VT Shooter: 'Libertarians Want Trans Furrys To Be Able To Protect Their Cannabis Farms With Unregistered Machine Guns'

It appears I was misled about the identity of the Vermont man who shot and injured three Palestinian college students over the weekend. The source where I found a photo of the arrestee has now swapped the soldier photo without acknowledging it, replacing it with the one above which was released by the Burlington police. And, while it's possible the two could be the same Jason J. Eaton, it seems unlikely.

The actual shooter appears to be a middle aged white male who was living with mental illness and guns. And in his long and rather odd resume, military service doesn't appear. So I apologize for misleading readers.

What did I find odd? Per the Daily Beast:

According to the resume, Eaton was a field instructor for the McCall Outdoor Science School in Idaho, where he taught science to 5th and 6th graders for two months in 2005. A year later, he apparently became an investment adviser representative, where he managed about 100 clients and $7 million in assets.

I once taught science to 5th graders. No one at the time suggested that this qualified me to manage investments in the realm of $7 million.

Another oddity as reported by the BBC among others is that Eaton's Twitter account had a banner reading: "Libertarians want trans furrys to be able to protect their cannabis farms with unregistered machine guns." This strikes me as a slam on Libertarians, or a lame attempt at humor, or a bit of both. It hints at the way the Libertarian Party in northern New England competes with the Republican Party for members.

AG Merrick Garland's Justice Department will be deciding whether to prosecute a hate crime on top of second-degree murder charges. Eaton has already pleaded "not guilty" and presumably will pursue a "lone wolf" mental illness defense. 

I'm left with two thoughts:

1) White middle aged men who go on a rampage shooting strangers often appear lonely and isolated, even within the structure of their own families. Palestinian martyrs who are shot by strangers often appear as deeply connected to their extended families, and to their communities. 

2) Chris Hedges has written about the tendency in decaying empires for crisis cults to spring up. Eaton appears to have dabbled at the edges of some of these, many with aspects of dog whistle antisemitism (mostly of the "Jewish money controls the world" variety). 

How ironic that he shot three men who are part of the struggle against the Zionist occupation of Palestine. One, Hasham Awartani, remains in critical condition with injuries to his spine and hand. Kinnan Abdalhamid's uncle revealed that the family feels betrayed for encouraging that young man to attend college in the U.S. believing it would be safer than continuing to live in the occupied West Bank. Along with their friend Tahseen Ahmad, the students were shot on their way to Awartani's grandmother's house returning from a bowling birthday party for his 8 year old cousins. Hard to get more wholesome than that.

In so many ways, the U.S. empire's long reign of terror in the rest of the world is coming home to roost. People of color would likely say, when has it not been roosting at home? And I can't disagree with that.

Three College Students Shot In Vermont Wearing Kuffiyeh And Speaking Arabic

It's seemed like the U.S. government-aligned media is doing all it can to bring on civil war. I'm sure it's seen as preferable to the uprising of the 99% that we so desperately need. 

But I didn't expect that the issue we'd fall out about would be the empire's evil doings in Palestine. More and more violent Zionism is emerging here in the U.S. both in word and in deed. One of the men shot for speaking Arabic and wearing a kuffiyeh has a bullet lodged in his spine, and the gunman is still at large.

With each passing day, though, the split between the generations is deepening over support for or resistance to Israel's genocide in Gaza. 

It isn't a red-blue split or even a (fake) left-right split. 

It's not driven by race or by socio economic status either. 

Blogger Caitlin Johnstone says, Israel doesn't have a Gen Z problem, they have a morality problem. And she theorizes that younger people have not scarred their consciences with so many compromises and looking away from things that make them morally queasy. Thus, they are better equipped to recognize genocide when they see it.

A common sign in Vermont reads: this brave little state says no to hate. Does it, though?

Burlington, Vermont is the stomping grounds of Senator Bernie Sanders, a big supporter of genocide as it turns out. He was once its mayor. He owns a fancy house on the shore of Lake Champlain. It's noon the next day after the shooting and he has yet to 1) condemn this hate crime in his backyard or for that matter 2) condemn the genocide in Gaza.

Honestly, I personally couldn't care less what Bernie says or doesn't say. It's been clear that he's a faithful Democrat Party apparatchik for years now. But you wouldn't believe how many people still see him as some kind of a moral leader.

I don't want to see civil war in any country including my own. But it may turn out to be the most effective way of bringing the evil empire to its conclusion sooner rather than later.

For ways to support the shooting victims who are still in hospital maybe call the Burlington Police 802-658-2704 or the mayor 802-865-7272   mayor@burlingtonvt and/or the Vermont State Police 802-224-8727 to say: 

the whole world is watching while you fail to find the shooter targeting Arab young men.