The Making of Child Assassins
In order perhaps to understand Cho better, I began looking into other school shootings. And while there are books which outline the similarities among these and seek to develop some sort of psychological profile, I wonder if there is one aspect being overlooked. Specifically, it appears to me that these children and young adults are often in some sort of dissociative state while engaged in the shooting and often have previous symptoms that are symptomatic of dissociative disorders. (This most certainly applies to some very famous assassins, such as Mark David Chapman and Sirhan Sirhan, but I’m not going to deal with that here. )
I ‘m using the term assassin here, because while it is tragic when any young person shoots another, whether out of anger or gang activities or whatever, these cases share certain features those other cases lack. Here are a few of the features that I’ve not seen highlighted in discussions of these young shooters.
- They usually plan their attacks well in advance and in great detail.
- They carry out their attacks in a calm, almost businesslike manner, even when vengeance is alleged to be the motive.
- They often report not remembering the attacks or, more usually, feeling as if they were in a “dream” during the attacks.
- They seldom flee the scene of the crime, either ending the attack in suicide or in calm surrender.
- There are often strong suspicions or direct evidence of others who help plan the attacks.
- There is often a history of what is often considered to be “early schizophrenia”, including hearing voices, “irrational fears”, paranoia and hallucinations.
And schizophrenia, though not typically considered a possible diagnosis in children, could be the culprit. However, it’s important to note that schizophrenia is primarily a thought disorder and makes the sort of meticulous planning that is often seen in these cases rather difficult if not impossible. In many ways, then, dissociative disorders, whether involving multiple personalities or simply a tendency to shift into “altered states” of consciousness during times of high stress, seems just as likely to explain what we are seeing, if not more so. If you combine the tendency to dissociate with a relationship with an abusive or manipulative authority figure or peer, this could easily explain most of the factors so common in these shootings. This is very important, in my view, even absent theories of “MKULTRA” or “Manchurian Candidates.” Dissociative disorders come about primarily as a result of long-term childhood abuse, often sexual abuse and/or extreme neglect. As such, it should be of concern that no one seems to be looking at this pathway in the development of these child “psychopaths.” (It should also be noted that the abuser does not necessarily have to be a parent.)
Here are a few “case studies” and I’m sticking with the lower profile cases we don’t hear as much about. I don’t have access to much material on these cases, but what I do find is shocking.
Let’s start with Brenda Spencer. In San Diego back in 1979, 16 year-old Spencer took a rifle and started taking shots at kids in the school across the street. When a siege ended with her arrest, she reportedly said that she began shooting just because, “I just don’t like Mondays.” Other reports have her gleefully recounting that it was “a lot of fun” to shoot the children. This, by the way, was before video games even existed…if you don’t count Pong, which is not a particulary violent game.
What makes a 16-year-old girl so cold? Well, apparently the courts believed that that’s just the way she was, and reasons aren’t important. And to be fair, she did not offer up any reasons until her parole hearing in 2002. Here is a collection of articles on that hearing. And what she told the parole officers, though ultimately rejected as unsubstantiated excuses, should raise a few red flags.
Spencer said that she was sexually abused by her father and forced to share his bed until she was fourteen. The rifle with which she shot the children was a Christmas gift from her father, though she’d asked for a radio. She felt he wanted her to use it to hill herself, but whatever the reason, it’s an odd gift for a 16-year-old girl. She claimed that she was drunk and on PCP at the time and was hallucinating that a group of commandos was coming in her direction from the school when she began shooting. (Drug tests evidently came back negative, but she claims those tests were faked.)
Spencer also claimed that she was kept on mind altering drugs after she was arrested and was kept in a sort of zombie state doing and saying whatever investigators wanted. In fact, she claimed she is active with a group of 50 female inmates who were all allegedly kept on mind-altering drugs until their trials were over and are planning a lawsuit, though surely they have little hope of success even if it is true.
Sure, she could just be making all of that up hoping to win parole. Though I have to say, if that’s the way she was hoping to win parole it was an odd way to go about it. As I realize every time I even venture to write about these topics, this sort of thing is not taken seriously, least of all by parole boards. However, it is hard to imagine any other explanation that makes sense. Perhaps we could assume she was taking PCP voluntarily and then just snapped, but to me, a history of abuse seems very likely. Her father has never spoken out about the shooting.
Several school shootings are described in fairly substantial detail in the book Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence (2003) . Two of them are of interest here.
In April of 1998, at age 14, Andrew Wurst came to a school dance at his Pennsylvania middle school with a pistol. He shot one teacher to death and wounded a few more students. Here is what he said when he was apprehended by the owner of the facility hosting the dance:
‘I died four years ago. I’ve already been dead and I’ve come back. It doesn’t matter anymore. None of this is real.’ (p. 73)
In later conversations with a psychiatrist, Wurst said he’d been knocked unconscious when “caught between two swings” at age 8. This would be 6 years previous. But by age 10, he was already having suicidal thoughts. Here is what a psychiatrist says was Wurst’s belief about other people.
Other people are “programmed to act and say what the government, mad scientists, or a psycho want them to say.” Andrew elaborated later, saying that people are like robots, programmed with “time tablets” that give them differing levels of intelligence and different personalities.
“If I can think, I am free—the last freedom are my thoughts.” (p. 77)
Wurst suffered from many seemingly irrational fears. His mother said that he was still afraid of monsters in the closet or under his bed. In addition, he was a bedwetter till age 9, and though this can have many causes, it can be a reaction to sexual abuse. Wurst also admitted that he heard voices in his head. In fact, he’d written to a friend that “the voices are coming again.”
Wurst felt he had been brought here from the future and had a special task to carry out:
At another point, Andrew stated he had returned from the future and has “a mission to prevent something terrible that has happened or that will happen in the future.” He wasn’t certain what that mission was, but he did know that he had an “arch enemy” who would try to prevent him from accomplishing it. He had never seen this arch enemy but knew that everyone has one, which meant that he had to be on guard. (p. 78)
And Andrew had told his former girlfriend some months before the murders:
“We are all in reality in hospital beds being monitored and programmed by these mad scientists, and this world is not real for them…. The scientists watch over us to see what we’re doing.”
The following year, the film The Matrix was released. The following year.
Just a few months prior to Wurst’s rampage, in December of 1997, Michael Carneal entered the lobby of his Paducah, Kentucky high school and began shooting students in a morning prayer circle. He’d brought several guns with him, as well as several sets of earplugs, which caused some to think he expected others to join in. Like Wurst, it would later emerge that he was deeply affected by mental health issues. He gravitated toward the “goth” crowd, some of whom wore the long black coats that Columbine would soon make famous.
Although he brought several guns with him that day, bundled up in a blanket as “props” for a skit, he told everyone, he chose to do the shooting with a .22 pistol. This was probably the least powerful weapon of the bunch. Not to worry, however, for Carneal, like Cho, had an amazing proficiency with this weapon that left even one military expert stunned:
Michael Carneal, a 14-year old boy who had never fired a handgun before, stole a pistol, fired a few practice shots the night before and came into his school the next morning with the gun. In this case 8 shots were apparently fired, for 8 hits–4 of them head shots, one neck, and 3 upper torso. This is simply astounding, unprecedented marksmanship, especially when it comes from a child who apparently had never fired a real pistol in his life (prior to stealing the gun) and had only fired a .22 caliber rifle once at a summer camp.
I am an Army Ranger, “expert” qualified on all major U.S. small arms and many NATO weapons, an instructor for: the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers (ASLET); the International Association Society of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Emergency Response Teams; the California Highway Patrol Academy; and numerous other state patrol academies. I have fired many tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, and even with all of this I sincerely doubt that I could have fired as accurately under these circumstances. Indeed, I have never heard of anything remotely like this in its degree of deadly accuracy under these circumstances. The Illinois Highway Patrol in an assessment of the accuracy of their officers across several years found that the average officer, in the average engagement, at the average distance of 23 feet, hit with 13% of the rounds fired. In the Amadu Dialo shooting in New York City, four members of an elite NYPD unit fired 41 rounds at an unarmed African immigrant, at point-blank range, and hit 19 times. That is the norm, even in the best of conditions, among trained, professional law enforcement officers. In the recent Jewish daycare center shootings in Los Angeles, the shooter is reported to have fired 70 shots, and wounded 5 individuals. This is what should be expected from an untrained shooter.
I trained a battalion of Green Berets, the Texas Rangers, the California Highway Patrol, the Australian Federal Police, and numerous other elite military and law enforcement organizations, and when I told them of Michael Carneal’s achievement they were simply amazed. Nowhere in the annals of military or law enforcement or criminal history can any of us find an equivalent achievement, and this from a 14-year old boy with no previous experience in firing a handgun. Michael Carneal had never fired an actual pistol before, but he had fired thousands of bullets in the video game “murder simulators.” His superhuman accuracy, combined with the fact that he “stood still,” firing two-handed, not wavering far to the left or far to the right in his shooting “field,” and firing only one shot at each target, are all behaviors that are completely unnatural to either trained or “native” shooters, behaviors that could only have been learned in a video game. link
But this last statement is completely wrong. You cannot learn to shoot in video games in any sort of way that corresponds to real life. You will not learn proper stance nor will you even use a gun. The games are played with a mouse and a keyboard. There’s an argument to be made that violent video games play a role in all of this, but not in the sense of “training” people to shoot live rounds.
