The Archdiocese of Washington has been battling the D.C. government for the right to discriminate against gays and lesbians since D.C.’s same-sex marriage legislation got rolling last year.
One major point of contention: Once gays and lesbians are allowed to marry, the Archdiocese—which employs plenty of locals through Catholic Charities—will be required to provide health benefits to same-sex spouses, an act which it says would fly in the face of the Catholic church’s teachings on homosexuality.
The solution? No spousal benefits for anybody.
Today, Catholic Charities President and CEO Edward Orzechowski sent out a memo to staffers informing them of the change to the health care coverage, which will go into effect tomorrow.
In short: If you and your spouse are already enrolled in Catholic Charities health coverage, your spouse will be grandfathered in. Starting tomorrow, however, new employees (or newly married employees, hint hint) will not be allowed to add spouses to the plan. So: Longtime employees will receive the spousal benefits they’ve always had; Catholic Charities will get to keep its pool of covered spouses gay-free; only fresh employees and gays will feel the sting on this one.
Here’s the memo:
I am writing to you to inform you of an important change to our group health care benefit plan that will take effect on March 2, 2010 due to a change in the law of the District of Columbia. It is important to note that the existing health coverage of current employees will not be affected by the change. New employees and current employees requesting revisions in benefit coverage will be affected by this change.
Catholic Charities will continue to honor the health plan coverage that current employees have as of March 1, 2010. As of March 2, a new plan will be in effect that will cover new employees and requests for benefit changes by current employees. The new plan will provide the same level of coverage for employees and their dependents that you now have, with one exception: spouses not in the plan as of March 1, will not be eligible for coverage in the future. If your spouse currently has coverage in our Plan, he/she may continue to be covered by the health benefit plan, even if you later add a dependent or decide to change your option level (e.g., change from low option to high option). Please see the attached formal Plan Amendment.
We sincerely regret that we have to make this change, but it is necessary to allow Catholic Charities to continue to provide essential services to the clients we serve in partnership with the District of Columbia while remaining consistent with the tenets of our religious faith.
A summary of the Plan modification has been mailed to you at your home address. If you have any questions on this matter, please e-mail your Human Resources manager or, if you do not have access to email, call. Please remember, this change does not impact your current coverage in any way.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter, and let me again express my appreciation for your support and patience over these past months as we have worked hard to arrive at a decision that allows us to continue to serve others in a manner that is consistent with our religious beliefs.
OXFORD, MS – The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit today against a Mississippi High School that has canceled prom rather than let a lesbian high school student attend the prom with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo to the event. In papers filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, the ACLU asks the court to reinstate the prom for all students at the school and charges Itawamba County School District officials are violating Constance McMillen’s First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
“All I wanted was the same chance to enjoy my prom night like any other student. But my school would rather hurt all the students than treat everyone fairly,” said McMillen, an 18-year-old senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi. “This isn’t just about me and my rights anymore – now I’m fighting for the right of all the students at my school to have our prom.”
Today’s filing comes after Itawamba County School District issued a statement yesterday saying they were canceling prom, following a letter from the ACLU and the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition demanding that they reverse their decision. McMillen said that before that happened, school officials had told her that she could not arrive at the prom with her girlfriend, also a student at IAHS, and that they might be thrown out if any other students complained about their presence at the April 2 event.
“Itawamba school officials are trying to turn Constance into the villain who called the whole thing off, and that just isn’t what happened. She’s fighting for everyone to be able to enjoy the prom,” said Kristy Bennett, Legal Director of the ACLU of Mississippi. “The government, and that includes public schools, can’t censor someone’s free expression just because some other person might not like it.”
In today’s legal complaint, the ACLU asks the court to reinstate the prom for all students and charges that the First Amendment guarantees students’ right to bring same-sex dates to school dances and cites cases holding that other parties’ objections don’t justify censorship. The ACLU also said that the school further violates McMillen’s free expression rights by telling her that she can’t wear a tuxedo to the prom.
“It’s shameful and cowardly of the school district to have canceled the prom and to try to blame Constance, who’s only standing up for herself. We will fight tooth and nail for the prom to be reinstated for all students,” said Christine P. Sun, Senior Counsel with the ACLU national LGBT Project, who represents McMillen along with the ACLU of Mississippi.
The ACLU will ask the court in the next few days to grant McMillen a preliminary injunction ordering the school to reinstate the April 2 prom, let McMillen and her girlfriend go to the prom together, and let McMillen wear a tuxedo to the event.
