| Author | Message | ||
     Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.0.167 |
I think I believe in demonic possession now.... http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-canada1-2008aug01,0,3890885. story | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
This has been getting a lot of airplay on the news, and is all over the papers here. Gruesome and horrific don't even begin to describe it. Apparently the attack was completely unprovoked and seems to have been unplanned, inasmuch as there's no connection between the two men that's come out (yet). Also getting a lot of airplay, at least in comments on the story, is accusations of cowardice against the other passengers; 'Where are the men in Canada?' asked one American poster on the CBC website (a number of these sorts of comments appear to be emanating from America, oddly enough). A rebuttal came (on the CBC site) from someone who has taught self-defence and disarming tactics to the military and police forces; he said that in the confines of a bus, dealing with someone right at the back with a hunting knife, he wouldn't have attempted to disarm the murderer either, particularly as it was apparent from the start that the victim was past help (the main eyewitness, who was sitting right in front of where it happened, said that by the time he realised what was going on, the victim had been stabbed 6 or 8 times in the chest and throat). Personally, I think it's amazing that they managed to get everyone else off the bus without further injuries, and contained the murderer until police arrived. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.157.91.38 |
What the US papers really mean is "why weren't all the passengers carrying guns?". Hmm. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Blimey. I know here in the UK you get the real hardcore weirdos travelling across the country on National Express buses. Sounds even worse on these Greyhounds... I must admit, I wouldn't tackle a hunting-knife-welding psycho in the confines of a bus. Chances are, you'd get more people killed. Those disrespectful comments sound like stereotypical macho bullshit. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
I agree with you, Zed. It was middle of the night, people were asleep, there were small children on board, the murderer was right at the back of the bus with a whacking great knife, the corridors on those things are only wide enough for one person at a time: if anyone had tried to be a hero, odds are he or she would have ended up dead too. And I can only imagine that if it had happened in the Stated, and people on board had been armed, it all would have been much worse. A bunch of half-asleep people firing at random in the gloom of a bus full of people? The death toll would almost certainly have been higher. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.16.87.169 |
That he "calmly came to the front of the bus to show off the head"... is to desire to impart a message of some kind, through such an act... what, exactly?... Craig's Law: If Sample Y is large enough, you will find all logically-possible variations of Condition X within it. Some people will go suddenly, murderously insane for no reason, attack the person next to them, and then lapse right back into sanity. If this doesn't prove to be that particular situation, it will surely happen somewhere else. Somewhere, someone is "in love" with his jar of peanut-butter, I guarantee you.... Pour enough billions of people into the world, you're going to get all sorts of nut-whacks. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.236.90 |
"Some people will go suddenly, murderously insane for no reason, attack the person next to them, and then lapse right back into sanity." Curious, isn't it? I get the same impression from seeing interviews with John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy or even Jeffrey Dahmer, who are all coherent to a fault - Bundy remarkably so. What can have gotten into them? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants me to take her out, talk to her, be real nice and sweet and treat her right. The other wonders what her head would look like on a stick." -Ed Gein | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.157.91.38 |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7539944.stm It's catching on :-( | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.236.181 |
Is it just me, Mick, or is there something in the way these news reports are written that come off like slapstick comedies?... No, folks, I do not mean the incidents themselves, god forbid - I mean the construction of sentences, elements, word choices, sequencing of events, etc. You'd almost think you were reading a Jack Black comedy script. I expect that last paragraph, about them all being piled into a plane together to go get surgery elsewhere, to be followed by: "Hijinks ensue." | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Craig, to me the utter incompetency of the reportage makes this stuff more chilling. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.157.91.38 |
I agree - it's as if the journalists are saying "ok, I've written this up; next". Craig, you're quite right, it all seems almost inconsequential, even though it's awful and shocking. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.2.107 |
That's exactly what I'm too afraid to contemplate, Zed - that there's utter incompetency in the actual reportage itself. Christ, we torture ourselves over our own work, and like you say, Mick, it's all "Order up! Next!" to these guys. The human condition is folly-fodder, sure - but we could use without help from these guys.... | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.244 |
Other news outlets reported that the greek man beheaded a dog first before going for the girlfriend. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.50.191.46 |
did the news report mention the dead guy was listening to his Ipod? Mmm. Suddenly my view is shifting. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.244 |