But one part of this rings very true. To Carneal, none of this seemed to really be happening. He told one psychiatrist that he felt like he was in a dream during the shooting. Carneal’s sister witnessed the affair and noticed a complete physical change had come over her brother:
She said later that she would not even have recognized her brother if she had not seen his clothes and his face. His posture was different and he seemed larger than his normal self when he was holding the gun.
Carneal stopped firing when he saw his friend on the floor, bleeding, and noticed bullet holes in the wall. This snapped him out of whatever trance he was in and he put the gun on the ground. When another student came over to him, Carneal asked that student to kill him.
Carneal had not been diagnosed before with a mental illness, but he later revealed the secret inner anguish he’d been hiding fairly well.
All of the reports, however, detailed similar odd behaviors, paranoia, and trouble interpreting social interactions correctly. Michael Carneal reported unreasonable fears. He thought people were looking at him though the air ducts in the bathroom, and worried that if he touched the floor in his bedroom, he could be harmed by assailants lurking under the floor. He often announced when entering his bedroom, “I know you are in here.” He often thought he heard voices calling his name or calling him stupid, but recognized that he might be imagining them. Before the shooting, he told one psychiatrist that he thought he heard people in the prayer group talking about him. He feared going to restaurants because he thought his family would be robbed. As he, his father, and a family friend walked across a quiet college campus the Friday before the shooting en route to a basketball tournament, he remarked, “Boy, you could really get mugged out here.” According to the experts’ reports, he never told his family about his fears because he knew them to be unreasonable.
Some of Michael Carneal’s fears translated into strange behaviors. He covered himself with at least six towels (other sources say this was out of fear of being seen naked by these unknown watchers) whenever he took a shower and covered the air vents with towels as well. He often slept in the family living room. Knives from the kitchen were discovered under his mattress after the shooting. He reportedly hopped on top of the furniture to avoid touching the floor in his bedroom. (p. 150)
As with Wurst, there’s plenty to suggest a psychotic disorder, such as emerging schizophrenia. However, the characteristics he showed are also consistent with a reaction to sexual abuse or extreme trauma. As with Wurst, we have no evidence that this is the case, but I think it’s safe to consider the actual shooting to have been carried out in a dissociative state of some kind. We should also note here that, as is often the case, police suspected others may have been involved in the planning of this incident. Wurst brought more weapons and earplugs than he needed and may have been expecting others to join in. And too, we are left with that nagging question: who taught Carneal how to shoot so well?
We also have Luke Woodham in October of 1997. While there were suggestions by media and authorities in the above two cases that there were others involved in the planning of these shootings, in Woodham’s case, the group was identified and five of them ended up facing minor charges for their role. Woodham showed up to school one day, wearing a trenchcoat, of course, and shot several students, killing two of them, including a former girlfriend. He remembered the school shooting but he didn’t remember much about the murder several hours previous in which he had stabbed and bludgeoned his own mother to death (eerily reminiscent of the Charles Whitman murder spree in 1966). He remembered standing at her door with baseball bat and knife, but said he closed his eyes and when he came to again, she was dead. link
Woodham and his accomplices were in a self-described Satanic cult called the “Kroth”. He claimed that the leader of the group, Grant Boyette, was very powerful and had introduced him to the power of Satan and had the ability to conjure demons. It was Boyette’s voice Woodham heard in his head, urging him on to murder.
At his mother’s murder trial on June 4, 1998, a tearful Woodham testified that he woke up on the morning of the incident haunted by demons. These demons, Woodham said, told him that he would be nothing unless he went to school and killed his targets. He also claimed that he tried to resist the demons but he kept hearing his friend Boyette’s voice in his head telling him “to do something.” Woodham, however, never specifically said that Boyette told him to kill and did not remember the actual slaying of his mother.
CNN reported from the trial:
Woodham, who broke down in tears on the stand, said he recalled getting a knife and a pillow and walking to his mother’s room. He said he could hear Boyette’s voice in his head throughout the process.
“I just closed my eyes and fought with myself because I didn’t want to do any of it,” he said. “When I opened my eyes, my mother was lying in her bed.”
Woodham said he and Boyette became good friends in January 1997, after Boyette cast a spell from a satanic book. Woodham said he believed the spell led to a teen-ager being run over by a car and killed.
“We started a satanic group and through the hate I had in my heart, I used it to try and get vengeance on people and do what he (Boyette) told me to do.”
After one round of pointed questions from Jones about his mother’s killing, a visibly shaken Woodham said he could not remember the actual killing. “I don’t know, sir. I don’t know and it’s eating me up every day.” link
Let’s assume for the moment that Woodham was not actually possessed by demons. Although Boyette was also only a teenager, he apparently had some natural skill at manipulating Woodham and in what seems to me to be a case of amateur mind control. Taken to an even further extreme, this is quite similar to what Charles Manson was able to do with his followers. And by the way, if you don’t believe that one person can gain significant control over others via these psychological techniques, then you should sign up for the “Free Charles Manson” committee. If you remember, Manson never killed anyone and was not even at the scene of any of the murders when they were carried out. I can’t find anything further about Boyette, but if he is back in the population, he likely has another group of followers around him.
At the very least, I wonder about our society which seems unable to see many of these children as mentally ill.
1997 – 1999 was a busy time period for school shootings, culminating in Columbine, but one of the more disturbing I’ve run across (also in the book, Deadly Lessons) is the case of two boys not even done with puberty who meticulously planned and carried out a deadly attack in a school near Jonesboro, Arkansas. On March 24, 1998, Mitchell Johnson, 13 and Andrew Golden, 11 (sic) pulled a fire alarm in their middle school and took shots sniper-style from nearly 100 yards away, killing four students and a teacher and seriously wounding ten others.
In some ways this case does not fit the parameters I listed above. For example, both boys seemed to have total recall of the events and though both have hints of some mental health issues, neither is reported phenomena such as voices in their head, irrational fears, etc. But still, there is a lot about this case that stands out. For one thing, Johnson is known to have suffered repeated sexual abuse by (evidently) his biological father. And while there is no “evidence of abuse” of Golden say the authors, two of his half-siblings had to be sent out of the house due to unspecified “mistreatment” by Golden’s father and grandparents. The details on this case again come from the Deadly Lessons book, but there is a strange reluctance by the authors to fully examine the sexual abuse of Johnson. In fact, if you only read the first part, you wouldn’t know about it at all. But even what is described of Johnson’s biological father is chilling.
Scott Johnson…had an explosive temper. According to media reports, by his own admission Scott Johnson was a screamer. While there is no evidence he was physically abusive toward Mitchell, he punched holes into walls and was verbally abusive, but after his tantrums rarely disciplined Mitchell in a way that would teach him what he had done wrong. Mitchell reacted quite strongly to his father’s temper; on several occasions, he was found trembling and physically ill in response, and it could take hours to calm him down. (p. 103)
What’s disturbing about that beyond the horror of Scott Johnson’s temper is that Mitchell was repeatedly sent up to spend time with his dad, despite the clear emotional abuse (at the very least). He was even threatened with being sent to live with him permanently.
Yet the mention of Mitchell’s sexual abuse is not made until the end of this chapter and in an offhanded way:
His troubled relationship with his father was a source of much anxiety for him, and the thought of possibly having to live with his father made him feel hopeless. He had suffered repeated sexual abuse, and while it is not uncommon for children to fear telling anyone about such abuse, Mitchell’s fears were aggravated by his worries about his father’s temper. (p. 115)
I guess that doesn’t count as “physically abusive” to the authors, but why was this left out of the initial description? And it’s not even completely clear about whether it was his father doing the sexual abuse, though the text strongly implies so. Mitchell had previously been caught sexually molesting a two-year-old girl. He had also been caught making hundreds of dollars of phone calls to 900 number phone-sex lines and he’d been kicked off the basketball team for self-mutilation, carving his own initials into his shoulder. All of these behaviors would be typical for a sexual abuse victim.
Golden is a bit more mysterious. While the authors of “Deadly Lessons” suggest he was never abused and perhaps even overindulged, his own half-siblings had to be sent to live with other relatives due to mistreatment of some kind.
