The Marathon Bombing: What the Media Didn’t Warn You About

By Russ Baker on Apr 19, 2013 

During a meeting on Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after the bombings at the Boston Marathon, a well-meaning person asked me whether I thought we could assume that the usual suspects were behind the mayhem, or whether there was “more to it.” When I explained doubts about the conventional rush to judgment—and where those doubts came from—I was told I was on dangerous ground. This person, it seemed, was quite steadfast that the culprits must have come from certain well-advertised enemies of America, and didn’t want to even consider anything more complex.

We’re the products of our environment, and, in many respects, the media defines that environment.

Monday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon provides a perfect example of the defects of conventional news reportage—and proof that we urgently need something better. We got “scoops”, “experts”, “updates,” and post-tragedy Kumbaya, but at the end of those days of saturation coverage, we were none the wiser. It’s like what studies find about television news: the more you watch, the worse you perform on knowledge exams.

We ought to care more about the narrative we’re getting, about the texture of what saturates us. The way in which a story is handled shapes our emotions and perceptions, determines priorities, and influences seemingly unrelated outcomes that affect us in profound ways, sometimes transforming our society.

Worry, But Not Too Much
With the bombing story, emotions ran high, of course. The media understand this, and while they talk in reassuring tones and routinely issue sober disclaimers, almost everything they do plays to our irrational sides.

Two elements predominate: danger and reassurance. Some of the talking heads are there to warn about danger, others to reassure us. Some do both. We wouldn’t want just one or the other—it would be too hard to take. But together, they represent, psychologically, an ineluctable offering.

As long as they appear in tandem, we will sit, immobilized, and let the networks’ pronouncements wash over us. We become so anaesthetized to critical thinking that we fail to consider whether we are getting any information of use at all.

Experts
On CBS, a purported expert declared, “It could be Al Qaeda, it could be someone influenced by Al Qaeda, or it could be a domestic lone wolf” –when in fact it could have been anything at all, including a whole bunch of domestic non-Al Qaeda non-lone wolves. This man provided nothing useful in any way beyond conventional stereotypes. What he did do was define the permissible bounds of public conjecture.

Scoops
Speculation and its close cousin, “analysis,” predominate only in the absence of the hottest commodity, “scoops.” News personnel are pressed into service to gather any sort of exclusive tidbits that might put their employer just slightly ahead of the competition. Temporarily, of course, and in the same direction. So, while CBS expert was strongly implying that we might suspect foreigners, CNN went it one better.

Correspondent John King reported:

I want to be very careful about this because people get very sensitive when you say these things. I was told by one of these sources, who is a law enforcement official, that this was a dark-skinned male. The official used some other words, I’m not going to repeat them until we get more information because of the sensitivities. There are some people that will take offense even at saying that.

 Well, no wonder. That “dark-skinned” detail turned out to be a false report.

Repetition
In the absence of “scoops” or a fresh trove of “experts,” TV news outfits resort to repetition. Thus, after several minutes, you’re on a loop. They don’t tell you that you are, and because we hear a live anchor slightly rewording things, we hang on, in the vain hope we are about to learn something new.
Another thing that keeps us hooked is the promise of being re-traumatized in as many ways as possible. Show us that bomb going off again, please. Let’s see new pictures of the killed and injured in happier times. Let’s see closeups of gnarled detritus, and, on occasion with disclaimers that young children ought not watch, at least a hint of blood and gore. Let us “empathize,” and feel good about ourselves for doing so.

Kumbaya
How many times do we have to hear the same—literally, almost exactly the same—stories about “our hearts go out to the families”, about how “neighbors displayed yellow ribbons, lit candles and displayed American flags.” A liberal news site sent out an email saying “we are all in this together.”
To what end all this empathy? It may reassure us that humanity continues to shine through at tough times, but don’t we already know that?

Some might say that stoking a “show of unity” is a principal responsibility of the American media. But is that really the purpose of journalism?

The definition of journalism I find most useful is, simply stated, the production and dissemination of news. And what, exactly, is “news”? Here’s one definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.

Is it new or noteworthy when people act in expected ways and say expected and indeed almost identical things in new situations?

Substitute for Substance
In today’s economic and journalistic climate, resources for newsgathering are extremely limited. It’s not surprising that the bosses go for quantity over quality. Much easier to collect a bunch of sterile or hackneyed “public reactions” than to ask the tough questions or do the hard digging.

When an event like the Boston bombing gives rise to wall-to-wall coverage, it fills our bandwidth. It exhausts us. It blocks out our ability to focus on anything else. At least, if we’re going to give up on everything else, is it too much to ask that the coverage contain some useful information?

What Gets Blocked Out
At the same moment that all eyes were on Boston, in Washington, legislation imposing restrictions on assault weapons and ammunition clips, along with efforts to require the recording of sales of murderous weapons, were under merciless assault by the NRA and its allies. Indeed, the proposed laws subsequently went down to defeat. As horrible as the death and destruction at the Marathon, it pales by comparison to potentially avoidable gun violence, with literally thousands of times as much carnage. Put another way, the toll in Boston was a compressed version of that occurring during a single ordinary week around this country.

Call the Senate vote bad timing. Just like the atypical rampage the week before in which a “nut” used a knife instead of the standard-issue assault rifle. How atypical? Very, says USA Today in an article, “Mass Knife Attacks, Like at Texas College, Are Rare.” Yet, at the time of the Senate vote, opponents of stronger gun laws were beneficiaries of this statistically anomalous but dominant news story.

Those who still will not do anything after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown ad nauseum had “cover” from the Boston bombing to not make hard choices.

Of course, a real nut, seeing the kind of coverage lavished on the Boston bombings, would be more, not less likely, to want to generate such a hullaballoo.

