Ishmael's Axe

http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/suny/2001suny-pikus.html ^

[TexasBud]

One possible source of the gunman's reference to "Ismail Ax" on inside of his arm is... James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie. Character Ishmael Bush had an axe. "And the axe, which created and transformed through destruction, clears the figurative way for the deflowering of the New World."

The axe is apparently both literal and symbolic, and references are made about the character's having moved from the east to the west, creating change through the destruction (using the axe), and the like. Just a possibility, esp. for someone who was an English major?

[mutley]

If it’s not him, it’s an incredible coincidence, basically the same name, nationality, approximate age, and the use of Ismail.

Indeed. It's tough to ignore coincidences of that magnitude.

[sola_fide]

Understood Paperdoll. Didn’t mean to sound as if I was doubting you. I do know about the fingeprinting of college students in VA - university’s don’t do it. Not sure where CBN is going with this, but they’re way off base I think.

[BurbankKarl]

And he ran out of time...

Hence the fatal blow at the end.

Anon.

[Palladin]

Who knows? Cho was insane. Who can tell what kinds of weird obsessioins ran through his sick mind?

With the Columbine kids it was Goth stuff. With this kid, it could have been the new fad of Islam, or he might have been obsessed with literary symbols of American literature.

We will never really know.

[Political Junkie Too]

Ishmael was also the sole survivor of the Pequod.

-PJ

[lakeman]

I wonder if he knew kevin Bacon too

[null and void]

Thanks.

[null and void]

No, but he knew someone who knew someone who...

[outofstyle]

Are people really so skeptical of the possibility that a sympathy with Islam (especially since he apparently rails on in his note about degeneracy and materialism) figured into at least part of Cho’s motivation

If they release the note, as well as his writings, and there are no references to the Prophet (piss be to him,) then it will remove the doubt. Given that the Islamists have declared war upon us and this Ismail is the Arabic spelling of a biblical and Koranic figure. It is not unreasonable to speculate.

[VaBthang4]

Do you honestly expect me to read all of that...can you summarize?

Oi...

[freeperfromnj]

Ping

[VaBthang4]

That was a STUPID post.

[null and void]

That was a STUPID post.

How so?

[VaBthang4]

Another STUPID post.

[aCDNinUSA]

?

[LilyBean]

Ahhh, a sane post lost amongst a sea of convoluted BS. Thank You SE Mom.

[potlatch]

I never knew the axe had that connotation.

[VaBthang4]

" think he got involved somehow with a local mosque."

Based on what, dummy?

[VaBthang4]

Amen.

It used to be that FR would dissect a situation in minutes. We’d have real info and insight long before the media did.

Now we just have a grip of dummies farting online.

[null and void]

Ah. Sorry. We forgot that you’re a sympathizer...