it was covered all over the world.

April 17, 2007 @ 2:54 pm | Comment

CCTV is setting itself up to lose face big time, it rushed to cover another story of violence and possible racism on US college campuses and it will only find a young man possibly from Guangdong who was dissed by his girl for a white guy (news.qq.com, mitbbs.com) and possibly mistook her black RA for her new boyfriend. The shooter then chained the doors of another classroom and opened fire.

Oh, yeah, there is another asian or possibly chinese student under arrest as “a person of interest”. Why would the police be looking for other people? over 50 injured and 33 dead. That’s at least 83 bullets. One person walks into a gun store and buys that much ammo (or more) and little sirens might go off (especially if the shopper is a foreigner).

The police have yet to release the identity because this is now a US State department/ Chinese embassy affair and the shooter blew his face off. The police are tearing through the shooter’s apartment now, I wonder what they will find? The US consulate in SHanghai issued the student visa and the student entered from SF last year.

April 17, 2007 @ 3:11 pm | Comment

“the shooter blew his face off.”

talk about losing face.

April 17, 2007 @ 3:17 pm | Comment

Shanghai Daily is running the story including the suspicion of the victim’s ID per Chicago Sun Times.
Guess they figure Chinese people can’t read english…or the editor is going to be in hot water.

April 17, 2007 @ 3:26 pm | Comment

Picking up Ferins’ comment from the Lao Wai thread, dude, are you seriously suggesting that two people *deserved* to die because they made choices that consenting adults make all the time (“cheaters got what they deserved”)?

Should a woman who dates a man become the exclusive property of that man until such time as the man releases her? It sure sounds like you’re making that argument.

April 17, 2007 @ 3:37 pm | Comment

no, she should just dump him. of all the other vile rumors on the internet circulating about this event it was supposedly that the gunman walked in on her having sex with someone else. which i also will refuse to believe, like the other crap i’m hearing about this on the internet.

my cousin, who i grew up with and am very close to, was a good friend of the RA that was murdered. so even if some people get their rocks off on learning that a chinese guy killed 32 people and it makes big bad china lose face, i would ask that they please wait for the evidence.

i have 3 childhood friends who are at VT, two of them at the engineering school, we were pretty worried until we finally were able to contact them (the networks were flooded) but it’s an utter disaster. the engineering school is the pride of VT and this really breaks the school’s heart. as bad as seeing your friends jumping out of windows in terror and being carted out with bullet wounds isn’t bad enough..

it’s been a really rough few years for the students there.

April 17, 2007 @ 3:56 pm | Comment

sorry, meant to say as if seeing* instead of as bad as.

April 17, 2007 @ 3:58 pm | Comment

Sorry to hear about your cousin’s friend. I have a friend who goes to Tech as well. His mom reports that he was in his dorm at the time, so he’s fine, but he’s in the engineering school so he almost certainly knows some of the wounded or dead.

April 17, 2007 @ 4:36 pm | Comment

i’m glad he’s alright.. the gunner should have killed himself earlier.

April 17, 2007 @ 4:41 pm | Comment

Too horrifying. Just as depraved is the way the far-right nuts went out of their way to immediately attribute the slaughter to Muslim jihadists. This was one of the more depraved examples, though many others abound. And needless to say, Malkin is already hyperventilating about immigrants because the alleged killer was here on a visa. Everything boils down to race for them.

April 17, 2007 @ 4:45 pm | Comment

Ha, ha, Richard, this all reminds me of a book I just finished reading. The protagonist, a left-wing contrarian shock-jock radio host in London counters the right wing rush to arm every civilian with every sort of gun, by saying, hey, why not go farther. We should only let the criminals have the guns.

Seriously, though, Malkin’s vision is seriously f***ed up. Every campus student armed with guns? Is she on crack? Actually, nobody answer that. She might very well be, for all I know. Even if someone thought they were in danger, they should avoid carrying guns.

Has upping the ante ever solved anything? Very likely yes, but only yes in a minority of instances. In the majority of instances, upping the ante only made things worse.

Only in a war of words can upping the ante possibly be meaninful. Even then, there always has to be unspoken understandings, limits, boundaries, and willingness to listen somewhere.

April 17, 2007 @ 4:59 pm | Comment

malkin, coulter and schlussel are such whores it’s disgusting.

April 17, 2007 @ 5:23 pm | Comment

shouldn’t we all just wait until we know?

April 17, 2007 @ 5:41 pm | Comment

Chinese media is reporting that the guy may have been Chinese.

April 17, 2007 @ 6:16 pm | Comment

Brendan, Chinese media ARE reporting…

April 17, 2007 @ 7:16 pm | Comment

Isn’t ‘media’ a collective noun?

April 17, 2007 @ 7:24 pm | Comment

Richard, you know who else was a prescriptivist?

April 17, 2007 @ 7:40 pm | Comment

Could he have been not only distraught by getting rejected, but losing the possability of his green card as well? He was not prepared for US culture and should not have come over, or been allowed to.

April 17, 2007 @ 8:33 pm | Comment

how exactly would you screen him out michael?

“excuse me sir, are you an unhinged gun nut?”

April 17, 2007 @ 8:43 pm | Comment

Truth is stranger than, err, rumor:

http://tinyurl.com/24p9bp

April 17, 2007 @ 9:48 pm | Comment

A Symptom of our “Chain Letter Society”?

Read an analysis of the influences in our “Chain Letter Society” that may be precipitating events like the tragedy at Virginia Tech and how our focus on winning and being number one may be fostering a generation of children with fully inadequate coping skills who have a misguided sense of self-worth…here:

http://www.thoughttheater.com

April 17, 2007 @ 10:11 pm | Comment

It sounds like the “problem with ID” might mean “problem with senior Chinese official’s numba-one son.” If this were China, they’d be harvesting the organs like the bodies were a bunch of busted pinatas.

April 17, 2007 @ 10:17 pm | Comment

the gunman is from south korea. some of you must be very disappointed.

April 17, 2007 @ 10:44 pm | Comment

I am confused…All the chatter about a Chinese male..But, the police chief being interviewed on CNN said the you man, Cho Seung-Hui, 23, was an alien resident from South Korea. Once again, the media jumps the gun..Sorry for the pun.

April 17, 2007 @ 10:46 pm | Comment

Police name Virginia Tech shooter

April 17, 2007 @ 11:03 pm | Comment

“the gunman is from south korea. some of you must be very disappointed.”

You’re a first class wanker.

April 17, 2007 @ 11:07 pm | Comment

“I do wonder if CCTV will continue to be so excited if it turns out the shooter was actually from China…”

I do wonder if some of you will continue to be so excited if it turns out the shooter was actually NOT from China.

April 17, 2007 @ 11:28 pm | Comment

Do you think any reader here would have been happy to hear the killer was Chinese? Most of us live in China or have lived there, speak or are learning to speak Chinese, work closely with Chinese companies or educational institutions and have decided to make China a core part of our lives. No one I know here wishes harm to China or its people.

About the media screwing up…yeah, it happens, especially in the Internet age. But I’d rather have the occasional error followed by correction than no free media. The price we pay where any citizen can be a journalist – just look at the depraved rumors that spread like wildfire over on the aforementioned wingnut sites.

April 17, 2007 @ 11:41 pm | Comment

the gunman is from south korea. some of you must be very disappointed.

Bingfeng, I am truly shocked. I always singled you out for your decency and intelligence, despite our frequent disappointments. Totally, deeply disappointed and disillusioned,

April 17, 2007 @ 11:48 pm | Comment

We here in the states are in shock and grief over this tragedy. As for the gun culture, criminals will always get guns, in any culture. Don’t you just love those Ozzies?

It was widely reported that the perp in the Virginia Tech massacre was an Asian male, 6 feet tall, possibly a Chinese on a student visa. As it turns out he was a So. Korean with residents papers.

Not that it is in any way equivalent in scope except for the final question in the following, but: I’m not certain if the story of dog and cat suffering and deaths due to contaminated food is playing overseas but it is of great concern to pet owners and vetenarians here. The ostensible cause is wheat gluten imported from China (uncomfirmed but widely reported) that contains rat poison. And “of course” this wheat gluten hasn’t found its way into human food. Are we seeing a “blame China” trend?

April 17, 2007 @ 11:59 pm | Comment

I really don’t think those two examples are enough to constitute a trend, Ellen, though I’m open to think otherwise. God knows, there are lots of similar trends her in America, most alarmingly the rights’ kneejerk reaction to blame anything bad on Moslems, evidence and logic be damned.

April 18, 2007 @ 12:05 am | Comment

“The ostensible cause is wheat gluten imported from China (uncomfirmed but widely reported) that contains rat poison. And “of course” this wheat gluten hasn’t found its way into human food.”

Actually, the wheat gluten problem was confirmed by factory workers interviewed by US and chinese authorities as wheat gluten can boost the apparent protein value of feedstock.

April 18, 2007 @ 12:10 am | Comment

@ellen – of course we will see a “blame china” trend. we had the whole “blame japan” trend in the 80s and 90s…

however it will be a nice change from the “blame the west” trend coming from the ccp.

i had a look at your site – thought the post on japan was interesting

April 18, 2007 @ 12:27 am | Comment

The massacre is a profound tragedy and the lessons that I learn from this
tragedy are:
1. Americans are in denial over gun control. It is plainly obvious to me that guns are the root cause of this tragedy. Sure, guns don’t kill people, people do, but if this killer did
this evil act in South Korea, he couldn’t be able to kill so many people because he couldn’t
have guns. The easy availability of guns combined with crazy people is a lethal combination.
2. Since I don’t believe Americans are going to do anything about gun control in my lifetime, I am seriously considering acquiring guns of my own for self defense for if any of the students had a gun, this murderer would be dead long ago and this tragedy would have been drastically reduced in scope.

Disturbed.

On a side note: I am really surprised that he was able to kill so many people using just two
handguns because I recall from conversations about guns with a friend of mine who is an
expert marksman that it is really hard to kill many people with handguns. So I guess the killer is probably an expert marksman. Knowing that, it is really chilling for me to hear from the amateur video tape the sounds of “pop, pop, pop” because in my mind, each of those awful sounds is a bullet penetrating somebody’s skull.

April 18, 2007 @ 12:34 am | Comment

he may not be talking about you but some posters sure seemed happy about it.

i know schlussel is a little disappointed and is probably being made to adjust a few key words in her next xenophobic diatribes.