Double Standard on Tragedy
We repeatedly fail to see how such media circuses feed the sickness. It’s an uncomfortable topic, but you can be sure that every assigning editor was aware that the Boston Marathon story had all the elements of high ratings: Families gathered. A hallowed sports event. Children. People of all backgrounds. A popular city and site.

Other stories in the news — such as the explosion Wednesday night at a Texas fertilizer plant, resulting in more fatalities than the Boston bombing— lack these compelling elements. How many people were glued to their sets or talking constantly about the Texas tragedy, which involved not “ordinary American families” enjoying a beloved pastime, but blue collar workers in a “right to work” state where unsafe working conditions are hardly considered shocking?  Even when it seemed possible that the Texas explosion might also involve terror, it didn’t capture the same degree of interest. We came to learn that perhaps it was “just” an industrial accident—at a plant that hadn’t been inspected in five years. Such accidents, if that is what it was, are only likely to increase as federal inspection funds are slashed as part of the sequester.

The truth is, some things grab and keep our attention more than others. The people who run the media know this. And because they have to sell ads, they focus on some things more than others.

FBI Missteps
Was there anything else we could have been focused on? There was, but it was just too “distasteful” to broach, at least in the early hours. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it was the Fox brand (admittedly a local station, not the propagandistic Fox News Channel) that dared to raise questions about events that terrorize the public. In this report, the correspondent dares to remind us that the FBI has in the past had close relationships with people who want to blow things up, and has even facilitated these plots up to the point where law enforcement can intervene to thwart the bad guys. Was a similar sting in place at the Marathon – a sting that went horribly wrong?

One veteran marathoner, Alistair Stevenson, the cross-country coach at the University of Mobile, says that he noticed an unusually heavy police presence, including bomb-sniffing dogs and spotters on rooftops, before the race, and that runners were told not to worry—that law enforcement was carrying out “drills.”

Stevenson’s account was reported in an Alabama blog run by a consortium of respectable local news organizations, but it was virtually ignored by the traditional media. Nothing here worth a second-look? Really?

Is it heresy or madness to take a harder look at the metastatic growth of the national security state? History is replete with examples of cynical efforts to create “strategies of tension” in which the public, fearful of growing chaos, turns to the reassurances of those who promise order.

In fact, it so happens that advocates of increasing surveillance are pressing their game on every front. One involves the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which, if enacted, would authorize your web service provider to pass along your real-time personal data to the Federal spooks. There’s been a lot of opposition to this, but something like the Marathon bombing can be a game-changer. Those who monitor public sentiment understand the power of emotion to alter public stances.

That’s not to say there is necessarily anything “more” going on here. But from history, we know that the official story will point to one of two things: either an organized radical (Left or Right or Foreign) group that threatens “the American way of life,” or it will be a “lone kook.”

It could be that by the time you read this, we will “know” the “full story.” At press time, the story was breaking in a new direction, with two young immigrant brothers, Chechens, the identified culprits. Why Chechens, who, though Muslim, would principally have a beef with the Russians, with whom they have been at war, not with the US? And why if they were, as apparently they were, treated well here and given opportunities, including a scholarship?

The upshot will be to bring the US and Russia into closer alignment.

Remember, though, that even the most radical of terrorists can be wound up by infiltrators, or can have links to our good friends, as we reported about those identified as the 9/11 hijackers, and their ties, via a house in Florida, to the Saudi royal family.

Oh, and what about the fire that broke out around the same time as the Marathon bombing, at the nearby John F. Kennedy Library and Museum? Interest in that fire largely vanished as soon as we were tentatively assured that it was (perhaps/probably) unrelated. Talk about symbolism: the Boston Marathon on “Patriot’s Day”—and the repository of records related to one of America’s greatest mysteries, the death fifty years ago of a President who warned us repeatedly of the dangers of tyranny—and who sought peace with the non-hardliners in the Kremlin.

So let’s not settle so fast for the wrong kind of reassurance. Other societies have learned the hard way to be wary of too-easy answers. We simply must be open to the most inconvenient truths—not out of paranoid fantasies, but from a cold-eyed look at history and recent experience.

Media Control: The Vaccine Disinformation Debate

Liberal mouthpiece, FRONTLINE ran a fluff piece called FRONTLINE: The Vaccine War where the program pretended to research vaccine contreversy (but ended up creating a lengthy commercial for Big Pharma's ad agency, the CDC).

One of the doctors interviewed at length—Dr. Jay Gordon—wound up writing FRONTLINE a letter after the program aired because through clever editing, they twisted every point he tried to make to better suit the message they were pushing to sell. 

His letter makes a well written argument on the topic:

Shame on PBS Frontline, ” The Vaccine War”, by Dr. Jay Gordon

     Accomplished pediatrician, author, and teacher Dr. Jay Gordon has a commonsense approach to vaccinations– and an unwillingness to be coerced into either the “pro” or “anti” vaccine camps. PBS Frontline recently interviewed the noted pediatrician at length for a show called “The Vaccine War.” Although Dr. Gordon spent hours interviewing with Frontline, PBS producers omitted not only 100% of his interview but the entire “third camp” approach to vaccinations. It is obvious that PBS wanted to create a simple tabloid news piece with the all-knowing doctors on one side vs. crazed parents on the other.

     This is disturbing. It is even more disturbing given the level of financial support provided to public television by drug and related companies. You won’t easily find information about drug company support for public television on the internet. But you can find some of it on a fundraising website run by WGBH, the public station that produces Frontline: www.SGPTV.org.

     ANH-USA reprints Dr. Gordon’s letter to PBS Frontline in its entirety for your review, because it provides excellent information on whether to vaccinate your children, and it serves as a reminder that the media cannot be trusted to report accurately on this issue. PBS’ actions are inexcusable. Please join us in telling PBS Frontline that the show’s biased presentation on vaccines is totally unacceptable and that the show has an obligation at least to put Dr Gordon’s information on the website. Take action now.

