Aspies For Freedom

Well, M, I think we can safely assume Broadway will not be his next destination.

Apparently his creative Writing teacher referred him to the college's counselors for psychological help. but no one knows if any action was taken...

A black friend of mine said that the minute she heard about the massacre, her first thought was "Oh, God -- please don't let the killer be black."

The media desperately wants to reassure the world that only "The Other" is capable of such a horrible crime. Yes, they want him to be black (although mass killing and serial killing is an almost exclusively white hobby) or Aspie (although being a loner is an attribute of several other, more potentially violent personality traits) or gay -- and yes, the right-wing media has already started that speculation, even though Cho seemed romantically obsessed with females.

"The fact that the killer was Asian and so am I means nothing too me."

To you? Hmmm... Maybe we were talking about one of the other 6 billion Asians.

I put *cho korean-community* into google and found over 80 headlines about :

Korean community expresses shock, sorrow

S. Korea feels shock and sorrow over shooting

• Korean-Americans Brace for Backlash

Korean community condemns shooting

Local Korean community apologetic, and fearful

Atlanta Korean community: 'How sorry we feel'

Korean Community In Shock After Shooter Identified

etc.

etc.

etc.

Here's an example: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18178194/site/newsweek/

Acebrook, you missed the April 16th noon update...

Welcome to Amerikkka.

My point is that whenever a white psycho kills a couple of dozen people, he is judged as an individual psycho -- no one says "Gee, we need to do something about these damn white people."

But if it's a person of color-- or any other "stigmatized status" -- America eagerly and invariably attributes a good chunk of the monstrousness to the killer's "other" status -- whether it's Korean, black, gay, Aspie, or whatever.

I agree that "the Korean community" has nothing to apologize for. But they know America well enough to know there will be collective blame dumped on all Koreans ...and, by extension, Asians -- of whom we will have a complete and accurate tally as soon as Acebrock completes his head-count.

Former Classmates: Virginia Tech Gunman Was Teased
CBS News Interactive: Blacksburg Massacre


(CBS News) BLACKSBURG, Va. Long before he snapped, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.

Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.

Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, 'Go back to China,'" Davids said.

The high school classmates' accounts add to the psychological portrait that is beginning to take shape, and could shed light on Cho's state of mind in the video rant he mailed to NBC in the middle of his rampage Monday at Virginia Tech.

He shot 32 people to death and committed suicide in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

In the often-incoherent video, the 23-year-old Cho portrays himself as persecuted and rants about rich kids.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, who came to the U.S. in 1992 and whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."

Among the victims of the massacre were two other Westfield High graduates: Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduated from the high school last year. Police said it is not clear whether Cho singled them out.

Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho's graduating class at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school.

"I just remember he was a shy kid who didn't really want to talk to anybody," she said. "I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there was a language barrier."

But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho told her they recalled him getting picked on there.

"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said Wednesday. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."

Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus — Christina Lilick — found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. Lilick went to the same high school as Cho, according to Lilick's Facebook page. Cho once scrawled a question mark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as "the question mark kid."

"I don't know if she knew that it was him for sure," Heck said. "I do remember that that fall that she was being stalked and she had mentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on her door."

Heck added: "She just let us know about it just in case there was a strange person walking around our suite."

Lilick could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.

On Wednesday, NBC received a package containing a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement from Cho, 28 video clips and 43 photos — many of them showing Cho brandishing handguns. A Postal Service time stamp reads 9:01 a.m. — between the two attacks on campus.

The package helped explain one mystery: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," a snarling Cho says on video. "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said Thursday that the material contained little they did not already know. Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast parts of it.

"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.

On NBC's "Today" show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly." Some victims' relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.

"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."

Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.

"What he has shown in this video is he's a psychopath," criminal profiler Pat Brown told CBS' The Early Show.

"He wasn't crazy, because he knew exactly what he was doing," Brown said.

Also, a search of Cho's dorm room and backpack produced eight pages of notes that law enforcement sources characterize as a "suicide note," reported CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

Orr reported the writings found in Cho's dorm "appear to be a manifesto."

"He (Cho) just seemed to hate everybody," a law enforcement official said. The notes, he continued, "are page after page of single-spaced rantings."

This contradicts Tuesday's statement by the Virginia State Police that no suicide note was found.