April 18, 2007 @ 1:03 am | Comment

Dear god, so much attention over the national identity of the shooter and barely any on the tragedy itself. I have friends who have friends who go to Tech, and while everybody’s fine, they’re pretty distraught.

Americans are in denial over gun control. It is plainly obvious to me that guns are the root cause of this tragedy. Sure, guns don’t kill people, people do, but if this killer did
this evil act in South Korea, he couldn’t be able to kill so many people because he couldn’t
have guns. The easy availability of guns combined with crazy people is a lethal combination.

IAWTC.

P.S. In the previous thread Nanhegourouchuan posted a link to someone’s livejournal, fingering the author as the killer. Would one of the mods please take it down, as the livejournal contains the guy’s real name and we know now that it’s definitely not him.

April 18, 2007 @ 1:06 am | Comment

“…As for the gun culture, criminals will always get guns, in any culture. Don’t you just love those Ozzies? ”

1.)As far as I’m aware, this murderer wasn’t a criminal before he started shooting people with his(possibly) legally purchased gun.

2.)Is the above referring to the Port Arthur massacre after which the Ozzy gov instituted and the people supported a gun buy back scheme to remove many high-calibre auto/semi-automatic weapons from general circulation?

Was discussing this with a Chinese friend, his view; it’s a good thing guns aren’t widely available in China.

April 18, 2007 @ 1:08 am | Comment

Anyway. I am wondering if this Korean young man had been in the military before he went to the US? Aren’t all males in Korea required to serve in the military? Maybe this is why he was able to kill so many.

There are horrible acts commited all over the world. The US is no different, it’s just that when it happens there the whole world knows about it in 5 minutes.

Guns ARE in China. The military and WJ have them all.

April 18, 2007 @ 1:54 am | Comment

“CCTV is setting itself up to lose face big time, it rushed to cover another story of violence and possible racism on US college campuses and it will only find a young man possibly from Guangdong who was dissed by his girl for a white guy (news.qq.com, mitbbs.com) and possibly mistook her black RA for her new boyfriend. The shooter then chained the doors of another classroom and opened fire.

Oh, yeah, there is another asian or possibly chinese student under arrest as “a person of interest”. Why would the police be looking for other people? over 50 injured and 33 dead. That’s at least 83 bullets. One person walks into a gun store and buys that much ammo (or more) and little sirens might go off (especially if the shopper is a foreigner).

The police have yet to release the identity because this is now a US State department/ Chinese embassy affair and the shooter blew his face off. The police are tearing through the shooter’s apartment now, I wonder what they will find? The US consulate in SHanghai issued the student visa and the student entered from SF last year.”

all i have to say is NHYGC is a complete ass. stop getting all excited fantasizing about how a chinese man is mad at “the west” for stealing “his women”.

you could at least have the decency not to smear completely unrelated individuals who were part of the internet asian witchhunt.

there were three other people with their blogs, myspace, whatever posted that were SO SURE they were the murderers.

Excuse me this time but all those taking part in the speculating e-Mob should be castrated.

April 18, 2007 @ 2:13 am | Comment

i think a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that this korean dude was “fresh off the plane” so to speak simply because he did not have a latinized first name (i came to the states when i was pretty young, but i still go by my given chinese name). given that he’s a resident alien and an english major, i’m inclined to infer that he immigrated at a much younger age. if that turns out to be the case, it’s even more important that we play down his nationality, since it’s likely his thoughts and actions have been influenced more heavily by american culture and society. truly tragic story. hopefully some good will come of this (i.e. tightening virginia’s gun control laws)

April 18, 2007 @ 2:19 am | Comment

@Bert: CNN reported that the shooter came over to the States in 1992. So he wouldn’t have had any military training prior to immigration. Which goes to show you that nationality in this case means nothing; what does mean something is the fact that he was able to easily and *legally* access the guns that allowed him to murder so many.

April 18, 2007 @ 2:29 am | Comment

he immigrated at age 8. but all asians are foreigners.

many here could have learned things about uncultured xenophobia if they simply asked around in their own countries before going to china.

April 18, 2007 @ 2:33 am | Comment

I’m still in shock. Blacksburg is such a beautiful and quiet and peaceful place. One of the best places to retire to in the US, I’d even say. People are nice. Environment is nice. Prices are nice. Everything’s so nice. When I was away in college some years ago all my friends there emailed me about how shocked they were that someone had been shot in a PizzaHut. And now this. For whatever religious or political reasons people feel a need to jump the gun on Muslims or Chinese or anything, could you all just please STOP?!?!?! 33 people are dead! Now is not the time to go into lengthy discussions about the evils of the commies! I feel so sick reading all those finger pointing and self-righteous articles and blogs all over the Internet. Blacksburg’s peace is gone. Why can’t all those people at least have the decency to shut up while we mourn our loss? Sorry about the babbling…

April 18, 2007 @ 2:38 am | Comment

A mass murderer is not chained to a certain ethnic identity. There was a Chinese student, LuGang, who killed 5 in 1991. However, there are people in this blog who are indeed “giddily” reporting anything negative that can be linked to China, as some in American Media. It is ‘mission impossible’ for a Chinese student who arrived in the US less than a year ago to get two guns and such a huge amount of ammunition. This kind of story went into main stream American media speak volumes on the ignorance and bias existed in this world. I would appreciate if the site moderators show same indignation and condemnation as they are doing to Chinese media and Chinese commenters.

April 18, 2007 @ 3:19 am | Comment

“Now is not the time to go into lengthy discussions about the evils of the commies!”

You can say that again to Jeremiah and his cohorts. In his original post I did not feel any obligatory mourning that he suddenly remembered to perform – only after the prospect of a big time loss of face on the part of the hideous Chinese media was thwarted.

April 18, 2007 @ 3:31 am | Comment

bingfeng — It’s really good to see you again. I’ll admit, I had been hoping that the guy was Chinese. Not for any really good reasons — I just wanted to see the right-wing blogs break out in craziness: CHINESE STUDENT KILLS PURE-BRED WHITE STUDENTS! HE WAS JUST AFTER THEIR OIL RESERVES!

As is, hey: who cares. If the dude had been white, he would have been compared to Timothy McVeigh or the Columbine shooters. If he’d been Chinese, he’d have been compared to Li Gang (?) in Iowa years ago, and the news coverage would have focused on his country of origin. Had he been Iranian-American, there would probably be TV news segments on Islam and what an awful influence it is. If he’d been black, it would’ve doubtlessly been about rough neighborhoods in the US.
I do not myself care very much – and I acknowledge that this is a horrible thing to say, given that so many people have died. But so what? Crazy people are crazy regardless of their ethnicity. Gunmen shoot no matter what skin color they are. I find it interesting in the context of China only insofar as the coverage it was given — considering the number of e.g. mine workers who die uneulogized monthly.

The guy was Korean. This will probably save us from a lot of profoundly stupid US television coverage. The rest of the story is still bad news.

April 18, 2007 @ 4:44 am | Comment

Most whites don’t have the backbone, meanwhile, they don’t have the brain.

April 18, 2007 @ 5:31 am | Comment

Most whites don’t have the backbone, meanwhile, they don’t have the brain.

I’m sure this sentence made sense in your demented little mind.

April 18, 2007 @ 5:54 am | Comment

The first place that I saw the rumor that the shooter might be Chinese was MIT BBS. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rumors started there and got picked up by Wenxue city and then on to the Chinese media in China. So I wouldn’t necessarily jump to conclusions about the “American media” in this case.

April 18, 2007 @ 7:17 am | Comment

If I didn’t have a backbone, I think I, in all of my whiteness, would have quite a hard time standing up.
Come on, don’t make an already ugly incident even uglier.

April 18, 2007 @ 7:30 am | Comment

Originally numb.

I’d like to spare a thought for the parents of the victims. Imagine raising and nurturing your child for 20 years. Your heart is full of pride and hope.

And then… your numb.

April 18, 2007 @ 8:06 am | Comment

Can anyone link to American media sites saying that is was definitely a Chinese shooter? All the sites I read said it was a person of Asian background, which was true. I think there was Sun-Times article stating that the shooter was Chinese but it qualified that statement.

After a tragedy like this one, people are scrambling for news and a lot of false information is spread. It happened after 9/11. It took a day or two before the facts started to emerge. I think the media has done a pretty good job in this case. They stated what they knew and reported speculation but labeled it as speculation. They gave us information and it is up to us to figure out what is true, what is fact and what is a guess. A free media cannot exist without critical thinking and the American media did its job of providing us with information.

There’s one thing I like to throw out there. I think this a particularly American tragedy. The violence, passion, the display of emotion all seem to be American. Anyone agree with me or am I just smoking something. For the record, I am an American.

April 18, 2007 @ 8:31 am | Comment

It is a tragedy for this great nation. But American society can do nothing about it. Guns are easily available, widespread violence on movies and TV; people celebrate violence, but deny it.

April 18, 2007 @ 8:48 am | Comment

The guy was Korean. This will probably save us from a lot of profoundly stupid US television coverage. The rest of the story is still bad news.

Nah, it won’t. Because of the general ignorance about Korea and Asia in the US. I can see the headlines: DOES CONFUCIAN CULTURE MAKE YOU TIGHTLY WOUND? KIMCHI AND VIOLENCE: NEW LINKS DEMONSTRATED.

I think gun control is a fantastic idea. Ban them all, except maybe hunting rifles. In the assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian in ’04, the shooter had no access to mob links that would have enabled him to procure a real gun, so he had to buy a half-assed homemade gun, whose bullets lacked the force of a real one. Chen is thus still alive. When I think of the number of incidents of road rage I have witnessed and heard about, I say silent thanks that Taiwan has no guns in the general population.

Michael

April 18, 2007 @ 9:05 am | Comment

“The first place that I saw the rumor that the shooter might be Chinese was MIT BBS. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rumors started there and got picked up by Wenxue city and then on to the Chinese media in China. So I wouldn’t necessarily jump to conclusions about the “American media” in this case.”

88, where did people on MITBBS get the idea that the killer was chinese? Chicago Sun times!!! You think our fellow chinese here just made that up? Actually Sun times’ accused article was picked up by Fox, then other international press, then HK, TW, SG…at last it went to China mainland. Be careful when you point finger to someone. You made the same mistake as those stupid press.

