day in Iraq and thousands more in just as violent and senseless episodes elsewhere in world that are ignored or glossed over by media. .

And disturbing though Cho was, one has surely to remember that this kid was desperately needing psyche help ? . I feel as sorry for him as his victims. That not one person bothered to follow up on the signs of his mental instability, and it seems enough powers that be and indeed students noticed, but did nothing is somehow as shocking as his mental breakdown that ended in this tragic episode .How sad is that.?

winemaster

April 22, 2007 2:03 PM

Of course Cho, what ever his mental instablity, psychotic modus operandi at age 23, was not born as a killer. It is violent America that made him one, and for that matter, he is not exclusive, not that such maniac sociopaths are acceptable. Nevertheless, innocent Americans are not the only people that are dying or are killed. The war on Iraq and in Afghanistan; and the real terror of poverty, hunger, starvation, diseases like AIDS, malaria, denge fever, rift valley fever and hundreds of deadly viruses, parasites is a much bigger toll in thousands every day. The difference is the indifference of America to other people.

As far as emblem of America, we have George W. Bush, that is showing up the whole world with his megalomaniac, compulsive-obsessive, sociopath mentality, divine religious mandate, being the messenger of his. Plus the like minded perverse ideology of inequality and rights only of their kind, not to mention their malignant narcissism, chronic scape goating, uncorrectable grab bagging, while sacrifcing others with coercion, reckless abandon and impunity to promote their own, outward, hypocrite self image of good and perfection.

MDELELWA

April 22, 2007 6:12 PM

To me Cho represents at an individual micro level what the American nation stands for in the world. It is a vast, wealthy, but sickly nation that readily lashes out with a violence whose totality is as chilingly complete as Cho&#39;s at nations that pose no immidiate or even remote danger to it. To understand what dark forces operated and lived in Cho&#39;s mind we need to first understand the American national psyche-the sickly desire of one nation to dominate and control the rest of the world and its willingness to visit total destruction on those who stand on the way of its crazy, demented, schezophrenic designs.
Of course I do not mean to trivialse the loss of the relatives of the dead students. Their loss is particularly severe in that all those lost were young people so full of promise and potential yet cut down in their prime years by a single lunatic. Inevitably so many lives there have been roughly touched by the hand of fate and altered for ever. Some will inevitably never recover from this loss. And all of them will go through life saying &#39;only if&#39; so and so had not died in that shooting. Indeed a vacuum never to be filled has been left in the lives of many parents, siblings, children and loved ones. No words can ever articulate their pain. However this tragic path that Americans now grieving have to tread on is a well worn path. Countless Iraqs walk it daily. Many in Afghanistan have to too. All because of America&#39;s madness. Black Africans bear a simillar loss on a daily basis because of the American policies on issues of AIDS etc. All this means the world is a tough neighbour-hood. The likes of Cho are forever larking everywhere, foreever ready to visit mayhem and chaos and destruction within communities at all levels.
In that vein as we take a pause to reflect on the tradegy and loss at VT lets also reflect on the countless lives lost elsewhere on that same day-dozens of kids succumbing to hunger and AIDS in Zimbabwe due to sanctions imposed by the West, and over and above all the 200 plus lost in bomb blasts at the very time the VT carnage was underway in Bhagdad Iraqi. It is a world gone mad.

davidfletcher26

April 22, 2007 8:03 PM

I doubt if America is a more aggressive culture than Britain
and I also dont think they have any more violent nutters than we do.
What is different is the ease with which such a young man can get hold of a high power handgun or an assault rifle.
The knowledge that this kind of weaaponry is available helps to feed meglomaniac fantasies of mass killing.
America is not a uniquilely evil society as some would like to think.
Was the British Empire that good or that of Soviet Russia?

WoollyMindedLiberal

April 22, 2007 10:02 PM

This poor young man was clearly a victim of religious delusion and is emblematic of the problems caused by the pernicious &#39;Christianity&#39; strain that has plagued our civilization these last 2000 years.

The time has come to grow up and put behind us these infantile games of make-believe which disturbed individuals take seriously with the terrible consequences we see daily in Iraq and every year in the USA.

vandygirl

April 24, 2007 8:58 AM

I am a college student in the USA. I would like to say to all who will listen that what happened is at Virginia Tech is a tragedy, but it is not representative of the US or our citizens. We are a large and varied country, and I promise that most of us are not psycopathic, gun-happy murderers. In fact, most of us are disgusted and disturbed by the actions of people like Cho, but we are not the ones you hear about in the news. We are the ones forgotten by the media and the world (including within our own borders). And please don&#39;t let this become a debate on the war in Iraq - there is massive opposition to the war by people in the US, and many of us who disagree with the actions of our government and support the Iraqi people. Cho is not symbolic of the US or its people. There are many of us who are aware of the many crises facing the world today - yes, even those that occur outside the US - and we do sympathize with them. We do not hold our lives to be any more important than other peoples, and we are not indifferent to the rest of the world. Please don&#39;t assume all people in the US are the same, and don&#39;t judge us by the ones you hear about in the news - inevitably those are ones who have committed atrocities rather than the average US citizen.

