YouTube Video Warned About School Shooting

mytrip writes to tell us that CNN is reporting at least eight dead in a Finland school shooting that was apparently planned out in graphic videos posted to YouTube. "YouTube appeared to have removed 89 videos linked to his account, many of them featuring Nazi imagery, shortly after the incident. Finnish media reported someone posted a message two weeks ago on the Web site, warning of a bloodbath at the school. A video posted earlier Wednesday, by 'Sturmgeist89,' was titled 'Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007.' 'Sturmgeist89' identified himself as Auvinen, and said he chose the name 'Sturmgeist' because it means 'storm spirit' in German."

Comments

How freedom is lost

[riceboy50]

How else could career politicians stay in power other than to appease the masses with knee-jerk measures that strip a small piece of freedom away? Who needs the long-term big picture when there are kids dying today?

Re:How freedom is lost

[sqrt(2)]

When the PATRIOT act was passed I said if an attack of this magnitude (9/11) every 50 years is the price of liberty it's still worth it.

And that may sounds selfish if you know someone who died on 9/11 but I have to live in the US too, so I have just as much chance of dying as anyone. People die from guns; worth it for the freedom to own guns. People die from drugs; worth it to have the freedom to control your own body. People die from terrorist attacks; worth it to have freedom and privacy. The only way you can win against terrorism is by not fighting it and LIVING FREE. Don't take stupid risks, but by far the bigger danger is from over correcting and NOT from doing too little. This is not something people like to hear, and so we get stories like this one and the politicians take away our guns, our drugs, our privacy and we say it's worth it to protect ourselves. I fear that the sun will rise on a day when a generation of Americans wakes up and finds that they no longer have any freedoms left to give.

Re:It's the media

[Max Romantschuk]

While it's reasonable to assume that some people will react with "We should ban X" -reactions, judging from the recent local news (I live in Finland) I think this time around there will be more talk about how no one noticed what was happening inside the shooters head and less about what to blame.

Interestingly, the news interviewed a friend of his who apparently hadn't noticed anything much more than the kid keeping to himself. It seems to have come as a surprise to everyone.

The shooter's manifesto also claimed that he did not wish anyone to be blamed for his own actions. It seems he saw the media reaction coming.

Ultimately, much depends on the survival of the shooter. When I last saw the news at 22:00 local time he was alive but in a critical state after having shot himself in the head. If he does survive the aftermath will hopefully have less guessing to be done.

There's a Wikipedia article about the Jokela school shooting as well, with some bits and pieces of information.

Re:Interesting

[SatanicPuppy]

The eternal question: Is he just messed up, or is he scary messed up?

People always telegraph their intentions beforehand, but seeing it is almost always reserved for after the fact. Most attempts to predict this sort of behaviour run aground on the fact that it doesn't sound all that different from regular messed up behaviour. Of course a lot of people would like to stomp that out, but a lot of antisocial people still don't go to the point of mass murder...or even solo murder, or self-murder.

I look at things like this, and my first response is never: "Oh gosh, we should have seen it coming!" For every real nutjob, there are a hundred others who are just being young, alienated, and angry. Every quasi-normal action is held up as a "warning sign" and every admittedly abnormal action is magnified, and then used to villify people who "should have seen it coming."

I don't know. Just my experience that, every time something like this happens, it's used as an excuse to harass people who don't fit the "normal" mold, whatever the hell that is, and when, in reality, 99% of the people you're harassing have done nothing wrong, and will do nothing wrong.

Re:Crazy Idea

[BewireNomali]

M.A.D. It worked for your superpowers. Now let's make it work for you.

Re:It's the media

[SatanicPuppy]

People always do those types of recriminations afterward; "Oh why did we not heed all these warning signs which are now obvious."

The truth of it is, those warning signs are almost never obvious beforehand, because if they were, someone would have locked the guy up. A lot of the behaviour which is "obvious evidence of psychosis" could have a lot of interpretations if the person never kills anyone.