” In the assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian in ’04,”???

This is the biggest political joke in that year. Please don’t use that to compare with the saddness here.

April 18, 2007 @ 9:46 am | Comment

i don’ think there is anything wrong with cctv saying he is “meiguoren”. i mean he grew up in america since the age of 8. i doubt he even speaks korean.

i know cctv is a joke sometimes but they are much better then fox news or lou dobbs on cnn. i am sure their coverage of america has a negative slant to it, but i am sure they are not giving orders from above by the government to portray america as the devil. also if you look at coverage from some of the european stations on america, you will notice alot more vitriol and sensationalism. so i really don’t understand some of your obsession with cctv

April 18, 2007 @ 10:05 am | Comment

Then the editor of the Shanghai Daily should apologize for insulting the feelings of the Chinese people for printing the news scoop and also resign.
But wait, he or she is chinese, so how does that figure?

China needs to get over itself, its ok for people in other countries to be insulted, but not Chinese people? I’ll bet that alot of people in China will be snickering about “those Koreans” while the S. Korean embassy is sending a delegation to VT to mend fences and dispell any branding of Korean students. A good lesson for China (and China needs many lessons) is that even after 9-11 there was little “mass branding” and the “mass branders” were mostly bums anyways.

Next to the Shanghai Daily story about the VT shootings, there was a story about more Chinese feelings being hurt when Italian police gave out traffic tickets to owners of shops in a Chinatown for blocking traffic to unload their cars…and a mass sit-in was being planned by CHinatown residents and the Chinese embassy was coming to their defence…all over a f*n traffic ticket.

China, get over yourself, you are all just part of 6.5 billion people…and grow some thicker skin.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:24 am | Comment

nanheyangrouchuan can always find his little angle to do his insulting, even in this tragedy. Dude, you are sick.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:32 am | Comment

nausicaa,

I hope you didn’t think my post was an attack on the shooters nationality. It wasn’t, it was just a thought before I read about the shooters life history. There was absolutely no judgement about were he came from. I just thought about his ‘skill’ (bad word here, I know) and thought maybe he had gone through some military training. No xenophobia here!

April 18, 2007 @ 11:34 am | Comment

nanheyangrouchuan,

You should be ashamed of yourself. Any reasonable person has seen your true color. I can almost imagine how excited you were when you first claimed the shooter was a chinese. You have lose all your credibility.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:37 am | Comment

“I think gun control is a fantastic idea. Ban them all, except maybe hunting rifles.”

Why do people always think that gun rights have to do with hunting? The guy on the water tower in 1966 had a hunting rifle. Kennedy was killed with a bolt action rifle that was military but basically the same as a hunting rifle.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:41 am | Comment

>>88, where did people on MITBBS get the idea that the killer was chinese? Chicago Sun times!!! You think our fellow chinese here just made that up?

There were a lot of reports stating that the shooter was “Asian.” Immediately after that I saw comments speculating that the shooter might be an ABC — not necessarily from China. Then some people from VT were speculating that it was this or that specific Chinese student. Then someone said he was a Chinese faculty member. And then he was a guy from Shanghai. On and on.

My point: rumors like this always spread in the immediate aftermath. No, we don’t know exactly where or how they got started.

Also, I read reports that a Taiwanese student claimed that the shooter was from China. If the Chicago Sun Times or others reported that, that isn’t the same as a newspaper saying, “The shooter is Chinese.” I saw reports that a Taiwanese student believed or claimed that the shooter was Chinese. Uh, there is a difference. But I know that point is completely lost on the hyper-nationalists over at MIT BBS who are trying to hire lawyers to sue anyone who claimed the shooter might be Chinese.

>>i don’ think there is anything wrong with cctv saying he is “meiguoren”. i mean he grew up in america since the age of 8. i doubt he even speaks korean.

Funny, if he were Chinese and came to the US at age 8 — and did anything remotely positive — do you still think the Chinese media would call him a “meiguoren?”

April 18, 2007 @ 11:42 am | Comment

@Bert: no worries, you don’t need to explain yourself. I just didn’t want the issue of nationality to cloud the larger issue of gun control. (Even though a constitutional amendment of 2A is obviously a pipe dream, gun safety measures can still be implemented so as to decrease the likelihood of something like this ever happening agin.)

@everyone else: yeah, all the finger-pointing (“you are anti-Chinese!” “No, you are overly sensitive!”) is real classy.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:46 am | Comment

Mass murders like this take place in all countries from time to time. I remember a case in Colombia in the 50s whereby a lone individual killed some 500 people over a two year period. Incidents in many third world countries seldom make it into international reporting. In the case of the U.S., however, the wide range of firearms readily available make it more likely that any individual contemplating such a crime will will be armed with the very best in lethal weapons capable of inflicting proportionately greater casualties in a shorter length of time. Firearms may not be all of the equation, but they certainly are a key ingredient. An outright firearms ban will likely never pass, but perhaps this latest outrage may spur a movement for more rigorous firearms licensing laws. Understand that because of the federal nature of the U.S., and such laws must either be federal, or based upon uniform standards recommended by the federal government.

I would include the parents of the shooter in any prayers. This has to be at least as great a tragedy for them as it is for the victims. In some societies, they would be exected to commit mutual suicide to atone for their son’s actions.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:56 am | Comment

I think nanheyangrouchuan and his friends must be as sad as the parents of those victims.

When the rumors started that the shooter was Chinese, they got very very excited and wrote many posts, some about how dangerous Chinese nationalists are, some how about this is the fault of CCP’s anti-American education, some about how this is because Chinese people have low morality, some about how this is because there’s no religion in China, etc etc etc. This is a golden opportunity for them!

But when they found out the shooter was not Chinese but South Korean, all their hopes were destroyed, just like when the parents of the victims found that their childrens’ names are on the list from the police department.

We should hold a memorial for nanheyangourouchuan and his friends.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:58 am | Comment

Thank you for your post, lirelou. You said it better than I ever could.

April 18, 2007 @ 12:15 pm | Comment

“China needs to get over itself, its ok for people in other countries to be insulted, but not Chinese people? I’ll bet that alot of people in China will be snickering about “those Koreans” while the S. Korean embassy is sending a delegation to VT to mend fences and dispell any branding of Korean students. A good lesson for China (and China needs many lessons) is that even after 9-11 there was little “mass branding” and the “mass branders” were mostly bums anyways.”

Bums who killed Indians and Sikhs? And you think that’s some kind of minor offense? You’re disgusting.

“Next to the Shanghai Daily story about the VT shootings, there was a story about more Chinese feelings being hurt when Italian police gave out traffic tickets to owners of shops in a Chinatown for blocking traffic to unload their cars…and a mass sit-in was being planned by CHinatown residents and the Chinese embassy was coming to their defence…all over a f*n traffic ticket.”

The woman was pregnant, she was beaten, and the police trampled the Chinese flag. Sure, it’s impolite to wave your flag in someone else’s country, but you DON’T beat pregnant women unless she’s attacking you.

When’s the last time any other Chinatown has done something like this? You think all Chinese people flare up and riot over parking tickets? You must be severely retarded. Get over yourself, 1.3 billion people aren’t out to get you. If they knew what kind of garbage you were they’d toss you into the ocean.

April 18, 2007 @ 12:26 pm | Comment

“I would include the parents of the shooter in any prayers. This has to be at least as great a tragedy for them as it is for the victims. In some societies, they would be exected to commit mutual suicide to atone for their son’s actions.”

I’m hearing from some Korean news sources that his parents committed suicide.. it’s a damn horrible rumor but I really don’t want it to be true.

April 18, 2007 @ 12:28 pm | Comment

ferins:
“The woman was pregnant, she was beaten, and the police trampled the Chinese flag.”

Is that what Xinhua told you?

Hongxing:
“some about how dangerous Chinese nationalists are, some how about this is the fault of CCP’s anti-American education, some about how this is because Chinese people have low morality, some about how this is because there’s no religion in China”

I never said anything about low morality, but the rest is true. And religion does help, ask the Dalai Lama.

z and fatbrick: 放屁

April 18, 2007 @ 12:41 pm | Comment

“Is that what Xinhua told you?”

if you’re getting your “news” from the same morons who told you cho seung hui was a 24 year old chinese national jealous that his chinese girlfriend left him for a white guy, i’ll take my chances will maonetdaily.ccp or slaythebourgeoisie.net

April 18, 2007 @ 1:35 pm | Comment

ferins:
Is this how a supposedly world class news organization acts?

http://www.beijingnewspeak.com/2007/04/18/ill-informed-chicago-columnist-scares-the-hell-out-of-china/

Ill-informed Chicago columnist scares the hell out of China

If Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed finds herself on an extended holiday, she would be advised to strike China off her list of refuge spots.

Sneed wrote in the Chicago newspaper on Tuesday that the Virginia Tech gunman was Chinese. On Tuesday evening, Virginia State Police identified the killer as South Korean. During the twelve hours between Sneed’s column hitting the shelves and the official statement, China was quivering. A host of international websites carried the story “Chinese student suspected of Virginia massacre”. The main international news agencies wisely chose to wait for the official statement much to the relief of Xinhua. Alarm bells were ringing on the eighth floor, which is home to the international news department, and there was a flurry of activity to work out how to report the nationality of the gunman.

In the end, we will never know how they planned to approach it but suffice to say the senior editors were delighted when “South Korea” was read out at the press conference. Back-slapping and congratulations ensued – one editor said that it would have been a inconceivable loss of face if the gunman had been Chinese. Xinhua can now go forth and write about the incident all they want but there is no doubt that if the gunman had been Chinese the reporting would have been understated to say the least. Galling really. To think a potential loss of face dwarfed a sense of responsibility to report such a tragic world news event.

A CCTV 9 news bulletin around 10pm on Tuesday did not lead with the story. It showed no footage from Virginia, choosing to settle with the Foreign Ministry statement expressing China’s condolences. It could be pure cynicism on my part but I wonder if the decision to report it this way was made on the assumption that the gunman was Chinese. I welcome slap downs from CCTV 9ers on this point. But on the subject of CCTV 9, their midnight bulletin, although following standard practice, inspired a hefty rant. The main news item was the Pakistani Prime Minister’s visit to China including a three-minute interview. It was followed by Wen Jiabao meeting the top Greek legislator, who promised to raise the strategic partnership … Then came China and Tunisia relations before finally a report – with footage – of the Virginia police naming South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui.

