Bill Gates blamed for Virginia Tech shooting
By John Pospisil
US morals advocate and publicity hound Jack Thompson has suggested that Bill Gates and Microsoft are responsible for the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech.
According to an early report in the Washington Post, the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was a fan of violent video games, especially Counter-strike, which Microsoft publishes for the Xbox. The reference to Counter-strike and violent video games has now been removed from the report, but that hasn’t stopped Thompson from lashing out at Gates.
In a letter to Gates, which he also sent to Game Almighty, Thompson suggested that Bill Gates had moral duty to “pull the plug” on Counter-strike.
Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill. You knew five years ago that your on-line game, Counterstrike, so clearly figured in the massacre by a student in Erfurt that the event and the game impacted the race for Chancellor in Germany at the time!
Yet, here you are, five years after “Erfurt,” still marketing Counterstrike, having done nothing to disable the server(s) for this mass murder simulator, and it looks like “Virginia Tech” is a consequence. There’s more going on in the world than Vista. Just ask the bereaved Virginia Tech families.
Mr. Gates, pull the plug on Counterstrike today, or do we need more dead to convince you? “Virginia Tech” was the 9-11 of school shootings, and it appears Microsoft is in the middle of it, in more ways than one.
If you have any doubt that video games are to blame for the Virginia Tech tragedy, Doctor Phil McGraw, has also weighed in on the issue during an appearance on CNN Larry King Live.
Speaking to Larry, Dr Phil said:
You cannot tell me — common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high. And we’re going to have to start dealing with that. We’re going to have to start addressing those issues and recognizing that the mass murders of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.
Of course video games don’t explain the massacre in Rwanda, or the Crusades, or the Spanish Inquisition.
But then again video games are an easy target, and talking about the influence of video games on teenagers distracts us all from looking at some of the real issues that may have contributed to the Virginia Tech tragedy. On this occasion, Bill Gates is definitely not the bad guy.
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April 20th, 2007
As far as I find some videogames way too violent, I find the argument proposed here ridiculous. Why blaming a software company? All major movie distributors would have to be blamed as well. I am not defending microsoft by any menas. I think that the problem must be looked somewhere else, such as in gun controls laws. Why do we think videogames are a problem and then we let delusional phsycopath get access to guns? Let’s be realistic, please. One can be as crazy as we can hardly imagine. However some tragedies can be easily avoid that such individuals can transform those insane wishes in reality by giving them easy access to guns. Let’s leave Dr. Phil to comment on lighter topics, it seems to me he flopped badly this time.
April 21st, 2007
First off microsoft dosnt make counterstrike valve does and secound violent video games let people get out there anger in a safe controled enviorment the people who wrote this article need to get there facts straight before blaming somebody else. The reason he killed 32 people was not because he wanted to SIMULATE counterstrike but because he was mentally ill and had no friends and was always made fun of
April 21st, 2007
Well if that is the case that it is Bill Gates’ fault, then we can take nintendo down while we are at it. And playstation. Oh, but that wouldnt be enough, we would also have to take away all the action and violent movies, but then people can read the books so lets burn the books too. WTF?
The way I see it is that if you dont have the strong enough mind to play or watch violent things without takeing it to the next level, dont play it. After all, the shooter bought the games to play, Bill Gates didnt tell him what to buy.
April 21st, 2007
I think we need to make all gun / weapon manufacturers responsible for incident like this. Perhaps, in the modern world, we shouldn’t need gun and gun should not be sold to the public. For self defense, stun gun and perhaps, a new form of laser gun should be developed to immobolize mischief individuals rather than a gun, which takes one’s life.
I believe many of us are logical and communication should be deployed to solve any disputes. Therefore, even in a dispute between two countries, there shouldn’t be any weapon fighting at each others. Correct?
April 22nd, 2007
Sean, are you a degreed and practicing psychologist? Have any of you heard of “The Lawful Path: Silent Weapns for Quiet Wars?” Its a protocol written in the mid 50’s and revised in the late 70’s. Its a protocol for social engineering through high technology.
You can google it and find the website by the same name and read the doggone thing before you all comment out of ignorance. Thompson maybe more right than he knows and for the wrong reasons.
