James wrote:Damn, the 8/8/88 - the date I envy, because it would have been my date of birth if I was born a year later, and let's face it being born on the 8/8/88 would have been much cooler than 87!

Except for the fact that my life and all the events and people within it would be utterly different, so I don't mind that much!

If i had been born 3 years and 204 days earlier, i would have been born on the 6/6/66!! Thats cool

(sad thing is i have just counted that out on the calendar )

If i had been born ten days and 209 years earlier i would have been born on the 7/7/1777. The seventh day of JULY!

Hostile wrote:

Immortalicide wrote:It never fails to amaze me just how fucked up the average americans logic is!! There was a guy interviewed on the radio this afternoon who was almost in tears about the fact that so many innocent people had died in this incident (he didnt know any of them personally), but it was only 33!!! Yet the same guy would probably not even give a fuck if he were to be told about the number of palestinian teenagers who have been murdered by the israelis using american supplied arms, who were just as innocent and just wanting to get on with their lives!!! In the main part, the whole country is just full of fucked up people!!

That's pretty cool, I made the same arguement on a different forum. Horrific massacres occur weekly in Palestinian territory, but only the english-speaking atrocities are worthy of all this pity and noise-making. For that reason I refuse to join the "poor them" circle-jerk.

My mum casually made the same connection today with reference to the recent bomb attack in Iraq. She said it's already old news but we're still going on about killings that hurt about a 1/3 of the people. It's not even like it took place in the UK and thus has local interest. Bright lass my mum.

Anyway, Greg Palast is a damn fine journalist and he speaks in controversial tones. His an e-mail he put out recently:
The Accomplices: Sundance George and Butch Reid and the Virginia Tech Massacre

by Greg Palast
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

He had accomplices. Don't kid yourself: 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui didn't forge his two little pistols in his smithy shop.

He had a dealer, a guns-and-bullets pusher-man who put the heat in his hand, took the kid's money and pocketed it with a grin.

"Whether you are looking for a pistol for affordable training or simply the excitement of shooting, the P22 is the pistol for you!"

That's the ad on the Walther website for the student-reaper, a Walther .22.

Not that Walther, or its fellow murder-maker, Glock, which crafted the other Weapon of Student Mass Destruction, the Glock 7mm, kept all of the killer kid's money. The gun makers religiously tithe a portion of their grim reapings to their friends in Washington.

This report isn't about gun control legislation or the right to bear arms or any of that sideways crap. This is about a group of co-conspirators who dropped two killing devices into the hands of someone who shouldn't have had access to a plastic spoon.

But before we bring in the suspects for questioning, let's pull back the camera lens for the bigger picture. Because what we saw at Virginia Tech was just a concentrated node of a larger, nationwide killing spree that goes on day after day in the USA. Eighty-thousand Americans take a bullet from a hand gun in any year. Thirty-thousand die. That's one thousand shooting deaths off-camera for each victim at Virginia Tech.

Sundance Bush is right now at the school for his photo op. The President is, "saddened and angered by these senseless acts of violence." But will our senseless and violent President do anything about it? He already has: On July 29, 2005, the US Senate passed, then Bush signed, a grant of immunity from lawsuits for Walther, Glock and other gun manufacturers.

Now, corporations that make hand-guns can't be sued for knowingly selling firearms to killers. Like that? No other industry has such wide lawsuit immunity -- not teachers, not doctors, not cops -- only gun makers.

Here's how Cho got his guns. It's a story you won't hear on CNN. It begins with something known as, The Iron Pipeline. At one end of the Pipeline are states like Alabama where gun laws are loosey-goosey. Gun makers including Glock stuff the 'Bama end of the pipe with far more guns than can ever be bought legally in that state, knowing full well that the guns will be illegally shipped up the pipeline into states where gun laws are tougher. Virginia law prevents "gun-trafficking"; in Alabama, they could care less.

In every state in America, a bar owner is liable to lawsuit if a bartender serves too many drinks and a customer dies in an auto accident. Hand a chainsaw to a child, you're in legal trouble. Until Bush signed the 2005 protect-the-gun-makers law, the same common law against negligent distribution applied to firearms.