McMillen is represented by Bennett and Sun, as well as by Norman C. Simon and Joshua Glick of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP.
I'll dig it up later, it's kind of late right now, but I read an article about a hotel owner who offered to bus them all down to New Orleans and hold them a free prom at one of his hotels if the school doesn't back down. I'm pretty sure he's not the only person to make such an offer, too.
It's different because these girls are in a relationship and they want to go as such. Not only that, but this girl's girlfriend wanted to dress in a tux, and that's a huge no-no according to the school. Girls wear dresses because it says so in the Bible that girls must wear dresses to prom.
Activist Mike Vanderboegh urged his fellow extremists to break Democrats' windows. But he gets "Marxist" welfare.
A glass door in Rochester, N.Y., was struck by a brick on March 20 with a note attached reading "Exremism in defense of liberty Is no vice."
Mike Vanderboegh is the far-right activist from Alabama who gained sudden notoriety when he posted a message this week urging his fellow extremists to smash the windows of Democratic politicians to protest healthcare reform -- a wingnut Kristallnacht. In a revealing profile in today's Washington Post, Vanderboegh explains that throwing rocks was merely meant to warn of an impending "civil war" against Washington's infringements on poor honest folk like him.
"So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows," Vanderboegh wrote on a blog called Sipsey Street Irregulars. "Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats. But BREAK THEM."
He assured the Post that untold numbers of alienated Americans "are not only willing to resist this law to the very end of their lives, but are armed and are capable of making such resistance possible and perhaps even initiating a civil war." So far there is no evidence that Vanderboegh followed his own advice, which might have entailed a personal risk for him, after all.
As a longtime "militia" organizer and Minuteman border patroller, he has advocated violence for many years without consequence. In a 2005 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Vanderboegh was identified as a hard-line nativist, obsessed with the notion of instigating a civil war in the United States.
Back in the mid-1990s, he wrote a document titled "Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War" in which he discussed the utility of snipers using "violence carefully targeted and clearly defensive: war criminals, secret policemen, rats ..." SPLC director Mark Potok set Vanderboegh in the current context of "Patriot" extremism on NPR's "Fresh Air" yesterday.
There is often a darkly comical aspect to these sinister fringe figures. While Vanderboegh claims to be a militant "libertarian," a tribune of the oppressed white middle class, and a student of Friedrich von Hayek, he appears to be an ordinary welfare case. Claiming to be too ill for gainful employment, he apparently spends most of his time stirring up violence, with a nice federal subsidy.
According to the Post, he lives off his wife, who works at a forklift company -- and also gets a monthly disability check from our "Marxist" federal government.
BEIJING — State media says two hospital mortuary workers have been detained by police after the bodies of 21 babies were found on a riverbank in eastern China.
Xinhua News Agency cited a government spokesman in Jining city as saying late Tuesday that Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun took money from the babies' families to dispose of the bodies, but instead dumped them at the Guangfu River.
Hospital ID tags on eight of the babies helped authorities trace them back to the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University. Xinhua says three top hospital officials have either been sacked or suspended.
Local residents discovered the bodies along the riverbank and initially thought they were toys.
Reports say the babies ranged in age from newborns to several months.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
BEIJING (AP) — The bodies of 21 babies, believed dumped by hospitals, have washed ashore on a riverbank in eastern China, state media reported Tuesday.
Video footage showed that the bodies — stashed in yellow plastic bags, at least one of which was marked "medical waste" — included some infants several months old. Some wore identification tags with their mothers' names, birth dates, measurements and weights. The official Xinhua News Agency said there were also fetuses among the bodies.
Residents discovered the remains under a bridge in the city of Jining, Shandong province, over the weekend. Tags on the feet of eight of the babies traced them back to a hospital in Jining, according to the People's Daily Web site. Three of them had been admitted earlier to the hospital in critical condition, the report said. It did not say when.
The other 13 bodies were unidentified. The number of girls or boys was not reported.
More girls than boys are aborted in China because of the traditional preference for male offspring, especially in rural areas. Although gender-selection abortions are illegal in China, the practice remains widespread and has led to a skewed sex ratio at birth in China with 119 males born for every 100 females. In industrialized countries, the ratio is 107 to 100.
An official from the general office from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical College confirmed it was involved.
"Several of the bodies of babies with (identification) tags were from our hospital, but not all of them. The officials from the health bureau are still in the hospital doing an investigation," said the official, who like most Chinese officials would not give his name.
