If you’re one of the millions of eXiled Online readers living in the Greater London area, then Christmas is coming early for you. Next Friday, October 16, there will be a special screening of the brutal BBC-produced documentary, Going Postal, based on my book of the same name. The mad and mega-talented director, Paul Tickell, will be on-hand for a Q&A after the showing–I highly recommend taking advantage of that opportunity. The screening will be held at the Frontline Club, “in the heart of London”–for details click here. [Update: you can book through the Frontline website, though there may still be tickets on the night of the showing. It's at 13 Norfolk Place, W2. Close to Paddington Station.] (more…)
There was another workplace rampage killing last week, just outside of Fresno, California, leaving two company employees dead and the other employees grateful to be alive.
Fresno, like so much of unofficial America, is still in a state of shock these days, after suffering from a non-stop barrage of tragic events and trends, of subprime devastation and a three-year drought, and political corruption and machinations that seem to be accelerating with every month. So unlike workplace shootings in the past, this one was quickly pushed off the front pages and almost forgotten, just a couple of days after it happened.
After a brief lull, workplace shootings are back with today’s murder rampage near Fresno, California. Apparently the killer, identified as James Bascadi Badasci was recently laid off after 10 years from the company he attacked this morning—Fresno Equipment Company, a dealer for John Deere equipment. Early reports say that Badasci showed up at 9:00am with a shotgun, killed a person whom he allegedly “targeted,” then fired several more shots into the equipment before eventually turning the gun on himself. SWAT teams arrived after the damage was done–they always have an uncanny way of showing up after the killing’s over and the murderer’s already “comma-self”‘d. (more…)
This is infuriating: According to today’s New York Times, most low-wage workers in America are victims of routine theft. The thieves: wealthy employers, who steal on average 15% of their low-wage employees’ pay by routinely underpaying them for their work, according to a new report.
Huge numbers of America’s low-wage workers don’t even earn minimum wage for their work. Only 20% of these wage-slaves dare to complain or consider starting or joining a union–and of those who do, nearly half suffer illegal punishment at the hands of their bosses and/or companies, either suspended or fired. And of course, the companies never worry that the government will do anything to them for illegally stomping on America’s vulnerable, because you know, government is a bad, bad thing.
We live in Dickensian times again, folks, except that ours is a degraded Dickens: our Dickensian victims don’t evince any of the pathos of Dickens’ 19th century characters, because officially, none of this is even happening. And if it is happening, it’s their own damn fault. (more…)
This is one of the clearest and most painful “going postal” rampage massacres I’ve studied, and I’ve looked at a lot of them. The reason is that the murderer, George Sodini, left behind a diary that makes everything as clear as can be–so clear, in fact, that the media is doing everything it can to avoid looking at what it really says. Because this massacre is really about the desperation and hate so common in America. You can’t understand yesterday’s health club massacre in Pennsylvania, leaving 3 women dead, 10 injured, and the male gunman with his brains blown out, without recognizing this misery and hate. Most Americans’ lives have grown worse over the past three decades: today, average American male workers earn less than they did in 1979 in inflation-adjusted dollars, while the top 400 richest Americans own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, a wealth gap only found in tinpot Third World kleptocracies, and not seen here since 1928. That alone is reason enough to hate.
Even Warren Buffet admitted it in a interview with the New York Times: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” For some reason, only the rich have the courage to talk about it.
This documentary will scramble your mind and your world in ways you won’t forget. It’s a harrowing, painful 1-1/2 hour plunge into this uniquely modern and American type of murder: rampage massacres in offices and schoolyards, and includes some of the most disturbing and bizarre interviews you’ll ever watch, as well as exclusive gory police footage of the murder scenes.
Mark Ames’ book Going Postal, a searing expose on America’s rage massacres in schools and workplaces, has just been released in Italy by Isbn Edizioni, a cutting-edge independent publisher based in Milano. The Italian edition of Going Postal is titled Social Killer: La Rivolta dei Nuovi Schiavi. You can check out Isbn’s site here, and order the Italian-language edition of Going Postal here.
In New York, on Friday, April 3, a man burst into a community center and started shooting, killing 15 people before blowing his own brains out. The gunman, 41-year-old Jiverly Voong, was instantly branded as a maniac by the media: an “angry loner who loved guns, hated America and talked about assassinating the President.” But who was he, really? Ames tries to answer that question on KPFK radio.
Mega-Statue Of Chicken Plutocrat Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim
The killing spree in Alabama fits a well-worn pattern of workplace-driven massacres that we’ve seen since the “going postal” phenomenon exploded in the middle of the Reagan revolution.
In spite of the fact that these killings have gone on unabated for over 20 years, most of the country doesn’t want to know why they’re happening — least of all the people in power.
If we study the motive for Michael McLendon’s shooting rampage Tuesday, which left 11 bodies across three towns in southern Alabama, and we look at the bizarre way that the causes of the shooting are being hushed up, you begin to understand why this uniquely-Reaganomics-inspired crime started in the United States, and continues to plague us. (more…)
Whenever I hear about a rampage massacre like the one that just took place in southern Alabama a few hours ago, so far leaving 11 dead and untold wounded (casualty numbers seem to tick up every hour), the first thing I look for is how the company treated the shooter or the workforce as a whole: did they recently fire him in the usual callous manner that companies do it these days, leaving him desperate and devastated? Has the company been following the typical post-Reagan management model in which workers are squeezed with endless downsizings, slashed benefits, and more time at the job for less pay, all in order to fatten the filthy-rich executives’ already-obscene bonuses?
The answer in the case of today’s Alabama shootings already appears to be yes.