The authors themselves describe both boys as having “Jekyll and Hyde” personalities. Both had dark sides not seen by many adults in the community. Golden was the worse of the two, in this regard:
He rode around with a sheathed hunting knife strapped to his leg and reportedly killed cats in his backyard, including one that he starved to death in a barrel. Golden’s grandfather also had a reputation among some in the community as being irascible and petulant, and some wondered whether Andrew learned his menacing behavior from him. Andrew’s behavior around the neighborhood contributed to his reputation as “mean-spirited.” (p. 107)
But what stood out for me about this killing spree, besides the obviously startling young ages of the shooters, is that the two boys seemed not to know each other well at all:
By most accounts, Mitchell and Andrew were not friends, just acquaintances who met on the long bus ride to school.3
The bus ride provided the boys with a fairly lengthy period of unsupervised time, with the bus driver as the only adult present. Many parents complained of rowdy and inappropriate antics by older children on the bus, to which younger children were exposed. While Mitchell and Andrew were not assigned to sit together on the bus, many believed that their plans were likely hatched there nonetheless. Neither boy visited the other’s house, they were in separate grades at school, and they had no common recess or activities together. In fact, adults at the school said they never would have paired the two together, their personalities were so different. But Mitchell and Andrew did call one another at least a few times, and friends said they saw each other outside school. (p. 108).
This young Jekyll and Hyde went to great trouble to procure weapons from Golden’s house and the house of his grandfather who had a veritable arsenal of rifles. Amazingly, Mitchell drove his parents’ van to the school, stopping, apparently, at three different gas stations to buy gas before an attendant would allow them to do so. None of the gas station attendants called the police on these obviously underaged drivers, however.
While both boys seem to have remembered the events, Johnson at least claimed that he had not intended to hit anyone.
I really thought that no one would actually be hurt. I thought we would just shoot over everyone’s head.
Bullet holes were, in fact, found very high up on the school building. This suggests that of the misses, at least some were intentional. And maybe they never did intend to hurt anyone. Or perhaps the third shooter was somehow responsible for hitting the targets or ordering them to do so. Oh, didn’t I mention that a third shooter was spotted with the boys? As in Columbine, another shooter was seen at the site.
The possibility of a third shooter was apparently investigated by the police and found to have no merit, but some of those who were in the line of fire still believe that a third shooter, situated on a hill near the elementary school nearby, was involved and eluded capture. Some community members also speculated that a third person, perhaps someone older, had helped the boys plan the event or had discussed it with them. This issue apparently was not part of the investigation. (p. 131…the footnotes, of course.)
Apparently not.In all of these cases of the late nineties, leaving aside the earlier Spencer case for the moment, other conspirators were rumored to be or actually found to be involved in the planning of the shootings. And even the Spencer case is suggestive in that it was her father who inexplicably bought her the rifle, though perhaps it was her own suicide he was attempting to manipulate her toward.
Sexual abuse. Satanic cults. “Mental illnesses” involving the belief that people’s minds are controlled by doctors in white coats. Allegations of control by police via mind altering drugs. Dissociative episodes. Young children described as “Jekyll and Hyde”. A “third gunman.” This is the substrate within which we need to be interpreting these events. I’m not suggesting all of these events are part of some grand conspiracy. I’m suggesting that investigators and reporters seem to do little more than poke around with a stick at the fringes of these cases. These young assassins are made, not born. And I think it is very likely that the same mechanisms which have been studied carefully by the CIA for deliberately creating “Manchurian candidates” of their own are at work here as well.
Trauma ===> Dissociation ===> Manipulation ===> Death.
deodan said,
May 2, 2007 at 8:49 am
“The games are played with a mouse and a keyboard.” Ever hear of a light game gun?
People, even children, can develop mental disorders and gain access to weapons. Ever hear of Occam’s Razor? Paranoid schizophrenia is a more sensible explanation than Satanic cults and secret CIA programs to instruct rural schoolchildren with firearms.
Your entire post is a series of spurious intimations and illucid suggestions.
The Shadefoot said,
May 2, 2007 at 11:09 am
The case of Michael Carneal and his outstanding shooting abilities reminded me of something I had read about Martin Bryant, the man that is in jail for (allegedly) carrying out the Port Arthur massacre in Australia.
Apparently Bryant had no shooting experience yet managed to kill, with one shot to the head, 19 people out of the first 20 he shot at, shooting from the hip……..
…an interesting twist is that the cafe he started the shooting in was full of members of the Australian security and intelligence establishments.
much respect DE!
Loren Coleman said,
May 2, 2007 at 11:35 am
You may wish to check out from your library or look into ordering online The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), which would give you a broader read on school shootings and a wide range of diverse situations that speaks to your concerns.
This is a complex issue that deserves a broad reading of several sources.
Respectfully,
Loren Coleman
ND said,
May 2, 2007 at 12:57 pm
You outline the evidence very clearly which is hard to do with so much information.
I agree with your conclusions.
Thank you for taking the time to shed light on what is being done to all of us by the CIA/Alphabet agencies with our tax dollars.
dreamsend said,
May 2, 2007 at 1:41 pm
deodan…if that wasn’t just a bit of driveby commenting:
A light gun? Yes, I’m very familiar with them. But none of the games ever mentioned with these kids utilize those. Arcade games often do but PC games such as Doom, etc don’t, though even if they did, I wonder how much “training” that would provide. You are firing at tiny targets a couple of feet away…and sitting, no less. Not standing, no recoil, etc.
Paranoid schizophrenia typically does not manifest until late adolescence. Also it is a thought disorder which affects executive function (i.e. planning) and also output as in speech and writing. Cho didn’t talk much, and was old enough to receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia (though he evidently never did). Many of the other cases were not old enough and showed no such signs of a thought disorder. Some even continued to make good grades. And would Johnson and Mitchell be a case of “joint schizophrenia”?
Finally, I wonder if you read the whole piece? My suggestion is that dissociative disorders are a more likely commonality as far as the mental “illness” component. Dissociative disorders are commonly misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. A hallmark of dissociative disorders, especially when fully formed alter personalities are present, is “voices in the head”. However, DID is NOT a thought disorder. Executive function is perfectly in tact though alters, if present, may take turns being “in charge.”
The manipulation in these cases seemed to come from independent sources not part of some grand plan, but there often was manipulation, showing that this is a very powerful combination. Woodham, of course, is a case in which direct evidence of this manipulation is present.
Everyone should reread the piece. I didn’t say these cases were CIA operations. I said they were an example of how trauma and abuse lead to dissociative like symptoms which can be manipulated. The CIA was very interested in learning how to do this on purpose, but I specifically did NOT say that’s what was going on here.
I’m not sure about the whole “copycat effect” thing. It’s a sort of logic issue. If B follows A rather consistently, do we assume B was CAUSED by A? No…there could be a third cause to both A and B. Many say video games or violent media…and there could be something to that, though I think this may determine the form of the reaction these kids have. Maybe before most would have stuck with self harmful behavior.
But what I am saying is that we live in more of a David Lynch world than a Frank Capra world. If you want to understand….really understand…these kids and these events, you have to look at the total picture. Investigators routinely stop short (notice no investigation into the third shooter in Jonesboro or the strange minimization of the sexual abuse in Mitchell Johnson’s case) of understanding the underlying pathology at play…it’s a pathology not just in the child but in the family and often in the community itself.
dude h said,
May 2, 2007 at 3:50 pm
dreams end, i appreciate the “digression” into the school shooting mine. as always, your posts are worth waiting for.
keep up the good work.
dude h said,
May 2, 2007 at 3:52 pm
one more thing: the artwork to accompany so much of the david lynch world…
http://www.howdypardner.com/
WoodyWoodman said,
May 2, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Ya gotta love those folks that display their ignorance so flagrantly while accusing you of the same. It’s kinda cute. I mean light game guns right, they’re pretty much exactly like firing real pistols. I heard the LAPD took out their entire firing range and then set up a couple of NES systems with modified Duck Hunt ™ cartriges. It’s too bad he didn’t sneak in an angry “wake up!” after invoking Occam, he could have had an internet cliche hat-trick.
I’ve had a smidge of firearms training, just enough to know that there is a world of difference between getting a tight grouping at the range and combat accuracy. A good portion of that world is the emotional and physiological state of the shooter. Raging adrenaline can make you pull the trigger instead of squeezing and with pistol fire that is the difference between a miss and a hit. To me that calm ‘robotic’ dissociative state may go a long way to explain how those untrained shooters can exhibit such accuracy.
wonderer in the wilderness said,
May 2, 2007 at 5:03 pm
There are some similarities, I find, between shooting a gun and shooting a camera–both require a very steady hand, while holding breath, really. It’s highly unlikely that an inexperienced shooter could manage that kind of accuracy, expecially considering the weight of the gun which makes the hand of the inexperienced wobble all over. They also usually have a blink reflex as they pull the trigger which puts the aim off.
Great analysis, DE.
dreamsend said,
May 2, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Thing about light guns….most games are about moving around in the game world…not just shooting. Most of the arcade games with light guns put the shooter in a static position so there is no need to move the character around. There are a few games which were released for console that were created for light guns..but the games you hear associated with these shooters are games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Unreal Tournament, etc. I didn’t really want to reveal the extent of my own knowledge of video games…but I’m taking one for the team here.
