Police sources say the gunman who shot dead a New South Wales police civilian employee was a 15-year-old radicalised youth of Middle Eastern background.

The lone shooter killed the employee as he was leaving police headquarters at Parramatta in Sydney's west around 4:30pm yesterday.

The offender then fired several more shots at officers as they emerged from the building to respond to the incident.

He was killed when the officers, who are special constables, returned fire.

In an emotional media conference last night, Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione described the incident as a callous attack.

"I've viewed a number of pieces of footage. I can tell you this was a brutal crime," he said.

"This particular man was deliberately targeted.

"There is no way you can describe the feeling that comes with being told that you have an officer that's been killed."

Mr Scipione praised the senior constables for the way they handled the situation.

"Those special constables certainly put their lives on the line," he said.

"They acted in a way that was incredibly courageous. And I'm just so pleased that they're all well ... they were incredibly professional."

The Commissioner stressed there was no ongoing threat to the surrounding community.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-03/nsw-police-headquarters-gunman-was-radicalised-youth/6825028

Read article above...

Online radicalisation expert at Edith Cowan University Robyn Torok​ said in June that Islamic State had released a new book aimed at 13- to 20-year-olds living in the West, explaining how to get away with terrorist attacks.

"It actually talks about how to be a young person and to blend in ... to be a lone wolf terrorist in the West," she said. "It's engaging, and a 13-year-old can understand it and act on it."

After yet another American mass shooting, will any U.S. presidential candidate have the guts to put a handgun ban on the table. Bill Scher from Common Dreamsconsiders.

With yet another mass shooting terrorising the American public, some facts are in order:

• Mass shootings in public places are on the rise in America over the past few years, but they still represent an infinitesimal amount – less than 1% – of the 33,000 deaths (as of 2013) due to guns each year.
• In fact, the overall murder rate is at its lowest point since at least 1960. The annual murder rate per 100,000 people peaked at 10.2 in 1980. In 2014, it was at 4.5.
• Most gun deaths, 63%, are from suicide, not homicide, let alone mass homicide.
• And unlike the murder rate, the suicide rate is going up, from 10.4 in 2000 to 12.6 in 2013.
• Furthermore, most gun deaths are from handguns and not assault rifles. According to the FBI, 68% of homicidal gun deaths in 2014 were from handguns. Only 3% were from rifles of any sort.
• A similar percentage of suicides by gun are estimated to involve handguns.

If you want to reduce the number of gun deaths in America, the conclusion is inescapable: ban handguns, along with assault rifles.

Politicians generally avoid proposing handgun bans because the position doesn’t fit into the frame of exempting “responsible gun owners” from new regulations. No one needs an assault rifle to hunt or to protect themselves. But plenty of Americans keep handguns thinking that it will protect them from harm. Politicians are loathe to advocate that the government “take their guns away”.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/will-any-us-presidential-candidate-support-banning-handguns,8223

America is again reeling from the horror of its gun violence with an 11-year-old boy being charged with murder after allegedly shooting dead an eight-year-old girl in Tennessee, days after the mass shooting in Oregon and a series of drive-by murders of children in Cleveland, Ohio.

The 11-year-old boy has been charged with first-degree murder after he used his father's 12-gauge shotgun to shoot his next door neighbour, McKayla Dyer, through a window as she played outside on Saturday afternoon.

"I want her back in my arms, this is not fair. Hold and kiss your babies every night because you're never promised the next day with them," Ms Dyer told an ABC News affiliate.

“The other side of that argument, that people always throw out, of course, is like: ‘look at Australia! They don’t have gun violence, they have no guns, their citizens aren’t allowed to have guns’,” Morris said.

“They also have no freedom,” Carlson said. “You can go to prison for expressing unpopular views in Australia and people do.”

Carlson appears to have been referring to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the law which rightwing News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt was found by the federal court in 2011 to have breachedfor columns suggesting “fair-skinned Aborigines” identified as Indigenous in part for personal gain.

That prompted former prime minister, Tony Abbott, who is a good friend of Bolt, to pledge to change the provision. This pledge was later dumped to ‘preserve unity’, according to the government.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/oct/06/australia-has-no-freedom-fox-news-host-claims-in-discussion-on-gun-laws

Note to foxie bum... : Bolt was free to insult some people but the law was free to punch him in the gonads for it... Same: you can own a gun in Australia but the law can stop you should you be deranged, underaged or plain stupid. I know, it's amazing... Far less stupid shoot-outs... And contrary to Foxie Crappo, Gus is not in prison forever after, for expressing views that are...

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has waded deeper into a row over gun control by claiming that Jewish people in Nazi Germany might have been able to prevent the Holocaust if they had been armed.

Carson was quizzed on CNN over comments in his new book, A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties, which cites Nazi Germany to argue that the right to bear arms should not be curtailed.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him: “Just clarify, if there had been no gun control laws in Europe at that time, would six million Jews have been slaughtered?”

Carson replied: “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed … I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first.”

The former neurosurgeon is currently polling in second place in the race to become the Republican presidential candidate, behind front-runner Donald Trump.

His comments risk further fuelling the outrage that greeted recent remarks on the killing of nine people last week at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/09/ben-carson-claims-jewish-people-might-have-stopped-holocaust-if-they-had-guns

The 3-year-old was sitting on a stool behind the counter near the cash register while his father, the owner of a small convenience store in North Carolina, chatted with a customer on Sunday.

Suddenly a shot rang out, and the owner, Manal Abdelaziz, 56, turned and saw his son, Manal, lying on the floor.

Manal, who was nicknamed Cash, had found a 9-millimeter handgun that was kept in the store for protection, and fatally shot himself.