Xinhua said medical staff were suspended after the discovery.
"The hospital medical staff involved have been suspended from their work during the investigation," Zhong Haitao, a spokesman at the Jining Health Bureau, was quoted as saying.
Local residents and firefighters recovered the bodies Monday after they were discovered under a bridge spanning the Guangfu River in the outskirts of Jining, Zhong said.
Interviews with residents who discovered the bodies floating near the shore over the weekend were broadcast on the Web site of the Shandong Broadcasting Company, IQILU.com.
The footage shows bodies lying on parts of the bank of the river. Some are uncovered, and others are in bags. They are all small and covered in dirt. A leg sticks out from under one bag. At least one of the bags has "medical waste" written on it.
The IQILU.com report said the babies ranged from newborns to several months old. One of the bluish-green identification tags visible in the video indicates the baby was born in April 2009.
People's Daily said all the bodies were babies, while Xinhua said several were fetuses.
An official from the information office of China's Health Ministry said she was not aware of the case, while telephone calls to the Jining Health Bureau and the Shandong Health Bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.
As not only a fan of Nirvana but also Twilight (specifically Team Edward), I am thrilled by this news.
ROBERT PATTINSON has landed his dream film role - playing KURT COBAIN in a Hollywood biopic.
The Twilight star has always thought of himself as a musician rather than an actor, he even reckons his guitar is his best friend.
So securing a part playing the tragic NIRVANA genius, who shot himself in 1994, is ideal for the pin-up.
R-Patz has been in regular contact with Kurt's widow COURTNEY LOVE, who has been handed a key role in the production by bosses at Universal Pictures.
The HOLE singer wanted R-Patz as Kurt and SCARLETT JOHANSSON to portray her. My graphics team have mocked up Rob and Scarlett as the hellraising pair.
A source said: "This is a big money deal for Courtney.
"She has agreed to the film on condition that she gets to decide the main aspects of the project including director, casting, screenplay and music.
"Robert has been calling and emailing her non-stop. She has been a bit wound up by his manners, but he is her number one choice to play Kurt.
"She is adamant Scarlett will play her. Scarlett is friendly with FRANCES BEAN, her daughter with Kurt."
Courtney has been in touch with director DAVID FINCHER about the project, which has the working title All Apologies.
He was behind Fight Club, Se7en and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.
It's not the first time a studio have tried to make a film about Nirvana, who had hits with Come As You Are and Smells Like Teen Spirit.
A few years ago Sony Pictures were told to sling their hook by Courtney when they floated the idea of ZAC EFRON as Kurt, while Frances Bean would play her mum.
I have to say, the 14-year-old in me was a little bit sick when I found out a Twilight vampire was playing a rock idol.
But at least it's an improvement on the man lined up to play Kurt in the West End - Footballers' Wives star GARY LUCY.
Go ahead and put those Lithium pills away, Nirvana fans. Universal has confirmed with EW that a report in The Sun — that had Robert Pattinson in talks with Courtney Love to play the Kurt Cobain in a biopic released by the studio — is false. What’s more, Love’s manager also told Spin: “That’s an amazing story, and the first I’ve heard of any of this…I’m not sure [Courtney] knows who R Patz is, but he sure is cute.” Sorry, Twilight fans — even though Patticakes is a bit of a musician (plays guitar and piano), looks like this one’s a big Nevermind.
TAIXING, China — The screams of the children inside the kindergarten could be heard out in the street.
When people ran in to investigate, they found what one witness said was a scene "too horrible to imagine" — blood everywhere as a knife-wielding man slashed 29 children, two teachers and a security guard Thursday in the second such school attack in China in two days.
Experts called it a copycat rampage triggered by similar incidents Wednesday and last month. They said the wave of school attacks falls amid poor care for the mentally unstable and growing feelings of social injustice in the fast-changing country.
All the students were aged 4 or 5 years old. Thursday's attack at the Zhongxin Kindergarten left five students badly injured, two of them in critical condition, in the eastern city of Taixing, said Zhu Guiming, an official with the municipal propaganda department. Two teachers and the security guard were also hurt. Initially officials had reported that 28 children had been hurt but they later realized they had miscounted.
The official Xinhua News Agency identified the attacker as Xu Yuyuan, a 47-year-old unemployed man. He pushed his way into the classroom with an eight-inch (20-centimeter) knife after two teachers and a security guard failed to stop him. No motive was given.