Posted by Chris O’Brien on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007, at 12:20 am, and filed under Confusion.

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April 18, 2007 @ 3:00 pm | Comment

I don’t watch that stuff, though you seem to believe Michael Sneed, or any random idiot that will satisfy your fantasies.

April 18, 2007 @ 3:32 pm | Comment

Why do people always think that gun rights have to do with hunting? The guy on the water tower in 1966 had a hunting rifle. Kennedy was killed with a bolt action rifle that was military but basically the same as a hunting rifle.

Mass murders are exceedingly rare events and cannot be used to form the basis of public policy on guns. But in the main robberies are carried out with handguns, rifles being too large and awkward for such purposes. That is why I support a ban on handguns but not rifles.

Another less important reason is that people who hunt generally support conservation and other things I support. And finally, coming from PA where we’re overrun with deer because we stupidly killed all the predators, hunting is an important population curb, not merely a luxury (yes, I know it can be carried out in other ways and you can hunt with other stuff besides rifles).

Michael

April 18, 2007 @ 7:50 pm | Comment

I would say the US has on the books more gun laws than any other country. The guns are already there! At least 1/3 of the population, if not more.

Does anybody know what the guns laws in China state? Is it just a big “NO WAY” Are there any laws in print? I know it is off topic a bit but I was just wondering.

We are burying ourselves in the reporting of this stuff and giving people bad ideas but I don’t want to pass laws restricting the first amendment.

April 18, 2007 @ 9:02 pm | Comment

Whenever there’s a tragedy like this involving the use of guns to take lives there’s never a shortage of people running on their emotions calling for a ban.

Guns have been a part of American society since the beginning of this country. Of the 300 million people (that we know of) in the United States more than 90 million households are armed with some type of firearm. It would be impossible to remove all guns from the American public and such a ban would only affect law abiding citizens anyway. Does anyone really think the criminals would be falling over themselves to turn their guns in? ha!

My wife was quick to point out how such an incident like this could never happen in China because people in China aren’t allowed to own guns. Well, when people don’t have guns they find other ways to achieve their twisted objectives, that’s why there’s reports of people rushing into schools stabbing dozens of children in China; mass poisonings and suicide bombers on occasion.

Banning guns isn’t going to solve anything in American society. Sure, it might reduce the number of accidental deaths involving guns, but those figures are already very low. As this tragedy shows, you can’t always rely on the police to protect at all times and had just one student been carrying a weapon, the outcome and number of innocent deaths could have been drastically lower.

It’s sad that people should have to consider whether or not to carry a weapon with them in order ensure their own safety, but that’s the reality of today’s society.

Last week there was an attempted abduction of a young woman at my university. She had no weapons to protect herself and if it hadn’t been for the male students who heard her screams, the outcome of that incident would have been very different because it would have taken the police at least 5 minutes to reach her location.

I would even go so far as to say that an armed society is a safe society.

Since the law went into effect, there have been no cases of domestic violence or gun-related accidents that have been attributed to mandatory ownership. In fact, the town has had a number of gun safety and instruction classes for residents

As ridiculous as it may sound, there are a growing number of communities in America passing such legislation mandating private gun ownership.

Flame away. 🙂

April 18, 2007 @ 10:09 pm | Comment

@THM

I think that statistics would beg to differ with your analysis of the situation. The US with its looser gun regulations has a significant higher murder rate that either Japan or the EU.

I agree with you that a gun ban would be impractically in the US right now but I’d urge you to look at the Constitution and read the 2nd amendment:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The right to bear arms is linked with a militia. Most people who own guns don’t belong to the National Guard, the modern version of the militia. Furthermore, lets compare this with the the first amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Even with the first amendment, the government has passed laws effecting our rights to free speech and assembly. Free speech is much less dangerous than guns yet it still has regulations. What we really should be discussing appropriate ways to restrict and manage gun ownership.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:22 pm | Comment

@THM: Really? I think you must be joking, right?

…”such a ban would only affect law abiding citizens anyway. Does anyone really think the criminals would be falling over themselves to turn their guns in? ha!”

It is the very use of guns which turns people from law abiding citizens into criminals. If guns were more tightly controlled criminals would be criminals by virtue of carrying a gun. The police would feel safer and criminals, strange as it sounds, in many circumstances would not feel the need to use or perhaps even carry a gun.

“Well, when people don’t have guns they find other ways to achieve their twisted objectives, that’s why there’s reports of people rushing into schools stabbing dozens of children in China; mass poisonings and suicide bombers on occasion.”

1. Guns don’t prevent people stabbing, poisoning or suicide bombing.

2. I would think that a person on a massacre with a gun would kill more than one with a knife. With the most recent case the murderer would not have got far with a knife.

3. The above seems to be an argument of convenience. For instance, if it is not going to stop a twisted person, why not allow the convenience of the most efficient method of dispatching your fellow humans? Crazy.

“I would even go so far as to say that an armed society is a safe society”.

The quote you refer to, in my view does not support any argument that an armed society is a safe society. It basically reads that since creating the potential for more gun related violence and accidents there hasn’t been any increase. Yay, congratulations!

April 18, 2007 @ 11:45 pm | Comment

“My wife was quick to point out how such an incident like this could never happen in China because people in China aren’t allowed to own guns”

With guns, the US gov’t could never achieve the level of oppression the Chinese gov’t has. Think of the trouble local bosses would have illegally siezing village land if even half of the village is packing heat.

As for Japan’s low crime rate, the mayor of Nagasaki was just shot with a gun. The criminals will always get guns.

“The right to bear arms is linked with a militia. Most people who own guns don’t belong to the National Guard, the modern version of the militia.”

Militias have always been defined as civilians mustered for common defense, thus the whole is defined by the sum of its parts. That argument has been tried before the US Supreme Court and failed. States have “national guards” ie their own armies as a carry over from the US that existed before the US constitution and after the Revolutionary War. In that US, the federal gov’t had no army and only a small navy and the states each had their own army as well as their own currency.

April 18, 2007 @ 11:55 pm | Comment

This is a Pandora’s box we’re opening up here. Nothing polarizes people like guns and abortion. For the record, I hate the idea of everyone carrying a gun, and see America’s culture of gun worship as an aberration, exactly what the Founding Fathers would not have wanted. If they had a second go at it today, they would make the 2nd Amendment even clearer: guns – certainly handguns and assault rifles, etc. – only for a well-regulated militia, and not for private citizens. Period. Unfortunately, considering the sheer volume and proliferation of guns in America, I have no idea how we could ever get the genie back into the bottle.

April 19, 2007 @ 12:01 am | Comment

Of course the text of the second amendment is “antiquated.” But does that matter? Only if you are an originalist. When the Bill of Rights was written half of the country owned slaves. Women couldn’t vote. On and on. When we don’t like the original intent of the founders, we reinterpret it or legislate it out of existence. Unlike Scalia, et al., I think that is a good thing — you can’t escape it in any case.

Does the first amendment mean the same thing today as when the founders wrote it? No, it doesn’t. We’ve spent more than two centuries clarifying, reinterpreting, and changing what it means. Same goes for the second amendment. This is why I don’t find the”But is says MILITIA in the second amendment!” argument at all convincing. The Declaration of Independence says “all men are created equal.” We now take that to mean “men and women,” without changing or amending the text, etc.

I’m all for reasonable gun control measures, but I’m entirely opposed to any sort of gun ban. And not because I think arming everyone makes us safer or reduces crime or protects my Bible, etc. A gun ban would probably reduce crime. That’s obvious. Living in a police state would reduce crime also. Repealing the Bill of Rights would reduce crime, too.

I’ll take the extra crime along with the extra freedom.

April 19, 2007 @ 12:30 am | Comment

Appalachian School of Law shooting

April 19, 2007 @ 12:56 am | Comment

@nanheyangrouchuan

“As for Japan’s low crime rate, the mayor of Nagasaki was just shot with a gun.”

what’s your point here? one shooting does nothing to disprove the fact that japan has a low crime rate. you really need to start looking at the big picture…stop pointing to isolated incidents to make flimsy at best arguments.

April 19, 2007 @ 1:14 am | Comment

nanheyangrouchuan can easily be replaced with a bot that takes every opportunity possible to spread his negative view of the Chinese government and Chinese people. As for the gun control issue, perhaps a bit restriction on how much ammunition can be legally purchased or whether the background check should be extended to mental health history should be discussed. It is a sad situation for everyone including Cho’s family.

April 19, 2007 @ 1:38 am | Comment

Gun Rights Activist Mistaken For VT Murderer
Students shell-shocked, coincidences link Wayne to killings

Venkatesan Vembu

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 23:31 IST

HONG KONG: Wayne Chiang has had quite a traumatic day. For over 12 hours on Monday, virtually all of America believed that the 23-year-old, a US citizen of Chinese descent, was the gunman who had mowed down 32 people at the Virginia Tech University, including two Indians. Picking up on blog chatter that jumped to erroneous conclusions, TV stations across the US cited his name as the suspected killer. Chiang received an avalanche of death threats on his livejournal, his family is quaking in fear, his siblings have had to had skip school?

?It?s been very chaotic, I can tell you that,? Chiang told DNA in a telephone interview from Washington DC, ?What really blows my mind is the death threat.?

At the time of the killings, Chiang was 250 miles away, in Washington DC. But he was erroneously linked to the shooting by a string of eerie coincidences. ?I matched the profile exactly,? he acknowledges. ?I believe they gave out a five-point description of the suspect, and I matched them all. I?m of Asian descent, I graduated from Virginia Tech, I used to live in the campus building where the first shooting happened, I recently broke up with my girlfriend, and I collect guns.?

Just two days before the shooting, Chiang, an ardent advocate of the right to bear arms, had posted pictures of himself on his livejournal, posing with his armoury of semi-automatic weapons and Russian rifles. In March, he broke up with his girlfriend Janice. Since initial reports of the massacre suggested that the killer was a jilted lover of Asian descent, the needle of suspicion seemed ? for some ? to point to Chiang. And TV networks, drawn to the sensational story, momentarily let down their guard, and got caught up in the rush to judgement. Chiang realised that something was up when traffic to his blog surged. ?Everyone?s trying to look for a scapegoat. I don?t blame them: we all did it after 9/11; it?s our way of coping.?

