Bundy Ranch

In 2014, the moniker "Bundy" is linked to events reminding many of Ruby Ridge, Waco, and other similar situations. The Bundy Standoff (also known as the Bundy Ranch Standoff and the Siege of Bundy Ranch) is an ongoing standoff between the United States Bureau of Land Management and cattle farmer Cliven Bundy. The standoff originated when the BLM accused Bundy of herding cattle which threatened the desert tortoise.

Reports of black helicopters being used to herd Bundy cattle to be caught and killed by the BLM has further incited anger in the Old West, and raised fears of government conspiracy and mistreatment. The BLM has designated "First Amendment areas," deemed as the only place where protesters (in support of Bundy) are allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights.

April Flashbacks: Waco, OKBomb, Columbine, Hitler, Patriots Day, VA Tech...

It will be recalled that the Waco Siege (also known as the Waco Massacre) was a standoff and assault of a compound belonging to the religious group Branch Davidians by American federal and Texas state law enforcement and military between February 28 and April 19, 1993.

Four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians killed in initial raid. A 51-day siege ensued, ending with an FBI assault during which the compound burned down, killing 76 people, including many children, inside, including David Koresh. Eleven people who left the compound were arrested.

As a direct result of the events at Waco were cited as the primary motivation for the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing that took place exactly two years later in 1995.

Timothy McVeigh cited the Waco incident as a primary motivation for the Oklahoma City bombing, his April 19, 1995 truck bomb attack that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, a U.S. government office complex in downtown Oklahoma City, and destroyed or damaged numerous other buildings in the vicinity. The attack claimed 168 lives (including 19 children under the age of 6) and left over 600 injured in the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil prior to the September 11 attacks, and as of 2014 it remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history.

The Murrah building had been previously targeted in October 1983 by white supremacist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, including founder James Ellison and Richard Snell. The group had plotted to park "a van or trailer in front of the Federal Building and blow it up with rockets detonated by a timer." After Snell's appeal for murdering two people in unrelated cases was denied, he was executed the same day as the Murrah bombing. Richard Wayne Snell (May 21, 1930 – April 19, 1995) watched the television reports of the Murrah Building bombing before he was put to death in Arkansas.

In his last words before being executed, Snell addressed then-Governor Jim Guy Tucker:

Governor Tucker, look over your shoulder; justice is coming. I wouldn't trade places with you or any of your cronies. Hell has victories. I am at peace.

Other events sharing the date of fire at Mt. Carmel have been mentioned in discussions of the Waco siege. The April 20, 1999, Columbine High School massacre might have been timed to mark either an anniversary of the FBI's assault at Waco or Adolf Hitler's birthday. Some of the connections appear coincidental. April 19 was the date from the American Revolution's opening battles ("the shot heard round the world") and was also the date of the opening of the siege on the CSAL group in Arkansas in 1985. On April 17, 2013, a fertilizer plant exploded at West near Waco, two days after the Boston Marathon bombings that some speculatively connected to an upcoming 20th anniversary of the Waco incident of 1993, as well as to an anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre of April 16, 2007.

Another Link: Ruby Ridge

The Siege of Ruby Ridge has been cited as a precursor to what may be unfolding at the Bundy Ranch standoff. Ruby Ridge was the site of a deadly confrontation and siege in northern Idaho between August 21 – August 31, 1992 against Randy Weaver, his family and his friend Kevin Harris by agents of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It resulted in the death of Weaver's son Sammy, his wife Vicki, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Francis Degan.

It appears an April encounter with a helicopter was behind why people were killed at Ruby Ridge. Following an April 18, 1992 fly-over by a helicopter for the Geraldo Rivera "Now It Can Be Told" TV show, US Marshal Service HQ received media reports that Weaver had fired on the helicopter. That day in Idaho, a US Marshals team was installing surveillance cameras overlooking the Weaver property at the time of the fly-over. The field report for April 18, 1992 filed by Marshal W. Warren Mays reported seeing a helicopter near the Weaver property, but not hearing any shots fired.

Weaver then granted an interview with a newspaper reporter in which he, family and friends present that day denied firing on the helicopter. The helicopter pilot Richard Weiss eventually gave FBI FD-302 interviews denying that Weaver fired on his helicopter.

The media reports that Weaver had fired on the Rivera helicopter became part of the justification later cited by USMS Wayne "Duke" Smith and FBI HRT Commander Richard Rogers in drawing up the Ruby Ridge Rules of Engagement on August 21–22, 1992. Also, in spite of Richard Weiss' repeated denials that shots had been fired at his helicopter, US Attorney Ron Howen would charge that, as Overt Act 32 of the Weaver's Conspiracy Against the Federal Government, Randy, Vicki and Harris fired two shots at the Rivera helicopter.

Bundy

Formerly, the name "Bundy" was associated with an infamous serial killer of the 1970s. The adopted son of Johnny Culpepper Bundy, Ted Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) would go on to kill perhaps 30 young women in seven states between 1974 and 1978.

The quick meaning of the name Bundy is "free."

A little more digging shows links to the fate of Cliven Bundy:

Bundy: This interesting surname, of Anglo-Saxon origin, with variant spellings Bownd, Bownde, Bounde, was at first a status surname for a peasant farmer or husbandman. The derivation is from the Olde English pre 7th Century "bonda, bunda", reinforced by the Old Norse "bonde, bondi", in Middle English, "bonde". The ultimate derivation is disputed; it may be connected with the Olde English "buan", to dwell, hence "buende", a dweller, but is thought more likely to be from "bindan", to bind. It was originally used to signify a farmer holding lands from and bound by loyalty to a lord, and hence a free landowner. After the Norman Conquest the name became associated with the idea of bound servitude. Source.