Xu had been a salesman in a local insurance company until he was fired in 2001. Since then, he has remained jobless, Xinhua said.
A witness to the early morning attack said people outside heard screams coming from the three-story building and rushed inside.
"It was too horrible to imagine. I saw blood everywhere, and kids bleeding from their heads," a visibly shaken Hu Tao told The Associated Press hours later.
"Some of them could not open their eyes because of the blood," he said.
Hu, who owns a small restaurant across the street from the school, said a delivery man used a fire extinguisher to knock Xu down.
Set in a side street off the main avenue of the heavily industrialized city, the kindergarten has a whimsical European-style castle turret rising above its gate and a cartoon-like bunny by the entrance, which was sealed off by police tape.
Most of the recent school invasions have been blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness, leading to calls for improved security.
Accounts in China's state-owned media have glossed over motives and largely shied away from why schools have so often been targets. Yet experts say outbursts against the defenseless are frequently due to social pressures.
An avowedly egalitarian society only a generation ago, China's headlong rush to prosperity has sharpened differences between haves and have-nots, and the public health system has atrophied even as pressures grew.
China likely has about 173 million adults with mental health disorders, and 158 million of them have never had professional help, according to a mental health survey in four provinces jointly done by Chinese and U.S. doctors that was published in the medical journal The Lancet in June.
"We must create a more healthy and just society," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing.
While it's not known if Thursday's attacker knew about previous school stabbings, Zhou said such sensational, violent acts often draw copycats.
"Normally, with these kind of violent events we hope the media won't blow them up too much, because that tends to make it spread," Zhou said.
On Wednesday, a man in the southern city of Leizhou broke into a primary school and wounded 15 students and a teacher in a knife attack. The suspect, Chen Kangbing, 33, was a former teacher who had been on sick leave since 2006 for mental health problems.
That attack came the same day a man was executed for stabbing eight children to death outside their elementary school last month in the southeastern city of Nanping.
The attack in March shocked China because eight children died and the assailant had no known history of mental illness. At his trial, Zheng Minsheng, 42, said he killed because he had been upset after being jilted by a woman and treated badly by her wealthy family. He was executed Wednesday, just a little over a month after his crime.
A fourth attack earlier this month occurred when a mentally ill man hacked to death a second grader and an elderly woman with a meat cleaver near a school in southern Guangxi, and wounded five other people, including students.
After a 2004 attack at a school in Beijing that left nine students dead, the central government ordered tighter school security nationwide. Regulations that took effect in 2006 require schools to register or inspect visitors and keep out people who have no reason to come inside.
The man in Wednesday's attack managed to slip into the school with a group of visiting teachers, Xinhua reported. Chen Kangbing had been a teacher himself. Xinhua said he suffered from mental illness and had been on sick leave since February 2006.
The attack left fourth and fifth graders with stab wounds on their heads, backs and arms, but none was in life-threatening condition.
The Ministry of Education did not immediately respond to a fax Thursday asking whether this week's attacks would lead to changes in school security.
Yeah, shit's fucked up. This is the third time in two months a random middle aged man with absolutely no connections whatsoever has walked into an elementary school and started stabbing indiscriminately.
BEIJING — Continuing a bizarre series of attacks on Chinese schoolchildren, a man broke into a primary school in eastern china on Friday and beat five preschool children with a hammer before setting himself afire, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The attacker, identified as Wang Yonglai, died on the spot, Xinhua quoted police officers as saying. The five children were reported to be in stable condition in a hospital in Weifang, the Shandong Province city where the attack took place.
It was the fourth assault on Chinese students in little more than a month, and the third in three days. On Thursday, a 47-year-old unemployed man stabbed 28 children and three adults at a kindergarten in Jiangsu Province, on China’s east coast just south of Shandong.
On Wednesday, a 33-year-old ex-teacher with a history of mental illness stabbed 15 children at a primary school in Leizhou, also in Shandong.
That attack occurred on the same day that authorities executed another man, 42-year-old Zheng Minsheng, for a March 23 knife attack at a Fujian Province primary school that left eight children dead.
Criminal psychologists have speculated that the recent attacks are copycat crimes, inspired by the intense public reaction and broad media coverage of the March 23 murders. Friday’s assault began at 7:40 a.m. , Xinhua reported, when Mr. Xu drove his motorbike to Weifang’s Shangzhuang primary school and broke in, overcoming a teacher.