Earlier in the day, authorities disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho was accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.

The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that appeared well before the student opened fire. Among other things, Cho's twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.

Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.

He refers to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" — a reference to the teenage killers in the Columbine High School massacre.

NBC News President Steve Capus said the package arrived in Tuesday afternoon's mail, but was not opened until Wednesday morning. It was sent by overnight delivery and apparently had the wrong ZIP code, NBC said.

An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath, "Ismail Ax," NBC said.

Capus said that the network notified the FBI around noon, but held off reporting on it at the FBI's request, so that the bureau could look at it first. NBC finally broke the story just before police announced the development at 4:30 p.m.

It was clear Cho videotaped himself, Capus said, because he could be seen leaning in to shut off the camera.

State Police Spokeswoman Corinne Geller cautioned that, while the package was mailed between the two shootings, police have not inspected the footage and have yet to establish exactly when the images were made.

Cho repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.

"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he says, apparently reading from his manifesto. "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."

A law enforcement official said Cho's letter also refers in the same sentence to President Bush and John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed last year to having killed child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media.

Earlier Wednesday, authorities disclosed that in November and December 2005, two women complained to campus police that they had received calls and computer messages from Cho. But the women considered the messages "annoying," not threatening, and neither pressed charges, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.

Neither woman was among the victims in the massacre, police said.

After the second complaint about Cho's behavior, the university obtained a temporary detention order and took Cho away because an acquaintance reported he might be suicidal, authorities said. Police did not identify the acquaintance.

On Dec. 13, 2005, a magistrate ordered Cho to undergo an evaluation at Carilion St. Albans, a private psychiatric hospital. The magistrate signed the order after an initial evaluation found probable cause that Cho was a danger to himself or others as a result of mental illness.

The next day, according to court records, doctors at Carilion conducted further examination and a special justice, Paul M. Barnett, approved outpatient treatment.

A medical examination conducted Dec. 14 reported that that Cho's "affect is flat. ... He denies suicidal ideations. He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment are normal."

The court papers indicate that Barnett checked a box that said Cho "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." Barnett did not check the box that would indicate a danger to others.

It is unclear how long Cho stayed at Carilion, though court papers indicate he was free to leave as of Dec. 14. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Cho had been continually enrolled at Tech and never took a leave of absence.

A spokesman for Carilion St. Albans would not comment.

Though the incidents with the two women did not result in criminal charges, police referred Cho to the university's disciplinary system, Flinchum said. But Ed Spencer, assistant vice president of student affairs, would not comment on any disciplinary proceedings, saying federal law protects students' medical privacy even after death.

Some students refused to second-guess the university.

"Who would've woken up in the morning and said, 'Maybe this student who's just troubled is really going to do something this horrific?"' said Elizabeth Hart, a communications major and a spokeswoman for the student government.

One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho's problems was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her introduction to creative writing class in late 2005.

Students in Giovanni's class had told their professor that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. Female students refused to come to class. She said she considered him "mean" and "a bully."

Lucinda Roy, professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that she, too, relayed her concerns to campus police and various other college units after Cho displayed antisocial behavior in her class and handed in disturbing writing assignments.

But she said authorities "hit a wall" in terms of what they could do "with a student on campus unless he'd made a very overt threat to himself or others." Cho resisted her repeated suggestion that he undergo counseling, Roy said.

Questions lingered over whether campus police should have issued an immediate campus-wide warning of a killer on the loose and locked down the campus after the first burst of gunfire.

Police said that after the first shooting, in which two students were killed, they believed that it was a domestic dispute, and that the gunman had fled the campus. Police went looking for a young man, Karl David Thornhill, who had once shot guns at a firing range with the roommate of one of the victims. But police said Thornhill is no longer under suspicion.

Theosoph, I've done a couple of searches to see if anyone is trying to hang the AS tag on Cho and .... yeah, it has started. This may be the article you referred to:

http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/7101526.html

Virginia Tech Gunman Had Problems As A Child
Report: Va. Tech Shooter Spoke Little As Child

(April 19, 2007)—Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung Hui was "well-behaved" as a child in South Korea, but his parents were worried about his speech problems, his grandfather says.

