OK, thanks Jason.

I need to start checking my references

Weird.

The ancient Biblical/Koranic story of Abraham/Isaac/Ishmael involves some very powerful themes that have been taken up in the literature of many countries– including in the USA by Herman Melville and James Fenimore Cooper, who incorporated characters with the name “Ishmael” in no small part as a reference to the ancient character. And an ax(e) did indeed figure prominently in the tale (been talked about at length elsewhere).

Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael has the same origin—Ishmael, the first son ignored by his father in favor of his second son, is how the civilized world thinks about the relationship between nature and Abraham’s god. But it’s painfully obvious that Cho was referring to Abraham’s son, and not any of the later figures that drew on those themes. Of course, this continued speculation on the media’s part has everything to do with trying to shift the blame away from a crazed Christian nut, trying to fit him into the mold of the Unabomber (when arguing it refers to Quinn’s gorilla), or better still, a jihadist (by misspelling it as “Ismael”).

It’s an Arabic blog from November 2005, and a rough translation of the site (Systran) basically gets into something involving old Islamic parables.

So does this mean that the wingers posting up an “Islamic connection” for Cho’s murders are right? Almost certainly not. The presence of “Ismail Ax” on the akhbarekhouzestan blogsite from November 2005 is either (1) coincidence or (2) maybe in some distant way filtered into the troubled, violent mind of Cho, but almost certainly didn’t involve a “Muslim conversion” of any kind.

Maybe Cho in some perverse way was inspired by suicide bombers or by the ancient story of Ishmael and Isaac, Abraham, Hagar and Sarah (which the 2005 blog does seem to refer to).

But he wasn’t Muslim himself, and he certainly wasn’t “put up to this” like a Manchurian candidate. That’s just getting too much into the realm of X-files goofulating.

The ancient Biblical/Koranic story of Abraham/Isaac/Ishmael involves some very powerful themes that have been taken up in the literature of many countries– including in the USA by Herman Melville and James Fenimore Cooper, who incorporated characters with the name “Ishmael” in no small part as a reference to the ancient character. And an ax(e) did indeed figure prominently in the tale (been talked about at length elsewhere).

So the fact that akhbarkhouzestan mentioned it in a blogpost from 2005, and Cho took it as an apparent moniker, probably both stem from the power and significance of the original story itself.

Honestly, the news of these murders bummed me out even worse than other depressing mass murders recently that seem to occur with such painful frequency in the USA.

Besides my own VA Tech connections, just reading the biographies of those Virginia Tech students, professors and others who were murdered– it almost brought me to tears, thinking about the wasted potential and prospects of those people.

It also brought me to DETEST idiots like Mark Steyn and John Derbyshire, two right-wing nuts who faulted the VA Tech students for not pulling a “Die Hard” and rushing Cho when he was shooting or reloading. Do they really think, in the heat and uncertainty of that moment (not to mention the cramped quarters of the classroom where Cho did most of his killing) that anybody would have been able to bum rush Cho, especially considering that Cho had somehow achieved a quite terribly impressive technical mastery of the weapons he was wielding?

I hereby nominate those two jerks, Steyn and Derbyshire, for posting the most callous, asinine comments of the month on the Virginia Tech shootings.

And Steyn and Derbyshire are hereby referred to the local US military recruiting service, to be drafted immediately for duty in Ramadi, Iraq, without body armor, where they will have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate their purported “courage” against heavily armed dudes who really do hate and aim to kill them.

I’d bet a season’s worth of Lakers tickets that Steyn and Derbyshire would both be crapping in their pants at the first unholstering of a nearby weapon– an Iraqi insurgent’s or their own colleagues’.

I hope we never, ever speak ill of those people on the Tech campus. Both that school and the people therein deserve our utmost support at this time– we really are all Hokies now, at least in the immediacy of this terrible moment for the nation at large.

I’ve read that what was written on his arm was “Ismail Ax,” in reference to an Islamic figure.

That’s how it was originally reported, but that appears to have been a mistake. Take a look at the return address: not much is clear in this picture except “hmael.”

Of course, it’s been conservatives peddling this story in their on-going effort to demonize everything Islamic. Here is a link:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=041807B

In the end, I think our media will focus on guns (too many or too little?), violent video games and everything else they can in their on-going effort not to look at the culture these people are being raised in. Cho wasn’t born a killer, but somehow through his experiences with our culture he was made one. No-one should be surprised by any of this.

are “monsters” born? or are they made?

by and large, they’re made.

and it’s really no surprise that these events happen, which is why i get so upset with our media when they say things like “unimaginable”, “unfathomable”, and “impossible to predict”, because it’s none of those things, not to anyone who took the time to pay attention to him….

i agree that monsters are more made than born. one might have a propensity toward violence or chemical imbalances that make emotional outbursts difficult to control, and in that sense be born into the possibility of acting violently. but to make so many conscious decisions toward purchasing weaponry an ammunition, killing two people, mailing your manifesto and visual documentation to the news, and then going on to finish your planned scheme… it takes more than propensity to carry that out.

i worked for a year with adolescent sex offenders, many of whom had chemical imbalances, and even for those kids, often the imbalance was more brought on than inherited.

LOL!

If your grandfather’s name was Ishmael, your first association upon reading about ‘Ax Ishmael’ would probably have been your grandfather; that doesn’t mean you would’ve speculated about the possibility of the old man’s somehow being in on this.

Oh, I totally would. You don’t know Grandpa Ishmael like I do. He’s a crazy old muthafucka who’d kill you in a second. They never did find the bodies of the last kids who wouldn’t get off his lawn…