Wielding a hammer, Mr. Wang struck five students and grabbed another two, then doused himself with gasoline and ignited it. Teachers managed to save the two children.
In Thursday’s attack, many of the wounded children were just 4 years old and shared the same classroom, according to Xinhua. Police officers identified the assailant as Xu Yuyuan, a former insurance agent. According to Xinhua, he began attacking children with a knife about eight inches long around 9 a.m. at the Zhongxin Kindergarten, a middle-class school in Taixing, about 570 miles southeast of Beijing. He also wounded two teachers and a security guard.
A 33-year-old man in the southern province of Guangdong stabbed 15 fourth and fifth graders at a primary school in Leizhou on Wednesday. None of those students were seriously wounded. The authorities said that attacker, identified as Chen Kangbing, had taught at a nearby school but had been on leave since 2006, apparently because of mental illness.
On March 23, Mr. Zheng, 42, stabbed eight primary school students to death in Fujian Province, also on China’s east coast. Some news reports stated that Mr. Zheng also had mental problems, but most state media said no such evidence existed.
Mental illness remains a closeted topic in modern China, and neither medication nor modern psychiatric treatment is widely used. An analysis of mental health issues in four Chinese provinces, published in June in the British medical journal The Lancet, estimated that 91 percent of the 173 million Chinese adults that are believed to suffer mental problems never receive professional help.
Mr. Zheng’s attack stirred calls for a school safety crackdown. Mr. Zheng was executed on Wednesday after what one legal expert, He Weifang, a former Peking University law professor and civil rights advocate, said was an unusually speedy trial.
There was no immediate explanation as to why the four attackers chose young students as their targets. While assaults in schools are not particularly common, an eerily similar series of five knife attacks took place in August and September 2004 in schools and a child care center. Three of the attacks occurred on China’s east coast.
In February 2008, two students at another Leizhou school were stabbed to death by a former student who then killed himself by jumping off the school building.
In the current string of knifings, which took place hundreds of miles apart, “probably there was some kind of copycat element,” Liu Jianqing, a professor of criminal psychology at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said Thursday. “People in similar predicaments emulate this because of the impact of the mass media these days.”
The assaults were also likely to be acts of self-destruction by the attackers, he said, because such crimes stand a high chance of drawing a death sentence.
Some experts like Mr. He said that beyond mental illness, rising strains in China’s fast-changing society might have a role in the growing number of violent crimes. Most school assaults have occurred on the east coast, where both the cost of living and income inequality are high.
The man executed on Wednesday, Mr. Zheng, wanted revenge on “rich” and “powerful officials” in Nanping, where he lived, Xinhua said, quoting his neighbors.
It seems that many people in China do not know about the last attacks by the dude with the hammer, because many local news agencies never released any news about it in Chinese, and the province where it happened did not discuss it in the evening news. In China, news organizations are under the strict control of state propaganda departments, and it is very rare that a news outlet will release news that the state does not approve of ahead of time.
In other words, the government is muffling the story. They're not denying it or hiding it, they're just keeping it low key and away from the front page.
My question for you: Is it right for a government to hide news from the public in certain situations? In this situation, it seems that several of these attacks have been partially copycat in nature. Therefore, the government could argue that by keeping the news stories, then they can keep more people safe and reduce the rate of copycat attacks. Three attacks have happened this week, and there was another high profile one against random children a month ago. On the other hand, that's an incredibly dangerous slippery slope, and governments have frequently used that rationalization very liberally to cover up various misdeeds.
I for one can't see why anyone would want to copy a crime that was enacted recently, much less MULTIPLE TIMES in the past few days, as the authorities would have handled a similar case and be able to draw conclusions as to "Who dunnit?" much faster. Given, that if I were to be a criminal my foremost goal would be to not get caught, but as the suicide of this last man illustrates these guys aren't particularly worried about being caught.
On the topic of "should the Government hide this", under any normal circumstance I would say no. But that also assumes that the government in question has promised and is founded upon not keeping secrets from the people, which I'm almost quite certain, isn't the "Communist Chinese" goal (Hence censors and such). Also these do indeed seem to be copycat attacks, no matter how stupid I believe that to be.
To actually answer the question asked and not just ramble on about my specific thoughts, due to them being copycat attacks, I think to keep them in the news but still leave them out of sight behind the front pages is a good balance between keeping the people informed and preventing and such attacks again. Though they could probably beef up security a bit (Which according to the article they've at least said they're going to).
