As More Is Reported...

[Caveat: Who knows whether the reporting is truthful or accurate? Reporting on the American tradition of mass murder is typically/traditionally sketchy at best, and it is always, always driven by narrative...]

So the Orlando killer, they now say, was a conflicted gay man who regularly went to a gay bar in Orlando two hours away from his home on the east Florida, where on Sunday during Pride Week he slaughtered dozens of patrons and wounded dozens more just after last call. Speculation is that he knew any number of those he shot; at any rate, quite a few survivors have come forth and said they knew him. Oh yeah. They knew him all right, and from what's been reported, it seems they did not like him at all.

But he was a regular nonetheless. It's a four hour round trip between Port St. Lucie and Orlando. They say he drank heavily at the bar, and he would get raging drunk while he was there, so the drive home must have been challenging to say the least. Or did he spend the night in Orlando? Did he spend the night with anyone he met at the bar? Or...?

Some observers and commenters have been skeptical about this whole self-loathing gay theory, not so much because it's not plausible as there seems to be so little evidence that he was actually a gay man, and not simply someone who was... curious -- apparently lethally so.

They want evidence that he ever had sexual relations -- or even a casual encounter -- with another man. So far, there's been none.

All that's been reported is that he was married twice. He was very abusive to his first wife, and she left him within a few months. His second wife apparently did not suffer that way. He fathered children. He frequented the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. He used gay-oriented online chats. There is a report that he asked a fellow student at the police academy out on a date but the fellow declined.

And fairly consistently the reports suggest that nobody liked him, not at his job (as a security guard at the local courthouse) and not at the gay bar.

They didn't like him because he was volatile, mercurial and filled with anger. Among other things no doubt.

In other words, he was a frightening character that many people wanted to stay well away from.

He was reported to the FBI by his co-workers because of some of the things he said about being involved with terrorist groups. The FBI interviewed him several times over a period of over a year and determined there was nothing  actionable about what he had said or done.

He went to the Pulse bar in Orlando on Latin Night, the culmination of a week of gay pride celebration in Orlando. Somehow he got past the uniformed off-duty policeman working security at the door, got past him with his guns and ammunition. Reports suggest that he had a few drinks, chatted with some folks, and then... started shooting. He somehow shot more than 100 people before retreating to a restroom where he holed up with hostages and started an hours-long "negotiation" with authorities, using his cell phone for communication.

Ultimately, the "negotiations" failed, and the authorities decided to blast their way into the restroom where he was holed up, but that failed the first time they tried. They sent in a robot bobcat (IIRC) to knock a hole in the wall. The wall was breeched, and the hostages, according to reports, escaped. The killer emerged after the hostages and engaged in a gunfight with the police. He was killed in the gun battle.

End of incident.

During the "negotiations" the killer apparently said he had explosives and was prepared to blow himself and the hostages up, and that was the excuse given for taking aggressive action.

He is also said to have declared his loyalty to a number of Muslim terrorist groups.

He was born in New York, the son of Afghani parents who emigrated to the US after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. From appearances at any rate, his parents were/are very well off, and one would assume he grew up comfort or even luxury. From reports, it appears he was not religious.

Reports suggest he had fairly severe mental health issues, specifically "bi-polar disorder." Given his age and behavior, he may have had incipient or full-blown schizophrenic issues. Anger management was apparently not his forte.

The question then arises, how was he able to get and keep a security officer job with one of the nation's premiere mercenary contractors (G4S -- ask Jeremy Scahill about it) for nearly 10 years, despite his apparent record behavioral and psychological issues? How was he able to get all the clearances and gun permits and so forth? This is odd, it seems to me, unless it is somehow typical.

This was a man who should not have been allowed around any weapon at all, and yet he was a long-time employee of one of the top mercenary outfits, working as an armed guard at a fricking courthouse, even though he was recognized as a... potential danger to himself or others by his own co-workers who reported him to the FBI. The FBI that investigated and claimed to find nothing "actionable."

Well, I'm sure the conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this one.

Something isn't right.

By doG no.