Currently, paintball and airsoft are popular and those involve actual guns which fire projectiles. I’ve heard no complaints about those hobbies, however.
dude h said,
May 2, 2007 at 6:21 pm
confession: ive been working my way through old school doom and doom 2 for a few weeks now. its lovely. the darkness. the reddened beserker sight. the howl of the imp peppered with shotgun pellets. the joy of blasting the demons of hell with perfect moral clarity.
no apologies here, dreams end!
cadeveo said,
May 2, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Deodan–Occam’s Razor simply says that in choosing between explanations, one should prefer the simplest one that accounts for all the data. And here’s the thing, often the folks who evoke OR most often and mechanically go for the first half of the razor–simplest explanation–without really remembering the second part of OC. It’s just “simpler” to put your blinders on and ignore all the the evidence that facile pseudo-rationalism of the James Randi kind is uncomfortable so you’re explanations can remain “simple.” Here’s the other thing, too–OR only prescribes (and by no real axiomatic authority) for a “preference” in explanations; it makes no claim about a simpler explanation being a more accurate or truthful one.
How you use OC depends on what data your reality tunnel allows for and what data it is incapable of perceiving as such.
Great piece, DE.
WoodyWoodman said,
May 2, 2007 at 9:22 pm
No worries about revealing any familiarity with FPS games DE, I don’t suspect you’d find yourself in the company of strangers. Hell I have to contantly replace my keyboard because I keep wearing out the w,a,s,d and Space.
I ‘d have to disagree with Wanderer, moving and shooting with pistols isn’t like plinking at static targets. Generally you are not going into a Weaver stance and taking careful aim down metal sights. It is a more intuitive process that normally comes with enormous practice, usually to pound out all the bad habits. I think that an untrained shooter free of such things as fear, rage, or reflexive blinking (a bit of an assumption I know) could get multiple shots on target at classroom ranges. Really, calm, focus and decent reflexes are all that is needed, it’s the calm and focus that are really hard to maintain in such circumstances. Also emergency response time, and the lack of helicopter medivac was probably a confounding factor in the VT incident. A person can get shot in the elbow and die from shock/trauma because they didn’t get timely assistance. I figure it’ll be unlikely that we’ll ever get those details.
Brett said,
May 3, 2007 at 2:47 am
I agree; this was a very thought-provoking essay, Dream’s End.
You wrote, “But what I am saying is that we live in more of a David Lynch world than a Frank Capra world.”
How true. Unfortunately, those who insist on trying to see “Bedford Falls” when it’s “Twin Peaks” they’re watching, may never understand the true weight of your well-made points.
The “owls” are definitely not what they seem.
They never were.
ND said,
May 3, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Long interesting thread, one of the posters is in the VA Tech area and mentioned that the Homeland Security Nuclear Test (NOBEL RESOLVE) was to be run at VAT.
Children on lock down – Shooter at VA Tech
Well….
I see right now I’m gonna have to go take some pictures for you guys, because the info they are releasing is very misleading.
First off, the VA Tech Campus and Blacksburg is NOT a very big place. The maps are making it look huge, but it’s not. This is backwater village usa…got it?
The post offices in the area are OLD, except for the new Christiansburg office. I imagine the reason the package was sent at 9:01 was becuase the Post OFfice window did not open until 9am.
Parking at VA Tech sucks. So thinking he drove to the post office and then drove back to campus and found parking is crazy. It would have been faster to walk.
Next thing…those big wooden doors they keep showing ARE NOT USED!!!! I walked around VA Tech trying to get into the library…I tried at least 4 of those wood doors…they are ALL locked from the inside…and they may have already been chained to keep people from using them…but that would be against fire code regulations and we wouldn’t want that to get out, now would we? Considering that VT had been in the newspapers many times in the past 7 years for building code violations. VT has spent billions the past years to build a smart road…they have enlarged their football stadium to 10 times it’s original size, built a new hotel and conference center but cannot find the funds to get their classrooms up to code.
The above is fact SOD…remember, I live here and you don’t. But if you care to do a search in the Roanoke times you will find the news articles on the disrepair of the classroom buildings.
All of the buildings at VT have the fake wooden doors but the actuall entrance to the buidlings are modern GLASS doors. Easily broken.
Still, no one in the area is talking about the fact that Montgomery County Schools were in lock down by 9am. Look when I started this thread. It was less than 40 minutes after the shooting stopped.
There were already Federal troops at the campus because of bomb threats the week before, so why the delay?
I only know of one shooting range around here. IT’s in the basement of the local Diary Queen, 5 lights down the street.
Oh and another thing…how come no one has noticed that VT was part of Nobel Resolve???? The real name for VT is VA Polytechnic Institute and State University…it is NOT VA Tech University….only 2 schools in the state were listed as being part of the Nobel Resolve operation…UVA and VT. The biggest in-state rivals.
And the zip code thing is really odd. It is NOT a Blacksburg zip code. Christiansburg is 24073 which is the closest I can find to the zip used on Cho’s package…
AND…Cho’s name was not in the VA Tech database an hour after the shootings. I checked. Anyone who is paying VT funds or getting a pay check from VT is in that database. I know some of the guys who run the database for Tech…they didn’t remove Cho’s info that fast, they were too busy eating and pirating software.
Another thing that I find suspect…remember the girl with the shaved head that survived the shootings in one of the classrooms? She was interviewed not 2 hours later…she was just wandering around campus like nothing had happened. She wasn’t even very upset. But there was a guy on one of the news channels the next morning…he was interviewed really early like around 7am…he was in one of the rooms also, but he had been spirited away to his home in Portsmouth…and if you watch this boy, he is furious about something. Probably because he was told what he could say…I wish I remembered his name or what channel I was watching at the time…..
The point here is that a convenient cover story is not plausible and only by carefully not thinking and passively accepting does the cover story have any wings. Holes can be shot in the alternative story easily enough, but those holes sink the offical story as well. It makes any aspect of reality about the cover story drop away. So faced with an obvious lie, intelligent souls turn to history and notice the patter of Mind Control work done since the 1940’s-some even sited at V-Tech one of only 3 public/military schools in the nation.
And interestingly, enough, April 27-29, 2007 — In a follow-up to our April 25 story about how the federal government is able to track those who are prescribed anti-depressant controlled drugs, we have learned that the capability to track such drug users is far more widespread than first reported. ABC News first admitted that senior federal sources revealed that federal records were checked to find out about Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung Hui’s history of anti-depressant use — the search having turned up negative results. ABC News then reversed itself and said there was no such tracking system.
A number of school shooters were later discovered to be on legally-prescribed psychotropic drugs. Columbine High School shooter Eric Harris was on Luvox; Springfield, Oregon high school shooter Kip Kinkle was on Prozac; and Conyers, Georgia shooter T. J. Solomon was on Ritalin.
Cho would have been tracked in his anti-depressant drug use if his prescriptions were legal.
MORE http://www.waynemad senreport. com/ ….
http://www.freedomcrowsnest.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57260&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=1065
….
A glaring clue–Tom Ridge is involved in the coverup, so we know that it was an op.
dude h said,
May 3, 2007 at 5:48 pm
so wierd, fcn is one of my haunts from a long time ago, interesting to see it here.
Thirtyseven said,
May 3, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Deodan’s point is absurd, there are no light guns that respond anything like an actual gun, and of course, the core point here is that the video game controller could be a genuine, weighted glock 9mm with a USB port — that’s still not teaching you the stances or how to contain recoil or how to aim an actual firearm.
BackInTheDreamtime said,
May 3, 2007 at 10:40 pm
My last comment didn`t show up…which might be a good thing, as I think I said something pretty stupid!
Anyway, check out this web site–the author has some allegations I haven`t seen anywhere else, like Cho hiring a prostitute shortly before the shootings & possible connections to Operation Midnight Climax / MKUltra.
http://theconspiratorsnest.blogspot.com/search/label/mind%20control
galactivision said,
May 4, 2007 at 3:41 am
Not much too add other than thanks for this post.
And speaking of taking one for the (quake) team: I must admit myself that my youthful years of clan-warfare and rocket-jumping excellence proved of no use in my _actual_ rocket jumping prowess (although my real-life hand-to-hand capture-the-flag abilities did see a bit of an upswing).
galactivision said,
May 4, 2007 at 6:36 am
Actually, I shouldn’t be so flippant…. I actually had to consciously stop playing video games (it was a release from hardcore gradschool computer science studies) due to the brain-suckage and addiction-factor.
One of my good friends here in SF used to be a game tester for EA, working 60+ hour weeks at one point, putting out a real bloody and stupid game where you kill homeless people at some point. My friend ‘woke up’ to the mind-control and desensitization when he walked around a corner, saw a homeless guy, and had an instinctive thought to reach for something to bash him. He quit soon after and now is a real warrior for truth.
And actually I still play Galaga if I come across it… skills are a bit rusty, but some muscle motion you never forget, and I can get a good 20+ mins off a quarter…
dreamsend said,
May 4, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Galaga! Second best game ever. Number one is an old Playstation game called Jet Moto. There are games that are pretty creative out there, but mostly it’s just blind violence. Remember the original Myst? There was a nonviolent and fascinating game.