Only after Chiang proclaimed his innocence on his blog ? ?I am not the shooter,? he posted ? did the chatter thin down. Sticking to his guns, literally, Chiang says he has no reason to feel apologetic about posting the controversial pictures on his web journal. ?I don?t regret those pictures. I believe in my Second Amend Rights (to bear arms), and I freely express it; it is my way of expressing my patriotism as an American.?

In fact, argues Chiang, the massacre wouldn?t have happened if students at the Virginia Tech University had had the right to carry concealed weapons. ?The university has prohibited the carrying of concealed weapons. Students who carry arms face expulsion. Given the description of what happened on Monday, I sincerely believe that if the students had been armed, this could have ended a lot sooner”

this is what happens when idiots spread rumors on the internet.

April 19, 2007 @ 4:37 am | Comment

Late to the party, but I imagined NanheyXXXX and a few others busted a nut and had an orgasm upon hearing the shooter was Chinese

April 19, 2007 @ 4:52 am | Comment

And now we can bust a nut watching the CCP media machine backpeddle from its soft stance into a hard stance condemning the US “gun culture”.

CCP speaks with forked tongue and two faces.

April 19, 2007 @ 6:43 am | Comment

Nanheyangrouchuan, get a life. You sound like someone with the same psychological profile as Cho Seung-Hui.

April 19, 2007 @ 6:52 am | Comment

While some have been on the topic of amendment rights and their validity 200+ years after being written, I think the Constitution doesn’t actually provide for freedom of speech but rather “no prior restraint”. You can say whatever you want without hindrance but the state can, as Lincoln and Wilson showed, detain you for it.

April 19, 2007 @ 7:08 am | Comment

The shooter sounds like the worst kind of asshole. He pretty much gunned down everyone in sight, and wasn’t shooting randomly to boot. I think people should start talking about the victims and give their condolences. As a college student I can really empathize. The parents of the freshman must really be suffering.

But you guys do seem rather gleeful when something bad happens in China.

Do you guys not realize that you totally give off that ambience. I’m sorry, but look at yourselves in the mirror and wonder if maybe you aren’t a bit self-righteous. If people have come to that conclusion, they’re not all to blame.

April 19, 2007 @ 7:33 am | Comment

Just a note: “Naus” isn’t me.

@Dana: It’s the Peking Duck. We’re all a little bit self-righteous over here. And I don’t think anyone actually experienced schadenfreude upon learning the false rumours.

Btw, in the article that ferins posted, Wayne Chiang had this to say:

“the massacre wouldn’t have happened if students at the Virginia Tech University had had the right to carry concealed weapons. The university has prohibited the carrying of concealed weapons. Students who carry arms face expulsion. Given the description of what happened on Monday, I sincerely believe that if the students had been armed, this could have ended a lot sooner”

Oh yeah, letting emotionally volatile and immature teenagers and twentysomethings carry firearms on campus, that’s a GREAT idea.

April 19, 2007 @ 7:53 am | Comment

Getting back to the second amendment. First, the 2nd amendment talks about arms not guns. A bomb is a type of armament as are nuclear weapons. If the government can’t regulate guns, why can it regulate nuclear weapons which are also arms?

I think it’s pretty obvious that as there are restrictions on free speech, there also need to be restrictions on gun control. nanheyangrouchuan, if I took your logic, I could go around telling people that you are a rapist, who sleeps with his mother and works for the Chinese government and you couldn’t do anything about it because “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech…”

I think guns are a plague in American culture and I think we need to have a reasonable regulations to stop the murders that are taking place. I’d like to talk to people who support gun rights and come up with some regulations that all sides could support.

April 19, 2007 @ 8:24 am | Comment

Well. Most people here really care about the victims. Regard to issue related to China, lots of people criticizes China here. I can believe many comments come from good intentions. However, there is always particular someone behaving like a sick maniac.

April 19, 2007 @ 9:16 am | Comment

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-04/19/content_853832.htm

I knew we could rely on CD to turn this into a personal insult to Chinese people everywhere. They do love to manipulate that chip on their shoulder – and any tragedy will do for the purpose.

They, and their paymasters, are utterly pathetic. That includes you, ferins – just another rank ‘n file party hack with a blinkered agenda.

April 19, 2007 @ 10:36 am | Comment

an armed society is a safe society.

Does this apply to Mogadishu or Baghdad?

I don’t think anyone actually experienced schadenfreude upon learning the false rumours.

Do you know Matt Parkman? 🙂

April 19, 2007 @ 10:51 am | Comment

“Nah, it won’t. Because of the general ignorance about Korea and Asia in the US. I can see the headlines: DOES CONFUCIAN CULTURE MAKE YOU TIGHTLY WOUND? KIMCHI AND VIOLENCE: NEW LINKS DEMONSTRATED.
“

I hope you were being facetious, Michael. The US media has made mention of his nationality but no cultural connections. It is clear from the evidence that the man was mentally unstable.

It is tempting to demonize the shooter and wish him a long stay in Hell, but after watching the video he made on Yahoo, it is evident that he was deeply disturbed and seems to have been unstable for awhile, judging from eyewitness accounts of erratic behavior. Mental illness is a sickness, just like cancer or pneumonia. The man was not rational. I pray that his troubled soul rests in peace, too.

April 19, 2007 @ 11:15 am | Comment

I just saw the videos an am truly in shock. As sick as a person could ever be.

Nanhey, I’ve got to ask you to tone down the China bashing. Express your opinion, but please, don’t give people ammunition to call this a hate site. It is not, but some of your comments could be construed to make it seem otherwise, and I have to ask you to consider this. Thanks

April 19, 2007 @ 11:26 am | Comment

Ferins:
I dislike malkin, coulter, etc. as much or more…

But I don’t think you should be so quick to use words like “whore” to insult them. That is really stooping to their level. What is the point of it? I don’t use “whore” to insult anybody. And what does that say to someone who is the real thing? Are they bad people? That kind of insult: “slut,” “whore,” is meaningless.

It’s different if I say, “Well, I just started working for an advertising firm. And I’m a real corporate whore for them, day in and day out.”

Saying, in just one sentence that Malkin, Coulter, etc. are “whores,” is kind of trolling, isn’t it? It would be wonderful if everyone could say something meaningful. We all have our base instincts. Maybe in private arguments, we all say things we don’t want to, like calling our friend, partner, etc. a***ole, b**ch, etc. But we try to avoid it as much as possible, and regret it afterwards. I don’t like Malkin, but wouldn’t it be great if she had a change of heart in her life, and became less villainous in words and intent? I want us all to give her and anybody else leeway for such redemption.

Maybe giving leeway to people to redemption would prevent unstable people from blaming our peers, society, etc. We are all responsible. I think the shooter realized he was responsible, too. After all, why is it that all these berserkers, like Marc Lepine, Kimveer Gill, and Cho Seung-hui all killed themselves after doing their act? Cowardice? Yes, maybe that, too. But it takes courage to kill yourself. And I believe it is probably easier (I don’t know, I didn’t do such things, and I wouldn’t, but I am speaking intuitively) to kill others before doing it to yourself.

It is sad that the perpetrators was kicked out of a poetry professor’s class. I was reading Al Jazeera’s report on this incident, and Nikki Giovanni said she had to kick him out because he was taking pictures of students and writing “violent, obscene poetry.” I assume he was being directly threatening, naming names, bullying, invasive, etc. to warrant being kicked out of class.

If he involved his alienation-fuelled and rejection-fuelled rage in creative forms that actually transcending direct violence and intent, then he could have helped himself and others cope with a troubling world. Instead, he made himself part of the problem. I guess he wasn’t a smart enough person. After all, he bought the guns (knowing, in some sense, his mind was so unstable), and he went irredeemably berserk.

April 19, 2007 @ 12:31 pm | Comment

nanheyangrouchuan, you are an arsehole and a shit bag. that is about the politest thing I can say to you after reading your posts here and seeing how you desperately tried to turn tragedy into justification of your petty and tiresome racism.

I don’t for a second think PD is disappointed that the killer was not Chinese, but it is clear that you are.

Unlucky, but I am sure you will find some other unrelated event that will add fuel to your childish rants that infiltrate so many China-based forums. Like the previous person said, you are little better than Cho Seung-hui and I am surprised Richard has put up with you for so long.

April 19, 2007 @ 12:54 pm | Comment

Why do the media keep showing that sick video?! It will just prompt more copy cat violence (Let’s see if I can top Cho by killing more than 33 people and make myself famous). It is so dangerous. We are about 8 years removed from Columbine and I bet eight years from now there will be an even worse mass killing in the states. I hope I am wrong but I just have this ominous feeling.

April 19, 2007 @ 1:48 pm | Comment

i think malkin, coulter, and schlussel are hopeless. they will be spewing vapid garbage until the day they keel over; even if they have a change of heart (or whatever organ far-right nutjobs have in its place) they’ll still vomit and screech dumb rhetoric all over the media because there will still be morons who buy their crap.

April 19, 2007 @ 3:46 pm | Comment

Thoth, I have no trouble with anyone calling Malkin a whore. Ann Coulter not so much, because I don’t think she’s serious – she is pure entertainment. Malkin is far the more insidious and dangerous of the two. I don’t call her a “whore” myself because I know when we use incendiary language like that it can come back to bite us. But that doesn’t mean the shoe doesn’t fit.

Okay, I hope we can get back on topic.

April 19, 2007 @ 4:09 pm | Comment

A very sad story. One reporter told about the heartbreaking moment when all the cellphones of the dead students started ringing. What hell those parents must be going through!

I want to say some words concerning the weapon issue. First of all, gun control doesn’t prevent such tragedies from happening totally. We had a similar case here in Germany and to get your hands on a gun here is quite difficult. Strict gun control can prevent some of such cases but if the guy is really determined to do it he will manage to do it.

On the other hand do I think that the claim that an armed society is a safe society is nonsense. Germany at the end of the 10s, and in the 20es was an armed society. The result was sort of civil war. Guns don’t make a society safe but laws and a state which is able to enforce them.

Guns are an escalation. And unfortunately in the US the genie seems to be out of the bottle, as Richard said. If you expect a gun you get yourself a gun too. If you expect a knife … and if you expect no weapon … well, nobody I know in Germany ever talked about getting a gun because he feels insecure. Some girls perhaps have pepper spray. But that’s as far as it gets. They are the most heavily armed individuals in the neighborhood.