The Boston Marathon Thing Keeps Getting Stranger And Stranger

The story of the Boston Marathon Bombing has developed into a nearly incomprehensible mish-mash of action/reaction, yarn-spinning and story-telling... not to mention the death and dismemberment...

Each version of the story leads to ever more speculation about what is and was really going on.

Who are these people, and what are they doing to us?

Of course, all the many variations in the story of what happened, how, and who was involved quite naturally give rise to any number of conspiracy theories and theatrics, and I've long been under the impression that conspiracy theories are actually the point of all the many conflicting "official" stories that always seem to come from some Anonymous Official Familiar With the Case and which are breathlessly written down and sent on their merry way by credulous reporters who haven't a clue that they might be hearing blarney. Or that's the way it looks, but the situation could well be less naive than that; it could well be that the reporters and their editors, the Officials and the publications are all in on it, all well aware of the many levels of deceit going on, and that none of them really give a good gott-damb about what's really going on or the Truth in any rational sense.

As the Busheviks were proud to point out, "We're history's actors... you just study what we do..."

This was one of the cleverer aspects of the whole Soviet system of rule that never quite caught on in the West -- not until the Soviet Union collapsed at any rate, and then this sort of propaganda became all the rage in Western halls of power.

Yes, it is a propaganda tactic, as is the creation of false leads and fantasy conspiracy theories. They are  completely harmless to the apparat that create them while keeping would-be Exposers of Great Wrong on the trail of... nothing at all.

It works like a charm, especially on the Internet, where sleuthing and gaming are widespread user-hobbies if not outright obsessions. Fabricate some sort of Mystery or Conspiracy around a traumatic event and the Internet Gumshoes are on it like white on rice; it keeps them busy tracking down "leads" and "inconsistencies" and speculating and arguing endlessly on the "meaning" of this or that "clue."


Meanwhile, there's a whole other world (maybe Reality) that they're either never aware of at all, or that they only come to recognize after years and years of running down "clues" and "leads" that go nowhere.

The deaths and arrests of suspects in the Boston Marathon Thing have given the impression to some observers that something else entirely is going on than What We Are Told. The recent death in Orlando of someone who knew the dead suspect in Boston (at least we are to assume he is dead) is one of those things.

The Official Story of what happened in Orlando is frankly jibberish, a word salad of conflicting and mutually incompatible statements by Officials Familiar With the Case who are clearly not telling the truth to the media.

Friends and family, as in Boston regarding the prime suspects in the bombing, are offering a very different picture of the man who was killed in Orlando, and the Official Story has changed so many times by now ("He had a knife! He was going for a gun! He had a pole! He had a broomstick! He had a sword! He pushed a table! He was unarmed! He was SCARY!!!!1") nothing the Officials say is believable. But then, there is no other source of information about what happened, either. There are some other sources of information about what happened in Boston during the pursuit and capture of the surviving suspect, but there are no other sources of information after his capture, except for statements of his mother in Russia regarding her telephone conversation with him while he was recovering from his (apparently rather minor) wounds in a prison hospital.

"Wait," I said. He was on the phone with his mother in Russia? While in a prison hospital? How? I mean really. Something like this is not exactly protocol, as phone calls in and out of any sort of prison environment in the United States are so tightly regulated and monitored and so fiercely restricted that a call in from Russia or out to Russia is all but inconceivable.

But the gamers and amateur gumshoes don't even question it; they take it on faith that the call happened and that the suspect said what the mother is reported to have said he said ("I'm innocent!") 

Mkay.

The only way that something like this could have happened, in my view, is if the FBI or one of the other Agencies Involved set the call up as part of the investigation. But it's conceivable the call never happened at all.

It's been pointed out that at least part of this (ethnic) Chechen family -- including potentially the dead Boston suspect -- has all the earmarks of being Assets of some Agency or other in the Great Global Game. That being so, could the dead suspect in Orlando also be an Asset? Isn't there a Program to eliminate Assets Who Go Rogue? Is that what's taking place? Or part of it?

If that were the case, how, exactly, would "guilt" or "innocence" work under the circumstances?

Wheels within wheels.