I think Ali is spam…don’t have time to get to editing it.
Cho... where is the meaning? « Going gentle into that fair night? said,
May 5, 2007 at 8:05 am
[...] illness and rich-hatred to me are just convenient scapegoats. After all, there are many mentally ill people, read: the rest of them, who don’t go around gunning people down), and that we can do nothing [...]
daniel said,
May 5, 2007 at 12:06 pm
First of all the best game ever is Starcraft and the next best is is the original Zelda. Now…
The Johnson/Golden bit set off a couple bells for me. The most spurious thing I noticed was a South Park connection. I have begun to suspect Parker and Stone of some level of schillhood given their contribution to “Bowling for Columbine” and their disingenuous 9/11 truth episode. There is an episode with a character “Trent Boyette” who the boys convince to start a fire, thinking they can extinguish it with their “firemen” (no prizes for guessing what their “firemen” are). When they can’t, a teacher is burned so badly she must occupy a Captain Pike from Star Trek chair and the kids all get Trent sent to juvie. Anyway…
The more lucid connection was the seeming child on child mind control which immediately makes me think of columbine. there are two ways to contextualize the conflict of interest of lead agent Dwayne(Duane?) Fusilier in a mind control setting (for those who don’t know, one or both of his sons were in the trench coat mafia and one of them shot the infamous video in which the students strutted through the high school in trench coats with guns, and was the lead investigator on the case… he had no comment on said conflict). Either he controlled his son(s) or he and his son(s) controlled Kleibold/Harris. I would lean towards the latter because of a link Dave McGowan drew between their last name (Fusilier) and the last name of a mind-control experienced lawyer who wrote the preface for a book detailing systematic mind control methods. Also I saw some evidence that some kids in the trench coat mafia were not investigated and may have had violent radical family connections.
A comment on the video game/shooting link. In terms of proficiency there is none. You could argue that gun based games teach proper leading for moving targets but most of these games have unrealistically slow bullets (also firing a empty gun into the ground in real life does not refill it). The only particularly realistic games are mouse or controller based because of the necessity of free character movement made near impossible with a light gun. That shooting expert spends a lot of time proving he’s an expert at shooting but takes about 2 sentences to prove he is equally ignorant of video games. The only useful skills that could be learned are those NOT displayed by the super accurate school shooter because, like real training it is aimed primarily at not getting shot yourself, i.e. utilizing cover, knowing what you can easily shoot through, constant movement when in the open etc. The thought occurs that were there an insurgency in America the tactics used by Counterstrike players would be exactly the tactics the government wouldn’t want gun-owning property defenders to know…
dreamsend said,
May 5, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Excellent comments, daniel…and yes on Starcraft. Never been a big Zelda fan though.
As far as Columbine…McGowan and others have shown that one for what it is. At the very least, you have to wonder about how long the police let the shooters go on before finally going in, even by the official timeline. I think I read somewhere that Columbine changed the way police deal with school shootings. They supposedly don’t just sit outside and wait till the shooters get tired of shooting anymore…I think that’s a good change. (Duh…)
In an uncomfortable coincidence that seems to be just that, my stepdaughter went to a “teen night” at a local club on Sunday, before this was posted but after most of it was written. I didn’t know much about her plans or this club but while waiting for a ride to go home, someone came to the club and just outside near where she was started shooting up the place. Four people shot. This was more likely gang related as she reported seeing people throwing gang signs and getting thrown out of the club before it started. So it’s not one of “those” shootings but not the sort of thing I expected her to be around. The club is closing…not that we’d let her go there again.
Adam said,
May 5, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Mcgowan, yeah…
Did any of you read his book, “Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Assassination” (or Serial Killing, whatever it was)?
I read it when it came out, but I should get another copy and re-read, cause it’s so relevant to V. Tech and this conversation.
Fascinating stuff.
The military/fascists are indeed in the business of creating or molding serial killers.
Thanks for your work, btw, DE.
Apparant said,
May 6, 2007 at 4:21 am
Alright. I’m a bit out of my league over here. And perhaps I should read through all this one more time before speaking.
If each of you spent two afternoons a week, along with a couple of other adults, (plus the amount of time you spend blogging and commenting) consistently volunteering or teaching a small group of children the “joys and how to” of something truly valuable where do you think these youngsters would be in five years.
What can you do with your remaining time to make this world a better place? And I don’t mean deleting/destruction or decay. Oh, wait, decay is good unless it’s the mind of a child.
BackInTheDreamtime said,
May 6, 2007 at 8:32 am
Glad your stepdaughter is OK, DE.
I can`t believe how many shootings and other violent events (fires, bomb threats) have been in the news lately. It seems like they`ve increased quite a bit in the last few weeks, but maybe I`m just noticing them more.
daniel said,
May 6, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Wow Apparent! We stand corrected, apparently we should follow your shining example and criticize those who engage in political discussions and THEREBY make the world a better place. I Kettle, you Pot.
veal said,
May 7, 2007 at 4:30 pm
What’s happening here as far as research and dot-connecting is MUCH more important than the miniscule good I could do “volunteering” (not to mention that my idea of “truly valuable” no doubt differs from those who might allow me to teach their children anything). That’s just my opinion, I know, but I’m entitled to it. I think what’s happening here and in a couple other places online (RI is one) is GOOD for the world, not bad, and I don’t see it as a waste of time at all.
Thanks for your good work, dreamsend & all of you.
11:11 said,
May 8, 2007 at 2:46 am
Damn it, lost my post *sigh*
Back in the Dreamtime’s link talks about a Moon connection to Cho’s sister. Very significant, imho.
daniel, I, too, think there’s some hidden hand in SP. Interesting about the Boyette name.
This lead investigator with the Trench Coat videographer son – he was the lead cop on the Columbine case? SHIT. I don’t care for MM, so I never saw Bowling for Columbine. I don’t suppose this was mentioned.
DE, as always, you’re so good at what you do. Very good piece.
galactivision said,
May 8, 2007 at 6:07 am
One great postscript: I had a great day in the sun yesterday at the Howweird Street Fair (http://flickr.com/search/?q=howweird+ – peep us San Fran freeks getting freeky), great music, friends, freeks, freedom; and I was sitting with my friend when a friend of hers came over to join us. His name of all names? Galaga…
First time I’ve ever met a Galaga, even in my Rainbow Gathering travels…
Ya, myst was great- although I must admit I only ever played 7th Guest…
Brett said,
May 8, 2007 at 6:42 am
“Apparant” wrote:
“Oh, wait, decay is good unless it’s the mind of a child.”
Well, that’s just “it,” isn’t it, Apparant? What we’re talking about here IS DIRECTLY ABOUT the destruction of “the mind of a child” and that mind’s subsequent “decay.” Did you know that THOUSANDS of children had their minds shattered in the course of the United States Government’s vile MK-ULTRA program?
Do you even know what MK-ULTRA was? Do you care?
You asked, “What can you do with your remaining time to make this world a better place?”
That’s a great question.
Here’s ONE great answer (there are others): I can help expose the EVIL that has been done to countless children—many of which live today in daily horror, not knowing WHAT ruined their lives, because the U.S. Government hasn’t had THE DECENCY to declassify whatever documents may still remain, after intentionally shredding the others, relating to its programming and experimentation ON—among countless others—CHILDREN.
That’s ONE thing I can do. What can YOU do?
What WILL you do?
11:11 said,
May 8, 2007 at 7:24 am
To add to what Brett said: Nothing too incriminatijng, or too revealing will be declassified, because this is still going on, and we know it.
Brett said,
May 8, 2007 at 6:04 pm
I think you’re exactly right, 11:11. It would be *very* surprising to me if MK-ULTRA ever really ended; that it has continued on in some form—or in many forms—seems almost unavoidable, especially as one considers credible survivor testimony.
In an age where “rolling things out” to the so-calld “private sector” is fashionable and encouraged, the idea that MK-ULTRA has not only survived and continued on but even multiplied also under MANY different names and through many different “private contractors” while “the government” claims “it doesn’t do that anymore” would be a natural and expected course for those who wish to create “plausible deniability.”
I, however, do not find their denial at all plausible.
11:11 said,
May 8, 2007 at 10:52 pm
The other component with mind control, is RA/SRA and the connection with who is selected for these programs. This is a family issue, as much as an institutional one. It’s also an ancient one. Until that part is acknowledged, there is no getting to the bottom of this.
Top Posts « WordPress.com said,
May 11, 2007 at 12:01 am
[...] The Making of Child Assassins In order perhaps to understand Cho better, I began looking into other school shootings. And while there are books which […] [...]
dude h said,
May 13, 2007 at 12:21 am
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Commentary/Collins_Interview.htm
37 just put this up, and i think it might be of interest to you dreams end, especially as relates to the heavens gate ufo cult:
“Paul: The excellent investigative researcher Daniel Hopsicker has revealed that the 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult that committed suicide were staying at the mansion of Sam Koutchesfahani. Koutchesfahani was a retainer for the Shah of Iran, an arms dealer and an informant for the San Diego FBI at the time of the cult suicide. We also know that the FBI was running an Operation Heaven’s Gate in the San Diego area. To say this is all coincidence is to strain credulity. That whole cult suicide had many of the trademarks of a government mind control operation.”
korella said,
May 13, 2007 at 5:57 am
Dream’s end, you are absolutely right. Dissociation is a powerful tool in changing the psyche. And this is why it is used as part of all those mind control programs.