April 19, 2007 @ 5:24 pm | Comment

“they’ll still vomit and screech dumb rhetoric all over the media because there will still be morons who buy their crap.”

This is also the conclusion reached by all enlightened individuals after a cursory glance at China Daily or tuning in to CCTV.

April 19, 2007 @ 6:21 pm | Comment

People here need to read some of the quotes from our founding fathers about guns and the ownership thereof.

George Washington: “Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the
people’s liberty teeth (and) keystone… the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable… more than
99% of them [guns] by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very
atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference [crime]. When firearms go, all goes,
we need them every hour.” (Address to 1st session of Congress

George Washington: “A free people ought to be armed.” (Jan 14 1790, Boston Independent
Chronicle

George Mason: “I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.” (Elliott,
Debates, 425-426

Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (Nov 11 1755, from the Pennsylvania Assembly’s reply to
the Governor of Pennsylvania)

John Adams: “Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self
defense.” (A defense of the Constitution of the US

George Mason: “To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them.” (3 Elliot,
Debates at 380)

Thomas Jefferson: “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” (T. Jefferson papers,
334, C.J. Boyd, Ed. 1950)

Most police officers who are not in a political desk type job support gun ownership. It is the political pencil pusher that supports a ban.

Other famous people’s quotes on guns

Sigmund Freud: “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”
(“General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,” S. Freud

Mahatma Gandhi: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the
act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.” (“Gandhi, an Autobiography,” M.K. Gandhi,
446)

Mao Tse Tung: “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must
command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.” (Problems of
War and Strategy, Nov 6 1938, published in “Selected Works of Mao Zedong,” 1965)

Bill Clinton: (US President, has sworn an oath to defend the US Constitution, “When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical
Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was
assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly…When personal freedom is
being abused, you have to move to limit it.” (April 19 1994, on MTV)

Thomas Jefferson: “On every occasion…[of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves
back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates,
and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it,
[instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” (June 12 1823, Letter to
William Johnson)

April 19, 2007 @ 10:32 pm | Comment

Yes, guns are the answer to everything. If you fear guns something is wrong with you. Jefferson would have been thrilled to see how Americans are armed to the teeth, and how many people die from handguns each year. Each day. Guns. What would America be without them?

April 19, 2007 @ 10:38 pm | Comment

Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (Nov 11 1755, from the Pennsylvania Assembly’s reply to
the Governor of Pennsylvania)

I just want to note one thing about this quote. The gun crowd loves to trot this quote out when the issue of gun control comes up, yet when the word “terrorism” comes up, many of the same people rush to shred the other nine amendments and promote unbound and unchecked government power.

On those days their favorite quote is: “You have no civil rights when you are dead.” For some reason, I don’t think Franklin was only referring to the second amendment.

I should also note that some on the Left who (rightly) deride the “no civil rights when you are dead” meme, suddenly adopt a similar position when the subject of gun control arises.

April 19, 2007 @ 11:33 pm | Comment

Mike:

“Unlucky, but I am sure you will find some other unrelated event that will add fuel to your childish rants that infiltrate so many China-based forums. Like the previous person said, you are little better than Cho Seung-hui and I am surprised Richard has put up with you for so long.”

Your words mean nothing after the blog posting about the celebration that went on inside of Xinhua after they found out that the shooter was not Chinese.

So who are the real racists?

April 20, 2007 @ 1:03 am | Comment

“Your words mean nothing after the blog posting about the celebration that went on inside of Xinhua after they found out that the shooter was not Chinese.

So who are the real racists?”

right, if you act like a complete moron you’re vindicated when someone else does the same.

thanks for the wisdom.

April 20, 2007 @ 3:55 am | Comment

@Bert

Could you explain those quotes? What exactly is the connection between regulating gun ownership and the loss of our rights? The founding fathers also thought that a standing army was dangerous to our rights. Do you think that we should therefore disband the army? I like to see you expand on these points.

April 20, 2007 @ 8:48 am | Comment

“Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (Nov 11 1755, from the Pennsylvania Assembly’s reply to the Governor of Pennsylvania)

I just want to note one thing about this quote. The gun crowd loves to trot this quote out when the issue of gun control comes up, yet when the word “terrorism” comes up…”

And the Left loves to trot it in regards to freedom in the U.S. but not in Iraq where civilians were “better off under Saddam”.

I’ve rarely seen that quote applied consistently.

April 20, 2007 @ 9:13 am | Comment

This was to well planned and “executed” to have been a Chinese. Maybe in 20 years a Chinese could pull this kinda thing off.

April 20, 2007 @ 10:11 am | Comment

Too…

April 20, 2007 @ 10:15 am | Comment

he wasn’t culturally Korean. they aren’t gun obsessed primitives there.

April 20, 2007 @ 10:25 am | Comment

I lived in L.A. back in the early nineties and Koreans seemed to have a very good understanding of the power of a gun. The Chinese have a more easily accessible understanding of poisons. Dead is dead.

April 20, 2007 @ 10:44 am | Comment

I lived in L.A. back in the early nineties and Koreans seemed to have a very good understanding of the power of a gun. The Chinese have a more easily accessible understanding of poisons. Dead is dead.

April 20, 2007 @ 10:47 am | Comment

And Ferins…We are not ALL the same..unlike China. Many, many people are against the gun culture here. I, personally, have never hung out with a person who speaks about owning a gun. It’s a very diverse country. Sometimes it’s too complex. Nevertheless, there are psychos in every country. We seem to host a good amount of them because we have everyone in the world here. I was raised in NYC and I have seen one shooting in my life..

April 20, 2007 @ 11:03 am | Comment

Bert

Let me just relate something of our experience in Singapore/Malaysia We may have the strictest gun control laws in the world where if an individual is caught with any form of fire arm other than authourised personnel for eg police and army it is an offence which carries with it a mandatory death sentence. Even a bullet is deemed to be a firearm. It is a draconian law. The presumption is that if no other civilain are carrying fire arms and if you are caught doing so it you must be upto mischief.
Despite that we are still a working democracy( elections are held and the people do have their voice heard) and we are not surpressed by the army or others.

So the need for private guns ownership to guarantee ones freedoms is not 100% true for all countries.

Morever, I donot need to have to worry that a gun man may come up to my daughters school and have a shoot out. We donot need guns to feel free as no one else other than the police and a few authorised personnel have it. The gun discipline amongst the police here have been the best.

Historically in the USA , I understand why guns were important to your founding fathers but times have changed and you have enough institutions in place to guarantee your freedoms than the need for guns in your hands.

The firearm casualty/deaths of 30,000 to 40,000 per year in USA is the strongest statistic against careless gun ownership laws.
I appreciate the fact that eradicating guns and fire arms are not possible now or if ever in USA but very strict gun ownership regulations than a 10 minutes background check is needed. Otherwise every few years and even very year thousands of needless deaths is the consequence. Plus stricter laws is needed of illegal possesion of fire arms.

April 20, 2007 @ 11:14 am | Comment

Bert

Let me just relate something of our experience in Singapore/Malaysia We may have the strictest gun control laws in the world where if an individual is caught with any form of fire arm other than authourised personnel for eg police and army it is an offence which carries with it a mandatory death sentence. Even a bullet is deemed to be a firearm. It is a draconian law. The presumption is that if no other civilain are carrying fire arms and if you are caught doing so it you must be upto mischief.
Despite that we are still a working democracy( elections are held and the people do have their voice heard) and we are not surpressed by the army or others.

So the need for private guns ownership to guarantee ones freedoms is not 100% true for all countries.

Morever, I donot need to have to worry that a gun man may come up to my daughters school and have a shoot out. We donot need guns to feel free as no one else other than the police and a few authorised personnel have it. The gun discipline amongst the police here have been the best.

Historically in the USA , I understand why guns were important to your founding fathers but times have changed and you have enough institutions in place to guarantee your freedoms than the need for guns in your hands.

The firearm casualty/deaths of 30,000 to 40,000 per year in USA is the strongest statistic against careless gun ownership laws.
I appreciate the fact that eradicating guns and fire arms are not possible now or if ever in USA but very strict gun ownership regulations than a 10 minutes background check is needed. Otherwise every few years and even very year thousands of needless deaths is the consequence. Plus stricter laws is needed of illegal possesion of fire arms.

April 20, 2007 @ 11:14 am | Comment

Dave, do you think our exercise in Iraq is a good thing?

Ting Bu Dong and others, please don’t insult the people of China. I won’t tolerate it.

April 20, 2007 @ 11:32 am | Comment

The Chinese have a more easily accessible understanding of poisons.

Yes, Fu Manchu was our master. We may look like unassuming computer geeks and mathletes on the outside, but really we are all skilled in the secret art of extracting venom from scorpions and marinating them with eyes of newt. Mwahahahaha. *twirls thin, rat-like mustache*

April 20, 2007 @ 12:25 pm | Comment

Naw,the Chinese have no guns so..they use poisons!!!! are you that paranoid? thats just the easier option. Proven deadly. NOT a racist thing at all. Just a fact. You guys are really really weird about “Race”. Maybe its your problem.

April 20, 2007 @ 12:31 pm | Comment

My point was that every society has crazy folks and these crazy people do things in there own way. Like guns or poison or knives. Thats it.In America we off people en masse by guns …in China with poison. How is that a racist statement?

April 20, 2007 @ 12:38 pm | Comment

Dude, did I call you racist? No. If you look through the thread, you’ll see I’ve been trying to direct attention away from discussions of race or nationality all along. I’m just tired of being painted in broad brushstrokes.

If I misunderstood you, I apologize. This thread has raised my hackles because it seems like it has descended into a juvenile name-calling contest (“You’re a racist! No, you’re a racist! Everybody’s a little racist!”).

April 20, 2007 @ 12:53 pm | Comment

Please try to see this from my perspective. Multiple times certain parties have tried to paint this as a racist site, an equivalent of Little Green Footballs with focus on Chinese instead of Muslims. Of course, that is insane – I chose to live in China and work with Chinese and make China a major part of my life. Can you imagine Charles Johnson going to live and work in Syria? Anyway…

So I am acutely sensitive to material people can use to portray my little blog as “anti-China,” and lately they’ve had plenty to choose from, which makes me very unhappy. Whenever someone applies blanket statements – the Chinese are devious, the Chinese lie and steal, the Chinese are hateful – I cringe. The who reason this site exists is because I hated to see wonderful people in China being oppressed. If you want to post random attacks on the Chinese, there are other places to go. So please respect my simple request: don’t leave this site prone to charges of racism. Don’t slam the Chinese people with blanket epithets. Thank you.