+++++UPDATE APRIL 12, 2014+++++

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4.4.14: The Winter Soldier, Jinn, and Fort Hood?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014. Remember what happened when the initial Captain America first was released?

The day of neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik's massacre in Norway (July 22, 2011) was the day of the release of the film Captain America (July 22, 2011), with the film's first scene taking place in Norway, to the sound of Nazis' rapid fire machine gunning. A bizarre coincidence, to say the least.

All this lead me to ask on July 19, 2012, "What will happen on July 20, 2012?," with that year's upcoming Friday release of The Dark Knight Rises.

We know, now, don't we? The Aurora theater shooting. 

Predictions are only helpful if people take precautions. A journalist wrote a Dangerous Minds article later, entitled: "The Copycat Effect: Meet The Man Who Predicted The Aurora Shooting." Nothing has really changed, as far as we can tell.

Certainly, we are in different times here in 2014 than we were in 2012. Newtown/Sandy Hook has taken place. The Boston Marathon bombing occurred. Mass shootings are part of the landscape too frequently. The Fort Hood shooting on April 2, 2014 may have already released the jinn from the bottle. Soldiers. Mass Shootings. Fort Hood & the Bell Name Game. BTW, the film Jinn is being released on 4.4.14, too. The purpose of the movie Jinn is to "introduce the accurate mythological concept of the jinn to western audiences."

Something is already in the air. 

Should we expect mass violence this weekend, regarding soldiers, jinn, and shooting sprees? Let's hope not.

Nevertheless, we are heading into April, which has been the month of Copycat Effects. Waco (April 19, 1993), OKBomb (April 19, 1995), Columbine (April 20, 1999), VA Tech (April 16, 2007), Boston Marathon bombings (April 15, 2013) and so many major and minor copycats are tied to this terrible month of violence.

April is the cruellest month... 

by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). 

 From The Waste Land, 1922.

Ozymandias vs Winter Soldier

In antiquity, Ozymandias was an alternative name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, January 11, 1818

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Tecumseh Name Game Surfaces In Mass Shootings

After the release of my 2004 Simon and Schuster book, The Copycat Effect, I was ridiculed by mainstream media for pointing to rising data that was clearly indicating a reinforcement of a probable violent future.

Today, mass shootings, school shootings, and related forms of violence are routine in America.

This weekend, mass media stories are appearing noting that in the first 14 days of 2014, there have been seven school shootings, an average of one every other day. A simplistic and perhaps slightly inaccurate summary, but the stat is remarkably close to the truth, if we restrict the timeframe to the first 14 school days of the year.

Based upon a survey of small media markets about various forms of mass shootings, it appears that the frequency of these events may be higher than that quick media statistic would lead us to believe.

Here's what I've seen in the news:

January 9:

Jackson, Madison County, Tennessee ~

A 17-year-old student was wounded Thursday in a shooting at a Jackson high school, and another student was taken into custody, police said.
The 17-year-old was shot once in the left thigh outside of Liberty Technology Magnet High School and was taken by ambulance to Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. The shooting occurred at the front of the school at 2:21 p.m., a few minutes after dismissal time. Officials said the suspect left campus in a car. He was taken into custody about 30 minutes after the shooting.
Police took a 16-year-old Liberty student into custody at his grandmother's house on Cotton Grove Road in east Madison County.
The names of the victim and the suspect have not been released.


January 13:

Wesley Chapel, Pasco County, Florida ~

Not a school shooting, but a movie theater shooting made the news on this Monday. Curtis Reeves, Jr., 71, a retired Tampa Police Captain was arrested and held without bail for shooting a man and his wife after an apparent argument over texting while at a Wesley Chapel, Florida, movie theater.
At the Monday afternoon showing of the film Lone Survivor, Reeves and his wife were sitting behind another couple, Chad and Nicole Oulson, watching the previews, when Reeves became agitated with Chad for texting before the movie began.
At the Wesley Chapel-January 13th screening of Lone Survivor an argument broke out between the couples, popcorn was thrown, after which Reeves reportedly left the theater, came back, took out a gun and fired at Oulson and his wife. Officials said Nicole tried to block the bullet, resulting in a gunshot wound to her hand, before Chad was struck. And killed.

January 14:

Roswell, Chaves County, New Mexico ~

Tuesday, a Berrendo Middle School student opened fire in his gym with a shotgun and critically wounded two students in Roswell, New Mexico.

The injured were a 13-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy who were "simply sitting in their gym waiting to go to class," New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez said. The shooting occurred shortly before class was to begin at Berrendo Middle School.
The Eastern New Mexico Medical Center confirmed it treated two patients, who were then air lifted to the University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas, located about 175 miles from the middle school.
A spokesperson for UMC said the boy, who the governor said was 12, is out of surgery and is listed in critical condition. The girl, 13, is also being treated at the hospital and is listed in serious condition, according to the spokesperson. A school staff member suffered a minor injury and declined treatment.

The 12-year-old suspect was named as Mason Campbell.

January 15:

West Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania ~

A 17-year-old boy was arrested for bringing a loaded handgun to a West Philadelphia charter school.

St. Louis, Missouri ~
A hidden-camera TV news story on security at St. Louis schools led to a Thursday afternoon lockdown at Kirkwood High and a flurry of complaints by angry parents.
A KSDK-TV reporter visited four elementary schools and the St. Louis County high school without identifying himself as a journalist. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Kirkwood students and teachers were huddled in classrooms with the lights off for about 40 minutes Thursday after a man came into the school and asked to speak with security, then left.
The station defended its reporting in a statement broadcast Thursday night before its news report on school security lapses. The statement noted that the lockdown didn't happen until one hour after the reporter left Kirkwood High.