I hope people are more sane in Finland than over here in the states, because something like that happening here would provoke nothing but unproductive attempts to restrict freedoms, hours and hours of meaningless television commentary, and a host of lawsuits.

Re:Crazy Idea

[Cornflake917]

That's not a crazy idea, that's the most retarded idea I've ever heard.

Yes, lets give children guns, look at how well thats working out for them in African countries in civil war.

Re:What's Nerd about this Article?

[MightyMartian]

Then don't open the fucking topic, you half-wit toadhead.

Of course it is.

[SatanicPuppy]

God the PATRIOT act is a fricking nightmare. Has it made anyone safer?

The real issue is, 9/11 won't happen again. As a country, we've learned our lesson about "just sit tight and wait" when it comes to plane hijacking. Box cutter? You best have a flamethrower next time, because me and everyone in business class are going to beat you to death with our laptops as soon as you start trying to wave that piddly crap in our faces. Akbar Macbook, Bitch!

It was a surprise. People bought it. That day has passed. But in response we have done unto ourselves far worse things than they could have ever hoped to have accomplished. Massively stupid.

And we will have other successful attacks on our soil. It's inevitable that, over time, everyone will miss someone. The occasional deranged teen will go on a shooting rampage. The occasional terrorist will pull off a successful attack.

But the fact that there is a possible danger is not a reason to upend your entire society. Analyze, find your mistakes, and correct them...Don't throw out a system that failed once, and try to replace it whole cloth with something new, designed by committee! Ridiculous.

Re:Interesting

[cromar]

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to understand that violent fantasies -- not actions, but fantasies -- are therapeutic and cathartic. Dante wasn't a crazed devil because he imagined and wrote The Divine Comedy. Nor was Shakespeare because he wrote King Lear and Macbeth. Look at just about any piece of creative work and you will find violence and usually a non-psychotic who wrote it.

The sad part...

[Kazrath]

is how desensitized people are to this type of violence. One of my co-workers is friends with an individual that attends that school. He made a joke "Well at least I get to take the rest of the week off and do some drinking!".

Re:The sad part...

[jjohnson]

I wouldn't be too sad about this--I don't think it indicates a blasé attitude. People have long made jokes like that at dark times, as part of coping, or just from a sense that life goes on. Salon has a great article on the venal, silly, and generally unworthy things that many thought on 9/11: Forbidden Thoughts on 9/11.

Re:The sad part...

[MirrorField]

Humor, íncluding black and tasteless humor, are an important coping mechanism. Not necessarily a sign of desensitization.

Re:Interesting

[Kjella]

The eternal question: Is he just messed up, or is he scary messed up? And the even more practical YRO question: Even if you're 110% convinced he's scary messed up, what can you do before he goes ballistic? To get into therapy he either has to want it, be stark raving mad or show very clear violent tendencies. Most of these loners don't want help from the world they hate, they're not bubbling mad since they're rational enough to plan and execute and most of them just keep it all bottled up until it goes boom. In short, there's rarely something to formally latch onto in order to force them to get help.

it's not that complicated

[circletimessquare]

you can play with rocket launchers in your back yard, pledge eternal devotion to hitler, and ramble on and on about the craziest shit

none of theat matters

but when you threaten a school, no matter how obliquely, you should be arrested

this guy did that. the rest doesn't matter

Re:it's not that complicated

[Lurker2288]

Fine, but what constitutes a threat? There was a story on the news the other day where I live about some 2nd grader being suspended for pointing a 'gun finger' at another student and yelling "bang, you're dead." Is that a threat? What if a teenager says he'd like to kill a teacher who just gave him a detention? Or the class loser commiserating with a friend and saying he wishes he could 'blow the whole school up.'

Are any of these threats? None of them? If we arrest the people making them, are we removing a valid threat to society, or are we just giving them a REAL reason to be pissed off at the world? And do you really want to totally discount the circumstances (I'd be a lot more worried about the rocket launcher wielding neo-Nazi than about some kid who sits at home on the weekend and watches 'Heathers.')? How many non-threats are you willing to lock up for some nebulous, hypothetical increase in safety?