Here are some more info to this end: Martha Stout’s “The Myth of Sanity” talks about the perils of dissociation in everyday life; “Programmed to Kill” by David McGowan does an in-depth study of the same red flags you point out; and there is also a chilling article on hypnosis, MPD and ritual abuse: THE GREENBAUM SPEECH of D.C.HAMMOND
BackInTheDreamtime said,
May 13, 2007 at 7:04 am
Dude h, great link, and how perfect that it was comment 37.
Just seeing if this will post–my earlier comment didn`t show up, but I think it`s because I made a typo in my email address.
11:11 said,
May 14, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Teachers Stage Fake Gun Attack on Kids
AP
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (May 14) – Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.
The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.
“We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation,” he said.
But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.
“The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them,” said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.
Some parents said they were upset by the staff’s poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.
During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door.
After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.
“I was like, ‘Oh My God,’ ” she said. “At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out.”
Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation “involved poor judgment.”
http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/teachers-stage-fake-gun-attack-on-kids/20070513232409990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
They’ve done this TWICE. This is what you get from dumbed down teachers who are also control freaks. If someone did this to my kid I would be out for blood.
Erwin said,
May 14, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Another source that explains how Monarch-type trauma-based mind control can be achieved:
http://educate-yourself.org/mc/deeperinsightsbook.shtml
It’s written by Fritz Springmeier – and he must have hit a nerve somewhere otherwise he had not been framed and sentenced for 11 years in prison.
As I have not found a post/comment in which this author was mentioned on this blog, maybe you will find his work helpful.
Keep up the discussion,
PEACE!
dreamsend said,
May 14, 2007 at 10:48 pm
How do you know he was framed? His own wife said he had a bunch of false identification papers and like most “rescuers” he ended up screwing his rescuee. Testimony from his wife and people who worked with him here:
http://www.eaec.org/expose/FritzSpringmeier1.htm
Just because there is an MKULTRA doesn’t mean anyone who says they know about it are legit. And his stuff on Oz is just silly. Survivors have said they found things of value in his writing…so maybe Cisco is a survivor but Fritz is manipulating? In any event, his Illuminati stuff is crap…most Illuminati stuff is crap. Sorry to bag on Springmeier but that’s when I found out when I read about him.
C Dub said,
May 15, 2007 at 6:24 am
Weird thing happened today that made me think of this blog post…
I picked a bad day to go to the post office, because today is the first day of the postage increase & there was a LONG line of people there to get their 2 cent stamps… In front of me in line was a 40-ish mother with a daughter about 8-10 years old (wearing a school uniform). The mother was having a weird cell phone conversation that I was trying hard to ignore, but afterwards wished I had paid more attention. The daughter was quiet but a bit hyperactive, until they got near the front of the line and the mother got off the phone. The daughter kept repeating a few curious phrases:
“Mommy, did you know humans are aliens and aliens are humans?”
“Mommy, I’m afraid of myself.”
She repeated those at least half a dozen times, which really creeped me out; but I was also creeped out that the mother just ignored this behavior.
Erwin said,
May 15, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Dreamsend, thank you for the link. That info puts the Springmeier character under a new light for me.
——
“You cannot learn to shoot in video games in any sort of way that corresponds to real life. You will not learn proper stance nor will you even use a gun. The games are played with a mouse and a keyboard. There’s an argument to be made that violent video games play a role in all of this, but not in the sense of “training” people to shoot live rounds.”
I agree with your statement and support it with this event:
In 2002 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser killed several teachers, two students and one policeman in Erfurt, Germany. He had played different violent pc games and listened to Heavy Metal, but also learned how to shoot at a local shooting club. However, he fired mostly three or more times at one person. Sometimes he missed. A teacher confronted him, locked him up in a class room, and eventually Steinhauser committed suicide.
Unfortunately, not much has been publisized about his childhood. The relationship to his parents is described as “cold”. He was an inconspicuous teenager. Medical records are not known. Reportedly, the motive was revenge for his expulsion from school (because of faking a medical certificate about a month before the shooting) and achieving popularity (maybe a reaction to his parents pressuring him to be a successful student).
In contrast to the VA Tech incident, the Erfurt tragedy is more credible in the way it was made public by the media.
Nevertheless, there is something strange about this story, too. All murders happened with Steinhauser wearing black clothes, plus a ski-mask, which he removed just before the teacher confonted him. He had brought 500 rounds of ammunition for his glock, but used about 50. Police suspected a second shooter, but found no evidence.
Brett said,
May 15, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Does anyone know if “Texe Marrs” has ANY relationship whatsoever to “Jim Marrs”? (Texe Marrs was mentioned in the Springmeier article, and prompted this question.)
foo said,
May 16, 2007 at 5:26 am
Does anyone know if “Texe Marrs” has ANY relationship whatsoever to “Jim Marrs”?
No. Texe Marrs is a fundamentalist kook. As with Springmeier, remember that just because someone rails against an evil establishment doesn’t mean that they know what they’re talking about or should be listened to.
Some, such as some of the fundamentalists, have agendas of their own that are in some ways as nasty as those of the establishment. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is written all over the road to hell.
Brett said,
May 16, 2007 at 5:52 am
Hi, Foo. I know Texe Marrs is a fundamentalist; unfortunately I have some relations that fall (very loudly) into that category also.
So, I am aware that these two men do not think at all alike, but are they related?
I’m assuming from your answer that you KNOW for a FACT that they are NOT.
Is that right? (Sorry about pressing this, but I want to be sure I understand.)
BackInTheDreamtime said,
May 16, 2007 at 7:29 am
C Dub, you`re scaring me! And sorry about your post office trip…had a similar experience here. (Side note, I composed a reply to your comment re therapists on another thread but lost it, and didn`t want to go through the thought processes again.)
Re Andrew Wurst and his comments about the nature of reality–I was thinking about how Lee Boyd Malvo (of the DC sniper duo), for instance, was heavily influenced by “The Matrix“; I did a search and found this mildly interesting article from 2003, “The Matrix Defense`,` at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/11/09/the_matrix_defense/. One part I found intriguing was the story of Tonda Lynn Ansley who said her landlady “had been controlling her mind and making her have `dreams that I\’ve found out aren\’t really dreams.“`
Oh, another bit of trivia involving the DC sniper duo–I remember reading some years back about a bar in Bellingham, Washington where, coincidentally, Ted Bundy, the Hillside Strangler and John Muhammad and other killers all were served (at different times, of course). The story I read had more detail, but there`s an online version at http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_TRAVEL
Also, in a non-conspiratorial vein, I`ve been wondering whether the fact that Seung-Hui Cho and Emily Hilscher`s boyfriend practiced at the same shooting range might be significant–could he have developed an infatuation with her there? So I did a search to see if anyone had pursued the angle, and found some support for this theory. In this story, of note to me was this tantalizing tidbit: “[F]ederal agents [searching the shooting range] said they were specifically looking for .50 caliber casings. That size of shell takes a large rifle to fire, a type of weapon that has not figured publicly in the investigation of the slayings.“ http://www.wsls.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSLS%2FMGArticle%2FSLS_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173350891084&path=!news!localnews
dreamsend said,
May 16, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Marre and Marrs aren’t even the same name…I’m not sure why you are so stuck on that. Jim Marrs, however, also took a sharp turn to the right. It’s a professional hazard, I guess.
Brett said,
May 17, 2007 at 3:37 am
Dreamsend wrote:
“Marre and Marrs aren’t even the same name…I’m not sure why you are so stuck on that. Jim Marrs, however, also took a sharp turn to the right. It’s a professional hazard, I guess.”
I’m “stuck on that,” Dream’s End, because in the link YOU provided (http://www.eaec.org/expose/FritzSpringmeier1.htm) concerning “Fritz Springmeier,” there is a man mentioned there several times whose name is spelled “Texe Marrs”—that is the EXACT same last name as “Jim Marrs,” spelling and all.
It is NOT “Marre.” I’m sorry, but you are incorrect about that. Please read it again, for yourself.
The last names ARE the same.
Hence, my question.
If I understood Foo correctly, he has answered it; I just wanted to be sure my understanding of his answer was not in error.
Banta said,
May 17, 2007 at 6:12 am
It is “Texe Marrs.” From his website:
“Well-known author of three #1 national Christian bestsellers, including the landmark bestselling book, Dark Secrets of the New Age, Texe Marrs has also written over 40 other books for such major publishers as Simon & Schuster, John Wiley, Prentice Hall/Arco, Stein & Day, and Dow Jones-Irwin. His books have sold over two million copies and have been published in many foreign languages, including Turkey, Greece, Romania, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. His books have been featured as main selections of the Christian Book Club, the Conservative Book Club, and the Computer and Electronics Book Clubs.