Elkhart, Elkhart County, Indiana ~

In Elkhart, Indiana, Shawn Walter Bair, 22, killed an employee, Krystle Dikes, and a shopper, Rachelle Godfread, at the Martin's Super Market on January 15th, Wednesday night.

Although apparently a name of German or Germanic origin, the etymology of Elkhart's name is disputed. One source claims that the origin of the city's name was the Shawnee Indian Chief Elkhart, cousin of the famous Chief Tecumseh, and the father of Princess Mishawaka, the namesake of neighboring Mishawaka, Indiana.

January 17:

Albany, Dougherty County, Georgia ~

A student was shot near Albany High School, Albany, Georgia. Albany Police said the 16 year old student was shot in the arm. Officers said the victim was walking along Tift Avenue when it happened. Investigators said the student was shot with a small caliber weapon. The victim was taken to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, but the injuries are not expected to be life-threatening.

Logan, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania ~

Two 15-year-old students were wounded Friday afternoon in what may have been an accidental shooting inside a charter high school in Logan, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia police said. One of the victims, a girl who was shot through the arm, was treated at and released from Einstein Medical Center, just blocks away from Delaware Valley Charter High School, where the shooting occurred. The second victim, her boyfriend, was struck by the same bullet, which lodged in his shoulder, police said. He remained at the hospital Friday night. The shooting took place just before 3:30 p.m. in the gym at Delaware Valley Charter High, 5201 Old York Rd., Philadelphia.

January 19-20:

Schulenburg, Fayette County, Texas:
Miguel Mejia-Ramos returned to his Queens, New York home on Sunday, January 19, and rifled through his wife's phone and Facebook account. He found an image of her with another man. He grabbed a knife from a butcher block and stood over his sleeping wife, Deisy Garcia, 21, and two daughters 2 and 1. He stabbed all of them to death. Mejia-Ramos fled in a white van, driving south to Texas. Authorities in Fayette County, Texas, say the suspect, who goes by at least one other name, was located Monday night, January 20th, after he turned on his cellphone. Authorities were able to track his location and arrest him at a vehicle roadblock on Interstate 10 in Schulenburg, Texas. The location is about 1,700 miles from New York.

January 20:

Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania ~
A school shooting, happening near the athletic center of Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, left one student in the hospital. The shooting put the campus on lockdown Monday night. The student was shot in the side while sitting in a car. The suspect remains on the run.

January 20-22:

Fayetteville, Cumberland County, North Carolina:
A 19-year-old man wanted for questioning in Fayetteville's first two homicides of 2014 turned himself in Wednesday evening.
Family members surrounded Albert Lamont Jackson, 19, of 3521 Seawell St. in Fayetteville, as he surrendered to police. Jackson was wanted for questioning in the murders of Manuel Sampeur, 25, and Pamela Ann Coe, 40, who were both found dead inside a residence at the Cambridge Arms Apartments on Monday.
Jackson, who had active warrants for assault with a deadly weapon, simple assault and communication of threats, was transported to the Cumberland County Detention Center.
The 19-year-old was the second person wanted in connection with the double homicide. Rashawn Javonte Hill, 17, was arrested Tuesday night after firing a shotgun at police.
Authorities arrived at 3611 Pickerel St. at about 11 p.m. to speak with Hill about the killings. As Fayetteville police and Cumberland County deputies entered the home, they heard a shotgun being racked from a rear bedroom. Hill then fired a single round as authorities walked down the hallway, police said. A Fayetteville police detective fired one shot at Hill. No one was hit.
Officers immediately retreated from the home and established a perimeter to ensure Hill did not escape. Hill was taken into custody without incident after authorities convinced him to surrender.

January 21: 

West Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, Indiana ~

One student was killed in a shooting on Tuesday, January 21, 2014, on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Police said the victim was a male senior and also a teaching assistant.

Purdue University Police Chief John Cox said Cody Mark Cousins, 23, of Centerville, Ohio, and Warsaw, Indiana, was being held in the Tippecanoe County Jail in Lafayette, on a preliminary charge of murder.
Cousins is accused of shooting 21-year-old Andrew F. Boldt of West Bend, Wisconsin, in the basement of the electrical engineering building around noon.
The suspect was apprehended moments after the shooting as he ran outside and was caught by West Lafayette, Indiana, police.

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Thus ended the third Fayette incident in three days. See the Fayette Factor, noted before, here. But intriguingly, another name in the background that keeps popping up in 2014 is Tecumseh.

Fayette county, Indiana, is best known for The Battle of Tippecanoe, which was fought on November 7, 1811, between United States forces led by Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and Native American warriors associated with the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.

For more on the "Curse of Tippecanoe," see here.

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Turlock, Stanislaus County, California ~

A man was shot near Turlock, California's Wakefield Elementary School Tuesday afternoon, putting the school on temporary lockdown as police searched for a fleeing suspect. According to Turlock Police Sgt. Steven Webb, the incident occurred at approximately 4:13 p.m., when persons in a late 1990s or early 2000s Honda started to argue with three other individuals near the intersection of South Avenue and Spruce Street – just across the street from Wakefield Elementary School.

The media placed this event in their list of 2014 "school shootings," but it does not really seem to fit there.

January 22:

Norman, Cleveland County, Oklahoma ~

Located south of Tecumseh Road, the University of Oklahoma resumed campus operations after a shooting scare.
There was no evidence of shots fired and no injuries after university officials reported a possible shooting just before noon central time on Wednesday.
"Shooting on campus. Avoid Gould Hall. Seek immediate shelter in place," the university tweeted.
The shelter in place order was lifted shortly afterward.