BEIJING—A prosperous village merchant, described as soft-spoken and gentle, armed himself with a meat cleaver and hacked to death seven schoolchildren, their teacher and her mother before taking his own life, the deadliest in a spate of school attacks in China that is fueling growing anger at the government's inability to keep children safe.
Unlike perpetrators of several of the previous four attacks, 48-year-old Wu Huanming exhibited no signs of mental illness, according to residents of Lincheng village in southwest Shaanxi province. He was well-off by local standards, and a respected member of the village government.
Yet a scene of bloody carnage confronted villagers who rushed through heavy rain to the two-story schoolhouse shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday morning after hearing frantic cries for help.
"I saw blood everywhere like a stream, on the wall, on the floors," said Wu Yaojin, 51 years old, who lived just a few steps from the school where 20 children, ages four to nine, had just gathered for class. "Some kids were lying on the floor or with their chest against the floor. All the kids were hacked. Most were slashed in the head."
The teacher, Wu Hongying, was attacked with such savagery her head was almost severed from her body, he said. Her mother lay dying nearby.
Wu Yaojin, the alleged killer's cousin, said he was so traumatized his legs buckled. As he was helping injured children into his minivan to take them to the hospital 30 kilometers away, he spotted the alleged killer on the second-floor balcony of his new house calmly smoking a cigarette and observing the rescue efforts. Ten minutes later, he said, when police entered the house, the attacker had committed suicide. He said he heard from the village head who saw the body that the suspect had died by cutting his own throat.
The killing appeared to stem from a property dispute that got out of hand. The killer had rented out his house to the privately run school under a five-year contract brokered by the local government, Wu Yaojin said. When the contract expired, Wu Huanmin tried to take back his house, and repeatedly quarreled with the school's teacher.
The official Xinhua news agency said the killer had demanded in April that the school vacate the premises. The teacher had requested a grace period until the summer holidays. The report said deal wasn't government sanctioned.
The riverside village of Lincheng has a population of just over 1,000 and an average income of some $410 a year, making it one of the poorer villages in China. On Wednesday, stunned parents were searching for answers to how one of their own slaughtered their children.
Mr. Wu described his cousin as a physically large man who had a tender manner and sometimes played with local children. He had two children, an adopted 25-year-old who is severely disabled and described as being in a vegetative state, and a younger boy studying at a university.
"It was so cruel! The kids are innocent!" Mr. Wu said.
"We are all panicked because we all have children in kindergarten or primary school," said a woman surnamed Zhang, who works for the county waterworks department.
The teacher and one child died at the scene, while six additional children and the teacher's 80-year-old mother died in the hospital. Another 11 children were being treated for injuries.
Xinhua photos showed tearful parents making phone calls in the hospital. It is unclear whether the attacker and teacher, who share a surname, were related. It is common for people from the same village to have the same last name.
The spate of attacks in recent months has left at least 21 dead and some 90 injured, posing a crisis for China's top leaders, who are trying to figure out what is motivating the unusual violence.
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have demanded action to prevent further school atrocities. Last week, Zhou Yongkang, a member of the ruling Politburo's nine-member standing committee in charge of public security, convened a national telephone conference of security officials, ordering them to bolster security at schools.
Official media have been ordered to keep away from deeper issues of social injustice, focusing instead on safety initiatives.
But in the Internet era, where despite heavy censorship public opinion increasingly drives policy, China's leaders face the prospect that anger will turn from the murderers to officials who appear powerless to halt the carnage.
"These cases pose a challenge to the government because it's being criticized for its weak social administration," said Ma Ai, a leading sociologist at the China University of Politics, Science and Law. "The government may be blamed if it can't protect its citizens—especially vulnerable children. I think these attacks are more and more like terrorism."
Some websites quickly censored negative comments in chat rooms, but others allowed sharply worded posts. Anger was directed as much at broader social ills and government failures. as it was at the attacker himself, underscoring the political risks.
"It's a result of social injustice," said one post.
"It's the government's mistake," said another. "Young kids can't protect themselves. Does this mean they've just become targets for maniacs? With these attacks happening one after another, shouldn't the government have already paid a lot more attention?"