Texe Marrs was assistant professor of aerospace studies, teaching American Defense Policy, strategic weapons systems, and related subjects at the University of Texas at Austin from 1977 to 1982. He has also taught international affairs, political science, and psychology for two other universities. A graduate Summa Cum Laude from Park University, Kansas City, Missouri, he earned his Master�s degree at North Carolina State University.
As a career USAF officer (now retired), he commanded communications-electronics and engineering units. He holds a number of military decorations, including the Vietnam Service Medal and the Presidential Unit Citation., and served in Germany, Italy, and throughout Asia. He was chosen Airman of the Year while serving in Korat Air Base, Thailand….”
http://www.texemarrs.com/atm.htm
dreamsend said,
May 17, 2007 at 12:41 pm
My mistake. And the Airforce background is not surprising either.
AboriginalSin said,
May 19, 2007 at 6:07 am
I`ve changed my screen name from BackInTheDreamtime–when I first posted, I didn`t give it a second`s thought, and just put down the first thing that came into my mind. I felt kinda silly after I realized it bears some similarity to “dreamsend,“ which is obviously why it came into my mind to begin with (talk about your Freudian slip!)
Anyway, I tried to say this earlier, but since it didn`t post…I wanted to say “thanks“ to those who have defended Dream`s End–I wouldn`t be spending my time here if I didn`t believe it was important. I also want to make it clear that I feel great empathy for the victims at Virginia Tech and their families. My hope is that somewhere, someone reading this blog who has the power to do so will act to prevent a similar tragedy from unfolding in the future.
From time to time, I`ve had an uncomfortable suspicion that I may have been a victim of “MK-Ultra“ type programming as a child. All I remember is “normal“ abuse, but that was enough to mess my mind up for a many years. Having been through that, I have a keen interest in stopping experimentation on and abuse of children.
I`d actually stopped my investigations, since it was just too much to think about. Then, I read a book by Budd Hopkins wherein he describes supposed human/alien interbreeding. I got extremely creeped out by the description of hybrid babies, because since at least the late 70`s I`ve had dreams about strange babies that were oddly sized, sickly or unresponsive, often with Asian-looking eyes. (I always assumed the dreams reflected my fears of being a bad parent.) I actually was considering asking Mr. Hopkins to hypnotize me & thought I`d search on the internet for info about the man, when I stumbled across this blog. After reading more, I think I`ll just remain un-hypnotized, thank you!
My new screen name is the title of a Leonard Peltier poem. At wisdomkeepers.com, where the poem can be found, Mr. Peltier also notes, “Yes, we can each be an army of one. One good man or one good woman can change the world, can push back the evil, and their work can be a beacon for millions, for billions….We must each of us be that person.“
Looking forward to the next SRI post!
AboriginalSin said,
May 19, 2007 at 7:31 am
Jim Marrs has stated that Texe Marrs is “no known relation“ to him.
dreamsend said,
May 19, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Great new nick. I hope to post a post about why I’m not posting much post haste…or something like that. When the school year is done in about a week or so, I’ll have a lot more time. And I appreciate your thanking those who “defend” me, but I also continue to be amazed at the quality of discourse here. Even those who don’t agree with me are usually civil and well spoken. Since I often don’t agree with myself, I can sympathize….
OccultedIgnoramus said,
May 23, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Hey everyone, do you remember Andrew Cunanan, the spree murderer of (among others) Gianni Versace? A few of the details of his life sound a little MK Ultra to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cunanan
AboriginalSin said,
June 2, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Good observation, Occulted. I had never heard of MK-Ultra when Cunanan murdered Versace, but that story did seem strange to me at the time. I`d forgotten about him.
In case anyone missed this the first time around, here`s something to ponder from 2002: \”Mystery particle found in schizophrenics\” at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2212766.stm (they say it “might be a new form of life“), and the apparently unrelated “Insanity virus: a crazy idea?“ at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=chronicle/archive/2002/08/05/MN12264.DTL
I tried to follow up on the “mystery particle“ story about a year ago but found nothing. (There`s plenty of info, though, on E. Fuller Torrey, the subject of the second article, such as in this piece at http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Schizovirus.html. One line states “Trapped in a world of private delusions, a schizophrenic might cling, for example, to the belief that he is Jesus Christ, or that the government has implanted a monitoring device in his mouth during a routine dental procedure.“)
dude h said,
June 5, 2007 at 1:09 pm
ok, its been long enough, dont you think? *wheres the next post yo!?!*
Brett said,
June 6, 2007 at 10:16 pm
I would be interested to hear what aspects of Andrew Cunanan’s life sound particularly “MK-ULTRA” to OccultedIgnoramus. (I’m asking this question not because I want to argue about it, by the way; only because I want to hear OI’s opinion.)
OccultedIgnoramus said,
June 7, 2007 at 2:03 am
It’s all just speculative, spotty imagining on my part, but according to Wikipedia:
He was extremely bright–fluent in seven languages.
Attended a highly regarded prep school in the heavily military-industrial-complicated San Diego area.
He had “extreme” sexual proclivities and there was alleged prostitution with older male clients.
All of this could be coincidental or irrelevant, but something about it just seemed to groove with the MK Ultra victim profiles I have read on Dreamsend.
Brett said,
June 7, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Thank you, OccultedIgnoramus. I was interested to hear your thought process on this, and I agree with it.
Whether he was really an MK-ULTRA survivor or not, he certainly does fit a certain profile, quite suggestive of it. (Regarding his “sexual proclivities,” as you put it, I think that is an area that has not yet been fully-enough explored as regards either the particular appetites of some of the Controllers themselves or the profile of SOME survivors.)
OccultedIgnoramus said,
June 8, 2007 at 4:40 am
There was also something about the spree he went on. It was a sudden outburst that I imagine as to be a result of a triggering incident or program gone wrong (or gone as intended?) Run-of-the-mill radical self-destructive types, it would seem to me, destroy themselves a lot sooner in life than Cunanan did.
He did not get caught napping “like a duck in a noose,” but the authorities closing in on that houseboat and finding him after he committed suicide also just feels like it clicks with the profile of a programmed spree-kill then omega-yourself. I can’t wait for Dreamsend to dismiss this postulation and/or finish up the school year and get back to posting!
AboriginalSin said,
June 8, 2007 at 6:23 pm
“My National Security Letter Gag Order“
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882.html
Hemisphere Creep said,
June 10, 2007 at 11:46 pm
One only need look at the stellar work of Nick Begich, MD, Mr. Kucinich in the House of Representatives (see HR 2977) and especially John J. McMurtrey, M.S., and his 2003 paper, Inner Voice, Target Tracking, and Behavioral Influence Technologies, to really understand the extent of the potentially bottomless pit of a Pandora’s Box that has been opened by those Aldous Huxley once called the Power Elite.
As a side note, John J. McMurtrey’s aforementioned paper contains eleven excellent and eye-opening pages of footnotes, with a great many US Patent Office numbers issued for related inventions, dating back to the early 1960’s. The complete document should still be available via Wikipedia, keyword search: Microwave Auditory Effect or Microwave Hearing.
All of the patents referenced in that document are readily available and easily accessible via the US Patent Office website; complete with abstracts, claims and detailed descriptions.
Of special interest is Apparatus and Method for Remotely Monitoring and Altering Brain Waves, (United States Patent 3951134), which was issued in 1974, coincidently, approximately the same year A Course In Miracles was published (1975). To the best of my knowledge, The United States Patent Office does not give patent numbers to inventions that do not work.
Similarly, Nick Begich, MD has done extensive research into the area of what the US military calls the Microwave Auditory Effect:
This area of research is one of the most important because it points to the ultimate weapon of political control: the ability to place information directly into the human brain, bypassing all normal filtering mechanisms.
In 1995, the US Department of Defense put forward the contract, “Communicating via the Microwave Auditory Effect; Awarding Agency: Department of Defense; SBIR Contract Number: F41624-95-C-9007″. The description of this technology, which would be used for direct communications with military personnel, is written as follows:
“Title: Communicating via the Microwave Auditory Effect. “Description: An innovative and revolutionary technology is described that offers a means of low-probability-of-intercept Radio Frequency (RF) communications. The feasibility of the concept has been established using both a low intensity laboratory system and a high power RF transmitter. Numerous military applications exist in areas of search and rescue, security and special operations.”(Mind Control: The Ultimate Brave New World, Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 13, Number 2, February – March 2006)
There is absolutely no doubt that these and other similar types of technologies and programs have been privatized and are being used extensively in theatre today in the Middle East to combat the so-called ‘War on Terror.’ These technologies may also be exasperating the ‘civil wars’ currently raging in Iraq, the Occupied Territories in Palestine and now, (once again) in Lebanon.
Hemisphere Creep said,
June 10, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Btw–at the risk of being called a troll or a ‘Creep’ (hehe)– the words ‘US Patent’ do not appear anywhere on this blog, per wordpress search function.