In fact, our whole society is being socially engineered to obtain control. Can’t you feel the first Amendment being restricted coming through these words? I have watched over 6 years as the final stages of that document are being implemented. I don’t know who wrote it but its a training protocol for new recruits for the intelligence community and so far everything in there is coming true.
This society is being destroyed from within. Have any of you heard of the “Bens Tail to tooth” commission? They are the ones who completed recommendations to restructure the military and our department of defense (see link below) and the result was for the first time in the history of this country a North American command with a civilian department under military control (homeland security).
http://www.bens.org/what_tailtotooth.html
Remember also, Bill Gates has been leading forcefully the charge for unlimited numbers of H1-B visas from third world countries at half or less the wages of our school loan ladened high tech American employees. This is all part of the social engineering. Its the CEO’S that control the business environment, the potential movement of workers aroud the world, the campaign contributions that buy pollicy and laws and structures of this nation and they control the content of those videos.
I can’t even watch half the stuff that is coming out now. We have a problem and people better wake up and start looking, researching as I have done and do something before its way too late.
April 22nd, 2007
Question Marks…
“This didn’t have to happen”, Cho Seung-Hui said, after brutally murdering thirty-two people at Virginia Tech University.
And this terrible tragedy of sons, daughters, mothers and fathers didn’t have to happen, if we’d only listened.
But we never listen.
We never listen to those that are different from us- the outcasts, the lonely, the homeless, the ones that are unspoken for. We don’t try to understand. We shun them and put them out of our minds because of our fear that we will become like them.
And these people become more and more lonely and alienated in their isolation.
Words like “creep”, “deranged misfit” and “psycho” devalue this killer’s humanity so we don’t have to face how similar he is to us. Cries of “how could he have been stopped” are uttered by media quick to sensationalize and gain market share, when the words “how could he have been listened to” are never considered.
Because we don’t want to listen.
We don’t want to hear about loneliness and alienation when we’re all so busy with our lives, making money and making friends. And the unpopular, the ones that don’t fit in, the lonely ones are ignored or made fun of because we don’t care to understand anything about them.
As a boy, Cho Seung-Hui “was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness” (Associated Press). When he started college, according to the Guardian, “his mother took his dormitory mates to one side to explain about her son’s unusual character and implored them to help.”
And he clearly needed help, devaluing himself so much that he called himself “Question Mark”.
There are more “Question Marks” out there. There are millions of them. And if we don’t listen to them, they will follow the same path again and again, because people are not connecting. We are becoming more and more disconnected from each other, creating more and more “Question Marks” every day.
Most “Question Marks” don’t become murderers. Some just kill themselves. Most harm no one and live just as we do, needing antidepressants to appear what we call “normal”. They may be someone you know, someone you love.
This “Question Mark” was once a little boy, who cried, and smiled and loved, He wanted to fit in just like you and I. But that desire to fit in transformed itself into anger towards a society that shunned and ignored him.
How many more times will we shun and ignore the one that doesn’t fit in, the one in the corner, the one that’s different? When all we have to do is listen, before it’s too late.
But we won’t.
Thirty-two human beings who did not know Cho Seung-Hui were murdered.
They were sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, with dreams of futures that will never come and children that will never be born. The thirty-two leave behind people that love them. People that are now scarred for life by this horrible day of death.
To most of us that have not been directly involved, this tragedy will become a memory and fade like all the others that came before.
And the “Question Marks” will appear with more frequency, again and again, because we don’t listen.
We never do.
—————
http://www.x-thc.com
April 23rd, 2007
Bill gates is innocent and should have nothing to do with this. Imanige what what would happen if he liked GRAND THEFT AUTO SAN ADREAS so fuck those blammers
April 23rd, 2007
that is bull shit
April 29th, 2007
24 months ago in a small Minnesota town, a mentally unstable student murdered and wounded 14 students before killing himself (my April 2005 weblog posting http://www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog
Jeff Weise also kept an outrageous website openly referencing homicide and suicide. Jeff was also denied treatment and prescribed Prozac*. After the carnage, Red Lake community found the money for a mental health family center to counsel troubled youth.
