"Obama decries an epidemic of gun violence; At memorial, president insists on change in laws" by Nedra Pickler | Associated Press, September 23, 2013
WASHINGTON — President Obama memorialized the victims of the Washington Navy Yard shooting on Sunday by calling for a transformation in the nation’s gun laws to address an epidemic of gun violence....
Reprising his role of the nation’s consoler in chief after yet another mass shooting, Obama said Americans should honor the victims of last Monday’s shooting by insisting on a change in gun laws. ‘‘It ought to obsess us,’’ Obama said.
I thought he was obsessed with leaks, but that was before.
‘‘Sometimes I fear there is a creeping resignation that these tragedies are just somehow the way it is, that this is somehow the new normal. We cannot accept this,’’ Obama said.
He said no other advanced nation endures the kind of gun violence seen in the United States, and he blamed mass shootings in America on laws that fail ‘‘to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people.’’
And no other nation visits as much violence on others as the United States that you head, sir.
‘‘What’s different in America is it’s easy to get your hands on a gun,’’ he said, eulogizing from the parade grounds at the Marine Barracks. ‘‘And that’s sometimes where the resignation comes from: the sense that our politics are frozen and that nothing will change. Well, I cannot accept that. By now, though, it should be clear that the change we need will not come from Washington, even when tragedy strikes Washington. Change will come the only way it ever has come, and that’s from the American people.’’
Your presidency has confirmed it.
****************************
The memorial service came on the first day of fall, which shone brightly in Washington, with sun sparkling off the instruments being played by the Navy Band and the gold dress uniform buttons worn by so many in the crowd.
The invitation-only crowd included around 4,000 mourners, with the victims’ tearful, black-clad family members directly in front of the speakers’ stage. The president and his wife Michelle met privately with the families before the service, White House officials said.
Authorities say their loved ones’ lives were taken Monday by shotgun-wielding Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old former Navy reservist and information technology contractor who struggled with mental illness. Police killed Alexis in a gun battle.
By the end of the day, the Senate’s chief gun control proponent, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, was calling on her colleagues to restart the debate on gun control....
She is like a lawyer chasing an ambulance.
Obama did not speak out on the issue until Saturday night, when he urged a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner ‘‘to get back up and go back at it’’ to push gun control legislation that stalled in the Senate earlier this year. Obama proposed the legislation in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 that killed 20 first graders and six staff.
I'm tired of spitballing about that hoax, but the constant flogging by the agenda-pushing media should tell you something!
Obama said it is clear from the Navy Yard shooting that the country needs to do a better job to secure its military facilities and improve mental health services, but also address gun laws.
The military leaders who spoke before Obama at the memorial service, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, avoided any mention of gun control. But Washington Mayor Vincent Gray spoke forcefully for action....
The service ended with a bugler playing taps and singing of the Navy hymn after a reading of the names of the fallen....
‘‘What wears on us, what troubles us so deeply as we gather here today, is how this senseless violence that took place in the Navy Yard echoes other recent tragedies,’’ he said. ‘‘As president, I have now grieved with five American communities ripped apart by mass violence: Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook, and now the Washington Navy Yard.
Related:
MSM Putting the Hood Over the American Public
Putting the Fort Hood Trial to Rest
Sunday Globe Special: Raising Arizona
The Arizona Agenda
All of a Sudden Up Leaps a Story About Loughner
Aurora Borebullshit
Slow Saturday Special: Limited Hangout on Holmes
Sunday Globe Special: Aurora Anniversary
Also see: Sikh Anniversary
Obama forgot to mention that one. More on the Navy Yard below.
“These mass shootings occur against a backdrop of daily tragedies as an epidemic of gun violence tears apart communities across America, from the streets of Chicago to neighborhoods not far from here.’’
--more--"
Speaking of Chicago:
"13 people wounded, including a toddler, in shooting in a Chicago park" by Monica Davey and Timothy Williams | New York Times, September 21, 2013
CHICAGO — A gunman who shot and wounded 13 people at a South Side park Thursday night was armed with an assault-style rifle equipped with a high-capacity magazine, the police said Friday.