April 20, 2007 @ 1:03 pm | Comment

I wear that blanket every day BUT. I know it. You should know it too. It;s NOT racist .it’s a cultural thing. Whats the difference?Richard..I’m not trying to be..difficult here but cultural differences are very fucked up.

April 20, 2007 @ 1:20 pm | Comment

“times have changed”

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

@flabbergasted

Good for Singapore/Malaysia

I never said that every country should be like the U.S. But people should have the attitude of protecting themselves and family and not have the idea that the society will do it for you everytime. I don’t want everyone walking around with a gun in the U.S. I don’t want people to be paranoid. This is a bigger problem than guns.

“The firearm casualty/deaths of 30,000 to 40,000 per year in USA is the strongest statistic against careless gun ownership laws.”

Not trying to be a smarty but can I have the link to this info?

@kenzhu

Post some quotes by well known individuals against gun ownership. I am not against reading such things. I am not bothered by them. I don’t need them to be explained. I posted the quotes, they explain themselves. You are asking me to explain something you already know. Do you really think that armed citizens in some places doesn’t limit the power of the government? I am not trying promoting paranoia.

Richard I AM NOT saying guns are the answer to everything. You stated that the founding fathers would have changed some things, “certainly handguns and assault rifles”. What did they intend? Hunting rifles only? The second amendment isn’t about hunting at all. But we could go on about this until the cows come home. It is about responsibilty and sadly we have traded in our responsibilties.

April 20, 2007 @ 1:23 pm | Comment

Bert, no amount of discussion will ever move a gun nut. I learned that long ago. You can believe we’d all be safer if we were armed to the teeth (though the police, mystifyingly enough, are dead set against such an option – maybe they know how many murders are committed by enraged domestic partners); you also believed in the Iraq War, if I remember our old arguments a year or two ago. No hope.

April 20, 2007 @ 1:41 pm | Comment

TBD, it’s really simple. You can point out cultural differences, crimes of individuals or the government, but you can’t come on this site and say “everyone knows the Chinese are hateful people.” I want that to be clear to everyone.

April 20, 2007 @ 1:42 pm | Comment

Forgot to mention – Ting Bu Dong, I referenced Fu Manchu because he was the only Chinese I could think of off the top of my head who had an intimate knowledge of poisons (in book lore anyway.) Your comment caught me off-guard (since most Chinese criminals use illegally-purchased guns or common knives, not poisons) and I took it the wrong way. Let’s put it down to crossed signals and call it a night. Oy.

April 20, 2007 @ 1:48 pm | Comment

nanheyangrouchuan: I read the same post. It read to me like relief rather than celebration. Relief that is quite understandable given the context (Xinhua).

And how do you even know that the blog post was true/accurate? Seems to me that you spend a lot of time on the internet spreading rumour rather than fact. You have been shown up time and time again (see Danwei and the China-Russia in Mongolia hearsay). Mostly, it is harmless, but on this thread your fetish with Chinese men’s fear of the white man’s cock was seriously misplaced. You dropped the ball (again). Yesterday I had a lot of anger with you. Today I have little more than indifference.

April 20, 2007 @ 1:58 pm | Comment

“And Ferins…We are not ALL the same..unlike China. Many, many people are against the gun culture here. I, personally, have never hung out with a person who speaks about owning a gun. It’s a very diverse country. Sometimes it’s too complex. Nevertheless, there are psychos in every country. We seem to host a good amount of them because we have everyone in the world here. I was raised in NYC and I have seen one shooting in my life..”

I lived in America for most of my life myself, and I was born here. And I’m not necessarily against gun ownership because I don’t know the statistics (outside of 69% of homicides being gun related and 17k homicides a year) and I doubt that banning them outright would really do anything.

One thing’s for sure though, they definitely should not let really crazy people buy guns. Like Laurie Dann, that Purdy guy who shot a several SE Asian refugee children to death, and the Luby’s Massacre man..

They had crazy written all over them.

But on that other topic, murders are pretty rare in China on a per capita basis, aren’t they?

April 20, 2007 @ 3:30 pm | Comment

“But on that other topic, murders are pretty rare in China on a per capita basis, aren’t they?”

Depends whether or not you want to throw in the persecuted minorities and the thousands of annual victims of capital punishment. Sounds like murder to me.

April 20, 2007 @ 6:35 pm | Comment

Shame on you, Chicago Suntimes!

You have reported a sensitive and critical news without validation of the source and its accuracy about the suspect! Also,
the headline you may think humor, but actually light-hearted.

Today, when the background of the suspect is much clearer, your news sound like a joke.

April 21, 2007 @ 1:35 am | Comment

Shame on you, Chicago Suntimes!

You have reported a sensitive and critical news without validation of the source and its accuracy about the suspect! Also,
the headline you may think humor, but actually light-hearted.

Today, when the background of the suspect is much clearer, your news sound like a joke.

April 21, 2007 @ 1:36 am | Comment

“right, if you act like a complete moron you’re vindicated when someone else does the same.”

You should appreciate the fact that I vindicated you.

“But on that other topic, murders are pretty rare in China on a per capita basis, aren’t they?”

Why don’t you go find us some nice, reliable Chinese statistics? And try to confirm if those statistics include mass poisonings of school lunches or knife wielding lunatics tearing through a preschool.

Richard: Any site that criticizes the Chinese gov’t or the social condition of China gets labled “racist”. Even Chinese returnees who criticize China are labled “racists” and I’ve even heard of chinese “uncle toms”

April 21, 2007 @ 1:42 am | Comment

@stuart
let’s try to keep the spin down to a minimum please. which minorities are you referring to? as far as i know, chinese law gives preferential treatment to its minorities （no, don’t construe that to mean that they prefer to kill them more). as far as capital punishment goes, while i am no fan of it and china’s justice system is admittedly miserable, it is what it is – punishment.

one final note: i’ve never lived in china for an extended period of time (since immigrating to the states when i was 3), but many of my friends who have studied abroad in china have told me that despite rampant petty theft, they’ve never feared for their life.

April 21, 2007 @ 3:39 am | Comment

(continued from that last thought above)
…never feared for their life regardless of the time of day or location. that is not categorically true of the states (e.g. east palo alto, richmond, philly, nyc, etc)

April 21, 2007 @ 3:43 am | Comment

i’m pretty sure china executes about 10,000 people a year, according to U.S media.

April 21, 2007 @ 4:18 am | Comment

@sox4life

“let’s try to keep the spin down to a minimum please…as far as i know, chinese law gives preferential treatment to its minorities”

Now THAT’S spin, pure and simple.

Tibetans and Uigyars: marginalisd, persecuted, oppressed, murdered. Is that preferential?

Sometimes murder occurs on a mass basis and comes with government approval. But it’s still murder.

April 21, 2007 @ 9:43 am | Comment

@nanheyangrouchuan

Not every site, mind you. Nobody here is calling Richard’s site racist–merely calling YOU racist.

Of course, I’m going to reserve judgment until later. But after dealing with unhinged individuals like pigsun and Ivan, I have to say you’re coming pretty close.

April 21, 2007 @ 10:30 am | Comment

“gun nut” “armed to the teeth” “believed in the Iraq war”

I was not trying to make you a villian.

Most on the beat police officers don’t support gun bans. Anyway terrible events are news worthy. If anyone protects life, it’s not newsworthy. Gun control supporters never want to report successful gun uses.

April 21, 2007 @ 11:51 am | Comment

@stuart
i hate to sound like a ccp lackey, which i am not – any of my friends with whom i’ve discussed china would characterize me as player-hater (ccp being, albeit questionably, the player in this somewhat botched analogy) more than anything else – but you named 2 out of 54 officially recognized chinese minorities to try and prove me wrong. i’m not convinced. admittedly, the ccp has struck down secession attempts rather brutally, but the laws in the books DO give strong preferential treatment to ethnic minorities in china and they are well-implemented for the most part:

1) exemption from one-child policy
2) well-represented in npc
3) preferential economic development in regions inhabited by ethnic minorities
4) ethnic minority autonomous regions
5) religious freedom (to a degree) in these autonomous regions

April 21, 2007 @ 12:25 pm | Comment

one more thing…tibet has strong secessionist elements and i sympathize with them on a certain level, but many tibetans are also tremendously grateful for what the ccp has done to improve their quality of life. no, this is not some propagandist bs i picked up through some tightly regulated chinese media outlet. a friend of mine at peking university, whom i met while teaching english in china last summer spent extensive time (two consecutive summers) in northern tibet with fellow communications students interviewing and speaking with locals. the responses were genuine. these were college students, so i don’t buy the compliance-by-intimidation argument here.

April 21, 2007 @ 12:37 pm | Comment

“Tibetans and Uigyars: marginalisd, persecuted, oppressed, murdered. Is that preferential? ”

Guess there is always some fundemantal difference in our opinions about this issue.

Let me briefly say something that somebody might not like. Before 1950, Tibet is still in slavery system. Dalai Lama was the biggest slave lord in that area. Isn’t it ironic that they named a slave lord to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner?

Uigyars. Lets just say they kind of have some privilege in China-usually police dare not touch them, unless they have a facny name: terrorist.

For those who don’t believe above arguments, you can search google by “slavery” and “Tibet” for first one. For second one, just ask around, probably everyone can tell you some stories about it.

April 21, 2007 @ 12:44 pm | Comment

Normally speaking, if your relative or friend went on a shooting rampage, I’d probably try to downplay it as much as I could when breaking the news to you. If it were some random stranger off the street who did it, I wouldn’t be nearly as considerate. I thought this would be common sense. No?

I don’t know if such a way of thinking is strictly Oriental, but at least in China and Japan, what you do outside of your smaller group is generally considered to reflect upon your group. For example, if you saw a Chinese shoot someone, you might say “all Chinese people are…” etc. Oh wait, that’s already happening a lot on the Internet, isn’t it?

