A Troubled Loner!

I'm kind of late entering my two yens worth of opinion, but I'm swamped at work and have to battle an intermittently unreliable internet at home. Our latest loony with a Glock decided to take out several students and teachers and then send a video to the TV networks explaining his reasoning. (One of the professors was a French Canadian, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak. If you'd like to leave a message for her family, please do.)
(This link works. The others don't)You've read all about it by now (for more extensive coverage of this whole rigmarole, go to the BoingBoing link and click around until you've had your fill.) When he was described as a "troubled loner", I was not overly surprised. (Interested in a Japanese student's bird's eye view of the situation? Click the link.)

Thank goodness I now live in a country where guns are banned and only hunters and cops own them. Oh yeah, and of course the Yakuza have them. The Mayor of Nagasaki, 伊藤 一長 (Itcho Itoh), was gunned down by a second-rate gangster. You can read all about it here and then a follow-up here. I don't honestly buy the alleged assassin's story that he was pissed off over a dispute about his damaged car, but neither can I believe that his bosses would approve of the hit for the heat it'd bring down on them. But you never know...the Yakuza have a right way of thinking and his policies on nuclear power are controversial, to say the least. Here are are few quotes of Mr. Itoh:

“The human race cannot coexist with nuclear weapons.”

“The atomic bomb survivors cannot wait another 50 years. Their highest hope is to see the abolition of nuclear weapons within their own lifetime. It is a steep climb to this goal, but one from which we must never relent.”

“The nuclear weapons states, the United States of America in particular, have ignored their international commitments and have made no change in their unyielding stance on nuclear deterrence … We strongly resent the trampling of the hopes of the world's people.”

Since we're still in a morbid mood, there aren't any leads on the slaying of Lindsay Ann Hawker. If any of you out there feel you're being stalked read this and I suggest you get in contact with the Victim Support Center in Tokyo at (03) 5287-3338.