Why is that, Mr. End?
Hemisphere Creep said,
June 12, 2007 at 10:52 pm
The lights are on…but there’s nobody home…
?
dreamsend said,
June 13, 2007 at 5:39 am
Umm…I guess the words don’t appear in a search because I never used them. Great comment you had, but that was a really weird question.
Sorry to have been absent. Back soon I hope. Nothing evil or nefarious going on…just life.
Hemisphere Creep said,
June 13, 2007 at 11:11 am
Weird question ? Your doing…umm…SRI and Mind Control research and blog presentations based on aforementioned here, yet you have never mentioned the technological side. Mr. Begich,, Mr. Kucinich, Mr. McMurtrey, Mr. Gysin–the Board….Insect People…Extensively archived US patents, etc…a matter of public record…as they say. Mr. Wells at RI and Mr. End at DE. No. Mr. Emory? Silenced? Mr. Huxley?
Creeps us out down here in the lower Hemispheres.
Top Secret – Classified – For The Board – The Elite – The Initiates –
Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies, Cowards who can not face your “dogs” your “gooks” your “errand boys” your “human animals” with the truth, Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere.You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn?
What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you; “the word.” Alien Word “the.” “The” word of Alien Enemy imprisons “thee” in Time, In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open, I Barak Obama rub out the word forever. If you I cancel all your words forever.
WoodyWoodman said,
June 14, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I think DE meant that the question of why the “US Patent” didn’t show up on a search was weird, not the posting about the microwave auditory effect. I suspect that DE does not focus on the tech side because it is not a strength. I don’t know what his formal and informal education is but I suspect it is not engineering or physics.
I don’t mean to pick but the statment that “The United States Patent Office does not give patent numbers to inventions that do not work.” is incorrect. For the most part the patent office is concerned with granting patents based on the fact that there is no other invention like it, not as an evaluation of it’s function. The Patent systems is about preserving intellectual property rights. All too often the fact that Patent has been issued is claimed as proof that something works, which is not always the case. Tom Bearden’s MEG is a good example of this, sure it produces bizzare voltage fluctuations and resistances reading that suggest overunity but it does not produce meaningful work. It’s behaviour is an artifact of hysteresis and induction in a multipolar magnetic field. It is a great example of slight of hand, so i suppose it does ‘work’ after a fashion, but more like a magic trick or three card monty.
This is not to suggest that I don’t think it is either possible that such technologies exist, or that any given power structure whould research and impliment them. But I try to follow the rule of ubiquity: the better something works, the more prevailent it will be.
Hemisphere Creep said,
June 18, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I don’t know what his formal and informal education is but I suspect it is not engineering or physics.
With all due respect, I think this is a cop out excuse.
I don’t mean to pick but the statment that “The United States Patent Office does not give patent numbers to inventions that do not work.”
What I have read contradicts your statement here. There are many, many patents in this area and one not need be a pro in the field to get a taste of what these weapons can do. There have been a few mainstream media reports as well, confirming that these weapons do, in fact, actually work.
For example, in the August 28, 2005 edition of the Washington Post, an article entitled Xtreme Defense by Sharon Weinberger, stated that similar ’non-lethal’ weapons, as previously described above, are currently being utilized by private contractors and the US military in Iraq: “His latest is to use ultrasonic waves in the dazzler not just to blind enemies, but also to convey messages in their heads, similar to Gibbs’ Medusa project. Hearing voices from God is a ‘big thing’ in Arab culture according to Bitar. “We flash-blind them. And, while their eyes are shut, you could send a recorded message or deep guttural voice that echoes in the inside of their head…”
Read Begich’s new book, which is based on the Nexus Mag articles. Why RI, DE, FTR (Emory) etc do not touch on these issues is… beyond me–but it DOES NOT make me feel very comfortable about the research and discussions going on here or there.
WoodyWoodman said,
June 18, 2007 at 9:12 pm
“I don’t know what his formal and informal education is but I suspect it is not engineering or physics.
With all due respect, I think this is a cop out excuse.”
To be fair to DE, that is just my speculation on why he doesn’t focus on the technical, I don’t actually know. Most folks don’t mind speculating outside of their expertise but the smart ones know that this sort of speculation is akin to wild guessing. DE strikes me as being more careful.
I didn’t say that the specific systems or technology you were talking about didn’t work, just that having a patent is not proof. ‘Work’, outside of physics and engineering where it does have a specific meaning, is subjective. I’m sure such things are possible, even probable. That said though there is always the possibility that they are specific misinformation ploys with explicit purpose of spreading the notion of US forces with god-like powers. There is some discussion about the Halfnium weapons in this regard. I suspect that DE and Jeff, and Emory understand the complexity and difficulty of addressing the feasability of cutting edge military tech without working in a similar field. DE has a talent for finding connections and relationships, teasing out motivation and concealed adgenda. I wouldn’t want him to take on a area that was outside his expertise, especially if it meant wasting his not-inconsiderable talent working on what he does.
I’ve made my case as to why I suspect these folks stay away from this stuff, but it would also be fair to suggest that they all have an adgenda. In fact I think it would be naive to think anyone does not, even if it is just as simple as the human need to confirm our own beliefs. I mean hell, they and I could all be sinister SRI change agents propegating damaging memes to disrupt the conspiracy sub-culture. The only choice we all have is to find what truth we can with the tools at our disposal. Please feel free to remain skeptical and uncomfortable with accepting anyones reality-approximation as the thing itself. I certainly do.
Hemisphere Creep said,
June 20, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Simply, my point is this: Not integrating the above aforementioned information into a continuing and operating thesis is neglecting an entire body of information that perhaps deprives the reader of the ‘whole picture.’ There is no way that all the information in this area is disinformation. The Pentagon is at least *twenty years* ahead of the consumer market and have spent millions on black budget exotic and non-lethal infomation weapons and have a separate division for R&D in this area. My source is a legit, yet anonymous ‘former’ ‘operative.’ To ignore and not attempt to integrate this body of knowledge into the work being done here, is, with all due respect, ’shoddy’ research. Perhaps I could have selected a better word. Having said that, however, I do appreciate some of the other work presented here.
Cheers.
dreamsend said,
June 22, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Well, HC, there are probably other websites out there that conform to your standards. Good luck!
Karl Whitney said,
July 7, 2007 at 7:50 am
Wow, I can’t believe how violent and unpredictable the world was back in April of 2007, when that Cho fella went batcrap insane and killed all them people never done him no harm. I sure am pleased that everything’s changed since then.
Folks are acting downright civilized and the leaders of our countries, our large companies, and our intelligence agencies are looking out for the interest of the common man and his pursuit of happiness and justice and other things like that.
Mrs. Hilton and Jesus have found each other thanks to the fine work of the custodial staff at the Los Angeles Correctional Facility. She says she’s going to turn away from her life of hedonistic pursuits and make the world a better place.
Paul Wolfowitz is going to author some fine papers full of wise and compassionate ideas over there at the American Enterprise Institute. Fitting job for such an enterprising young man.
Scooter Libby won’t have to encumber his bad self with yet another nickname, such as I. Lewis “Scooter” “Crazy Eye” Libby, or “Inmate No. 195430267″. I honestly couldn’t be happier for a man with such a longstanding career of serving the public with distinction and only the occasional break for writing bestial pornography. I tried to arouse a bear with a stick once, and all I got was this painful limp. Out West, where I vacation, the aspens will soon be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.
But I digress. I must admit, I am hanging painfully on the edge of my seat for the continuation of your SRI and the Manufacturing of the New Age series.
Banta said,
July 8, 2007 at 2:24 am
Yeah, DE, come on! Even MCGOWAN has updated his site since you have. I’ve almost considered started my own blog to fill the time, but frankly, I’m still too lazy that.
Also, question to anyone who might stumble upon this. Is breakfornews.com down or is it just me? I’m trying to listen to Dave’s interview on there, but I haven’t been able to access it for two days.
Karl Whitney said,
July 8, 2007 at 6:45 am
Banta, I’m at Fintan’s site right now, listening to the excellent audio, Big Pharma’s Health Coup d’Etat: http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2783
Highly recommend it.
I haven’t experienced any problems accessing BFN in the last few days or ever, really. Hope you have better luck soon.
DE, can you give us a teaser or ETA for the next article. Pleeease?
Banta said,
July 8, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Yeah, I’m still having problems. I’ve had this happen to me before with other websites and I never understand why and I don’t know how to fix it. It’s like I’m in China or something!
Banta said,
July 9, 2007 at 12:29 am
Well, I fixed my problem. Not that anyone cares, but here’s what I had to download to fix it, in the off chance anyone else has the same problem.
http://www.iup.edu/house/resnet/winfix.shtm
Take that, you commie bastards!
dilbert_g from B4N said,
July 14, 2007 at 7:59 am
Love this blog. Thanks for telling me Banta. Lotsa good info here on Col. Grossman (read his book), Columbine, V-Tech, Texe Marrs, etc. Thanks. I lernt a bit too!