Simple rules like 'if you do X, then you should always get Y' don't really satisfy us in the real world. The consequence of a more nuanced approach, unavoidably, is that sometimes bad things happen despite out efforts.

Re:Interesting

[KKlaus]

Whether violent fantasies are cathartic has nothing to do with whether they are risk factors or not (which they are).

Re:Interesting

[jpfed]

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to understand that violent fantasies -- not actions, but fantasies -- are therapeutic and cathartic. Here's why- because violent fantasies aren't therapeutic and cathartic.

There is a difference between things that feel good and things that are good for you. Catharsis feels good. Freud told us that catharsis was good for us. Freud also was full of shit.

Here's the deal. Our lives are full of circumstances that provoke us or challenge our assumptions and expectations. If you let things continue to do that, you will have anger. There are many ways to deal with this:

1. Accept the limitations of the situation. Find other ways to get what you want.
2. Use the anger to get energy to overcome the challenges in ways that respect others.
3. Use the anger to get energy to overcome your sense of empathy and ignore the rights of others.
4. Ignore your desire to do something about the challenges. Get depressed.

Violent fantasies do not reduce anger. "Venting" does not reduce anger. They both just increase it. You don't realize that they increase anger when you do it, because anger without a solution feels bad, and dominance and/or validation from others feels good. The good feeling you get after violent fantasies or from venting is not the antithesis of the original anger you felt, though- it's a reward for your anger. This can be good, if you were doing strategy 4 and, because of your increased anger, are ready to go to strategies 1 or 2. But if that's not the transition in strategies that's going to take place, then there's no benefit.

Side note: where did people get the idea that "therapeutic" meant "feels nice"? Improving one's health (mental or physical) very often involves sacrifice and changing habitual ways of thinking and acting. Things that feel nice like "therapeutic" shampoo or "therapeutic" massages or "therapeutic" whatever do nothing by themselves to promote growth or change.

Re:It's the media

[hitmark]

what i find interesting is that in his mind he was doing the "right thing".

as in, he talks about himself as natural selection incarnate and similar.

basically he convinced himself that he had a right, and even a duty do to what he did...

do anyone see a parallel to terrorists in general, or even the speeches of world leaders before they go to war/intervention?

makes me wonder what humans are able to do if they convince themselves that its the correct thing to do.

hell, you could probably replace "natural selection" above with "divine right" and get just the same effect.

in a way it scares me silly to think about it. thats true mind over matter, right there...

Re:It's the media

[hitmark]

so maybe one should take everyone that shows signs in for a psychological evaluation?

one goes to the doctor if one get a runny nose or similar, but going to a psychologist when the world caves in on one is a lot tougher...

hell, one could maybe say that every teen should have a round of evaluation. they get medical checkups for physical issues do they not?

Save the World

[iridium_ionizer]

Save a Mentally Ill Person, Save the World.

There was recently a public service announcement on TV that went somewhere along the lines of: Yeah, your friend may flake out on you, or act withdrawn sometimes, but what someone suffering from a mental illness needs most is a friend.

I know that it is human nature for people to make friends with people who fit in similar niches as themselves. And maybe in an idealized view of smaller communities of yesteryear, someone suffering from a mental illness would be more accepted, if only out of necessity (or maybe not). But it is not hard to imagine how in modern society, with so much emphasis on a mobile society and independence, that a person with only a mild case of mental illness could find themselves suddenly isolated and without a support group of family and friends. This could make an illness that was once barely noticeable to become dishabilitating.

Yes, people are free to choose to improve there circumstances or seek assistance, but if there is anything which Nazism and Stalinism taught us it is that even normal people can act in horrible ways given the (im)proper environment. And before this analogy is lost on you, remember that people with mental illnesses generally have either genetically-determined imbalances in their brain chemistries, or else traumatic past experiences. Most people don't wake up one day and decide to become mentally ill.

