Trident Times: FSU, Zócalo, Mockingjay, and Bangkok

Watch for rising levels of violence, protests, and related activities on November 20-21, 2014. Here's some early indicators....

There has been a college shooting at Florida State University.

The shooter is dead and, at least, three students are seriously injured after being shot inside the first floor lobby at Strozier Library at Florida State University (FSU), in the heart of the Tallahassee campus. As CNN and other major news outlets are reporting, the shooting began around 12:30 am on Thursday, November 20, 2014.

The library is open 24 hours a day, and was packed with students studying for finals, before the beginning of Thanksgiving break. Police confronted the gunman (some accounts say on the steps of the library), who refused to drop his gun, and he was shot dead.

The male individual who shot several students on Florida State University's campus Thursday night was identified as a graduate who later became a lawyer. Myron May graduated from FSU before earning his law degree at Texas Tech, according to the Associated Press, which cited an unnamed official providing the information. The AP also interviewed a woman, Abigail Taunton, who said she rented a house to May.

May graduated from FSU in 2005.

Myron (Arabic = sweet oil) May was from Dayton, Ohio, and has lived in Lubbock, Texas; Houston, Texas; and most recently, Wewahitchka (Seminole = water eyes), Florida. Source.

Florida State University student Jason Derfuss found this bullet and damaged book in his backpack after leaving the scene of Thursday night's shooting at the campus library.

FSU is one of the top research universities in the nation. It has about 40,000 students spread out in various campuses in the city, and is also considered one of the nation's top-ranked football teams.

The history of the campus is long and detailed. In 1856, the land and buildings in an area formerly known as Gallows Hill, site of public executions in early Tallahassee, where the Florida Institute was built, was accepted as the site of the state seminary for male students. The cadets from the Confederate military school there defeated Union forces at the Battle of Natural Bridge in 1865. The FSU Army ROTC, to this day, is only one of four collegiate military units in the US with permission to display a Confederate battle streamer.

During the 1960s and 1970s the Florida State University became a center for student activism especially in the areas of racial integration, women's rights and opposition to the Vietnam War. The school acquired the nickname "Berkeley of the South." The FSU chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society were especially active there in 1969, leading to the "Night of the Bayonets."

"Seminoles, who lived and fought in swampy everglades, tended not to ride horses." The stereotype of the Plains Indians is used for the FSU mascot.

(The most recent school shooting before the FSU incident involved the Tulalip First Nation of Washington State. Six died in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School event of Friday, October 24, 2014.)

Florida State has been the home of the “Seminoles” since 1947. In recent years, the name and symbols tied to FSU has called "The Champions of Racist Mascots." Dave Zirin has written therein:

Any Florida State fanatic will shout at you, the university has “a formal agreement with Seminole Nation” and that makes everything all right.
...the existence of this “agreement with the Seminole Nation” is a myth.
The agreement is with the Florida Seminole Tribal Council and not the Seminole Nation. The majority of Seminoles don’t even live in Florida. They live in Oklahoma, one of the fruits of the Seminole Wars, the Indian Removal Act and The Trail of Tears. These Oklahoma Seminoles—who, remember, are the majority—oppose the name. On October 26, 2013, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma’s governing body passed a resolution that read in part, “The Seminole Nation condemns the use of all American Indian sports team mascots in the public school system, by college and university level and by professional teams.”

FSU's logo, three burning staffs, contains the motto, vires, artes, mores (in Latin), strength, skill, character (in English).

Meanwhile, in Mexico,

RPJ writes from Mexico City:

Things might get VERY interesting [on Thursday, November 20, 2014] down here. They've announced a triple protest march, starting from different points of the city, and converging at the Zócalo plaza. A literal trident of angry people.

It's synchromystically interesting that [Thursday] is when we celebrate the 104th anniversary of the Mexican revolution, and a day later the first part of Mockingjay will be premiered worldwide.

There is great symbolism behind Zócalo:

The main plaza of Mexico City is commonly known as the Zócalo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈsokalo], plinth), meaning plinth. It was the main ceremonial center in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan and from the colonial period on, the main plaza or square in the heart of the historic center of Mexico City. The site is just one block southwest of the Templo Mayor which, according to Aztec legend and mythology, was considered the center of the universe....A European-style plaza was not part of the conquered Aztec Tenochtitlan; the old city had a sacred precinct or "teocalli" which was the absolute center of the city (and the universe, according to Aztec belief), but it was located to the immediate north and northeast of the modern-day Zócalo. Source.

"Mexico is facing an escalating political crisis amid growing fury over a mansion built for the presidential family and the disappearance and probable massacre of 43 student teachers," notes the Guardian article, "Mexico at breaking point as anti-government anger escalates."

Mockingjay and Bangkok

The movie, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I, has the release dates in Indonesia and the Philippines of November 20th, and in the United States of November 21th. It is a movie about revolution.

"Tridents" are to be found in The Hunger Games via the "three-finger salute."

NBC News has broken the news, November 20, 2014, that protest leader Nachacha Kongudom was arrested by undercover cops outside a Bangkok cinema after using the Hunger Games three-finger salute to defy Thailand's military rulers. The new The Hunger Games movie has been pulled from the Apex chain of Thai theaters.

The Hunger Games salute has actually been banned by the Thai military.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is a 2014 American science fiction adventure film directed by Francis Lawrence with a screenplay by Peter Craig and Danny Strong. It is the first of two cinematic parts based on the novel Mockingjay, the final book in The Hunger Games trilogy, written by Suzanne Collins, and the third installment in The Hunger Games film series, produced by Nina Jacobson and Jon Kilik and distributed by Lionsgate. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, [the now deceased] Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland. Source.

Other areas of concern...

The car rammings, protests, and now open attacks against Jews and Arabs related to the Temple Mount situation are increasing. (See here.) This is not going to go away. The fear after the recent massacre is high.

The Ferguson grand jury finding comes in soon too.

Also...

Michael Nichols, 83, director of Carnal Knowledge, The Odd Couple and The Graduate, has died of a heart attack, Wednesday evening.