Gorham, Cumberland County, Maine ~

A University of Southern Maine student allegedly caused a four-hour police standoff at one of the school’s two remaining off-campus fraternity houses in Gorham, Maine. The entire downtown area was shutdown.

Alan-Michael Santos, 23, of Winchester, Massachusetts, was arrested and held on $15,000 bail at Cumberland County Jail in Portland after his arrest late Wednesday night.
Earlier, before the standoff, one of Santos's fraternity brothers had gone in to check on him and was met with a gun. Then other students started evacuating the house, and the standoff with law enforcement began. It lasted over four hours. Police executed a search warrant Thursday morning at the Sigma Nu fraternity at 24 School Street and seized two handguns that they believe belonged to Santos. They did not recover any other guns in the building.

January 23:

Littleton, Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties, Colorado ~

Police were investigating a threat made at Columbine High School in Colorado on Thursday. A lockout was lifted for seven Jefferson County schools in Colorado after a threat was made Thursday at Columbine High School. Jefferson County Public School officials that the lockdown was lifted after about a three hour lockout. During that time, no one was allowed in or out of school buildings in the area.

January 24:

Orangeburg, Orangeburg County, South Carolina ~

A student was shot and killed Friday at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Those on campus at the 3,200-student historically black university about 40 miles south of Columbia, S.C., have been told to shelter in place. The shooting took place in a dormitory. Campus officials know who fired the shots, said Sonya Bennett, a university spokeswoman, but the name of the accused shooter has not been released. Authorities were searching for the suspect.

The victim who was killed was a SCSU football player, Brandon A. Robinson, 20.

Orangeburg's first church was erected prior to 1763 in the center of the village and was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. A subsequent church building was used as a smallpox hospital by General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War. General W. Tecumseh Sherman is noted for his burning of Atlanta, utilizing the "Army of the Cumberland."

A few hours after I wrote the above, the following occurred:

January 25:

Columbia, Howard County, Maryland

On Saturday reports of an active shooter at a shopping mall in Columbia, Maryland became bulletins on the news. The shooter, Darion Marcus Aguilar of College Park, Maryland, arrived at the mall shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday armed with a Mossburg 12-gauge shotgun and used it to kill two people at a store on the upper level of the Mall of Columbia before killing himself. Police identified the dead employees as Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Maryland, and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Ellicott City and/or Mount Airy, Maryland. Both worked at Zumiez. Both worked at Zumiez, a shop that caters to skaters, where the shootings took place. 
"We have no known relationship between the victims and our shooter," Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon said at a news conference late Sunday.The body of the suspected shooter (who reportedly took his own life) was found near a shotgun on the floor of Zumiez. A large amount of ammunition was found near the body, and leading investigators to suspect that he might be carrying explosives.

The meaning and origin of the surname Aguilar is linked to the eagle. The name is found in Latin America as Aguilar meaning "sharp-eyed" as an eagle, to Spain where Aguilar means "the eagle." Linguistically Aguilar is related to aquila, a Roman name and the Black Eagle was the devise used on the Roman Legions' banners. Aguilar thus is a habitational name from any of numerous places called Aguilar, from Latin aquilare "haunt of eagles," a derivative of aquila "eagle."

Zumiez is a leading retailer for lifestyle brands centering on action sports such as skateboarding, snowboarding, BMX, and motocross.

The name Zumiez breaks down to have this complex meaning: Z is for zest, your zeal for life. Uis for uncanny, the way you know what to do. Mis for mighty, your inner strength. Iis for intense, your zest of living. Eis for extra, those little things you do! Zis for zip, the quickness in your step!

For more on the Columbus-Columbia-Columbine linkages, see here.

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Tecumseh (March 1768 – October 5, 1813), the Shawnee leader and hero, is from the name, Tekoomsē, meaning "Shooting Star" or "Panther Across The Sky." When he was still young, his father Puckshinwa was "brutally murdered" by white frontiersmen who had crossed onto Indian land in violation of a recent treaty, at the Battle of Point Pleasant (West Virginia) during Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774. Tecumseh resolved to become a warrior like his father and to be "a fire spreading over the hill and valley, consuming the race of dark souls."

"Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart...Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and in the service of your people." ~ Tecumseh

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There were 28 school shootings in all of 2013, following the Sandy Hook shooting.

Here's the listing again:

+++++

What some positive folks said about The Copycat Effect, ten years ago:

Dr. Steven Stack, sociologist, Center for Suicide Research: "The media are still largely in a state of denial on how their coverage of death contributes to the violence and destructiveness in our society -- but Coleman's book should wake them up!"

Benjamin Radford, author of Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us: "Coleman raises troubling questions about the media's hidden role in perpetuating the very crimes and tragedies they sensationalize."

Tess Gerritsen, M.D., author of The Sinner, The Last to Die, and others: "A fascinating and frightening look at the bizarre outer limits of human behavior."

Kenn Thomas, author of Popular Alienation and Popular Paranoia: "This is urgent reading."

Publishers Weekly: "A convincing case."

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A Year After Sandy Hook Shooting, Another Colorado School Shooting

Update: December 21, Colorado high school shooting victim Claire Davis dies in hospital, according to CBS Denver.

Updated: The deceased suspect of this incident has been identified as Karl Halverson Pierson, 18, who had recently been removed from the debate team.

Pierson was targeting Tracy Murphy, the school's librarian and Speech and Debate coach.

Karl, in the German form of Charles / Carl (Old German) means "free man" and Karl, from the Old English churl, means "man, serf."