And as for the media - It is not the fault of the people if the media descends into the tabloid news that it so often is. The students at Virginia Tech have asked all media to leave their campus, an action supported by many. They need their time to grieve in private without being used to boost ratings.

<B>On Guardian Unlimited</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/virginiashooting/">Full coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/0,,182056,00.html">Gun violence in the US</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/gun/0,,178412,00.html">Gun violence in Britain</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/0,,759893,00.html">Full US coverage</A><BR><BR><B>Related articles</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2059217,00.html">Virginia massacre gunman named</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2059103,00.html">Unofficial list of shooting victims emerges</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2058887,00.html">Massacre on campus</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2059250,00.html">Q&A: US gun laws</A><BR><BR><B>World news guide</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldnewsguide/northamerica/0,,618255,00.html">North American Media</A><BR><BR><B>Media</B><BR><A HREF="http://edition.cnn.com/">CNN</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/">Washington Post</A><BR><BR><B>Government</B><BR><A HREF="http://www.state.va.us/cmsportal2/">Virginia state government portal</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.usa.gov/">US government portal</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.whitehouse.gov/">White House</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.senate.gov/">Senate</A><BR><A HREF="http://www.house.gov/">House of Representatives</A>

Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2007.
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Original Source:<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2062898,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,2062898,00.html</a>

Staff of The Observer

2007-08-10

Adriana Seagle

In consideration of the fee of GBP 0.00 ("the Fee") Guardian News & Media Limited ("GNM") grants the Licensee the right to: publish on its website for 10 years.

Contact info:Eve Thompson-permissions.syndication@guardian.co.uk

eng

Police identify Norris Hall shooter as Va. Tech student

Cho attended Northern Va. high school, peers describe him as &#39;loner&#39;

Maria Tchijov and Thomas Madrecki, Cavalier Daily Senior Writers

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Police identified Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, as the gunman responsible for killing 30 victims Monday in Virginia Tech&#39;s Norris Hall. Some who knew him described Cho as "a complete loner" and the author of "disturbing" and "excessively violent" plays.

Cho was found dead among the carnage that spanned four rooms and a nearby stairwell in Norris Hall.

Cho, a native of South Korea, was linked to the murder weapon through a fingerprint contained in immigration documents. Ballistics tests confirmed that one of the two guns found at Norris Hall was also used at the shooting that took place two hours earlier in West Ambler Johnston dormitory. While police said it is likely that the two shootings are related, the investigation is ongoing.

An ongoing investigation

Cho was an English major at the university from Centreville, Va. Peers from Cho&#39;s middle school in Centreville said he was quiet, shy and withdrawn.

"He was made fun of a lot by everybody," said Samuel Linton, a homeroom classmate of Cho&#39;s during seventh and eighth grade. "He was a complete loner, he never said a word ... he had no interaction with teachers -- he just stared like he wasn&#39;t paying attention."

David Gearheart, who also attended middle school with Cho, said he talked to Cho once or twice, but that talking to him was just that -- talking to somebody rather than with somebody.

"He had a lot of crazy writings in his notebook and stuff, how he hated Americans," Gearheart said.

Linton said Cho was once reported to the principal for writing down the names of people he was supposedly planning to kill.

"It was like a hit list," Linton said. "They found one in his locker."

Linton said people "constantly" talked about how Cho might be the type of person that would one day attempt to kill someone.

Officials at a press conference yesterday said they could not comment on allegations that Cho had a previous run-in with law enforcement officers in Blacksburg in 2005.

Authorities executed a search warrant yesterday of Cho&#39;s dorm room in Harper Hall and removed mostly documentary evidence, including his writings that were widely characterized as violent by peers and professors.

Stephanie Derry, a senior English student at Virginia Tech, said she knew Cho from a playwriting class. Derry described Cho&#39;s plays as "disturbing," but said nobody in the class took them as entirely serious.

"The plays were excessively violent," Derry said. "But you can&#39;t really assume that everything written is true or is going to be true."

The Associated Press reported that officials recovered a note in Cho&#39;s dorm that lambasted "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans."

Virginia State Police Superintendent Steve Flaherty said, however, there is no evidence of a suicide note.

