As far as I can tell, in the origional post they cited 1 case in texas and a few others in other countries of "Several boys die copying Saddam hanging".
well, if 40 people die per day of suicide, then 20 of them (or so, need to find gender bias in suicides...) are male (could be a boy) and therefore, this article cited one male (in the US) who committed suicide after seeing saddam's hanging.
If they are indeed "copycat" hangings, how is a hanging in a bedroom, using a slipknot (what kind of rope or knot was used in the saddam video ?) like or unlike saddam's hanging in a **wherever he was hung** ? I'm not seeing the "copycat" connection (knots used, type of rope, location, were they wearing what saddam was wearing...or were they just suicidal and wanted to hang themselves ?) Okay one guy in Turkey talked about it beforehand, one...
If the only "copycattedness" connection that can be made is the time frame (ie- they all hung themselves after saddam got hung) then here is my theory:
If there are 20 male suicides a day, odds are pretty good that ONE of them, in the week after saddam's hanging is going to be a person that recently viewed the hanging. One suicide in 100 (5-day suicide work week =) is not enough to convince me that "excessive media violence or natural selection" are at work. I would maintain that simply becuase they hung themselves in the week after saddam, does not imply that they wished to copycat him- I may be wrong, and I'm still open to someone who finds holes in my logic. That 40 suicides a day number still seems kinda high.
suicides per 100k people :
to the wiki
population of the US:
to the google
-John