Which is odd because Chicago has the strongest gun control policies in AmeriKa.
“A military-grade weapon on the streets of Chicago is simply unacceptable,” Garry McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, said at a news conference, where he issued another of his frequent calls for tighter state and federal gun laws....
I'm starting to wonder if this is another psyop or hoax.
The police said that no arrests had been made and that investigators were uncertain about the intended target, the motive, or even the number of people who fired weapons. There may have been one gunman, McCarthy said, or as many as three.
The attack, which occurred at a pickup basketball game, was the latest flare-up of street violence that has confounded city leaders. Chicago had more than 500 homicides in 2012 — more than any other city in the nation, and about 80 more than New York, which has three times as many people.
The vast majority of the violence has occurred in poorer neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides. The shooting Thursday again vaulted the issue to the center of the city’s debate about the causes of gun violence and potential solutions for the problem.
There is no safe passage in Chicago.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled events on the East Coast on Friday to fly home because of the shooting, his aides said.
McCarthy said Friday that while shootings typically elicit few witnesses who volunteer information to officers, the attack in the park had generated fury — and help.
“We’re getting a ton of cooperation,” he said. “People are rightfully outraged.”
--more--"
Then I expect a break in the case soon!
"Wounded gang member behind Chicago shooting" by Jason Keyser | Associated Press, September 25, 2013
CHICAGO — A Chicago man who was clipped in the leg by gunfire went looking for revenge, leading fellow gang members to a crowded park, where one of them unleashed more than a dozen bullets from an assault rifle in a shooting that wounded 13 people, including a 3-year-old boy, authorities say.
Thursday night’s attack at a basketball court on Chicago’s southwest side did injure several gang members. But the rapid spray of bullets also struck bystanders in a shooting that has again focused national attention on gang bloodshed in the nation’s third-largest city....
Not for long because I haven't seen a word since.
--more--"
Related:
I blame drug-dealing gangs.
"Man accused of plot to shoot up Salt Lake mall" by Paul Foy | Associated Press, September 25, 2013
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah man accused of plotting a deadly attack on a luxury outdoor shopping center in the heart of Salt Lake City told investigators this week that he planned to ‘‘randomly shoot and kill people.’’
An AmeriKan Kenya?
Jack Harry Stiles, 42, told a crisis counselor he was preparing to ‘‘kill as many people as possible’’ on Wednesday because it marked the anniversary of his mother’s death, authorities said.
Jail records show Stiles was booked into the Salt Lake County jail Monday and remains there on $1 million bail. The Salt Lake legal defender’s office said he did not have an attorney yet.
Court documents show Stiles did not have any weapons but was planning to buy two guns with silencers and stock up on ammunition. No motive was clear, according to the Salt Lake County district attorney, Sim Gill.
Police first learned of the plan Aug. 12 when a West Valley police officer was dispatched to Pioneer Valley Hospital by a crisis worker. At that point, investigators began looking into Stiles’ background. Family members told investigators the man had a history of mental illness and making threats, the district attorney said.
So WHICH PRESCRIPTION PHARMACEUTICALS was HE ON?
Gill said that authorities were motivated to take action by the Washington Navy Yard shooting last Monday that left a dozen people dead. That suspect had a history of violent and erratic behavior.
--more--"
Yeah, about that Navy Yard shooting:
"FBI says Navy Yard gunman left note about radio waves" by Eric Tucker | Associated Press, September 26, 2013
WASHINGTON — Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis left a note saying he was driven to kill by months of bombardment with extremely low-frequency radio waves, the FBI said Wednesday in a disclosure that explains the phrase he etched on his shotgun: ‘‘My ELF Weapon!’’
At first we were told there ws nothing, and days later this is rolled out?