At that time in Minnesota there were 15 child psychiatrists in the entire state (population about 4 million) and the student to counsellor ratio in MN high schools was 900 to 1.
As a child advocate (long time guardian ad Litem) I strongly feel the need for mental health therapy for those who need it. The children I work with have been severely traumatized and need adequate attention paid to their needs.
In my many years as a guardian ad-Litem it has been my experience that at risk children don’t get help until after their behaviors have become unmanageable and dangerous. Often the help they get comes in the form of a pill and not the personal professional counselling that they really need.
A Hennepin county judge has shared with me the psychotropic drug medications being taken by children in her courtroom. It is truely unbelievable how many disturbed and undertreated youth walk among us.
When attention to mental health services comes earlier, our communities can save themselves from the immense suffering that follows these horrific events.
* Not too many years from now it is my hope that we will recognize the repercussions of legally drugging children with psychotropic medications without adequate mental health services. Today we can only read about these consequences in the newspaper.
June 11th, 2007
LOL, it always makes me chuckle when someone blames something else for someone else’s death, never mind that ol nutso went on his rampage because he was a loser and a nutcase. Blame canada is next. Looks like the VT killer isn’t the only nutcase around here.
December 10th, 2007
Bill Gates is not to be blamed. Its the people fault. look i like to play Helo2 put i dont go killing people. i watch action movies all the time, but i dont blow things up. its not videogames and movies or anything made buy humans…. except the fact that home boy Cho Seung-Hui, was looked differenty, if some one would have be friended him instead of acting as if he didnt exist, i mean shure the news interviewd people, but those who where interviewd had to have lied, i remeber one person saying that they had tried to befriend him but if he did try to befriend him y would homeboy Cho Seug-Hui shot his ass… dont really make sense to me, as for the teachers getting shot, i remember a testimony of an older man at my church, he once had a friend, they went to school together and that kid wasnt all that smart, but that one day a teacher started making fun of him and embarressd him in front of the class… later that day the kid went home and committed suicide. wrather the teachers were nice outside of work or not is their problem but i believe everyone had a teacher in their day that wasnt to “nice” to them. later on in the investagetion they (news people and investigators) found out that homeboy Cho had some problems. health problems. Gosh Dang, now their making seem like its all Cho fault b/c he has an illnes, many people are out their with same problems but not all of them do stupid stuff. instead those ones probly had someone they were able to talk to now as for the families. i’m sorry u lost a loved one i am, but we both know when ur around curtian people u act differently then what u would with ur parents, what i’m getting at is the people who got shot had probly done Cho in dirty (treated him wrong), and they got what they had coming, now i’m not saying if someone does me wrong that i’m blast him cuz i think thats wack, but after so much that boy had been through he it was only a matter of time before he would have cracked… just like everyone else. ALL OF US are like pitbulls, after so much abuse or care, after so much anyone and everyone could/would snap, we just snap in different ways, some people punch things, others listen to music(such as myself i dont listen to rap i listen to R&b, Oldies such as zapp and Roger and Benton Woods) and many other ways. but society will have its way on the young and the old forever.
Videogames and Movies are not to be blamed. Society should be.
December 19th, 2007
oh.,.. please …. it is amazing what these guys say, just throwing sand into other american’s eyes, and trying to earn some money while at it…. The problem with these shootings isn’t video games, or tv, or movies, or even books for that mather, not even “crazy” people !!!!
Stop for a moment and think for yourself, have you ever wondered this kind of events ONLY happens in the US?, Do the US have more violent games, movies, tv or whatever than the rest of the world? NO !!! Do you have more “crazy” people? well, I have to give that a reazonable MAYBE, but this is only because in the US you have access to guns so facilitated that it is easier to get a war gun (or any gun) than it is to get a bank loan to buy a car.
Dahhhh !!!! Americans (not all, just the “crazy” ones) …. get real !!!
January 14th, 2008
its his own fault nobody wants o befriend someone that acts so weird. its also whoever is his guardins fault because they didn’t raise him proper. a lot of people have video games but they dont go shooting up places. im not 100% sure who to blame but i no its not the videogames.