Shame on PBS Frontline, ” The Vaccine War”, by Dr. Jay Gordon


     “Last night, PBS aired a show called “The Vaccine War.” I was interviewed at great length and in great depth about vaccines and my point of view and expressed my ambivalence about the polarization of this issue and the need for more calm reasoned discussion about the number one question that new parents have. I told Kate McMahon, the co-producer of the show, that there was a large group of doctors and others who cannot be dismissed with the facile label “anti-vaccine” because we still give vaccines and see a place for them in the practice of medicine, but we do not agree with the current vaccine schedule nor the number of vaccines children receive all at one time.

     A few days ago, Ms.McMahon emailed me to tell me that the decision had been made to omit my interview from the show. There would not be one word from me. She didn’t tell me that she had also omitted 100% of Dr. Robert Sears’ interview. And that any other comments from physicians supporting the parents on the show in their ambivalence about vaccines or their decision to refuse all vaccines would also be omitted.

     She left this as a show with many doctors commenting very negatively, very frighteningly and often disdainfully and dismissively about vaccine “hesitation” as they called it.”

     Below is my email response to Kate McMahon.


Dear Kate,

The “Frontline” show was disgraceful. You didn’t even have the courtesy to put my interview or any part of the two hours we spent taping on your web site.

You created a pseudo-documentary with a preconceived set of conclusions: “Irresponsible moms against science” was an easy takeaway from the show.

Did you happen to notice that Vanessa, the child critically ill with pertussis, was not intubated nor on a respirator in the ER? She had nasal “prongs” delivering oxygen. I’m sorry for her parents’ anxiety and very happy that she was cured of pertussis. But to use anecdotal reports like this as science is irresponsible and merely served the needs of the doctor you wanted to feature.

No one pursued Dr. Offit’s response about becoming rich from the vaccine he invented. He was allowed to slide right by that question without any follow up. Dr. Paul Offit did not go into vaccine research to get rich. He is a scientist motivated by his desire to help children. But his profiting tens of millions of dollars from the creation of this vaccine and the pursuit of sales of this and other vaccines is definitely not what he says it is. His many millions “don’t matter” he says. And you let it go.

     Jenny McCarthy resumed being a “former Playboy” person and was not acknowledged as a successful author, actress and mother exploring every possible avenue to treating her own son and the children of tens of thousands of other families.
 
     I trusted you by giving you two or three hours of my time for an interview and multiple background discussions. I expressed my heartfelt reservations about both vaccines and the polarizing of this issue into “pro-vaccine” and “anti-vaccine” camps. I told you that there was at least a third “camp.” There are many doctors and even more parents who would like a more judicious approach to immunization. Give vaccines later, slower and with an individualized approach as we do in every other area of medicine.

     What did you create instead?

     “The Vaccine War.”

     A war. Not a discussion or a disagreement over facts and opinions, but a war. This show was unintelligent, dangerous and completely lacking in the balance that you promised me–and your viewers–when you produced and advertised this piece of biased unscientific journalism. “Tabloid journalism” I believe is the epithet often used. Even a good tabloid journalist could see through the screed you’ve presented.
     You interviewed me, you spent hours with Dr. Robert Sears of the deservedly-illustrious Sears family and you spoke to other doctors who support parents in their desire to find out what went wrong and why it’s going wrong and what we might do to prevent this true epidemic.

     Not a measles epidemic, not whooping cough. Autism. An epidemic caused by environmental triggers acting on genetic predisposition. The science is there and the evidence of harm is there. Proof will come over the next decade. The National Children’s Study will, perhaps by accident, become a prospective look at many children with and without vaccines. But we don’t have time to wait for the results of this twenty-one year research study: We know that certain pesticides cause cancer and we know that flame retardants in children’s pajamas are dangerous. We are cleaning up our air and water slowly and parents know which paint to buy and which to leave on the shelves when they paint their babies’ bedrooms.

     The information parents and doctors don’t have is contained in the huge question mark about the number of vaccines, the way we vaccinate and the dramatic increase in autism, ADD/ADHD, childhood depression and more. We pretend to have proof of harm or proof of no harm when what we really have is a large series of very important unanswered questions.


     In case you were wondering, as I practice pediatrics every day of my career, I base nothing I do on Dr. Wakefield’s research or on Jenny McCarthy’s opinions. I respect what they both have done and respectfully disagree with them at times. I don’t think that Dr. Wakefield’s study proved anything except that we need to look harder at his hypothesis. I don’t think that Jenny McCarthy has all the answers to treating or preventing autism, but there are tens of thousands of parents who have long needed her strong high-profile voice to draw attention to their families’ needs: Most families with autism get inadequate reimbursement for their huge annual expenses and very little respect from the insurance industry, the government or the medical community. Jenny has demanded that a brighter light be shone on their circumstances, their frustration and their needs.


     I base everything I do on my reading of CDC and World Health Organization statistics about disease incidence in the United States and elsewhere. I base everything I do on having spent the past thirty years in pediatric practice watching tens of thousands of children get vaccines, not get vaccines and the differences I see.

     Vaccines change children.

     Most experts would argue that the changes are unequivocally good. My experience and three decades of observation and study tell me otherwise. Vaccines are neither all good–as this biased, miserable PBS treacle would have you believe–nor all bad as the strident anti-vaccine camp argues.

     You say the decisions to edit 100% of my interview from your show (and omit my comments from your website) “were purely based on what’s best for the show, not personal or political, and the others who didn’t make it came from both sides of the vaccine debate.” You are not telling the truth. You had a point to prove and removed material from your show which made the narrative balanced. “Distraught, confused moms against important, well-spoken calm doctors” was your narrative with a deep sure voice to, literally, narrate the entire artifice.