Halverson is an English patronymic surname from the Old English given name Halvor, meaning firm and prudent. As always, the -son suffix indicates that the bearer was the son of Halvor, or at least someone along the line was once surnames became heriditary. Halvorson family history enters the books in 1748, when Peter Spence married Ann Halvorson at St. James Church in London. Halvorson genealogy boasts of several notable people, such as director Gary Halvorson and Papillon Airways chairman Elling Halvorson.

Pierson is a variant of Pierce (English) and Piers (Greek), and the meaning of Pierson is "rock."

Two people were reported injured on Friday the 13th of December 2013, a year after the Friday the 14th of December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Today's afternoon shooting at a suburban Denver high school left the suspect dead from a self-inflicted gunshot, according to the sheriff.

The shooting occurred at Arapahoe High School, in Centennial, Colorado. It is located 6 miles from Littleton, and is in the Littleton School District. The mascot of the high school is the Arapahoe Warrior.

One teen has a gunshot wound. Another student has an injury of unknown origin.

Police, who surrounded the school, described the scene as a "active shooter situation" until the suspect student shooter was found dead.

Students were seen calmly exiting the building single file with their hands above their hands, gathering on a school track, at about 1:30 local time.

The Denver Post said there are reports of a fire at the school, home to about 2,200 students. 

A student carrying a shotgun entered the school, and gave the name of a specific adult he was after. The alleged target was Mr. Murphy, the school librarian.

Considering this blog's attention to the name game, the copycat effect, and especially the name Aurora, this entry about Centennial from Wikipedia is intriguing:

Since the city is relatively new, many people in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area do not recognize the area by the name “Centennial,” especially since neighboring Aurora, Englewood and Littleton are assigned by the United States Postal Service as the “default” place names for the ZIP codes serving Centennial. Thus, mailing addresses in which “Aurora,” “Englewood” or “Littleton” appear may actually be in Centennial. This causes considerable confusion, as Centennial and Englewood do not even share a common boundary, while some portions of Centennial are surrounded by Aurora and vice versa.

Nearby Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, was the site of a 1999 massacre in which two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students, a teacher and wounded several others before the pair committed suicide.

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot his mother at home and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 26 people (20 children and 6 faculty and staff) before killing himself. It was the second-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

(H/T SM + MCC)

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Templar Columbus, Columbia, and Columbine

Will the real Columbus please stand up! 

The Halloween-born Christopher Columbus brought genocide to the Americas. It does seem strange that Columbus is a variant of the Latin word Columba meaning dove for peace.

The most famous Columbus is Christopher Columbus (October 31, 1451 – May 20, 1506), the Italian explorer who is incorrectly credited with discovering America. There are whole books written on that subject, like the one by Patrick Huyghe.

The name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. His name in Italian is Cristoforo Colombo, and in Spanish, it is Cristóbal Colón. He was a Freemason, and perhaps more.

"Columbus’s cryptic signature, 'XpoFERENS Colon' as we decipher it, indicates that he was a member of the super-secretive Templar Military Order of Christ, which had a stronghold in Portugal at the time leading up to his voyage." Source.

"In Portugal, the Knights Templar did not disband, but simply changed their name to Knights of Christ. In 1492, this group is alleged to have provided the navigators for Christopher Columbus' journey, and the Order's cross was featured prominently on the sails of his ships, however there is no actual evidence to support this." Source

The earliest known painting (at top) of Columbus is to be found in The Virgin of the Navigators, 1531–36. Contemporary descriptions describe Columbus as having reddish or blond hair, which turned to white early in his life, light colored eyes, as well as being a lighter-skinned person with too much sun exposure turning his face red. Accounts consistently describe Columbus as a large and physically strong man of some six feet or more in height, easily taller than the average European of his day.

Columba was popular among early Christians because the dove was a symbol of gentleness, purity, and peace.

Other varieties of the word Columbus are written Colombe, Colombo, Columbanus, and Columbano.

The variant form Columbia is familiar to North Americans. Columbia is a historical and poetic name used for the United States of America and is also the name of its female personification. It has inspired the names of many persons, places, objects, institutions, and companies; such as the District of Columbia, the site of the national capital, Columbia River, and Columbia University. Columbia was largely displaced as the female symbol of the U.S. by the Statue of Liberty around 1920.

Columbia is a New Latin toponym, combining a stem Columb- based on the surname of the explorer Christopher Columbus and an ending -ia, common in Latin names of countries (e.g. Britannia "Britain," Gallia "Gaul"). The meaning is therefore "Land of Columbus."

In 1786, just before the United States' Constitutional Convention, South Carolina gave the name "Columbia" to its new capital city. Columbia is also the name of at least nineteen other towns in the United States. Many cities and other locations have been named for Christopher Columbus; see here.

"Pre-Columbian" refers to a time period before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other European explorers in the Americas.

1893 World's Fair ~ Tesla alternating current presentation.

The World's Columbian Exposition (the official shortened name for the World's Fair: Columbian Exposition, also known as The Chicago World's Fair) was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. 

The original Ferris Wheel was built for the 1893 World's Fair.

The fair ended with the city in shock, as popular mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. (shown) was assassinated by Patrick Eugene Prendergast two days (October 28, 1893) before the fair's closing. Harrison's career and assassination are closely connected with the World's Columbian Exposition, and are discussed at some length as a subplot to the two main stories (about the fair and serial killer H. H. Holmes) in The Devil in the White City.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (Illinois) sightings of September 1944, were characterized by the local newspaper, the Journal-Review, for example, by talking of the encounter of Miss Frances Smith, principal of the Columbian Grade School, and her sister Maxine:

The first infiltration of gas caught them in their beds. Gasping and choking they awoke and soon felt partial paralysis grip their legs and arms. Later, while awake, the other attacks came and they saw a thin blue smoke-like vapor spreading throughout the room. Just before the gas with its flower-like odor came pouring into the room they heard a strange ‘buzzing’ sound outside the house and expressed the belief that the sound was made by the 'madman's spraying apparatus' in operation.