“All we heard is something happening, and I look: Oh my God, my son is on the floor,” Mr. Abdelaziz told a local television station, WMBF. They called 911. “Help comes, but it was late,” the store owner said. “It happened quick.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/us/lumberton-nc-

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Australia Enjoys Another Peaceful Day Under Oppressive Gun Control Regime

"...the peaceful two decades that have followed are "probably" because the Australian government decided to strip us of our God-given right to own projectile weaponry capable of shooting down helicopters."

http://www.betootaadvocate.com/uncategorized/australia-enjoys-another-peaceful-day-under-oppressive-gun-control-regime/

For the first time, scientists have pinned down a molecular process in the brain that helps to trigger schizophrenia. The researchers involved in the landmark study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Nature, say the discovery of this new genetic pathway probably reveals what goes wrong neurologically in a young person diagnosed with the devastating disorder.

The study marks a watershed moment, with the potential for early detection and new treatments that were unthinkable just a year ago, according to Steven Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute at MIT. Hyman, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, calls it "the most significant mechanistic study about schizophrenia ever."

"I’m a crusty, old, curmudgeonly skeptic," he said. "But I’m almost giddy about these findings."

The researchers, chiefly from the Broad Institute, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, found that a person's risk of schizophrenia is dramatically increased if they inherit variants of a gene important to "synaptic pruning" -- the healthy reduction during adolescence of brain cell connections that are no longer needed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/01/27/scientists-open-the-black-box-of-schizophrenia-with-dramatic-genetic-finding/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_schizonphrenia640pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Read about young people's brain on this site including at top...:

The brain is "rewiring itself". As mentioned, this has been a solid scientific comparative analysis of young people versus settled people. The brain becomes like a flip-flopping soup. During these years, there is a "rebel" lurking within our mind. Authority is subconsciously resented. We want to fly with our own wings. But at some stage or another, we misjudge the dangers and we take stupid risks. We can also develop strong resentments. Our experiences lead us to not trust anyone and we get over-disappointed by unreciprocated "love" for example, love gone wrong or such. Strong sexual tensions (hormones such as testosterone) and desire add to this unsettled brew. Gus

Now we know that the "rewiring" can go wrong, as well as being loopy...

it is often said that "guns don't kill people" but they do contribute to the damage...

A Lockheed missile blows up a bus full of Yemeni children; in Australia Lockheed Martin gains kudos by sponsoring the National Youth Science Forum. BAE Systems sponsors underprivileged kids in Australia while being complicit in the killing of thousands of needy children in Yemen. All you see in industry marketing pitches is euphemism, with nary a mention of the word “weapons”.

The UK’s largest weapons-maker, BAE, is working inside Saudi Arabia supporting Saudi-United Arab Emirates military operations in Yemen, a war that has killed or injured tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children.

Meanwhile in Australia, BAE sponsors The Smith Family’s STEM education program for under-privileged children.

Flagrant hypocrisy? Welcome to the weapons business.

Then there’s Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons-maker, also raking in billions from the Yemen war. A Lockheed missile blew up a bus full of Yemeni school children in 2018, killing at least 29 kids and injuring dozens more. Back in Australia, Lockheed was cultivating kudos with kids as major sponsor of the National Youth Science Forum, a registered charity.

US missile-making giant Raytheon also continues to supply the Saudi-UAE coalition, despite evidence of numerous attacks with Raytheon missiles that targeted and killed civilians, including children. No mention of that in Australia. Instead, Aussie school kids had fun hanging out with the young Australian snowboarding paralympian Raytheon hired to front the launch of its Maths Alive! STEM program.

The French company supplying Australia’s new submarines, Naval Group, is at the centre of multiple corruption scandals globally, some of which involved murder. That hasn’t stopped Naval promoting itself as a model future employer, with the help of Port Adelaide footy heroes, to 90,174 kids in 329 South Australian schools since 2017.

And let’s not forget the list of sponsors of the Australian War Memorial, Legacy, Invictus Games and Soldier On, which include numerous weapons-making corporations.

There’s a name for this cynical behaviour: reputation laundering. And nearly every weapons company is doing it.

The world’s weapons producers have taken with gusto to promoting themselves as innovators in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Military industry has adopted the STEM mantra to target children and young people as future employees, usually with the willing partnership of respected educational institutions. Many, if not most, Australian universities now have joint agreements, strategic partnerships or some other form of collaboration with the weapons industry.

The sales pitch is, join us for an exciting and challenging high-tech career in science. This enthusiastic support of STEM serves two purposes: reputation laundering is one, the other is as a recruitment drive. STEM provides a socially acceptable way to promote the weapons industry to children, and parents, as a potential employer.

There’s nothing wrong with promoting STEM education, or seeking new employees. The issue is the way these companies are now targeting children as young as primary school age, with the full support of government. (eg. The MD of weapons-maker Saab Technologies is on the South Australian education board.) The problem is the spin and glamour applied to increased militarism, with pertinent information omitted from the marketing. Warfare isn’t mentioned, for starters.

There’s nothing about how the kids will use their STEM education to enhance the ‘lethality’ of their employer’s products. Or about a future where employees have eliminated the need for human involvement in the ‘kill chain’ by creating autonomous robotic devices to make those decisions. (This is not science fiction, these research and development programs are already under way.) Working on nuclear weapons isn’t discussed, either.

You won’t find the underlying arms manufacturing realities in the STEM marketing by weapons giants. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find the word “weapons” at all.

Instead, you’ll enter a world of euphemism: “high end technology company”, “leading systems integrator”, “security and aerospace company”, “defence technology and innovation company”. It’s also a fair bet you’re reading weapons company marketing if you see the phrase “solving complex problems”. Especially if there’s mention of working to make the world safer and more secure.

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/reputation-laundering-weapons-companies-infiltrating-schools-to-promote-education/

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