     You should be ashamed of yourself, Kate. You knew what you put on the air was slanted and you cheated the viewers out of an opportunity for education and information. You cheated me out of hours of time, betrayed my trust and then you wasted an hour of PBS airtime. Shame on you.

     The way vaccines are manufactured and administered right now in 2010 makes vaccines and their ingredients part of the group of toxins which have led to a huge increase in childhood diseases including autism. Your show made parents’ decisions harder and did nothing except regurgitate old news.

     Parents and children deserve far better from PBS.

     Thank you, Dr. Gordon, for stepping in where PBS failed, to share important information with all of us about the options that exist for new parents who are concerned about vaccinating their children.

     PBS’ actions are inexcusable.

Please join us in demanding that Frontline present Dr. Gordon’s interview accurately and honestly on their website. Take Action.



 

The Disinformation Campaign Behind The Massacre

The Police are claiming that they will prosecute anyone reporting on Sandy Hook outside of mainstream media:


Now consider this evidence of other shooter(s) involved:

Sandy Hook massacre: Official story spins out of control

 The massacre of 20 children and 7 adults at the Sandy Hook elementary school last Friday was one more in a long line of atrocious mass murders committed in the USA. By now, four days later, an official version of events has more or less solidified to explain the chain of events. The familiar 'lone gunman' narrative has once more stoked the hot-button issue of gun control and left the general population as clueless as ever as to why people suddenly 'go postal' and target the most vulnerable members of society.

On closer inspection, however, there is clearly more to many of these mass shootings than meets the eye. Very often the earliest reports present information that directly contradicts key foundations of the final 'official' analysis of events. Granted, confusion is natural when a story breaks, but some of the initial reports conflict so completely with the lone gunman narrative that I'm going to compile them here and then try to put this tragedy in a more objective context. In his speech at the Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil in Newtown, Connecticut on Sunday night, President Obama quoted the following biblical passage:

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:18

The traumatized Newtown community deserves the facts without the spin. Everyone touched by this brutal event deserves to know what really happened, so let's fix our eyes on what remains unseen...

A 20-year-old 'tech geek' named Adam Lanza is supposed to have snapped early last Friday, December 14th, shot dead his mother Nancy Lanza, loaded her car up with her guns and ammo, then driven it across town to his former school, the Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot dead 27 people in two classrooms and an adjoining hallway, then turned one of his guns on himself.

That's how most will now remember the shooting, but is that actually what happened?

All the child victims were first-graders between the ages of 6 and 7. If there's any saving grace to be found in this event, it's that it was all over within minutes. Police were reportedly on the scene "instantaneously" and by then the shooting had ended. Listed among the slain school teachers and administrative staff was the school principal, 47-year-old Dawn Hochsprung. Right here we encounter our first problem:

The Newtown Bee
December 14, 2012

Sandy Hook School Principal Dawn Hochsprung told The Bee that a masked man entered the school with a rifle and started shooting multiple shots - more than she could count - that went "on and on."

© The Newtown Bee

How could the principal have survived to give this statement to local press describing what happened ... if she was one of the first to be killed? Incidentally, The Newtown Bee's article was taken down yesterday. Of course, a plausible explanation is that a reporter mistook another teacher for the principal.

We were initially told that two handguns - a Glock and a Sig Sauer - were found next to the body of the dead shooter, while a third weapon, a .223-caliber rifle was also recovered "in the trunk of a car" later, in the school's parking lot. All of the weapons were allegedly legally bought and registered in Nancy Lanza's name. The car was later identified as a black Honda, also registered in her name. More weapons have since been introduced to the story but we'll get back to those later on.

Besides anonymous 'law enforcement officials' telling the media that Adam Lanza was a former pupil at the school, they also said his mother was currently a teacher there, that she was found among the dead and that her son had specifically sought out her classroom first. But when it emerged that teaching staff at the school had never heard of a Nancy Lanza, it was suggested that she was a substitute teacher whose name therefore mightn't appear on staff lists.

But this claim too has disappeared down the memory hole because it's now known that neither Nancy nor her son had any connection with the school whatsoever. Adam Lanza was in fact home-schooled. Nancy Lanza has since been painted as a "survivalist" who loved firearms, taught her sons how to shoot and was "stockpiling" because she was "worried about economic collapse."

Daily Mail, UK
December 16, 2012

Last night it also emerged Nancy was a member of the Doomsday Preppers movement, which believes people should prepare for end of the world.

Her former sister-in-law Marsha said she had turned her home 'into a fortress'. She added: 'Nancy had a survivalist philosophy which is why she was stockpiling guns. She had them for defense.

'She was stockpiling food. She grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. She was skilled with guns. We talked about preppers and preparing for the economy collapsing.'

It's not difficult to see that their efforts to insinuate that Nancy Lanza was somehow responsible for this massacre by being an irresponsible mother also serve to rile the large contingent of gun owners in the country, particularly the far right who see a conspiracy on the government's part to "take back our guns." More on that later, but for now I just want to note that all of the Lanza family members seemed to live more or less normal middle-class lives. Yes, the parents were divorced but it was apparently amicable and both put their own needs second to those of their children (and anyway, divorce in the US these days is decidedly 'normal middle class').

Despite "family insiders" claiming that he was a "deeply disturbed kid", Adam Lanza, like so many other alleged 'lone(r) gunmen' before him, does not fit the profile of a mass-murdering maniac. His 24-year-old brother, Ryan Lanza, said he hadn't seen his brother since 2010. This fact brings into question Ryan's claim that his younger brother may have had his identity card on his person at the school shooting. Although perhaps the question that needs to be asked here is, why would a person bother to carry identification with them after going to the trouble of dressing up in a bullet-proof vest, mask and black camouflage gear and going on a killing spree ...