The Command Module of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, the first manned mission to land on the Moon, was called Columbia (1969).

The Space Shuttle Columbia, built 1975-1979, was named for the exploring ship Columbia. It was the first spaceworthy Space Shuttle in NASA's orbital fleet. First launched on the STS-1 mission, the first of the Space Shuttle program, it completed 27 missions before disintegrating during re-entry on February 1, 2003 near the end of its 28th, STS-107. The destruction of the orbiter killed all seven crew members on board.

Which brings us to Columbine, the name of the high school and today associated with the name of the massacre that happened there (Littleton, Colorado) on April 20, 1999. Columbine is any of various perennial herbs of the genus Aquilegia native to north temperate regions, cultivated for their showy, variously colored flowers that have petals with long hollow spurs. Columbine's origins is from Middle English, from Medieval Latin columbna, from feminine of Latin columbnus, dovelike (from the resemblance of the inverted flower to a cluster of doves), from columba, dove.

Other names linked to dove: Aloma, Calum, Culver, Dove, Jemima, Jonah, Jonina, Paloma, Palomo, Rita, Semiramis, Tor, Yonina, and Yonas.

Portions of this blog, in terms of photos 

and content, are reprinted under the 

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of which commentary is made, 

without benefit of financial gain. 

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Ten Predictions: Ten Hits

by Loren Coleman ©2012

We live in capricious, contrary, and careless times. Moments of unpredictability, therefore, are best balanced by creating a foundation of predictability and predictions.

This week, at the end of an interview with British journalist Thomas McGrath, the last question I was asked was to name three or four "predictions" that I had made, which, as the writer characterized, might be considered "especially accurate."

Global predictions are often wrong, needless to say.

In general, I don't think of myself as foreseeing the future. Making predictions is a tricky thing to do, anyway. After all, look at a few bad predictions some people have recorded:

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

In contrast to those types of incorrect "projections," you have a televised cartoon program that screened between 1962 and 1963, which correctly forecast "futuristic technologies that exist today," as Matt Houghton wrote in his "6 Current Technologies The Jetsons Predicted."

Houghton noted in that piece, for example, the Video Chat,

The Jetsons was quite early in their predictions, as well as rather persistent. Video chat is used frequently in every episode I watched. Clearly, with webcams and Skype, as well as the iPhone 4′s new FaceTime, this has quite clearly come true. 

The way I conceptualize it, I have routinely noted some of my social science (vs technology) insights that have become transformed into "predictions," based upon my reading of "patterns."

Being a futurist, I was intrigued by this journalist's request and the resulting exercise. Developing a list to point to would be instructive, historically interesting, and helpful in illustrating what I do. So, I came up with a list of ten predictions, which I shall share completely with you.

The list may seem banal, being framed from Bigfoot to baseball, with many examples of violence in between. But they all are keyed to feelings I had that something was on the horizon that needed to be shared. There are other areas I decided to not explore, such as my writings on self-immolations, which are also predictable, and often result in great social change, as happened with the Arab Spring, see here and here. With the significance of what is going on this summer, in the wake of Aurora, I knew I wanted those kinds of events to be the core of what I examined.

So, here then is my list of ten examples of my "predictions" - in historical order, from most recent back to 1989 - which, in relative terms, have been "hits."

1. August 20, 2012; Highway 93, Montana; Randy Lee Tenley incident. - Prediction, earlier on August 20, 2012.

Apparently, I make predictions all the time, without even knowing it. Sometimes they are about shootings, red dawns, Jupiter, and other events, due to perceptions that literally come into my head and get typed out onto the screen of this computer. Let me give you a minor but intriguing illustration.

Recently, correspondent Guy Edwards (who writes a popular hominology blog, Bigfoot Lunch Club, and also enjoys my twilight language writings) pointed out my serious "masks" reference at the end of a somewhat humorous posting.

I included an image paired, on purpose, with a mismatched graphic novel quote, reproduced here:

"Congress is pushing through some new bill that's gonna outlaw masks. 

Our days are numbered. Till then it's like you always say, 

we're society's only protection." 

~ Edward Blake, Watchmen, 2009.

Edwards then left this comment at the TL site: "The Edward Blake/Watchmen quote about masks paired with the Guy Fawkes masks from V for Vendetta, another great graphic novel, is either serendipitous, a form of synchronicity or just plain clever."

To which I felt compelled to privately send him a thank you email, and let flow this reply/explanation to Edwards on Sunday, August 26, 2012, at 6:43 PM Eastern time: "Totally my creative streak. It all made sense. Harmonic and all of that. I look to it being a prediction too. I expect some kind of masked event next week, for some reason."

Guy Edwards wrote me back on Thursday, August 30, 2012: "You're getting spooky Loren. Does the Randy Lee Tenley tragedy count as a 'Masked event' you were predicting in the last email? I was hesitant to attribute the Guillie suit to your mask premonition, especially since you had used masks in a vigilante sense. But I have always felt that Next Media Animation has always been able to seemingly accidentally tap the Pop Culture Zeitgeist. Even the stuff they do that gets lost in translation seems to be non-accidental."

What was being highlighted was the incident that happened late on Sunday evening, August 26th.  Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, Montana, reportedly was wearing a Ghillie suit, dressed up as a Bigfoot, trying to create a popular cultural hoax, got hit, and got killed on Montana's Highway 93. Tenley was struck by two innocent teenage girls in two separate cars, who were unable to avoid Tenley. The death sent shockwaves throughout the cryptozoology and related research communities, because it was the first time that a hoax had ended so tragically. Most people had thought someone in a Bigfoot costume would first be killed in a forest faking event by being shot, not struck on a road.