Flaherty also announced that the handguns used by Cho in the massacre were purchased in accordance with Virginia law in March. Police have not yet determined whether Cho had an accomplice in the shootings.

Officials indicated that a person of interest from the first shooting is cooperating with police. That individual was an acquaintance of the female victim of the first shooting and was stopped by police and questioned by authorities at the time of the second shooting. As of press time, this individual was still considered a "person of interest."

Officials respond

Gov. Tim Kaine extended his condolences to the Virginia Tech community during a televised broadcast last night.

"Our hearts go out to the entire community, Kaine said. "This is the darkest day in the wonderful history of Virginia Tech."

Kaine also said he will commission an independent panel of law enforcement experts in the next 48 hours to examine the administration and law enforcement response to the events leading up to and immediately following Monday morning&#39;s shootings. The purview of this examination will include complaints about the university administration&#39;s delay in notifying students of danger immediately after the first shooting. That decision has been questioned publicly by some students and members of the media.

Kaine did not answer questions regarding policy changes.

"Before we talk about any policy changes we have to get our best assessment of what occurred," Kaine said.

Kaine added that families of the victims were the number one priority.

"This is not a crusade or something for a political campaign," Kaine said. "It&#39;s about comforting families ... and helping this community heal ... For those who want to make this into some kind of crusade I say take that elsewhere."

Officials said yesterday they are not releasing the names of the victims until they have identified all the remains and notified the next of kin. Several media sources, including the student newspaper at Tech, have released preliminary lists of the victims&#39; names.

Virginia Tech president Charles Steger said Virginia Tech will cancel classes for the remainder of the week. Further announcements about classes were expected today. Norris Hall will remain closed for the rest of the school year.

"As you can understand, we are still working to understand this terrible tragedy," Steger said. "It is very difficult for me to express how we feel."

-- Alex Sellinger and Stephanie Kassab contributed to this article

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Original Source: <a href= http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=30192&pid=1583>The Cavalier Daily - April 18, 2007</a>

Maria Tchijov and Thomas Madrecki

The Cavalier Daily

2007-07-31

Sara Hood

Meggie Bonner <meggiebonner@gmail.com>

eng

Can't stick it on Korea

By Zhang Xin
[ 2007-04-24 15:42 ]

Last week, in the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, some people apparently tried to stick it on Korea, or China, or Asia in general, all on the strength of such weak arguments that Cho Seung-Hui was an immigrant from Korea, that he was sometimes (mis)taken as Chinese, or that he&#39;s Asian-looking.

I read somewhere that a Korean retorted, quite correctly, that Cho left South Korea at the age of eight and spent most of his formative years in the States so they can&#39;t possibly stick it on Korea. Cho, who killed 33 people including himself on Virginia Tech campus on Monday, April 16, 2007, was 23.

Likewise, you can&#39;t stick it on China. At least once Cho was mistaken as Chinese. "In high school, Cho Seung-Hui almost never opened his mouth. When he finally did, his classmates laughed, pointed at him and said: &#39;Go back to China.&#39;" (Va. Tech shooter a &#39;textbook killer&#39;, Associated Press, April 19, 2007).

Nor can you pin it on Asia. After all, almost all East Asians look the same to the less discerning American eye.

Whom do we stick it onto, then?

If I have to assign blame, I will stick it first on Cho, obviously, then on gun control or the lacks thereof in America, then on pop culture and on society at large.

I, for one, believe it is not as far-fetched to blame it on society at large than on a specific target such as Korea. Society at large, you see, both yonder across the oceans and here in this country looks too much up to what is called success but has too little respect for and tolerance of what is considered to be failure. I mean, only by contrast do we tell success from failure. So theoretically for society as a whole, these two are equally important - we should therefore reserve a degree of respect for those who fail, who come up short but also run.

School bullies, for example, pick on practically anyone who&#39;s not regarded as "one of us". You may get glared at, jeered and sneered at for one of these perfectly harmless "crimes" - that you come from another country (or another province for that manner), that you don&#39;t get ushered to school by a sedan car, that you speak a non-local dialect, that you have an odd accent, that you have a physical disability or simply a harelip, that you have a mental problem.... The list goes on and on.

In the mainstream society of one-upmanship, pop culture craves for bringing up heroes (American Idol, or the Super Girl in China) and in the process create as a by product victims and villains, of whom Cho is but a latest and most disturbing example.

No doubt, blaming it on society at large is in vain. Cho himself tried to do it, and what consequences did he come to? Cho argued in his manifesto, sent to the NBC in between the murders, that he was out to avenge rich "brats" with had their "Mercedes", "gold necklaces", "cognac" and "trust funds". But he had no argument, really - none of the above justifies the shootings.