The live emergency services audio feed from the scene reveals some interesting observations from first responders that have been completely overlooked by the mainstream media. Note that the unedited version lasts over two hours, so the abridged version I'm going to quote from has a compressed sequence of events that are not in real time. In this abridged version, we hear at 1.38' a report that gunfire is still being heard, even though the shooting was supposed to have ended by the time police arrived. The next report at 2.35' says that the shooting has stopped and the school is "in lockdown". At 3.23', the police relay a teacher's report that she saw "two shadows running past the gym" [not "two shooters", as we previously reported on SOTT.net]. This is followed by another officer on the scene who says, "Yeh, we got 'em, they're coming at me! ... [inaudible] ... Coming up the driveway real slowly!" That same officer at 5.40' says he has them "proned out", which presumably means he has apprehended them and they are laid out on the ground, before another officer comes on to say, "be aware that we do have a second [inaudible] ..."

Later on, at 19.10', an officer who sounds out of breath, like he's just given chase, reports what I think sounds like "these guys" followed certainly by "multiple weapons, including long rifles and shotgun". If these were found so early on, why were they not included in the initial press reports which stated that three firearms had been found - the above mentioned Glock, Sig Sauer and Bushmaster AR-15 rifle? Further conflicting, and possibly planted evidence was thrown into the mix by 'law enforcement officials' when they published video footage of a long weapon being retrieved from the trunk of a car. Look closely and you'll see that it's a shotgun, not a rifle. In addition, this 'discovery' was made late in the day (it's dark outside), while the Bushmaster rifle was first reported found in the trunk of a car much earlier in the day.

Besides the above two suspects "proned out" in front of the school, another suspected gunman was apprehended after he gave chase, this time in the woods next to the school:


The police are clearly chasing someone whom they appear to apprehend in the middle of the woods next to the school, a fact confirmed by several eyewitnesses:



This fleeing suspect, wearing camouflage gear, a bulletproof vest and armed with four guns, has since disappeared from media coverage. Who was this person and how did he know what "it" was when he protested that "I didn't do it"?

Perhaps most astonishingly, this suspect arrested in the woods was named in an Associated Press report as 24-year-old Ryan Lanza. The original report has long since vanished of course, but you can see it referenced here. This was despite the fact that Ryan had already been named as the deceased suspect inside the school, lying next to two handguns.

Ryan Lanza was actually at work in Hoboken, New Jersey, that morning when his name and photo began circulating in the media. And so, for most of Friday, the 'lone shooter' was erroneously reported as "Ryan Lanza, confirmed dead." At the same time, we were being told that Ryan's girlfriend and a room-mate were reported missing, also from Hoboken, New Jersey.

So this isn't just a case of mistaken identity, as later claimed when it was suggested that Adam had a piece of identification belonging to his brother on his person. Not one, but BOTH Lanza brothers were being placed by 'law enforcement officials' at the scene of the shooting. It could be that Ryan's quick reflexes to leave his workplace to get on a bus to go back to his apartment while protesting innocence via his Facebook page may have saved his life.

Now remember, all of this confusion somehow resulted from a single guy going into a school and shooting children and teachers and then shooting himself, all within three minutes. Surely it should have been fairly easy to rapidly and concretely identify the details of such a crime and the scene.

What it's starting to look like is that the Lanzas were framed for this mass shooting in advance. Long before any suspects were named, and even as we were being told that Nancy Lanza was among the dead at the school, we were told that police were investigating a murder in ... Hoboken, New Jersey, where a body had been found at the home of ... Ryan Lanza! An older "confirmed" version of events had RYAN, not Adam, travelling to Hoboken that morning to murder his father before going to the school in Newtown, Connecticut. Other variants had Ryan OR Adam going to both their divorced parents' homes and killing them before going to the school.

The narrative has now settled on the younger brother killing his mother in Newtown then going to the school. So what about the rest of it? Do we just put it down to 'keen' journalism that was having a field day last Friday as media outlets sought to bring us the latest 'breaking news'? Confusion and 'Chinese whispers' undoubtedly play a part in the early stages of national media events, but I think back to those news anchors reading scripts about Osama Bin Laden within minutes of the first plane being hit on 9/11 and I think, 'Wait a minute!' All these misleading reports had to have been issued by someone or some people "confirming" to Associated Press and other media outlets that the Ryans's father had been murdered [he wasn't even aware that the shooting at the school had taken place until journalists turned up on his doorstep], or that Ryan's girlfriend had gone missing from Hoboken, or that either Ryan or Adam were pulled out of the adjacent woods in handcuffs yelling "I DIDN'T DO IT" to assembled parents. These aren't just 'little details' that can be confused for other details, these are detailed narratives. So how, or why, would any member of the press come up with such details? They strike me as a set of alternative scenarios that might have found their way into the official narrative had facts on the ground turned out differently.

Watch this snippet of State Police Lt. Paul Vance at the press conference he gave the day after the shootings. His answer is as bizarre as it is revealing. When asked whether Nancy Lanza had any connection with the school, he replied defensively about something that is both unrelated and arguably the most significant fact that completely undermines the official narrative: the arrest of a second gunman in the woods:











Most of the initial mainstream media reports have since been rewritten to fit 'new' facts proclaimed by 'law enforcement officials'. Here's an example from Business Insider. The following excerpts are the opening paragraphs from the 'same' article, one earlier original version, followed by the later revised version:

The massacre [...] was reportedly perpetrated with a .233 caliber rifle, a Glock pistol and a Sig Sauer pistol.

The Bushmaster rifle was found in the trunk of the shooter's car. The Sig Sauer and Glock pistols were the only weapons used in the shooting, according to CBS. Now the question is what kind of magazine would allow a shooter to fire "100" rounds in such a short period.