The Tenley incident happened on Sunday, August 26, 2012, at about 10:30 pm Mountain time (7:30 pm Eastern). I had written this writer that same night with my "masked event prediction" at 6:43 pm Eastern (9:43 pm Mountain).

Coincidence, haphazard remark, prediction? We best know our own works, sometimes, by how others internalize them.

2. August 5, 2012; Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Sikh Temple; Wade Michael Page kills 6 + self; plus other copycats. Prediction, July 23, 2012.

I said people should watch for copycats, in the wake of Aurora. The copycats, in general, did occur. But something bigger and more specific took place.

"In The Copycat Effect, the patterns I found in suicide clusters and school shootings happened over and over again in other kinds of mass shootings. In their most basic blueprint, the copycats take place exactly one week, two weeks, one month, and one year after a massively media-discussed incident of violence. The Aurora red dawn event is the first mass media incident in recent years. Wall-to-wall coverage has occurred, and copycats will happen. The correlation is direct," I wrote on July 23, 2012.

The Sikh Temple attack happened almost exactly two weeks after Aurora, fitting a pattern I saw long ago, and wrote about in my 2003 book.

3. July 20, 2012; Aurora, Colorado, Century 16 theater; allegedly James Eagan Holmes kills 12. Prediction, July 19, 2012.

It is rather well-documented by now that I predicted the Aurora event a day before it happened, and tied it directly to the opening of The Dark Knight Rises.

On July 19th, I wrote we all should expect something dramatic and perhaps deadly linked to the release of The Dark Knight Rises. I said, more specifically:

Now that the date of the release of The Dark Knight Rises and this visual Bane is upon us, let's look at the fact the film is opening on July 20, 2012. 7.20.2012. 20.7.2012.
What are the significant memorable themes associated with past July 20ths? There are two major motifs that leap forth from history: space and assassinations. 

[Then I looked at a short history of events associated with the date.] 

***
Will any events take place on July 20, 2012, of any import?
Dates of movie releases have had strange links.
The day of neo-Nazi Breivik's massacre in Norway (July 22, 2011) was the day of the release of the film Captain America (July 22, 2011), with the first scene taking place in Norway, to the sound of Nazis' rapid fire machine gunning. A bizarre coincidence, to say the least.

I've detailed these facts here (which has the source prediction blog quotes and citations), and then put this in context, biographically.

The British journalist asked me, "what time exactly on the nineteenth did you post that Aurora prediction."

The posting was time-coded on this blog, when the final edit was published:

7/19/12 9:36 AM

Eastern Daylight Time

4. Post-July 2008; Post-The Dark Knight release; Joker copycats.

Kim De Gelder, Dendermonde Joker, 2009, Fabeltjesland ("Fairytaleland"), Belgium.

In general, I wrote about and projected that Joker copycats would occur in the wake of the release 2008's of The Dark Knight. The deadly copycats of The Joker have been rather constant from 2009 through 2012, from the Dendermonde Joker, through James Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, infamy, to the most recent minor former resident of Aurora Park, Florida.

James Holmes, "I Am The Joker," 2012, Aurora, Colorado.

"I don't believe in coincidence." 

~ Batman, Justice League, 

"Starcrossed," 2004.

5. February 14, 2008; NIU, DeKalb, Illinois, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak kills 5 + self. Prediction, February 9, 2008.

On February 9, 2008, I wrote (see here and here):
"If we have learned anything from the recent past, awareness of the shifting patterns are often instructive in predicting the near future. Look for major surprises in school shootings and similar mass rampages..."

The Valentine's Day Northern Illinois University shooting happened five days later. It is the fifth-deadliest university shooting in United States history.

6. April 16, 2007; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia; Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 + self. Prediction, October 3, 2006.

During the fall of 2006, in emails to Canadian media, I shared some specifics pointing to the coming scope and date of the Virginia Tech massacre:

In that article, I was quoted as noting the psychological process that these shooters appear to be 'competing for the highest body count.' Sadly, we've seen that come true today [on April 16, 2007].
Also, the news item from last fall [2006] noted: 'He says that while the Pennsylvania shootings may not be the last in this cluster, the copycat crimes will likely slow down as we near winter. He says spring, and the anniversary of Columbine [April 20th], could be enough to spark another cycle of tragedy.'
Again, my prediction of a reigniting of the school shooting wildfire during this very week was revealed today [on April 16, 2007].

The Virginia Tech event is the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history and one of the deadliest in the world.

7. September 27 (Platte Canyon High School, Bailey, Colorado), September 29 (Weston High School, Cazenovia, Wisconsin), October 6 (Old Order Amish one-room school, Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania), 2006, series. - Prediction, September 18, 2006.

In the wake of the Montreal's Dawson College shooting, I predicted there would be a wave of school shootings. My predictive email of September 18, 2006, was noted by the CTV/Canadian media, and is archived here.

8. March 21, 2005; Red Lake, Minnesota, Jeffrey Weise kills 9 + self. Prediction, March 18, 2005.

Jeff Weise

I predicted on March 18, 2005 that we all needed to watch for a school shooting of some import in 2005, from March 20th through April 20th, probably involving a Neo-Nazi, as per The Copycat Effect. 

It happened almost immediately as soon as this time frame began, on March 21, 2005, when Native, Satanist and Neo-Nazi 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed his grandfather (a Sergeant with the Red Lake Police Department) and his grandfather's girlfriend. He then drove his grandfather's police vehicle to Red Lake Senior High School, where he shot and killed seven people on the school campus, consisting of five students, one teacher and an unarmed security guard, and wounded five others. In the end, Weise also killed himself with the police-issued shotgun he'd stolen from his grandfather. Red Lake is the second deadliest massacre at a U.S. high school, only behind the Columbine High School massacre.

