Sunday, January 9, 2011

Updated Video-Jared Lee Loughner's Signs of Mental Illness Before Arizona Killings; Examine Psychology before Politics or Rap Music (updated)

New data have been released
 regarding the signs of mental disturbance
 in this poor pitiful creature. 
[See most recent post HERE. ]
Saturday: An apparently mentally ill man targeted Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
 but killed several other people.
The 22-year old Loughner sprayed bullets at close range during a neighborhood's meet and greet with Congresswoman Giffords.
Below, his words and the signs of mental illness.

First, a recap of the tragedy.

Hero:
jared loughner mugshot
A woman and two men in the crowd jumped Jared Lee Loughner during his reloading, holding his magazine and gun away from him, yelling at him. (He complained that they were hurting his arm.) People making 911 calls were doing triage on victims while speaking with the 911 operator.
Witnesses stated that he seemed pleased with the killing he had wrought. One said he seemed "cold"--almost a "smirk".

 Officials state that he is NOT cooperating with police.
(His history is one of "odd" or "scary" or unbalanced" behavior. Students complained of his mental instability. College police were called to classrooms due to his disruptions 5 times. Jared Loughner lists as his favorite books at his Youtube site: "I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno."  This issue to be examined below.)
  • It should be made perfectly clear that people with mental illnesses in general do not commit more crimes than folks who are not afflicted. Remember, there are mothers who kill their children who think they are saving them from satan, and are in a twisted way fighting to be heroic; and there are those who kill their children with no remorse or out of greed, selfishness and  bad intent.
  • judge JohnRoll had received
    death threats himself
  •  Many will focus on the politics of this event- it has already happened, almost immediately, like when certain politicians publicly assumed the times square bomber was a "tea party"  person for some reason or that the Oklahoma bombing was the result of arab terrorists...the post HERE raises the question about how a variety of people immediately ramped UP the rhetoric of political anger, while ironically or hypocritically calling for toning down political anger...
  • The people who were killed seem to be extraordinary folks. Always seems to be the case. We are surrounded by really good people in our day to day lives, as the stories come out.  The judge (U.S. District Judge John Roll) who was killed was saying hello to Giffords after attending Mass.
  • One older man fell on his wife, shielding her body from the bullets. He died protecting her.
  • The young girl who was killed was top-notch. Interested in politics, ballet, and baseball. She was the only girl on her little league team (wanted to be the first female major leaguer), was born on 9-11, was just elected to office in her class (see video below), had just completed her first communion. Everyday events, parts of good happy family life we all relate to.
  • A 20 year-old intern for the congresswoman, Daniel Hernandez, only on the job for a few days, is credited with saving her life. I beleive he was trained in some medical area, like nursing or triage.
  • The congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was by all reports extraordinary, very well-liked by all and a gift to many. She was an interesting mix in her politics: a former republican, she was a democrat representing a republican district. pro-gun rights, pro-border protection, Freedom for motorcycle riders, intensely interested in health care.
  • Her tagline quote was from Mother Teresa:  "We can do no great things, only small things with great love." She was shot from behind the left ear; the bullet went through her brain and exited the skull through the frontal lobe. Her speech may well be affected. But it is extraordinary that she is alive. Her surgeon describes how HERE.
In this post (and HERE and HERE) i would like to examine the data, the facts, the evidence, and the clues as they come out as they relate to the mental health of the gunman.
This guy, Jared Lee Loughner, has a number of posts and videos on youtube which i will share with you below, along with some comments regarding any hypotheses about his mental state which might shed light on this horribly consequential act of violence.
 I will update this post as new info becomes available.