I'm not discounting the damage radio waves can do; however, the fact that the idea is being rolled out by the ma$$ media makes me question this whole thing.
Alexis, 34, did not target particular individuals during the Sept. 16 attack in which he killed 12 people, and there is no indication the shooting stemmed from any workplace dispute, said Valerie Parlave, assistant director of the FBI’s Washington field office.
That is strange because I WAS TOLD IT DID!
Instead, officials said, his behavior in the weeks before the shooting and records recovered from his hotel room reveal a man increasingly in the throes of paranoia and delusions.
‘‘Ultra-low frequency attack is what I’ve been subject to for the last 3 months, and to be perfectly honest that is what has driven me to this,’’ read an electronic document agents recovered after the shooting.
The attack came one month after Alexis had complained to police in Newport, R.I., that people were talking to him through the walls and ceilings of his hotel room and sending microwave vibrations into his body to deprive him of sleep.
On his shotgun, he had scrawled ‘‘My ELF Weapon!’’ — an apparent reference to extremely low-frequency waves — along with ‘‘End to the Torment!,’’ “Not what yall say,’’ and ‘‘Better off this way,’’ the FBI said.
Alexis, a former Navy reservist and computer technician for a government contractor, used a valid badge to get into the Navy Yard and opened fire inside a building with the sawed-off Remington shotgun, which he had legally purchased in Virginia two days earlier. He also used a 9mm handgun that he took from a security guard.
He was killed in the building by a US Park Police officer after a rampage the FBI said lasted more than an hour — longer than authorities previously indicated.
So we were lied to by authority again?
‘‘There are indicators that Alexis was prepared to die during the attack and that he accepted death as the inevitable consequence of his actions,’’ Parlave said.
Surveillance video released by the FBI shows Alexis pulling his rental car into a garage, walking into the building with a bag, and then skulking down a corridor with a shotgun, ducking and crouching around a corner, and walking briskly down a flight of stairs.
Alexis had started a job in the building just a week before.
Although there was a ‘‘routine performance-related issue addressed to him’’ on the Friday before the Monday morning shooting, ‘‘there is no indication that this caused any sort of reaction from him,’’ Parlave said.
‘‘We have not determined there to be any previous relationship between Alexis and any of the victims,’’ she said. ‘‘There is no evidence or information at this point that indicates he targeted anyone he worked for or worked with. We do not see any one event as triggering this attack.’’
Defense officials have acknowledged that a lot of red flags were missed in Alexis’s background, allowing him to maintain a secret-level security clearance and access to a Navy installation despite a string of behavioral problems and brushes with the law.
He worked for The Experts, a Florida-based computer firm that was a Hewlett-Packard subcontractor. Hewlett-Packard said Wednesday that it was severing ties with The Experts, accusing the company of failing to respond adequately to Alexis’s mental health problems.
At the Pentagon, Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the department will review base safety procedures and the security clearance process.
--more--"
Related:
What Happened at the Washington Navy Yard?
Wiping Up the Washington Navy Yard Shooting
Last Look Around the Washington Naval Yard
Navy Yard Shooting Proves Failure of NSA
Slow Saturday Special: U.S. Nuclear Watchdog Fa$t A$leep
Chatter the Globe did not pick up (must have been asleep):
"Clue To 911 - Shooters At Navy Yard; And Aurora Linked To 'NSA-CIA West'
by Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive to Rense
9-23-13
The Washington Navy Yard shootings ensure that details of Aaron Alexis’s career with U.S. intelligence agencies will remain inside a deep freezer alongside the dossier on another rogue government agent, the Aurora movie shooter James “the Joker” Holmes. These two villains have striking similarities: Both are linked by an admiration for the ArmaLite AR-15 spray gun and they also suffer bizarre psychiatric disorders, including chronic anxiety, heightened paranoia and strange voices inside their heads.The other feature in common between these now-retired government contractors is their work for the emerging new hub for America’s most advanced espionage capabilities Aurora, Colorado, along with next-door Denver and other sites in the Rocky Mountain region. Alexis had a role in transferring Hewlett Packard network systems vital to NSA intercepts of satellite communications from NSA facilities at East Coast naval bases to Colorado.