Bush was aiming at Stephen Fox. Steven can describe feeling pieces of his brain fly from his skull after a mugger shot him. He's permanently paralyzed. A jury charged the makers of .25-caliber hand guns with negligent distribution -- and Bush went wild.

He was especially worked up because the City of New Orleans sued the gun makers for the cost of hospitalizing cops shot by armaments pooping out the end of the Iron Pipeline. The NAACP joined in the suit with the effrontery to demand the gun-pushers alter their marketing programs to keep their products out of the hands of maniacs and murderers.

Do the gun manufacturers know their .22's are being used for something other than hunting long-horned elk? Every year, the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency sends 800,000 requests to the gun companies to trace weapons found at crime scenes. As Fox's attorney told me, criminals are a much-valued, if unpublicized, market segment sought out and provisioned by these manufacturers.

But they're safe, the gun-makers, even if we aren't, because of Bush's immunity law. But Sundance Bush didn't act alone. There was Harry 'Butch' Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, riding shotgun on the immunity bandwagon.

The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too. The Glock 7mm student-slayer comes from Germany. With the legal protection handed them by Bush and Reid, the two Teutonic weapons profiteers can skip free of legal judgment with that line well-practiced by their countrymen: "We were only taking orders -- for our product."

Couldn't have put it better myself

I had no idea such a legislation had been passed. That's insane.

more proof of the rotten-to-the-core politics that's been going on since politics was invented...

what sort of idea was it to let the country be ruled by a group of rich greedy bastards???

oh yeah, an idea from a rich greedy bastard....

FUCKERS

thrash metal maniac wrote:
what sort of idea was it to let the country be ruled by a group of rich greedy bastards???

Dont think it was an idea to be honest, after all the descendants of the modern day americans just decided to live in america and have it for themselves; the indiginous native american was subject to a bigger and more prolific genocide than any saddam or Chauchesku was ever guilty of, and then they spend the next 300 years pompously telling the world how fuckin great they are and strutting round like they own the planet when they are the worst race of murdering biggots in modern history!!! (and that is coming from an englishman, another country guilty of similar behaviour albeit on a smaller scale )

(and that is coming from an englishman, another country guilty of similar behaviour albeit on a smaller scale Confused )

*plays the Braveheart theme on bagpipes*

FREEEEEEEEEEEEDDOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!11111

The sooner they all fuckin die of obesity and their insane gun culture the better!!!!

Really enjoyed all of that article apart from the last two lines.

And I disagree with 'Mort that Britain has caused atrocities on a "smaller scale". Britain raped 1/4 of the globe.

boovidge wrote:Really enjoyed all of that article apart from the last two lines.

Yeah, I was thinking that too. I fail to see what the point was of that Hitler comparison, other than to shock people with the use of the word 'Hitler'. "The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too." I actually can't even see at all what his point is. I don't know if he's trying to say Austrians and Germans are all evil Nazis or if he's just trying to say that both guns and Hitler are bad things. What the hell has Hitler got to do with anything anyway?

Aside from that, it was a very inetresting read. And it's basically made me hate the world even more now.

jonny_boy34 wrote:I fail to see what the point was of that Hitler comparison, other than to shock people with the use of the word 'Hitler'. "The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too." I actually can't even see at all what his point is.

What you have witnessed is a textbook example of Godwin's Law.

His actual connection is the 'we're only taking orders' bit, a defence of War Criminals at Nuremburg. He is not saying all things from Germany/Austria are evil. He's saying the guns suppliers are acting like Nazi's, as if they are innocent of any actual crimes. The lines are still not great but you've made out to be worse than it is.

James wrote:Damn, the 8/8/88 - the date I envy, because it would have been my date of birth if I was born a year later, and let's face it being born on the 8/8/88 would have been much cooler than 87!

Except for the fact that my life and all the events and people within it would be utterly different, so I don't mind that much!

I can remember what I did on 8/8/88. I donated my first pint of blood. How's that for a memory.

terrorizer wrote:

James wrote:Damn, the 8/8/88 - the date I envy, because it would have been my date of birth if I was born a year later, and let's face it being born on the 8/8/88 would have been much cooler than 87!

Except for the fact that my life and all the events and people within it would be utterly different, so I don't mind that much!

I can remember what I did on 8/8/88. I donated my first pint of blood. How's that for a memory.

I had the better day tho methinks