Piece Of Art

The cult of Columbine is being realized anew. I've been getting media calls from Finland, Netherlands, Belgium, and other European countries asking whether I see any overlaps between this week's shooting in Finland and other school shootings. Of course, I do. The previous Finland school shooter exhibited several ties to Columbine and other recent incidents. The Jokela school shooting occurred on November 7, 2007 at Jokela High School (Finnish: Jokelan koulukeskus), a public secondary school in the town of Jokela, Tuusula municipality, Finland. The gunman was 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen. Pekka-Eric Auvinen uploaded a home-made movie entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007" to YouTube announcing the "massacre" hours prior to the shooting. KMFDM's "Stray Bullet" was used as background music. The KMFDM track used in his video, "Stray Bullet", was also used on the website of Columbine shooter Eric Harris. Several hours aft...

Rosemary's baby, 666, The Da Vinci Code , and the Last Supper? Fiction is turning into fact and the latest from Rome gives haunting pause to all Hell breaking loose across the landscape during a time of killings at a school in Finland to a language school in London just this week. Reuters today is reporting that a 25-year-old man who tried to kill a priest by stabbing him in a Rome church has told police that he did so after the watching the film The Da Vinci Code and believing himself to be the anti-Christ. The priest, Rev. Caino Calitri, 68, was in critical condition in a Rome hospital after he was stabbed repeatedly in the neck Tuesday, September 23, 2008, by Marco Luzi, according to Italian media reports, including the Catholic paper Avvenire . The attack took place at the Santa Marcella church in Rome and left two other worshippers needing treatment. Police officer Luca Gori, 41, who disarmed Luzi, suffered knife wounds to his stomach as he struggled with him on the floor of ...

On Tuesday, September 23, 2008, an expelled 16-year-old student entered a private Christian high school in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, during chapel, and put a pellet gun to the pastor's head before the principal grabbed the gun. Police arrested the student, officials said. Principal Mark Anderson said he kept talking with the youth, who was forcing the pastor to read a letter. Anderson said he got close enough to see the weapon was not a firearm, then grappled with the teen and held him until police arrived and arrested him. Police said they recovered a pellet pistol. "He just felt like we had to listen to his story, that people were working against him and that everything is a big conspiracy," Anderson told The Associated Press. Anderson said he was expelled him because of incidents from last school year. Alex McNair, a student at the Luther College high school, said the gunman forced the pastor to read a letter about his expulsion. He said the letter was about how th...

An east London woman killed by a knifeman wearing a Phantom Of The Opera-style mask has been named by Scotland Yard. A spokesman said Sehrish Waqar Sheikh was aged 23 and from Dagenham. A 29-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder. The suspect wore a Phantom of the Opera-style mask and wig when stabbing and killing his alleged ex-girlfriend whom he was stalking, then injured her best friend and turned his knife on himself in a gruesome attack in East London on Monday, September 22, 2008. Waqar, of Pakistani origin, died at the scene in an office belonging to St George’s College in Plaistow. She was found partially clothed with stab wounds to the chest and neck, Scotland Yard said. She was a receptionist at the private college for international students. Her friend, college manager Kiran Asghar, was also hurt but managed to escape and raise the alarm. According to witnesses, Asghar ran out of the building screaming: “He’s killing her.” Friends told how Waqar was preparin...

Tuesday's shootings in Kauhajoki, began just before 1100 local time (0800 GMT). At least eleven people have been killed and two others wounded in a shooting spree at a college in the small town in western Finland, some 330km (205 miles) north of the capital, Helsinki. Police said the gunman, thought to be a student in his early 20s, then shot himself. His condition is unclear. (He died later.) The gunmen apparently posted a YouTube video of himself on the internet last week firing a gun. As a result, police interviewed him on Monday but did not revoke his licence, the interior minister said. Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said this was a "tragic day" for Finland, said BBC News. An estimated 200 students were thought to be in the college buildings at the time. A BBC correspondent in Finland said a gunman dressed in black was seen at the school, apparently carrying an automatic weapon. A man with a ski mask was seen entering the building with a large bag, national broadcas...