Wednesday's killing spree is likely to further erode faith in the government's ability to stem the spate of apparent copycat crimes terrorizing schools despite beefed-up security. The Communist Party has built its reputation in part on maintaining relative stability and a low crime rate in a country that over the past century has struggled with long bouts of anarchy and lawlessness
China has managed to avoid the levels of violence seen in other developing countries with wide income gaps, in part because of the strict controls and the broad reach of the Communist Party's security apparatus. Surveillance cameras are widespread in urban areas, and local street committees typically made up of grass-roots party members keep tabs on neighborhoods, policing everything from adherence to China's birth-control policies to the arrival of new residents.
The school attacks have fueled a growing sense that China is being wrenched apart by powerful forces, including massive internal migration, a widening income gap between rich and poor, and widespread corruption.
"I don't think these recent school attacks were related to mental-health troubles, said Zhao Jingping, head of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry. "Obviously, these were premeditated attacks deliberately committed—people with mental problems don't have the analytical ability or judgment to plot these crimes. These attackers mainly aimed to attract the media's attention or give vent to their hatred of society. These were rooted in social factors."
In Beijing, which has relatively low levels of violent crime despite millions of poor migrant workers toiling alongside some of the richest people in the country, police said they had thwarted at least seven attempts to kill schoolchildren in recent weeks. The city is posting some 2,000 guards at schools every day and has given schools giant metal pitchfork-like tools meant to pin would-be assailants.
"It's easier for criminals to hurt students or young children because they can't really defend themselves," Zhang Xueping, a Beijing police official, told a news conference Monday. "These criminals are venting their dissatisfaction with society on children—the mentality of these people is just twisted."
Reflecting the widespread unease, a popular author of children's literature recently composed a song called "I want to come home alive." Lyrics include the lines: Dear uncles and aunts/I am in the school/ If you are dissatisfied/, please petition the government/ I want to go home alive!"
My god man, my god. This is terrible, and not just for the dead or injured (and their families), but imagine the trauma ALL of those kids are going though.
A prayer that these crazed attacks will cease. (And I'm not even religious, but this is just ridiculous.)
This is a bit weird. I'm not a huge fan, but last night some friends and I were talking about Ronnie James Dio and listening to Dio and Dio-era Black Sabbath. Today I wake up to find that he died. It's fucked up! Not only because he's Dio, but because we were just talking about him.
Something similar happened with me, on Friday I learned a few of my friends had only heard the Killswitch Engage version of Holy Diver, and didn't even know it was a cover. I immediately found it on Grooveshark for them.
Comments
An anti-government militant -- on disability
2 detained for dead babies found along China river
Eh, I don't have any strong opinions about this either way.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2010/04/09/2010-04-09_robert_pattinson_wont_be_playing_kurt_cobain_in_the_upcoming_biopic_on_the_late_.html
Asian kids are so fucking adorable too
Chinese Children Hurt in New Attack
It seems that many people in China do not know about the last attacks by the dude with the hammer, because many local news agencies never released any news about it in Chinese, and the province where it happened did not discuss it in the evening news. In China, news organizations are under the strict control of state propaganda departments, and it is very rare that a news outlet will release news that the state does not approve of ahead of time.
In other words, the government is muffling the story. They're not denying it or hiding it, they're just keeping it low key and away from the front page.
My question for you: Is it right for a government to hide news from the public in certain situations? In this situation, it seems that several of these attacks have been partially copycat in nature. Therefore, the government could argue that by keeping the news stories, then they can keep more people safe and reduce the rate of copycat attacks. Three attacks have happened this week, and there was another high profile one against random children a month ago. On the other hand, that's an incredibly dangerous slippery slope, and governments have frequently used that rationalization very liberally to cover up various misdeeds.
Thoughts?
On the topic of "should the Government hide this", under any normal circumstance I would say no. But that also assumes that the government in question has promised and is founded upon not keeping secrets from the people, which I'm almost quite certain, isn't the "Communist Chinese" goal (Hence censors and such). Also these do indeed seem to be copycat attacks, no matter how stupid I believe that to be.
To actually answer the question asked and not just ramble on about my specific thoughts, due to them being copycat attacks, I think to keep them in the news but still leave them out of sight behind the front pages is a good balance between keeping the people informed and preventing and such attacks again. Though they could probably beef up security a bit (Which according to the article they've at least said they're going to).
Nine in China Are Killed in Latest School Attack
A prayer that these crazed attacks will cease. (And I'm not even religious, but this is just ridiculous.)
\m/ ಥ_ಥ
Sympathy for his friends and family..... but seriously, I don't get his popularity, Black Sabbath or not.
IT'S NOT A TUMOR!!!