Indeed, I was wondering the same thing. How could two pistols do so much damage? The report was updated as follows:

The massacre in Connecticut that's taken the lives of at least 26 people was reportedly perpetrated with a .223 caliber rifle, a Glock pistol and a Sig Sauer pistol, according to NBC:

The shooter was using one Sig Sauer and one Glock pistol, according to CNN. Later details emerged that the primary weapon was the Bushmaster "assault-style" rifle.

Altogether, though, it doesn't matter what type of weapon the shooter used. The bottom line is that it was likely a magazine fed, semi-automatic, with enough rounds to shoot "100 shots" in a matter of minutes, as quoted in USA Today.

What actually happened may not matter to some, but surely a journalist's role is to at least try to find out?

This Associated Press/Newsday article on Saturday, December 15th, reported that "Only the rifle was used on the victims", a statement that is supported by Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, Connecticut state's chief medical examiner. Of the seven autopsies he personally performed on Sandy Hook victims, all of them had "three to 11 wounds apiece". He also said that the 'gunman' used a military-style rifle rigged to quickly reload, and that the 'shooter' was able to reload so quickly because he had "taped two magazines together." Even before the State Chief Medical Examiner had given these statements, it had been stated that spent shell casings from .233-caliber (rifle) bullets were found inside the school.

So all the victims' wounds were the result of rifle-fire, specifically from "the rifle", the one we were told in early reports was found in the trunk of a car in the parking lot! This is simply not credible.

© New York Daily News
The three guns Adam Lanza is supposed to have brought to the school with him. The rifle was left in the trunk, leaving him just the two handguns to let off "hundreds of rounds"... firing .233 caliber bullets that belonged to the rifle... which was left in the car

Remember that only "the rifle" was used on all the victims. If only this rifle was used, and if we try to make this claim fit into the (admittedly fluid) official version of events, then the alleged lone gunman would have had to leave the school, place the rifle back in his trunk, then return inside the school and shoot himself. No one reported any such maneuver on the part of any gunman or gunmen. What we do have, however, is live emergency services radio feed in which we hear that two men have been apprehended and are "proned out" AND live video footage supported by eyewitness testimony showing what appears to be a THIRD man being arrested by police in the woods.

We can see how the authorities' hands are tied because they need to fit all the facts into the usual 'lone gunman' narrative. For that, there can only be ONE rifle and a couple of handguns. The problem is that they have already claimed to find that solitary Bushmaster rifle in the trunk of a car in the school parking lot, so the earliest police reports of a cache of long arms being found inside the school will no longer fit with the lone gunman narrative, especially as they're now saying that he had already opened fire as he burst into the school.

Could "scrawny" 20-year-old Adam Lanza have stormed the school, solo Rambo-style, while carrying "multiple long arms, including rifles and shotguns"? Only one person was wounded. Everyone else who was shot was killed. How could Adam Lanza achieve such deadly accuracy, in such a short length of recorded time?

Similarly heavily armed men wearing black combat gear from head to toe... their job is to kill 'terrorists' to keep us safe, which they do by terrorizing us all

Initial reports put the beginning of the shooting in the school administrators' office, where someone, reportedly the school principal, had a row with the gunman(men). We know this because someone supposedly turned on the school intercom system, alerting the teaching staff to the loud swearing and commotion in the principal's office and probably saving many more children from being gunned down as teachers took measures to hide the children in closets.

One brave teacher, Kaitlin Roig, bundled a bunch of children into a bathroom and locked the door. What's interesting about her testimony to ABC News is that when police arrived and asked her to open the door, she refused, saying that "if they were really cops, they'd know where to find keys to open the door." In addition, she requested that they slide their badges under the door.

Now, this is generally a smart thing to do in any and all interactions with the police, especially in the U.S. But to have the wherewithal to do so under such traumatic circumstances strongly suggests that Ms. Roig had logically deduced by that point that multiple perpetrators were involved, and that they were either impersonating police officers or were indistinguishable from SWAT team police commandos, either in the way they dressed or the way they behaved upon entering the building. It also reminds us just how narrow the time window of the actual shooting was. The shooting appears to have barely ended when men knocked on that bathroom door and told Ms. Roig they were police.

There are also conflicting reports about how the gunmen entered the building. We were told initially that they came in through the main front entrance and proceeded straight to the administrators'/principal's offices. But Sandy Hook elementary school has a security system with a video monitor, which allows staff to screen visitors before buzzing them in. A "masked gunman dressed in black tactical combat gear" from head to toe would kinda raise red flags, don't you think?

Another possible anomaly is that Victoria Soto, one of the teachers killed at the school, appears to have had an 'in memoriam' Facebook page created in her name four days before the shooting.

Regarding this alleged 'LIBOR scandal' connection between this shooting and the Aurora theater shooting, there is as yet zero evidence to support the claim that either father of Lanza or Holmes were going to testify to anyone about anything, so for now this must remain just another rumor. I rather think that this is being spread to create the impression of a direct link that can be easily refuted, as in a straw man argument. The obvious and direct link staring everyone in the face is that the U.S. government's accounts of these events are hocus-pocus. The glaring connection between these two shootings, the Sikh Temple shooting and the Fort Hood shooting is that multiple gunmen were reported at the time by eyewitnesses, but they are now all officially claimed to have been carried out by 'lone gunmen'. This logically tells us that the real perpetrators are being protected with cover stories of what really happened because if the truth were known, some section of the U.S. government would be implicated.

Wade Michael Page, the 'lone gunman' in the Sikh Temple shooting in Wisconsin in August this year, was a highly decorated U.S. army psychological operations specialist, according to the Pentagon. But what happened to the three other gunmen seen by witnesses? It can't surely be coincidence that Wade was (former?) military psy-ops. The thought has crossed my mind more than once during the aftermath of the Connecticut shooting. Others too have suggested this was a 'false-flag' event, or that Lanza was some sort of Manchurian Candidate.