Widespread media credit was given to me for predicting this incident. Of course, no one who read my prediction was in any position to prevent what happened at Red Lake, so the media recognition carried with it an emptiness, unless people pay attention to the next time. (See more documentation on this prediction, here, here, and here.)

9. Post-April 20, 1999; Post-Columbine copycats. Prediction, April 1999.

Working as a youth suicide and school violence prevention consultant for the State of Maine, I had been predicting (from 1996-1999) that the ramifications of the copycat effect from school shootings were being greatly underestimated. After the Littleton, Colorado shootings at Columbine High School, on April 20, 1999, I predicted there would be a wave of school incidents occurring in the wake of Columbine. One fatality did take place a week after Columbine, at the W.R. Myers High School in Taber, Alberta, and 450 copycat incidents happened across the USA in the month after the Columbine school shooting.  I have continued to document the Columbine copycats into 2012.

10. Major League Baseball player suicides, Summer 1989. Prediction, October 4, 1988.

The Copycat Effect, pages 208, 212-216:

In 1987-88, I undertook a study of baseball player suicides, which led to a
significant statistical prediction. At the time, I was a project director and
principal investigator of a three-year quarter-million dollar federal project
on suicides at the University of Southern Maine. And having had a passionate
interest in baseball all my life, I wondered if the databases that existed for
ballplayers could provide any clues, in terms of stories or statistics, which
might inform the trends and patterns in baseball players’ suicides and suicide
clustering.
…[After a decade of no Major League Baseball players dying by suicide, I saw the likelihood of that changing was going to be immediately upon us.]
At the end of the baseball season in 1988, I predicted that, as the decade ended, a major league baseball player would die by suicide. I wrote a letter dated October 4, 1988, to then commissioner Peter Ueberroth and every team owner noting that a baseball player suicide was statistically likely in 1989 or 1990, and asking that a study be undertaken to see if a retirement counseling program for ballplayers would be justified.
As Sports Illustrated detailed in the July 31, 1989 issue (pp. 7):
“Sadly, Coleman's prediction came true last week. On July 18, at his home in
Anaheim, Calif., former All-Star relief pitcher Donnie Moore drew a gun, shot and critically wounded his wife, Tonya, with whom police say he had been arguing, and then shot and killed himself. Moore, 35, had been released on June 12 by the Kansas City Royals' minor league affiliate in Omaha. Friends say that Moore was haunted by memories of the two-strike, two-out, ninth-inning home run he gave up to Dave Henderson of the Boston Red Sox while pitching for the Angels in Game 5 of the 1986 American League Championship Series. If Moore had retired Henderson, California would have won the series four games to one. Instead, Boston won Game 5 in extra innings and then triumphed in Games 6 and 7 to advance to the World Series against the Mets.”
In 2001 ESPN Classics noted that Moore had told reporters in 1988, "I'll think about that [pitch] until the day I die."
My earlier findings showed Moore's death fit the typical pattern for baseball player suicides. Moore, like half the players who took their lives, had used a gun. He was, like more than half of baseball player suicide victims, between his late 20s and late 40s. And like 15% of the victims, he died within two years after their major league careers had ended. Moore's final big league season was 1988. But perhaps most notable of all, Moore, as with all pitchers before him in the 20th century who had killed themselves, was a right-handed pitcher. Curiously, teammates had given Moore the nickname “Lefty” because he seemed perhaps a little unpredictable, just as the mythic left-handed pitcher is said to be. One wonders if it is the left-handed pitchers’ flexible style that produces an acceptable coping mechanism for their stresses and serves as a protective factor against suicides.
While the media tend to always discuss the Moore suicide, it was only one of many in 1989. It was only after Moore’s suicide that we learned that three other Major Leaguers and one college player had killed themselves earlier that year. Dan Haycock, 19, a sophomore pitcher for Virginia's James Madison University's baseball team shot himself on February 12, 1989. He had been charged with drunk driving at 2:00 a.m. the morning of his death. His body was found near home plate with the 12-gauge shotgun he had used. He had left a note. On April 5th, the day after the Pittsburgh Pirates opening day, Carlos Bernier, an outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1953, hung himself in Puerto Rico. Mike Reinbach, 39, a Baltimore Orioles outfielder for one year in 1974, drove his car off a San Diego, in a suicide on May 20th. On May 30, 1989, Virgil Stallcup, a pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds in the late 1940s and early 1950s, shot himself.
Then within a week of the Moore suicide, a rising African-American college basketball star, Ricky Barry, 24, of the Sacramento Kings, killed himself using a gun in August 1989. How many other young African-American ball players died by suicide after the Moore death is unknown, because no one in MLB was tracking what was going on in 1989. The baseball establishment and the sports media circled their wagons, and little was heard of Donnie Moore or other suicidal players for years.
While Barry’s suicide may have been modeled on Moore’s suicide, those that preceded Moore’s suicide clearly were not. But was Donnie Moore’s death was a copycat itself? Certainly those prior suicides would have been well known within the small fraternity of baseball players.
In any case, the suicides have continued.
On May 31, 1990, almost a year exactly to the day of Stallcup’s suicide,
Charlie Shoemaker, a Kansas City second baseman in 1961-62, 1964, shot himself.

I take no joy in my predictions being true, but to ignore the patterns that are there and to not try to communicate them to those who would listen, I feel, would be the greater irresponsible act.

This way a storm comes....

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