Well, that should make the explanation easier, methinks. It was a horrible thing that had happened. Reporting bad news is always unpleasant, even if it’s the media’s job to report them. If it had been a Chinese who had done it, it would have been at least doubly as bad to report, for the same reason that the gunman’s nationality made so many Koreans very upset. Hence the original plan of downplaying it. Hence the relief when they found out it wasn’t a Chinese. Being somewhat relieved, however, in no way changes bad news into good news, much less news worth being giddy or smirky over.

Right now, people all over the world are sending their condolences and regrets and sympathies this way, regardless of race, nationality, or political orientation. And they will continue to do so for at least some time to come. Would it really hurt to drop politics and bigotry for a moment?

April 21, 2007 @ 1:14 pm | Comment

“Before 1950, Tibet is still in slavery system. Dalai Lama was the biggest slave lord in that area. Isn’t it ironic that they named a slave lord to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner?”

And Tibetans are free to do what? Do the bidding of their new masters in Beijing. What do you see Tibetans doing in cities outside of Tibet? selling wares and shining shoes.

“Uigyars. Lets just say they kind of have some privilege in China-usually police dare not touch them, unless they have a facny name: terrorist.”

Like the Gulja Massacre.

April 21, 2007 @ 1:28 pm | Comment

Right…about ethnic minorities…

AFAIK, many of the han ethnic group would take any and every chance they could get to be registered as a minority.

Other than the benefits named above, one major benefit is preferential treatment for education. Kind of like affirmative action, except this is in the context of China, where you’ve got so many students trying to get into the best universities and the resulting competition is so merciless that there would be suicides and development of severe mental illnesses over it. Depending on your ethnic minority group, your required “point line” on the national exam to get into the best universities could be tens of points lower–at a time when a 0.1 point difference means you either give up for life or get maybe another chance next year. In the second case, it’s after another year of pure study hell, where ramen is considered to be normal, and eggs nutritious. Mmm, sugar water.

At any rate, most ethnic minorities, you can’t even tell. I saw a post somewhere once by someone who was upset about the “reverse discrimination,” and he said something like “Until you stood up and said you were a minority, I always thought you were just another classmate. I still think you are just another classmate. Do you want to be treated differently?”

As for the Uigyars…their current most popular image in the streets of China, literally, is that of thief mobs. Basically, they send out the children to steal your wallets. And if you try to resist or catch the kids, a group of young men would come up to you and beat you up. Yes, the very bloody kind of beating up. And the police usually have their hands tied about this, because they can’t be seen as being prejudiced against minorities. Most recently I think, in some cities where they really had enough of this, some police would go on their patrols under cover, so they could try to reverse-beat the thiefs out of their cities. Being sensitive about being accused of ethnic discrimination doesn’t get much worse than this, IMHO.

But if you happen to be one of those people for whom when it comes to political discussions, any accusation goes, forget I said anything.

April 21, 2007 @ 1:47 pm | Comment

@Moo

I do agree that non-Han get preferential treatment but I think the problem is that the Tibetans and Uigyars believe that there culture is being destroyed by Han immigrants and they don’t have any say in the matter because the Han government is in charge.

On another note, I think there maybe more murders in China per capita then in the US. I asked a group of seven students how many of them knew someone who had been murders. Three told me that they had. This is unscientific but I feel that that proportion is higher that it would be in the US.

April 21, 2007 @ 2:13 pm | Comment

Sigh. And they built this giant road into Tibet, too. Now it’s not just going be the culture, but the environment, as well. The holy mountains laced with tourist garbage. What a thought. If anyone wants to go visit, make sure to take lots of pictures now. I’ve seen some images from over there and they are purely and shockingly beautiful.

Traditional Chinese culture has also been largely destroyed by westernization (not to mention the Cultural Revolution, grr). Loss of ethnic culture, even entire languages, have also occurred in other ethnic groups. All in the name of modernization and progress. Sigh. This is partly why cultural preservation/restoration is a topic of high interest to many people in China. The Tibetans and Uigyars are not alone in this. They just have politicians who are better at squeezing sympathy out of the rest of the world. From whatever literatures I’ve read on the subject matter, the slavery system in Tibet was pretty bad, and the monks were also not all that holy, either. Ahh, the wonderful thing called power.

Officially there’s no religion in China. Behind closed doors and now even out in the open, plenty people practice things like Buddhism. Some Christianity, too. The rules still say no religion, but Chinese families have always been pretty good at keeping what’s behind doors, behind doors (children are not told certain things until they are old enough to understand). As long as you don’t go out and try to start a cult and trick other people’s money into your own pockets, nobody cares. Personally, I read a lot, and after reading a lot, I decided to be an Agnostic. If you think about it, it’s not like Atheists can prove higher powers *don’t* exist, either. Since I don’t know, I won’t pretend to know. So off-topic.

April 21, 2007 @ 3:01 pm | Comment

t-co wrote:

” Nobody here is calling Richard’s site racist–merely calling YOU racist.
…Of course, I’m going to reserve judgment until later. But after dealing with unhinged individuals like pigsun and Ivan…”

Well. I have not commented on this site for FOUR MONTHS! I promised to stay away from TPD, and I have kept that promise within the bounds of honour. But one of my friends drew this evil, lying, defamatory comment to my attention, and so, now I am going to break my vow of silence and respond to it, for my own sake as well as for Richard’s, because THIS kind of bloody EVIL, LYING, DISHONOURABLE SHIT that t-co wrote, deserves a response from me, for the sake of my honour (or, even for the honour of my internet moniker) and – even though I have grave disagreements with Richard – for Richard’s honour too:

t-co, you filthy sack of lying shit, how DARE you, how DARE you resurrect my ghost from the TPD grave – after my ghost had been resting in peace without any disturbance for FOUR MONTHS – t-co, you SHAMELESS, EVIL little sack of Communist shit, how DARE you bring up the memory of ME, as a way to attack Richard and his site!

Good GOD, man, t-co, after I have been GONE for four months, how DARE you, t-co, how DARE you be so bloody SHAMELESS, to bring my memory up again, just as a cheap way to attack Richard and his forum!

T-co, have you NO SHAME? Have you NO SENSE OF DECENCY?

T-co, please tell us, what OTHER ghosts, what OTHER dead bodies will you dig up, just to take cheap shots?

As for your calling me “unhinged”, well, t-co (and everyone else), just look at the record. I have kept my promise to remain silent on this site, for four months. That is not how an “unhinged” man behaves.

But when I am summoned from the dead, by a shameless whore who just wants to make cheap shots at former friends of mine, then, yes, I will unhinge myself just for a moment, to throw barrels of shame onto t-co who has NO sense of shame or decency at all.

I have been gone for four months, but t-co’s bloody SHAMELESS, INDECENT way of summoning me back from the dead, has persuaded me to come back as a ghost, just for one moment, to tell t-co, “HAVE YOU NO SHAME!?

Here endeth the lesson. I will return to my quiet grave – where I am very happy and prosperous now, outside of China and with a new blue-chip job in which China will always be marginal to my work. However, even though I have had my disagreements with Richard, I will NOT countenance any shameless whores like t-co using my memory to harm Richard, or to make any cheap points for his own venal and amoral ambitions as a cowering slave to China’s Propaganda Ministry.

Now Ivan’s ghost returns to the dead. Please let me rest in peace.

April 21, 2007 @ 9:47 pm | Comment

If their culture is to keep slavery system and worship slave lords, I think that CCP did a good thing to destroy that kind of culture.

If blowing up a bus and training under Al-Qaeda are not qualified as terrorism, I don’t know what they are. So save it nanheyangrouchuan.

April 22, 2007 @ 12:31 am | Comment

kenzhou,

If their culture is not very compatible with modern life, isn’t it nice to change it a little bit? just like what the western culture did to other culture.

April 22, 2007 @ 1:49 am | Comment

I think people should be allowed to choose how to live their lives. If a person wants to choose spiritual purity and traditional ways of life over modern conveniences, he/she should be allowed to do so.

However, unlike in the US, where all that person has to do is find a mountain forest or piece of desert somewhere and can thusly live undisturbed (except maybe for the IRS), in China, where there’s too many people to spread over the landscape, what can you do? Also, even without the han “immigrants (can you use this word to describe moving from one place to another in the same country…?),” many members of the minority groups also want modern conveniences without having to leave their land of birth. If the majority of your own ethnic group chooses modernization over the traditional ways of life, what do you do? What can you do?

There is beauty in many traditions. While long flowing robes or garments with complex patterns and colors and materials may not be as convenient for daily work as T-shirts and jeans, it would still be a shame to just let them disappear. It would be nice if tradition could co-exist with modernization, especially the arts.

In the cities nowadays, some traditions have come back in the form of entertainment or luxury, such as shops where they perform tea ceremonies. When people’s bellies are full and wallets are not empty, they can take some time to enjoy the past, I guess.

Whether “progress” is a good thing…well, average life expectancy nowadays is much longer than the old days, but there’s also a lot more violence and hurt and distrust among people. China is changing, fast, and I don’t think this change can just be painted black or white. As long as there are still people who believe in honesty, hard work, and kindness to others, there is still hope yet.

Politics? Hardly anyone in China cares. I doubt even the CCP cares. As long as they are in power, what’s Communism but a name? Considering their practices, I’d rather just call them “the Ruling Party.” I mean, those young people chosen to become party members, at the grassroots level, are usually the best and the brightest (how they grow and change is anyone’s guess…). While many officials are corrupt and incompetent monsters that should be shot (and some are being shot, due to the occasional cleansing), there are also many who do honestly believe in “for the people” in their day to day work. The prime minister, for example, is widely loved and appreciated for his closeness with the people and his willingness to help the average citizen time and again (although this speaks volumes about what the officials that SHOULD be doing this kind of work are doing).

Having a secondary power to keep members of the CCP in check would be nice, in theory, but if it were put into practice suddenly, I’m not sure what kind of chaos that would bring to a land that historically has had only one ruling voice at any given time, and where the average person is still used to thinking about things in terms of black and white. Education is such a wonderful thing, but most people either don’t get enough, or don’t get as much out of it as they should. In the mean time, the international community and the Internet are doing a pretty decent job at keeping them from doing something too stupid. Thanks, everybody.

To have a stable China, everything has to be done the Chinese way (or at least labelled thus), which means everything takes time. It’s just taking a bit longer than some of us would like. Sigh.

April 22, 2007 @ 4:08 am | Comment