The 81-year-old man also tells a South Korean newspaper: "How could he have done such a thing if he had any sympathy for his parents?"

Relatives say they've had little contact with Cho's family since they moved to the US in 1992.

His great-aunt, Kim Yang-soon, told the Associated Press that she heard about what Cho had done from her brother, Cho's grandfather.

"My brother came in at about three in the morning, saying 'something big has happened. My daughter's son has shot some people,'" she said.

Kim said Cho was always a quiet boy and when he and his parents moved to the US they were told he was autistic.

She said Cho would not speak to her or his mother.

"Normally sons and mothers talk. There was none of that for them," Kim said.

"He was very cold," she added.

Kim said Cho's mother had told her she was afraid of dying with him during phone calls from the states.

"Every time I called and asked how he was, and she would say she was worried about him.

She said she couldn't die with him, she didn't know what to do," Kim said.

"Cho's father and grandfather worried about that. Who would have known he would cause such trouble, the idiot," she added.

Cho's parents ran a small used-book store in Seoul before they left South Korea.

He and his family arrived in the US in 1992.

He was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., where his parents worked at a dry cleaners.

Cho's family did well enough as cleaners in Centreville, Va. to send both of their children to college.

Their daughter graduated from Princeton, University.

Elly, I think loners and "people who are not sociable" have been targeted since the beginning of time. Homo Sapiens tend to be herd animals, and people who don't have,or don't respond to, that herd mentality have always been the object of witch-hunts, ostracism and suspicion. The Cho Seung Hui will just make it worse -- loners be pointed to -- "See! That's what those weirdos are! That's what they do!" Sad, indeed...

Oh, of course... now here's Psychiatric Expert #286 on CNN saying Cho was a paranoid pyschotic because he was a repressed homosexual.

We definitely need to blame this on the gays, as well as the Aspies and the Koreans.

Now we just need two more experts to claim he is Jewish and Black...

Don't blame autism for Cho's behavior
BY KIRAN KRISHNAMURTHY
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
Saturday, April 21, 2007

Classmates described Seung-Hui Cho as painfully quiet, and a relative overseas said he was diagnosed with autism after arriving in the United States.

But experts say autism does not cause the kind of violent behavior that Cho unleashed at Virginia Tech, killing 32 students and professors, and then himself.

John Bonvillian, a University of Virginia psychologist who studies autism, said Cho might indeed have had Asperger's disorder, a milder variant within the same medical spectrum as autism.

Asperger's symptoms can include the inability to connect socially and extremely awkward behavior - the kind that might attract taunts and ridicule.

But the gunman also might have had paranoid schizophrenia, which can trigger violence.

"Listening to his sorts of rants, you would think more of paranoid schizophrenia," he said. "It's a very rare combination, but it's in the realm of possibility that he had both" paranoid schizophrenia and Asperger's, Bonvillian said yesterday.

Bonvillian and other experts cautioned that it's tough, if not impossible, for them to reach conclusions based only on media reports and the widely seen video segments Cho made.

"He's going to be difficult to figure out because he's no longer with us," said Mary Muscari, author of "Not My Kid: 21 Steps to Raising a Non-Violent Child" and director of forensic health and nursing at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

Muscari agreed Cho could have had Asperger's. "It is kind of a geeky, odd kid who doesn't fit in. He's a target for bullies," she said in generally describing someone with the developmental disorder.

"He had some peculiar behavior," she said of Cho. "Telling people to call him Question Mark, always wearing the sunglasses. I don't think he was making a statement. He was trying to block people out."

Robert Ressler, the retired FBI profiler who is credited with coining the term "serial killer," said he thinks Cho had an inadequate-personality disorder with psychopathic overtones.

"Oftentimes there are sexual underpinnings to inadequacy," he said, noting authorities say Cho stalked two Virginia Tech students in 2005, leading to two encounters with police. High school classmates say they never saw him interact with girls.

Ressler added that Cho seemed "so mission-oriented. That would go against schizophrenia and more toward psychopathy."

Muscari said Cho's apparent level of organization, as evidenced by the multimedia manifesto he mailed to NBC between Monday's shootings, could be evidence of psychopathy.

Cho's great-aunt said the family constantly worried about Cho.