But, as a lesson, we as individuals need to be constantly reminded of the social callousness we often displays toward the weak and underprivileged.

In the same time society advocates winning, it&#39;d best advocate also tolerance and understanding towards losing. By all means win, but please maintain a healthy respect for those who fall behind.

It&#39;s called "live and let live". In this age of wealth and profligacy in many places, we instead may advocate "thrive but let survive".

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Original Source:Chinadaily.com

<a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/language_tips/2007-04/24/content_858747.htm">http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/language_tips/2007-04/24/content_858747.htm<a/>

Zhang Xin

2007-07-18

Na Mi

eng

Ponderation over shock from US campus shooting rampage

UPDATED: 17:04, April 19, 2007

A total of 33 people, including the gunman Seung-Hui Cho, 23, were killed Monday at Virginia Tech University in the deadiest shooting rampage in modern US history. The whole of the United States is stunned and shocked, and so is the entire world.

At the time when people, full of sympathy, are plunged themselves in an extreme sorrow and grief, they cannot but naturally ask such a question: Why it (the shooting rampage) has been again occurred in the U.S., and again in on the campus? In fact, this is not beyond people&#39;s expectations, as it is neither the first tragedy, nor the last, because there are two reasons involved:

First, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution specifies that the American people are endowered with the "right to keep and bear arms", which cannot be encroached upon. So the sale and purchase of firearms are legal in the United States according to law. Consequently, a large number of American families possess guns. Approximately 200 million guns are owned privately in the U.S., which has a population of 300 million, note relevant statistics released by the US Department of Justice. It has been reported that Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman on the Virginia campus killings, bought his first gun, a 9mm handgun, on March 13 at Roanoke, Va. Gun store, and he timed the purchase of his two firearms to be far enough apart that he would not run afoul of the "one gun a month" law.

Why does the United States still not amend its Constitution to ban the use of firearms after a frequent occurrence of mass killings with guns? Almost every shooting rampage is followed by a nationwide debate on whether or not the possession of firearms should be banned. But bills for banning the ownership of guns will not be passed in Congress in the end. This, however, has something to do with the influential and powerful National Rifle Association of America, or NRA. Having a membership of some 3 million that includes arms dealers, rich hunters and firearms fans, the NRA has both money and the vote with a significant impact in both Congressional and presidential elections. Any amendment of the US Constitution has to be rectified with a two-thirds majority at both chambers of US Congress and, therefore, the rigid draft firearms banning code remains a "still born in the womb". And gun owners seem to have some kind of reason, alleging that it is the gunman not the gun that kills people and the guns themselves cannot massacre people automatically.

Second, every society is made up of all kinds of people, and an undeniable reality is that a handful of people do not have a "sound" or healthy mind or character and still a small member of people are somewhat in mental disorders. Once these people seize firearms, others will be exposed to an immense threat. Relevant statistics show that close to half the killers have mental problems of some sort and, so for the sake of safeguarding social security, it is a must to reduce or prevent their accesses to firearms. Just imagine how is it possible for the gunman in the campus shooting rampage in Virginia Tech to massacre so many people if he had only a sword or a knife, not two guns in hand?

Furthermore, to make an in-depth analysis of its causes, a kind of culture to adore the force has been fostered and spread in the process from the War of Independence in 1776 to the subsequent extension westward in the late 18th century and early 19th centuries. In the meantime, violence and bloodshed scenes have been kept flooding "cowboy" movies and audio and visual products based on high-tech Star wars. This has created notions in minds of kids to worship the force and resort to it to solve problems.

On April 20, 1999, two teenagers, aged 17 or 18, killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before taking their own lives at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. What they did was solely simulated and designed with meticulous care on audio and visual items to peddle or spread violence and crimes.

Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean American student, has been in the U.S. from a very young age.

If he was in South Korea, a nation of his birth instead of the U.S., would a tragedy of such a scale could happen?

To date, the entire world has been mourning with a deep grief over victims in the Virginia campus killing rampage, and another round of debate for prohibition of firearms ban is in sight in the United States. If only the loss of 33 precious young lives on the Virginia campus will arouse the awareness and introspection of American statesmen. </b>

<i>By People&#39;s Daily Online, and its author is Li Xuejiang, a top PD resident reporter in the U.S.</i>

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Original Source: People&#39;s Daily Online, China
<a href="http://english.people.com.cn/200704/19/eng20070419_368006.html">http://english.people.com.cn/200704/19/eng20070419_368006.html</a>

Li Xuejiang

2007-07-18

Na Mi

eng