So instead of making jokes about people that we know as being "the next mass murderer/serial killer/etc" and effectively shunning said person, we should try to include them into our social circle. Otherwise we are just complaining about the symptoms without bothering with the inoculation. It's our society, if everyone did something small we could avert at least some of these tragedies.

Re:of course there's a gray area

[Lurker2288]

Okay, so now your position has changed from 'any threat merits arrest' to 'specific, actionable threats warrant arrest'.

I don't know, how many videos are there up on youtube with kids brandishing guns and talking about shooting shit up? How many of them would really do it? And how many are you willing to lock up to prevent the rare nutjob?

Or hell, let's take this case. Say somebody had seen his videos, and connected it with him, and contacted the authorities. They'd probably take his gun away and make him see a counselor or something, but without having actually done anything, they probably can't lock him up (not familiar with the laws in Finland). So two months later he's out, and he finds another way to get a gun. Or he builds a bomb. Or whatever.

I don't disagree with you that situations like this present a clear opportunity to intervene, but it's tough to sort out the real threats from the posers, and arrest isn't the optimal solution in any case.

Re:Obviously

[jwisser]

I agree with your initial point- survivors of a genocide should indeed get to call it what they want. But to imply that the genocide of the American Indians (or of ANY people) was any less horrific is ridiculous. Less organized, sure; no one person said, "Hey, we should eliminate this group of people based on race." An entire people just decided that they shouldn't get to keep their lives, their land, or their dignity. It might interest you to read about, for example, the Trail of Tears.

Genocide is genocide. It's evil no matter where, why, or how it happens.

The holocaust refers to an event in history

[Anonymous Coward]

The holocaust refers to the mass exterminations of Jews AND homosexuals AND gypsies AND whoever else was included in the purging of human life. It is an event that is named the holocaust. It's not a special "Jew massacre". The only thing that smacks of racism is you believing that it is somehow exclusive to Jews and disliking it for that.

Re:The holocaust refers to an event in history

[dsoltesz]

the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question." The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word 'olah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program--the extermination camps--the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires.

Note the Britannica definition does not limit the definition of Holocaust only to the genocide of Jews. Wikipedia's source for the definition including only Jews in the definition is a highly biased one and suggests that is the definition among Jews, not among the general populace. Also note the Wikipedia article cites broader definitions:

Although the word "holocaust" has been widely used since the 17th century to refer to the violent death of a large number of people

and

The word "Holocaust" is also used in a wider sense to describe other actions of the Nazi regime. These include around half a million Roma and Sinti, the deaths of several million Soviet prisoners of war, along with slave laborers, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, and political opponents.

Even the Wikipedia article suggests limiting the term to only refer to the killing of Jews during WWII is highly biased, and personally I'm finding the Wikipedia article to be heinously lacking in objectivity.

The use of the word in this wider sense is objected to by many Jewish organizations, particularly those established to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust. Jewish organizations say that the word in its application to the Nazi genocide was originally coined to describe the extermination of the Jews, and that the Jewish Holocaust was a crime on such a scale, and of such specificity, as the culmination of the long history of European antisemitism, that it should not be subsumed into a general category with other crimes of the Nazis.

I should hope we'd all be outraged and horrified at every single death at the hands of the Nazis, not just those of Jews. The notion that the tragedy of any group is somehow diluted by the remembrance of the same tragedy inflicted upon other groups, suggesting that the killing of gypsies or homosexuals was somehow a "lesser" crime, is absurd and offensive.

freaky how?

[Anonymous Coward]

A 22 pistol is nothing to be scared of. Neither is a manifesto. Neither is scary. One is a firearm (neutral piece of hardware) and one is a document (neutral of any action on it's own).

Let's allow for freedom to reign as it's the guns and documents that will free (or enslave) people.