Maybe in fifty years -- or maybe never -- something like the Real Truth will out. Until then, it's all just wheels spinning...

CT Every Which Way

It's not unusual for traumatic events to give rise to conspiracy theories of one sort or another, and so it has been with the Boston Marathon Bombing, though it seemed to take a bit longer for them to be generated than in some of the previous instances I can recall.

If we go back to the JFK Assassination in 1963 -- which I can still remember pretty well, and which seemed to have started the line of conspiracies and lies and government reformations, failures and breakdowns we've been subject to ever since -- we can see how easy it has been to induce the common people to believe something that simply may not be true. This goes for both the Official Story and the various alternative conspiracy theories as well.

Ever since then, I've been convinced that 1) the Official Story is a lie; 2) many, if not all, of the conspiracy theory alternatives to the Official Story originate from some of the same sources as the Official Story.

In other words, the conspiracy theories form part of the process by which most of the public is convinced of the "truth" of the Official Story while simultaneously providing those who are not convinced or convincible with plenty of distracting and generally false leads to consider and argue over indefinitely.

So it has been with the Boston Marathon Bombing, as it was with so many other traumatic events of the last several decades.

All we, the plebs, need to understand is that we are to live in persistent fear of arbitrary threats from sources we can't know or understand and we are to obey the commands of Our Betters -- for our own safety and security, of course.

This is the consistent message conveyed to us from on high: fear the unknown but always present threat; obey official orders (or, in the case of Boston's lockdown, what has been euphemistically and propagandistically called "requests to stay indoors.")

 Seems to have worked pretty well...

There's Your Trouble...

 

Until I saw the post over at Digby's Place, I wasn't aware of the active conspiracy theory about the Sandy Hook Massacre. I had no idea that MaoSatanHitler King Obama had staged the whole thing so as to enable the confiscation of your firearms (and mine, for that matter -- even though we gave away the guns we had before we moved [they were props, people, in shows we did...]), which is what all governments seek to do in order to establish tyranny; confiscate the guns first, then set up Socialism/Nazi/Commonist rule.

Now that I know it was all staged, and the whole point of it was to kill some kids to get the guns -- talk about Shock Doctrine, eh? -- I'm just gobsmacked.

Would they do this?

Of course they would. Eagerly and with bells on. The problem with the Conspiracy Theory in this case is that Our Rulers are not at all concerned about whether you and I have firearms, and they seem to enjoy the spectacles of the seemingly random massacres.

The massacres (always by Lone Gunmen, of course) are wonderful fear generators, aren't they?  

And always, despite the calls and the urge to Do Something about the slaughter, nothing is done. Haven't you noticed? When even a member of Congress is subject to the Lone Gunman Bloodfest and nothing is done about it then it should be obvious -- OBVIOUS -- that Our Rulers see benefit to themselves in continuing the slaughter and especially the threat of random slaughter among the common herd indefinitely.

Your guns will not be confiscated therefore. In fact, you'll be urged to get more of them as fast as you possibly can.

Even with HiltlerStalinObama's 23 Executive Orders on Gun Violence, we are unlikely to see a curb on the number of those who die by gunfire in this country, a number equivalent to that in a nation enduring civil war. And random slaughter will continue as long as it is useful.

And Conspiracy Theories will continue just as long as they are useful for keeping those susceptible to them ensnared.

Wheels within wheels, indeed.

This Is Kinda Fun... As These Things Go

Agenda 21 Full Video from Bryan Long on Vimeo.

Yes, well.

There's actually some more or less accurate information in the video within the video; I'll let the viewer figure out what it is. There are most definitely Things Going On that either the public is not privy to at all (a whole bunch of that stuff), or Things which are sold to the public using what amounts to false advertising. In other words, Things are not necessarily what they appear to be, and their upshot may be quite different than we are led to believe.

Government uses falsehoods frequently to help lull and control the People. This is nothing new, it's been going on for as long as there has been government, and it is by no means a peculiarity of the Modern American Government. Falsehood is built in to the institutional framework of government as we know it. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But I wouldn't call it good.

