The last thirty days was a month of violence.

In Virginia Tech USA, one of the country's largest universities, a 23-year old psychopath (born in South Korea) killed 32 innocent campus people (and then himself) using a 9-mm Glock 19 gun while in the serene environs of the beautiful Banaue rice terraces here, a 40-year old woman-volunteer for peace under the Peace Corps program was bludgeoned and strangled to death.

Along Manila's busy street, a philanthropist, named Ducot (and a companion) held hostage for one day - inside a hired bus before the blaze of television lights - 33 young innocents - to call attention of government to the sad plight of poverty and lack of education for children. He was armed with handguns and grenades.

Down south in the island of Muslim Sulu, the bandits called Abu Sayyaf - beheaded seven construction workers after the criminals' demand for P5-million ransom money was not met. The decapitated heads were dumped into two sacks and sent to the Military - with no love notes, of course. One youngster-victim Jelowa Teodoro merely wanted a summer job to pay his college tuition; the other, Wilmer de los Santos, wanted to put a brother to school.

The motivation to execute these numerous means of snuffing human lives is as varied as the faces of the perpetrators.

The Korean Cho Leung Hui, though born in Korea, spent most of his life years (15 of 23 years) in a culture of American violence (in American cinema and the real world). He lived in a liberal state of Virginia where the only requirement (to buy a gun) was to have a valid I.D. and not having a criminal record. The other rule was you can buy only one gun for every month - or you can own 12 guns in a year if you have the money.

The pre-taped video of Cho's wild ranting showed a hatred for "the rich brats and their trust funds, jewelries and Mercedes." He also expected not to come out alive of the violent mass murder - Cho had planned everything months ahead. Psychologists claimed that Cho was a typical "clinically narcissistic" person - with a disablingly low self-esteem and therefore in constant need of recognition and reward.

When the narcissistic psychopath gets marginalized or feels powerless, he fights back with a disrupted behavior of violence as Cho did.

The Virginia Tech Massacre is considered the worst campus mass murder. The killings of seven workers by Edward Allaway in California State University and the murders of 16 and wounding of 31 others by Charles Whirman in the University of Texas can only come close. In San Diego California, an apparently peeved student Frederick Davids killed three professors while making his thesis presentation.

The Virginia Tech case is one of a mentally disturbed man who had easy legal access to the purchase of guns and ammunition. It is a violent popular culture in America that gave rise to this kind of killer like Cho. It is unfortunate, indeed.

In the Ifugao area in the Banaue, the suspect is a 57 Filipino fair-skinned woodcarver aged near 27 years old motivated by greed and lust who went after the smiling Julia Campbell, 40 who gave up his lucrative work as media person in the prestigious New York Times and several other newspapers in order "to make a difference" in people's lives.

The Peace Corps volunteer's body was dug from a shallow grave covered with soil, gravel and grass (to hide the evidence of the crime) in a dry creek nearby. Campbell's story as one of the remarkable stories of the many months of sacrifice of the 8,000 Peace Corps Volunteers in the country, has been repeated many times and in many parts of the Philippine islands since 1961. It is known that Julia was a bright journalist who then worked for the renowned New York Times and other publications until she decided to call it a day - and gave up on the "rat race."

Meantime, the hostage takers in the Philippines - had a very valid point to make and used the drama to attract public attention. The message was heard clearly around the globe about the lack of good health and education under the GMA wake.

But the more important issue remained as to how the perpetrators of the hostage-taking were able to accumulate such a wide assortment of guns and ammo - enough to kill all students inside, had one of the suspect's head snapped.

The Sulu bandits hostage-takers' noble motivation, on the other hand, was eroded dramatically due to the means obviously used in the drama. The methodology of execution showed how some of us can be truly totally brutal and barbaric. The motivation was clearly - if disgustingly - materialistic, with the P5-million ransom bill filed like a flag against the Sulu skies.

Ducot's motivation was the only noble one among the poor perpetrators with anger, greed, a little dementia - in combination - accounting for the three others.

Having seen all that, quo vadis?

Surely, a stricter gun control law would have to be considered in America (and RP, too) and stronger control of psychiatric weirdos should become a campus mantra, from hereon, in many of the more liberal United states. The tourism industry will certainly turn sour in the Ifugao-Banaue area. And the antipathy will rise higher against the rapacious Abu Sayyafs. Travel advisory from politically-sensitive countries like the USA and Australia against entry into the country will become visible.

Amidst all these, one must not forget the other institutionalized violence that has been committed against the working press and politically committed activists in the country.
More than 800 of them have already been brutally killed - with very few cases solved - due to the culture of impunity that encourages people to commit crime. It is this seemingly "infinite tolerance" of the powers-that-be for these class murders that abets and enhances the environment that incubates and gives nourishment to the abhorrent culture of violence.

At the very least, in the last thirty days, the bad news bears.