"From the beginning, he wouldn't answer me," Kim Yang-soon, Cho's great aunt, told Associated Press Television News from South Korea. He "didn't talk. Normally sons and mothers talk. There was none of that for them. He was very cold."

"When they went to the United States, they told them it was autism," said Kim, 85.

The family arrived in the United States in 1992, when Cho was about 8.

Cho's uncle gave a similar account but said there were no early indications that the boy had serious problems. Cho "didn't talk much when he was young. He was very quiet, but he didn't display any peculiarities to suggest he may have problems," said the uncle, who asked to be identified only by his last name, Kim.

In a statement for the family, Cho's sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, said yesterday: "My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in."

Bonvillian said autism is typically diagnosed when children are 2 or 3, an age at which Cho was still in Korea. "Someone would have had to miss it pretty badly not to see it then," he said. Schizophrenia is generally diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 25, he added.

James Kauffman, a retired University of Virginia education behaviorist, dismissed any possible link between Cho's violence and autism.

"I don't see any connection to autism at all, even if he was diagnosed," Kauffman said. "It doesn't wash."

Clint Van Zandt, another retired FBI profiler, said he could not call to mind any serial killer who was autistic. "None," he said.

I'm sure this isn't a popular or politically correct thing to say, but maybe -- just maybe -- after a highly publicized atrocity like this, there will be some bullies who will think "gee... maybe **** with the geeks isn't worth the risk."

NOT saying I advocate mass murder, of course. But I do think some bullies target "nerds and geeks" because they are confidant there will be no retaliation.

Several years ago, there was a spate of gay-bashings in San Francisco. Trashy hooligans from the country would come into the city and beat up lone queers near the SF gay neighborhoods. A number of gays took to patrolling the neighborhood with baseball bats and T-shirts that said "FAGS BASH BACK." It made a difference.

Crazy-*** mass murders? No.

Bashing back against bullies? I think it needs to happen sometimes.

In saying that the bully is confident that there will be no retaliation, I mean that the bully is usually careful not to pick on someone who will kick his ***. It's generally safer to pick on the fags and geeks and fatties (as they are called.)

When I was in elementary school -- until I was about 16 years old, actually -- I was smaller than most of the other kids. And I was "different" -- the smart kid, the sissy -- and would normally be a great target for bullying. But I wasn't bullied because I was able to retaliate. I suppose this is a very NT thing, but I was able to "read" people quickly and accurately -- and that included knowing exactly what I could say that would hurt them most (emotionally, psychologically -- weapons of ego destruction) so they left me alone, as surely as they would avoid a bigger kid who could beat them up.

I think it's sad that I had to develop those destructive talents, but the fact is that without them I was an easy target. I guess I was out-bullying the bullies, but at least I wasn't using a gun.

"they normally do back off and go to easier prey. "

Exactly. Once I hit a real growth spurt at 17 and was suddenly 6 feet tall and 190 pounds, no one seemed as interested in picking on me. There was always an easier victim available elsewhere.

I still have a tendency to go after a person I see bullying others, though. A friend told me, "You realize you're a bully, too -- the only difference is you don't bully the victims, you bully the bullies."

I think it shows even in my classroom (I'm a teacher.) The kids learn very quickly not to pick on others in my room. I will make a bully cry if he pulls that *** with one of my kids.

I think that's why I know so many traditianal "victim" type kids -- they tend to spend a lot of time -- lunch and afterschool -- in my room because they know that no one will mess with them there.

"I recall a few teachers from my past that were simply jerks, just like the bullies"

YES! I have seen this so many times -- teachers who support or join in with the bullies because they (the teachers) are either afraid of the bullies, or because the particular bullies are the "cool kids" and the teacher wants the cool bullies to like him.

How pathetic is that?

In either case, the teacher is responding like just another stupid kid -- afraid to stand up to the bullies or currying the bullies' favor. They think the class will 'like" them if they join in on picking on a victimized kid. It makes me so angry... I have no respect for that kind of "teacher."

I don't think it was stupid at all.

A neo-Freudian, back in the 30's came up with the idea that there are broadly three basic kinds of people:

1: those who move toward others
2: those who move away from others
3: those who move against others

It sounds simplistic, but there's a lot of truth in it.

It's amazing how many personality systems have attempted to see character as being essentially a division of three.