The Oakland Shooting.

Yesterday (2/4/12) One Gho a 43 year old American of Korean extraction is alleged to have carried out a mass shooting at the Oikos University in Oakland California, USA. The Oikas University is a privately run institution specialising in providing in training in the medical professions - specifically nursing - to Oakland's Korean community. It is my belief that the sections of the US intelligence community had a hand in this incident. While I'm not exactly sure of the how yet the why is pretty obvious.

It turns out that while the US has spent the last 12 years smashing up various bits of the middle-east it's main geo-political rival China has been quietly getting on with it becoming richer and more powerful. Things have got to the point where if the US wants to hold on to it's position as the sole global hyper-power it will have to seriously inhibit China's rise. As a result diplomatic confrontation with China is the US' number 1 priority. This is especially true in 2012 because China is going through it's once a decade transfer of political power. Although this is nowhere near as democratic as the US Presidential election process the Chinese transition is certainly more democratic then the outgoing President simply nominating his successor. As a result different factions within the Chinese Communist Party are currently jostling for power and position. The wider world has been given a glimpse of these internal politics through the downfall of Bo Xilai but the US intelligence community obviously want even more information.

The shooting in Oakland obviously spreads shock and confusion if only as people try to work out what as happened and why it has happened. The fact that Oikas University is a Christian medical facility suggests one possible motive. In the US the Affordable Healthcare Act or "Obamacare" is currently in front of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and is likely to be a hot button issue during the 2012 Presidential election. One element of the Act known as the Health and Human Services mandate forces all providers of health insurance to include contraception and abortion services as part of those plans or face extremely punitive fines. Christian employers and Universities which are ideologically opposed to contraception and abortion are very opposed to this and are arguing that it goes against the freedom of religion clause of the US Constitution. Therefore you might have thought that the attack was carried out by an Obamacare supporter with a grudge against Christian Universities - explosive stuff in an election year. Although I'm not even sure if the Health and Human Services mandate is one of the issues in front of SCOTUS the court is being asked to rule on whether other aspects of Obamacare are Constitutional. Obviously the White House's experts in Constitutional law think it is while the applicant's to SCOTUS experts in Constitutional law think it isn't. Therefore it is now up to the nine supposedly world experts on US Constitutional law to decide. Even for someone with a working knowledge of the US Constitution the complex legal and moral arguments involved are difficult to follow. To a foreigner in a country where religion is widely banned and individual rights are an alien concept these arguments should be completely impenetrable.

Beyond that the Oakland shooting touches on elements of my role in relations between the US and China especially as they relate to Syria. I think in the original plan my "Operation Ostrava" post yesterday should have been published slightly before the shootings rather then right in the middle of them. That way key phrases from the story such as "lone gunman", "killing students" and "massacring Koreans" could be used for coded discussions about the US reaction to my post. As a general rule if you want spies to obsess about something - even if it's just your laundry list - put it in code. Also depending on how far you've gone into my biography you might know that in my early twenties I expressed an interest in becoming a psychiatric nurse which obviously would require me attending a facility like Oikas University. British intelligence and their US allies used this piece of information to build a psychological profile in which they identified me as what they would call a weak minded, bleeding heart liberal who is easy to manipulate and control. It would appear that profile is incorrect so the US would like to find out what the Chinese know and think on the issue.

Then there is the gun control debate that follows mass shootings as surely as night follows day. The Chinese are actually quite knowledgeable on this issue because in the years prior to the 2008 Olympics they suffered an epidemic of mass killings at schools and nurseries. However due to China's strict gun control laws those killings were carried out with farm tools like pitchforks and machetes. The Chinese authorities responded by banning pitchforks and machetes but the killings continued only with hammers and screwdrivers. So the lesson from the Chinese example is the only way to truly prevent mass killings is by creating a society in which people don't get to the point psychologically where they want to kill a large number of people. However I don't think we're going to solve that problem in the next five minutes even if it does feed into the recent massacre in Afghanistan by a US serviceman.

The general idea was that following the shooting all these complicated and confusing issues and arguments would make for a very untidy start to the heads of government/state Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit which opened in Cambodia a few hours later. Although it features cultural and political aspects ASEAN is primarily an economic bloc in which traditional allies of the US like South Korea and Japan do business and build relationships with China along with nations like Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma). It has also become something of a goldmine for the US for intelligence on China. As the Chinese economy a grown wages have risen to the point where it is now cheaper for western companies to outsource their low-tech manufacturing to countries like Thailand and Cambodia rather then China. Since the late 1980's China has kept it's population in line by providing a centrally planned economy that boosts living standards by providing jobs. Therefore what happens at ASEAN in terms of economic co-operation between China and these other nations provides an insight into how much the Chinese government is aware of this outsourcing phenomenon and what they're doing to prevent it causing what could become significant political unrest in China.

Obviously though what happens in California is unlikely to be headline news in south-east Asia. However with the shooter and the victims possibly being US/South Korean dual nationals and certainly having relatives South Korea the South Korean government had no choice other then to pay attention. This was the flaw in the US' plan because whatever pressure the shooting placed on the Chinese it placed double on the South Koreans giving China an advantage over South Korea. A similar thing happened after Japan's 3/11 which the US' approach to a supposed valued friend that had just suffered a once in a generation disaster shortly after having their economy overtaken by the Chinese was more hostile then helpful. So I think that regardless of what they're telling their bosses sections of the US intelligence community are actively trying to hand a series of victories to the Chinese while disguising it as a big campaign to beat China and preserve the American way of life.


I should also point out due to the time it took me to write this up I'm bumping my weekly Libya update to tomorrow (4/312).