But maybe there's a simpler explanation (albeit more outrageous) than that? Was that really Adam Lanza they found inside the school? Do we even know for a fact that one of the gunmen was found dead inside the school? What we have instead are reports of two or three masked gunmen, apparently all dressed similarly in black tactical gear from head to toe, being wilfully forgotten about at best, or protected by the state at worst. Based on the authorities' persistent but futile efforts to connect the Lanzas to this school, the multiple eyewitness reports of two shooters, the Connecticut State Medical Examiner's report that all the victims were riddled with bullets from a rifle that we're simultaneously being asked to believe was in the trunk of a car the whole time, similar reports of multiple shooters in previous mass shootings in recent years and the media focusing the emotional outcry onto the hot-button topic of gun control ... I'm left wondering if this was actually the work of some highly trained professional hit team?

Was the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a psy-op, using what amounts to a 'death squad' and a carefully planned mission to terrorize people on behalf of the government, in combination with perception management to shape the narrative and vector the emotional fallout?

Gun control isn't the issue here. The US government would long since have taken measures, quietly, to limit the supply of weapons, the 2nd Amendment of the constitution be damned (it's "just a goddamned piece of paper", remember?), if it was really concerned with limiting civilian access to weapons.

The psychopaths in power have absolutely no compunction about using state terrorism, in this case organising the deliberate massacre of innocent children, to control people. In effect, this is little different from the U.S. government calls counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism in foreign countries, where it attacks innocent civilians to create the impression that they were killed by 'communists', 'terrorists', 'insurgents' or 'militants', with the aim of generating public support for the illusion that the common people need a strong, ruthless government to protect them from the 'evil-doers'. When the common people buy into this manipulation, the end result, as history shows repeatedly, is an overt and brutal police state.



The Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown Connecticut ...2nd shooter, Guns, etc., The story is not adding up. Here is some evidence illustrating this -  

Take a moment and read through this info gathered at a fellow blogger's site, called Sherrie Questioning All be sure to click on the links:

UPDATE 12/16/12 5:35 PM - ODD Teachers/victims not listed on school website as staff/faculty.  

2nd Update 12/16/12 - Obama implies we have to give up our freedoms in his speech in Newtown Connecticut.  

Here is a list of things reported and then backtracked or silence on as if it was never mentioned:  Then take them one by one and discuss it and show the "proof"  and story change.

• 2nd shooter - as reported in police radio calls and witnesses.
• Mother was a teacher there.
• Ryan was shooter than it was Adam was the shooter.
• Police confirm: Dead body in Hoboken New Jersey at home there.
• Semi Automatic found in car, but casings of it in school.
• How was he able to kill so many in such a small amount of time with a Glock 9mm pistol, a Sig-Sauer pistol, by himself.... and reload?
• 4th Gun found outside the school building

First lets discuss the 2nd shooter that has now been erased and not mentioned from the media.  The police have never clarified who it was they caught in the woods either.  We know it did  in fact happen due to the police radio that is embedded below.

2nd shooter - here are the reports and facts about a second shooter from the police!

Washington Post: Possible Second shooter in custody




NY Post - Police Radio calls and discussions during the response to the shooting:
One policeman says: others running into woods, then running after them, then he has them.  





Natural News as an article about the 2nd shooter and they go back to other shootings that have happened where the 2nd shooter all of a sudden disappears from witness accounts.

Yahoo had the headline from ABC News:  Two shooters involved in Connecticut School shooting. 

So there are the facts that a second shooter was there.  Now there is silence and it is now the "Lone Gunman."

Now.......The mistake that Ryan Lanza was the gunman as reported by all the media.

They are saying that Adam Lanza had Ryan Lanza's ID on him and that is why that mistake was made. 

I have a question about that.  How did Adam Lanza get his brother's ID when they have not spoken since 2010?  
 

 Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza, of Hoboken, N.J., was questioned, and investigators searched his computers and phone records, but he told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.

Then that goes hand in hand with the New Jersey police confirming they have a "dead body" in Hoboken at the home there.  

Adam Lanza, who is from Newtown, traveled to a family home in Hoboken, N.J., yesterday, and killed at least one person there before going back to Connecticut.

New Jersey State Police have found a dead body in a search of Ryan Lanza's Hoboken home.

 Police have confirmed that a dead body found at Ryan Lanza’s house is his father.


We heard after a couple of hours that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school and it appeared that Adam Lanza targeted her class.  When I heard that Nancy Lanza was found dead in her home, I immediately questioned why Adam Lanza would have gone to the school then if he had already killed his mother.

Now we find out she was not a teacher there and was not even on the school list and they could not find a connection to her and the school. 

At least one parent said Lanza's mother was a substitute teacher at the school. But her name did not appear on a staff list. And the official said investigators were unable to establish any connection so far between her and the school.

NOW... Let's discuss the guns that were said to have been used in the shooting:

It has been reported that 2 guns were found inside the building and used by the gunman - A Glock 9 mm and a SigSauer hand gun and semi automatic in a vehicle.

Three weapons were recovered from the school on Friday: a semi-automatic .223 caliber rifle made by Bushmaster was found in a car in the school parking lot, and two pistols made by Glock and Sig Sauer were found with suspected gunman Lanza's body, a law enforcement source said previously.

 Here the NY Daily News had the fact that the gun was in the trunk of the vehicle at the school. 

 It wasn’t immediately clear whether this was the .223-caliber Bushmaster that was found in the trunk of Nancy Lanza’s car after her son murdered six staffers and 20 innocent students at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

 They are saying there were casings of a semi automatic in the school, but the gun was in the car.  So how is that possible?  Oh, this morning they are now saying "they have found a semi automatic in the school that was 'overlooked' earlier.

OH.... I have not been watching the news, but did just now turn on CNN.... the guest just blew Wolf Blitzer away saying "Was there someone else that was with him?"  Now the guest is defending the fact that Nancy Lanza had guns.