Tactics and techniques of mass control are pretty much constant in the haute monde of both the public and private sectors, and as we descend further and further into our Neo-Fascist Future, the interchange between the sectors essentially fuses them into a unity. They use each others' techniques freely, and for an identical purpose: control.

What is striking about this presentation is that it is offered as if it were "secret knowledge" -- much like the inner workings of the Mormon Temple to use one recent similar example -- when it's not really "secret" at all.

To state the obvious: The everyday world the public experiences doesn't operate the way the inner working of government does, but the way the government works is not especially hidden from view. Almost any interaction with the government will demonstrate how it works.

What's interesting to me is the how the ordinary operations of government can be so easily interpreted and sold as some vast conspiracy or other, much as is done in the video-within-the-video above and was done in a kind of baroque excess during the Clinton Era. There are conspiracies to be sure. And some of what the government and private sectors plan and do is not in the public interest by any means. Many people would say that most of what the government does is not in the public interest while giving the private sector a pass, and that's simply absurd; the twain have plighted their troth in a manner of speaking, and there is no way to separate their plans and actions from one another -- quite unlike the situation between the People and Government.

I've written many times that the United States Government has essentially divorced itself from the People and there is no longer much or in many cases any institutional necessity to include the People's Will or the Public Interest in the institutional framework of Government. This is true of many smaller jurisdictions as well. The United States Government -- like other governments around the world and at home -- serves the needs and interests of a select (and diminishing) minority of keyed-in and hyper-wealthy individuals and interests almost exclusively. The People are an impediment at times; most times they are simply irrelevant to the needs and interests of the power elites.

The surprise is that this state of affairs still comes as a surprise to many people.

It shouldn't.

In the meantime, the fantasy that is spun in the video above is really something to behold. The Truth might actually be scarier, though. So when these things appear, I generally take them to be the product  of an elite faction that wishes to press its own case in opposition to whatever is currently going on, and wishes to sell a load of crap to the public in the process in an effort to sway public opinion its own way.

Wheels within wheels...

[Speaking of: We had a series of truly remarkable adventures on Friday, starting with the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, thence to the Very Large Array at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, thence back to the Refuge for the Arrival of the Cranes, thence to New Mexico Tech to hang out at their Observatories. I've drafted some stuff about it, but it may be a while before I post anything. Still working on the pictures....;-)]

WSWS asks the right question: "Why did UK police declare death of News of the World whistleblower 'not suspicious?'"

To which of course there is no answer.

Yet.

The story thus far:

When the former News of the World reporter Sean Hoare was found dead Monday at his home in Watford, north of London, the immediate response of the Hertfordshire police was to issue a public statement declaring his death to be “unexplained but not thought to be suspicious.”

The statement is at the very least extraordinary, and at worst sinister in its implications. Hoare is the man who broke silence on the corrupt practices at the News of the World and, most specifically, alleged that former editor Andy Coulson, who later became Prime Minister David Cameron’s director of communications, was fully aware of phone hacking that took place on an “industrial scale.”

Under these circumstances, before either a post-mortem or any investigation had been mounted, how could such a claim be made by the police?

The morning after Hoare’s body was found, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and his former deputy, John Yates, were to give evidence before a home affairs select committee. Stephenson had tendered his resignation Sunday and Yates Monday. They were to be quizzed by MPs on their failure to pursue any serious investigation into phone hacking or on the bribing of police officers. This was to be followed by the quizzing of News Corporation head Rupert Murdoch, his son James, chairman of News International, and former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks.

The death of Hoare means that his testimony will never be heard by any such inquiry or, more importantly, by any criminal investigation that may arise.

That's your key, right there. Hoare cannot testify. Will not. Has been prevented by events from...

Hm. Convenient, no?

Well, coinky-dinks like this are common in Britain, aren't they? And in the USofA?

Hm.
----------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: From the Telegraph (UK)

The Prime Minister David Cameron said [In reference to Mr. Hoare's unsuspicious demise]: “The death of anyone is a tragedy for that person."

Yes. Well. Isn't that the truth.

Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

OT: Random Notes

I don't get into "Who Shot Kennedy?" and 9/11 Conspiracy Theories and whatnot for a very simple reason: While the speculation is all very interesting, it is pure and unresolvable speculation in my view, argument, in essence, for it's own sake, that cannot lead us forward, back, or anywhere at all. I enjoy the speculation -- for its own sake -- but I don't believe the arguments put forth are the answer or even necessarily true.

For example, almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, websites went up -- I remember one in particular in France -- that proposed that what we were being told was not what really happened at all (yes, well, that's fairly obvious, isn't it?) and that this conspiracy website had the real story. I immediately suspected a Black Op from one of the shadowy Black Budget operations our government (and other governments) so eagerly fund to... obscure the Truth, if there is any, and spread lies and propaganda all the while. Soon enough, all kinds of conspiratorial cornpone arose over the question of "What Really Happened" (including a website called WhatReallyHappened.org) on 9/11 and at every other time the inexplicable transpires. Truth? Well, there's probably some in there... yup. Sure. But we have a tough enough time decoding our Pravdas on the Potomac and on the Hudson (let alone wading through the contemptuous vomit and shit of the teevee "news") to pick out bits and fragments of Truth that show up on Conspiracy Day "news" sites.

As for 9/11, I know what I saw with my own eyes on the teevee and within the Federal employee working environment I was part of then. I know what I saw, felt, and did. Beyond that? Not a lot. I know I don't believe the Official Story, but who in their right mind would? The question is not whether the Government lies -- of course they do -- it's a question of whether there even is a Real Truth, beyond the lies, that is discoverable by you or by me. Maybe there is. But more than likely, you and I are just going down a Rabbit Hole. If that's your bliss, by all means, be my guest. Please report back! But don't expect me to go with you.

Conspiratism -- is that what it's called? -- reminds me a little bit of the British passion for such esoterica as "Ley Lines" on the landscape of Britian and the apparent geometric alignments of various things on Mars and other exotic places. The best known aspect of this sometimes obsessive interest in that which is not understood is the Face on Mars, about which a number of people were able to make lucrative careers for years.

Back in the day, one of the early websites I put up, even before Blogger came on the scene, was about Mars, and it included extensive speculation by scientists and laypeople about what might be transpiring there now, and what sort of history might have occurred in the past.

The Face figured, but not prominently. My interest lay more in the whole area around the Face, and in the nature of the landscape and Martian geology itself. Acidalia Planitia is not like anyplace you would find on Earth, and it was my position, regardless of the Face, that it should be explored and explained for its own sake.

Unfortunately, that has never happened to any great extent. I am little better informed about the nature of the landscape and highly evocative and curious geology of Acidalia Planitia on Mars today than I was 30 years ago. The obsessive interest in the Face and the various associated Cities and Forts and Alignments and whatnot and what they were and what weren't -- but not so much in what they are -- is part of the reason why.

In other words, these obsessions are distractions -- sometimes deliberately put before us, sometimes not -- that serve to obscure the truth.

Apparently the Distraction Formula is being applied with a vengeance with regard to the numerous uprisings and revolts taking place in North Africa and the Middle East as well as the Middle West of our own country, right along with all sorts of Conspiracy Theories. It really does seem to be a Formula for Dismissal of Popular Protest that every authoritarian/autocratic government and its minions engage in.

We saw it in stark operation in Egypt, during its recent revolt against the Mubarak Regime. And we see the same sort of denial and distraction and assertions of Conspiracies of All Kinds in Libya today.

But we also see it in Scott Walker's Wisconsin. He's distracting and asserting Conspiracies Most Foul by Outside Agitators, just like Mubarak and Gaddafi have done. The parallels are remarkable. That's why I say it is a Formula. But then, Walker's opponents have adopted some of the same Formula in attributing so much power over events in Wisconsin to the Koch Brothers -- Who Are Most Foul and Evil.

Almost immediately, we fall into a situation where there is no resolution because we are caught up almost entirely in minutiae. It isn't really about Scott Walker or the Koch Brothers, it's about what kind of nation we want and what we have to do to get there.

It's not about them in other words, it's about us.

All right, I've said my piece about that. Carry on.