Re:Obviously

[BobMcD]

They weren't just exterminated, they weren't just ostracized from society, they were tortured, starved, experimented on, persecuted, and so on. Look, you probably do need to open your mind just a tad. The Native American got at least as bad a deal from the US as the Jews got from Nazi Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears (forced relocation, numerous examples here as well)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre (machine guns turned on women and children)
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/281/22/2127.pdf (smallpox used as a biological weapon)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_treaties (hundreds of broken treaties)

I'm already bored with this, but I could certainly keep going.

I'll grant you that the holocaust is far more recent, but that doesn't really make it somehow more terrible nor more relevant.

Lots of people get the shaft on a regular basis. Yes, European Jews of the 40's are in that crowd. No, we probably shouldn't infringe on someone's right to question whether or not it happened (or at least happened exactly as it was reported.)

If I have to permit people to claim that there is no God, you also get to permit people to claim things you believe to be false.

Right?

Re:Interesting

[gardyloo]

Our lives are full of circumstances that provoke us or challenge our assumptions and expectations. If you let things continue to do that, you will have anger. Or you will study science.

Re:Finland and the Nazis

[pekkak]

Oh what a load of... I'm in a bit of a bad mood because of the news here, but really, where's the secret? That Finland and Germany were allies is no secret, it's documented history. When you go to war, you pick any allies you can get. That goes for any country, any time. Other Europians don't know about Finland fighting alongside the Axis powers? Really? Since when was that? I never knew any Europians who didn't know this and I've known plenty. More importantly, what has it got to do with the news discussed here?

That's why I'm not completely surprised to read about Auvinen's Nazi obsession.. it's a disturbing secret of Finnish history.

Even Israel has neonazis these days (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6985808.stm) which sounds about as stupid as anything to me. It just goes to show that some people are always attracted to stupid, evil ideas and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with history. Explaining a tradegy like this (a young kid going ballistic, ending and/or destroying countless lives including his own) with stuff that happened 60+ years ago is just about as smart as explaining it all with computer games.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

People are so judgmental and extreme. While the stories may not help her in any way, it's still should not be a problem for the community or the school whatever she writes. No one is purporting to have solutions for her, but I guess that compassion and understanding would go a lot further to better her situations than hasty judgments and forced actions.

Re:Obviously

[Flambergius]

I'll grant you that the holocaust is far more recent, but that doesn't really make it somehow more terrible nor more relevant.

I don't agree with this. I see at least two issues why the Holocaust's recentness does make it more terrible or relevant than many other genocides.

1) The Holocaust was industrialized genocide. It required the tools of an industrial society and economy to run and manage. To participate in the Holocaust you didn't really make a choice to kill the Jews, you did just your job, be it record keeping, train maintenance or gas chamber construction and you kept your mouth shut. This industrial disposal of unwanted humans is different sort of inhumanity than practiced by, say, tribal conquerors. Native Americans and Armenians, were either killed rather traditionally or ill-treated in ways that led to massive amounts of death from hunger and exposure, which, while purposeful, is still a long step from the systematic and designed activity of the Holocaust.

2) The Holocaust happened in highly developed Western nation. Much of our public activity, the energy of our societies, is spend on further progress towards ideals and policies that were supposed to be strongly present in the Germany of the 30s. Any serious look at the Holocaust must make us realize that just claiming to have ideals or to be civilized society does not make horrific things impossible. We must still be skeptical about claims of virtue and we still must take responsibility for our own actions. This lesson can not as forcefully be drawn from earlies atrocities, nor from later events in non-democratic countries.

Re:Obviously

[BobMcD]

Well, you may want to compare the actual practice with the spoken policy. The US's position on Native Americans essentially mirrored that of the Nazi's towards the Jews:

They are less than human, and we will take what they have through any means necessary.

I realize that they SAID different things while they were doing it, but personally I would actually put this in the 'Pro' column for the Nazis. If you were Jewish you KNEW that the Nazis couldn't be trusted, and as a feature of this many, many people got out before it was too late. The Native American was shamelessly duped over and over again by a government that claimed to be a friend, claimed to treat them as equals, etc. This is far more dispicable in my humble opinion...