I have read this morning that a 4th gun has now been found outside the elementary school this morning.   I can't find the information now, but I know I read it.  I did not save that page.  

What is known now is that Adam Lanza was on prescription drugs for depression and had a form of autism.

One more question........  Why hasn't any of the video cameras from the school been mentioned by the police?  There were cameras no doubt.  So why hasn't the media asked about the footage on the cameras?  There is silence from all regarding cameras at the school and any possible footage.

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Another blog that has been publishing all the inconsistencies in this story can be found here:
http://wtfrly.com/2012/12/16/newtown-school-shooting-inconsistencies-emerging-show-sandy-hook-event-may-have-been-manipulated/#.UM6PpHd4Ib5

The reason we’ve compiled this information is so that awareness can spread and prevent the next attack. We’re not saying this was a government operation of some kind, but there are inconsistencies which raise serious questions about the official narrative.

Please set aside your feelings on the gun control debate and process the fishy details of this possible manipulated event.

Before analyzing the reports of a second/multiple shooter(s), mainstream media is reporting the shooter had 2 handguns and a “long gun”.


The medical examiner says a long gun was the primary weapon.

Carver, who performed autopsies on seven of the victims, said the wounds he knew about were caused by a “long weapon.” Asked by a reporter whether the rifle was the primary weapon, he responded, “Yes.”

A report from the Daily News says the two handguns were the main weapons used.

Lanza, 20, did all his damage with two 9-mm. handguns after driving to the school in his dead mother’s car around 9:30 a.m., strolling inside and opening fire, authorities said.

Multiple sources are now reporting all victims were shot multiple times, including one who was hit 11 times. That’s at least 54 hits, plus 9 more for the victim with 11? 63 hits? How many more shots were fired?

Now the conflicting reports on the guns and their location(s).

CNN says here the rifle was found next to Lanza’s dead body in the school.

Lanza was found dead next to three guns, a semi-automatic .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle and two pistols made by Glock and Sig Sauer, a law enforcement source told CNN. All belonged to his mother.

Conflicts with reports of the gun being found in the back of the car parked out front.

Via Fox News

Lanza shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, drove to the school in her car with at least three guns, including a high-powered rifle that he apparently left in the back of the vehicle, and shot up two classrooms around 9:30 a.m. Friday, law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

And CBS New York

Authorities found at least three guns at the scene, including a Glock 9mm and a Sig Sauer 9mm — both pistols. Also found was a Bushmaster .223 assault rifle, which was discovered in a nearby car.

And NBC News places the rifle in the back of the car.

Two 9mm handguns were recovered from the scene, an official told NBCNewYork.com. A rifle was found in the back of a car parked outside the school.

And HuffPo says 4 guns were carried by the shooter.
Another report of 4 guns, maybe a fifth.

Strange enough yet? Media isn’t perfect but how do those details get crossed up?

NBC Connecticut report shows a shotgun, not a .223 rifle, being removed from the trunk and cleared.

 

Police were reportedly looking for a red or maroon van with a window blown out.

More videos with conflicting details

2nd man in camo pants w/ dark jacket led out of woods in handcuffs

Another man detained?

 

Not voluntarily let in to the school

 

This is all pinned on a 20 year old with Asperger Syndrome?

Stay tuned for more inconsistencies, I will post them as they come in....

5 Facts You Should Know About the Wealthiest One Percent of Americans

Very interesting statistics here: http://www.alternet.org/economy/152601/5_facts_you_should_know_about_the_wealthiest_one_percent_of_americans/?page=entire

Censorship by Omission

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict provides much clear evidence that the media game is rigged against Arabs in the United States. This video illustrates how (aside from the vast abundance of financial and military support (by way of weapons) the United States showers onto Israel in aid of the Palestinian genocide) PERHAPS THE MOST CRITICAL AID is the one-sided spin of misrepresentation that American mainstream media dishes out to keep citizens here ignorant and complacent.

After all, if the majority of Americans knew the atrocities and war crimes being committed constantly by Israel onto the Palestinian people, they might have a problem with things - like for example ,the U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.

Shirl McArthur wrote in the May 2003 issue of Washington Report.*

McArthur's article, "A Conservative Tally of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel: $97.5 Billion - and Counting" tallies the hidden costs, such as interest lost due to the early disbursement of aid to Israel and funds hidden in other accounts. For example, Israel received $5.45 billion in Defense Department funding of Israeli weapons projects through 2002, McArthur says.

Loans made to Israel by the U.S. government, like the recently awarded $9 billion, invariably wind up being paid by the American taxpayer. A recent Congressional Research Service report indicates that Israel has received $42 billion in waived loans. "Therefore, it is reasonable to consider all government loans to Israel the same as grants," McArthur says.

Support for Israel has cost America dearly - well over than $10,000 per American.*

This seems to play out as a major motive for Israel to manipulate and distorts American public perceptions. The United States has been considered Israel's most powerful and supportive ally and accounts for around 25% of Israel's military occupation (and genocide) of Palestine.

Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied territories appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one.

If you don't have time to watch the entire film, at least take a careful look at 48:08 - 50:05 in the film. This is one instance (amongst many others in the film) very clear picture of how Israel's American PR Campaign works their magic in our media and therefore understanding of the situation:
48:08 - 50:05




Further info:
* http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/245-2008-november/3845-congress-watch-a-conservative-estimate-of-total-direct-us-aid-to-israel-almost-114-billion.html

Watch free on Google Videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2165626245072381061

Blocking Out Paul

Great example of how mainstream media keeps genuine candidates out of the spotlight and away from the presidential race:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - Corn Polled Edition - Ron Paul & the Top Tier
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Anytime the corporate sponsored media puts this much effort into keeping a candidate out of the news - you KNOW that's the guy you want to spread awareness of...