A young man was stabbed Sunday, September 21, 2008, aboard a Winnipeg-bound Greyhound bus travelling near the town of White River, about 300 kilometres north of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, according to reporter Marcus Grundt of Canadian Press . Police are investigating a stabbing aboard the Greyhound bus eerily on its way Winnipeg, during an incident in which a young man was attacked by another passenger as the vehicle travelled through northern Ontario. It appears to mirror another recent Greyhound bus involving Winnipeg. The man who was stabbed is believed to be in his 20s. He was taken to hospital Sunday afternoon with minor injuries, the Sault Star newspaper reported. Police arrested a 28-year-old man near the town of White River, shortly after the bus driver let him get off at the side of the highway. “I can confirm that an incident did occur aboard one of our buses,” said Greyhound spokesperson Abby Wambaugh, speaking from Dallas, Texas. “The incident occurred 10 miles [16 kilom...

A school gun incident two years ago appears to have been a prelude to the Olympic Peninsula shooting that left three dead over the weekend. The shooting also comes not long after a 28-year-old Washington man was charged with killing six people and injuring four in a shooting rampage that started about 70 miles north of Seattle. According to court documents, Isaac Zamora told police that God had instructed him to "kill evil." A U.S. Forest Service officer was fatally shot on Saturday, September 20, 2008, while making a traffic stop of a man who investigators suspect had also killed the owner of the pickup truck he was driving when captured, the Washington State Patrol said. The suspect died later in a shootout with sheriff's deputies. But in 2006, his estranged wife warned officials of his violent nature, but had to resign from her teaching job when she decided to protect herself. The FBI was investigating the shooting of Officer Kristine Fairbanks, 51, a canine officer wi...

The "when" seems less important than the graphic details to the media, but here are the latest mass stabbings and beheadings, this time, from Eurasia, 155 miles (250 kilometers) northeast of Moscow, Russia. An alleged gang of Satanists, accused of stabbing four teenagers 666 times and eating their body parts, were carrying out an initiation ritual during one of the murders, according to Russian police. Police said that during the murders of the two teenage girls, the Satanists carried out a ritualistic initiation ceremony for a new recruit to their cult. As part of the initiation, the blood of the dead girls was poured over the near-naked body of 18-year-old Ksenia Kuznetsova, while they prayed to the Devil. They carried out the murders and induction at the same time, the UK's Sun quoted a source, as saying. The victims, aged between 15 and 16 described by police as "Goths" were stabbed 666 times before being roasted on a bonfire and eaten. They had apparently...

Two so-called "stabbing rampages" have taken place in Asia over the weekend, one in Japan and the second in China, both related to Autumn Festivals. On Saturday, September 13, 2008, one person was killed and six others injured when a man went on a stabbing rampage in central Japan -- the latest in a series of such sprees in the country in the last few months. The attacks occurred during a festival (attended by people having late-night celebrations to welcome the onset of fall). At a shrine in Ishikawa Prefecture, a man was seen indiscriminately slashing people with a sickle, the Kyodo news agency reported. Police arrested a 42-year-old vendor, Toshiaki Arai, and charged him with killing a 30-year-old man and wounding six others, Kyodo said. He was arrested at Kuwashima Jinja, a shrine in Hakusan in Ishikawa state. The Associated Press reported that Arai told police he was angry that customers had made fun of him. Police say Yohei Okada died from severe blood loss shortly a...

A technical high school rampage, the voice of the Joker, near beheadings, curved-bladed samurai swords, macabre clown masks, and Slipknot lead singer's Heath Ledger tattoo all merely seem to be incredibly coincidental cultural icons crashing together in one incident. Happenstance? Or enemy action? On Monday, September 1, 2008, in Johannesburg, Morné Harmse, an 18-year-old matric pupil (one who is in the final year of high school in South Africa) allegedly killed a fellow student with a sword. Harmse apparently had envisioned a widespread bloodbath in his school. The teenage attacker staged his deadly assault just before school assembly on Monday morning. He had left home dressed in his school uniform, including a red matric jersey and carrying four masks and three Samurai swords. The teenager's masks were fashioned after those worn by members of the band Slipknot. One looked like a clown mask, one like a gas mask, one was red with black dreadlocks, and another was black. He ...