Some new info:
  • A Mother Jones interview with a friend of Loughner HERE
  • excerpt 1:  "...Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a "fake." Loughner's animus toward Giffords intensified after he attended one of her campaign events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer a question he had posed, Tierney says. He also describes Loughner as being obsessed with "lucid dreaming"—that is, the idea that conscious dreams are an alternative reality that a person can inhabit and control—and says Loughner became "more interested in this world than our reality." Tierney adds, "I saw his dream journal once. That's the golden piece of evidence. You want to know what goes on in Jared Loughner's mind, there's a dream journal that will tell you everything...
  • excerpt 2: "Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner "might have gone to some other rallies," he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, 'What is government if words have no meaning?'"
    "He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question.' Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."
    Tierney says he has "no clue" why Loughner might have "shot all those other people." But, he notes, "when I heard Gabrielle Giffords has been shot, I was like 'Oh my God...' For some reason I felt like I knew...I felt like if anyone was going to shoot her, it would be Jared."
    Loughner would occasionally mention Giffords, according to Tierney: "It wasn't a day-in, day-out thing, but maybe once in a while, if Giffords did something that was ridiculous or passed some stupid law or did something stupid, he related that to people. But the thing I remember most is just that question. I don't remember him stalking her or anything." Tierney notes that Loughner did not display any specific political or ideological bent: "It wasn't like he was in a certain party or went to rallies...It's not like he'd go on political rants." — By Nick Baumann
  •  PBS interviewed a neighbor who was in the house of Loughner's parents today. He reported that Jared Lee Loughner's mother was "broken down" in bed, --may have to be "hospitalized"--and that the father was unable to speak more than three words without crying.







Monday morning, TV news shows report that Jared Loughner recited his poetry in class in a scary way, loudly ranting, holding his crotch, and hopping around the room. His instructor said it scared the women.
I wonder if Rappers are going to be focused on....

Here is his youtube site.

Here is a video from Jared Lee Loughner, an Introduction to himself as he offers it to us:

He says his favorite activity is Conscience Dreaming
here is another of his videos:





Jared Lee Loughner's history:

  • rejected by military (he apparently told them he'd used marijuana hundreds of times)
  • what do the neighbors say? HERE
  • and HERE
  • and expelled from community college HERE
  • More HERE

Apparently from Jared Lee Loughner's myspace page:

This is from the one favorite of his from youtube:

"If there's no flag in the constitution then the flag in the film is unknown.

There's no flag in the constitution.
Therefore, the flag in the film is unknown.
Burn every new and old flag that you see.
Burn your flag!
I bet you can imagine this in your mind with a faster speed.
Watch this protest in reverse!
Ask the local police; "What's your illegal activity on duty?".
If you protest the government then there's a new government from protesting.
There's not a new government from protesting.
Thus, you aren't protesting the government."





Will find more info, post, and ponder.

Sadness.
At the moment, the pieces of information indicate the presence of a thought disorder. I will post later in the week as more information emerges. This is a good time to look up how difficult it is to help those afflicted with thought disorders; i worked in D.C. with folks who endured paranoid schizophrenia and they did not always want assistance.



The parents of the 9 year-old girl, Christina Green, speak in these videos:

 







HERE is an LA times story with comments.

Questions: are you your neighbor's keeper?

More HERE




"There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives--the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them. ---Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well."
--Mother Teresa
"At the moment of death we will not be judged according to the number of good deeds we have done or by the diplomas we have received in our lifetime. We will be judged according to the love we have put into our work." Mother Teresa

5 comments:

  1. What his diagnosis?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Even if he has a thought problem diagnosis, like schizophrenia, will that excuse his behavior? Can he be excused for being sick?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Depends on the laws of Arizona. Some states have Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. After treatment they are released. i think Arizona has instead, Guilty but Insane, so after treatment, they have to go jail to serve the rest of the sentence.
    Even someone with a severe diagnosis might be in a mental state where they know right versus wrong. So a person with a diagnosis of, for example, Schizophrenia, could lose a case [trying to be found not guilty by reason of insanity] if the jury feels that they at the time of the crime, they knew right from wrong, or legal from illegal.

    ReplyDelete
  4. His lawyer has told the court that at this time, there is no problem with him "helping with his own defense" --which is court talk for 'he is not "crazy" right at thte momen't. So- she has apparently decided to wait to bring up the whole mental health issue. But he still had the crazed look on his face in the plea appearance in court. (his hair grew a lot in 2 weeks) My guess--We will learn as a nation, a lot about the insanity defense, during this process, like in the OJ case we learned a lot about how lawyers getting caught up in the theatrics will cost you your case.

    ReplyDelete
  5. In answer to the first comment--it is not possible to reliably diagnose from a distance. If you read up on schizophrenia, with paranoid features,or even Schizoid or schizotypal personality features with paranoia, you may find desciptions similar to what we read about in the paper. My guess is, we will all read and hear about this in great detail.

    ReplyDelete