Just another brutal image piled on top of the Canadian and Greek carnage this week... | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.244 |
Craig the thing you write about demonic possession is a haunting one. People seem to snap- sometimes seemingly out of the blue. An aqaintance of mine who I'd bummped into, on and off, for the past six years or so, just snapped last week. This is a kid who was working for Amnesty, he'd just gotten his Phd in Philosopy last year, quiet, a really nice guy- never violent as far as I knew. I had a couple of pints with him at this year's Roskilde festival. Out of the blue he completly thrashes a student dorm in the city, breaking windows, the communal kitchen, screaming, witnesses see him breaking windows on the third floor of the building, he slips, falls, dies. He was thirty three. One is shocked and puzzled. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I've thought a lot about this, Karim, and it seems to me that our modern culture breeds this kind of thing. Everybody seems to be running about in a state of repressed rage. We all work in our little offices, communicate on our little computers, and all the time our frustrations are incubating, pressed into an internal cage. Communities no longer exist; as Albie said the other week, our worlds are narrowing down to the inside of our houses. Everyone is a potential enemy. The media focus on this, build it up, and when someone finally snaps, they go off like a human bomb. It's terrifying. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.244 |
It is. The phenomenon of gated communities, and super skyscrapers box people in even more. If you look at new upcoming building projects, super skyscrapers will have people living, working, exercising in the same building. Some of these super structures will also have schools, banks and restaurants in them, meaning that whole communities will never have to leave their blocks. Imagine homeless people walking amongst these buildings with no one on the streets. I was in florida some years back, and as a naive European I went for a walk on foot on some of these pensioners' communities. I was stopped by three different cop cars that wanted to see Id and were asking questions. JG ballard has written extensively and convincingly on this phenomenon of course, and of the inherent rage underlying our modern culture. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
I hate to be (once again) the one saying "This is nothing new", but the Inquisition tortured and murdered something like ten million innocent women in the course of three centuries. One of their favourite intruments of torture was a face clamp that allowed nothing larger than a straw to enter or leave the mouth. This would be tightened over a period of weeks until the woman's face collapsed. The torturers and murderers never faced any kind of trial, and they lived in a society without housing estates, cars or television. If we imagine that the horrors of our age display a new twist in human nature, we are being excessively kind to our ancestors. Rage, hatred, victimisation and cruelty have been pretty much the norm in most societies at most times. How we address that is an urgent question – but blaming modernity is unlikely to help us. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Joel, I blame humanity in general, not simply modernity. We can never change this. Deep at the core of every human being there is...well, nothing. A gap. Violence is just another way to fill that gap. I wish I didn't believe this, but I do. Whenever I look into someone's eyes I see emptiness, potential madness. I wish, instead, I saw a glimmer of hope. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I'm such a happy little bunny, aren't I? :-) | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
"Deep at the core of every human being there is...well, nothing. A gap" Yes you are - such a happy little bunny | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 217.43.29.192 |
Deep at the core of every human being there is...well, nothing. A gap ========= Nemonymity. Nothing to bugle about or burgle. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
If you look deep into anyone's eyes, you'll see the last thing they saw before they died. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.244 |
Brrrr | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.4.159 |
What's fascinating about both these cases, is they managed to actually catch the perpetrators. Maybe we'll get some kind of window into pure madness.... One little "Allah Akhbar" would have been nice.  <--- I know, I know. But when one lacks all reason and context, what's left?... Bad jokes. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
"Doctor! Doctor! My penis hurts!" "OW! you could have warned me earlier!" | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
If either case had happened in the States, the murderers would both be dead, shot either by gun-toting onlookers or the police. I'm sure this would give some sense of reassurance and closure, and probably make the death penalty advocates feel it was a job well done, but we'd never get any answers. We still might not, but at least there's a chance now of having some questions answered by the people involved, rather than the second-hand entrail-examining and pontificating we usually see after these events ('We can't be sure, but it's possible that . . .' or 'We can only conjecture, but . . .' or 'It seems likely that . . .'). | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.239.208 |
A couple of days ago in Lagnieu, France a lovely 11-year old boy called Valentin was killed by a homeless couple who squatted in a nearby church. They stabbed him 44 times. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
More disturbing news... According to the BMJ, the single greatest cause of death in Australian women under 40 is partner abuse. Australia is a relatively under-populated country with a strong emphasis on traditional values. There's really no need to ask what that means. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Ken sorts out barbie... |