Buckley airfield in Aurora, home of the Aerospace Data Center, is currently being upgraded and expanded. Its huge golf-ball shaped antennae capture signals from orbiting satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office, NASA and the U.S. Air Force, along with data intercepted from the orbiting spacecraft of other countries and private corporations. This intelligence, once analyzed, is shuttled to the North American Aerospace Command in Colorado Springs, which is also the location of the Air Force Academy. (see “Intelligence service being secretive about who, where and when; post-9/11 decentralization” http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_3431085)
In nearby Lakewood, the Federal Center is being remodeled to house the CIA’s domestic surveillance program, which is aimed eavesdropping on U.S. citizens with the goal of psychological profiling of everyone in the borders (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/cia_moving_domestic_headquarters_to_denver/)
Before he opened fire on an audience at a Batman movie, Holmes conducted graduate-level neuroscience research in Denver at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, which integrates patient care and clinical trials with frontline biomedical studies. (http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Neuroscience-Program-and-Holmes-information.aspx) His psychiatric disorders may well be linked to the overexposure to powerful electromagnetic radiation from Buckley airfield and other intelligence centers concentrated in the area.
Although this unlikely pair followed separate career tracks and never met each other, the two shooters were each involved in secret work for the U.S. government. Since hard facts about this duo of evil-doers are scarce as hen’s teeth, the only method left to investigative journalism, short of a long camping trip in the Rockies, is context analysis and scenario development. While much of this discussion is admittedly speculative due to the thinness of evidence and unreliability of ever-changing media claims, the principal focus here is on the background to the secret work that Alexis did for the U.S. intelligence community. Holmes’ research funded by the National Institutes of Health is given passing mention as another facet of the mountain region’s emergence as America’s “Third Line” of strategic defense and tech-based intelligence gathering.
Operational Secrecy on 911
The Aaron Alexis story begins as so many other tragic events of our time on September 11, 2001. As told to the British press by his stepfather Frank Calderon, Alexis was riding up the escalator from the subway station below the World Trade Center just as the twin towers were collapsing. For hours, he remained outside the WTC entrance yet miraculously survived the downpour of shattered glass and splintered steel. Then, according to the stepfather’s account, Alexis participated in the rescue work alongside the first respondents over the following three days. (The Daily Mail, Sept. 18, 2013, Interview by Paul Thompson)
This story of personal heroism was also told to the Seattle police officers who questioned Alexis in 2004 after he shot the tires of a car. Alexis suspected the construction workers inside the car of being assassins sent to kill him. The gun charges were subsequently dropped by one of America’s toughest police forces, certainly not because of the cock-and-bull tale about WTC patriotism. Security clearances usually get the release from police custody of secret agents in event of common crimes, sparing the CIA the embarrassment of a police report and court case.
The New York Job
Now let’s move on to the salient points of his role in the WTC disaster. At the time of 911, the Bedford-Stuyvesant-born Alexis resided at the Queens home of his stepfather. Calderon himself was employed at “one of the WTC buildings”, where his night shift normally ended at 7 a.m. After the disaster, the stepfather relocated to Richmond, Virginia, where he has since done unspecified work at a local bank. (Daily Mail, Sept. 18) Judging from his modest station in life, Calderon was not a high-rolling stock analyst tracking Asian stock markets. His night job was probably as a security guard.
The security company that watched over the World Trade Center was Stratesec. Its principals until the year prior to the 911 attacks, were Marvin Bush, the brother of former president George W. Bush, and his cousin Wirt Walker III. Stratesec also provided security for United Airlines (two of its jetliners were supposedly hijacked) and for Dulles Airport, where one of the commandeered planes reportedly took off. (This is well-documented by different media, including http://www.historycommons.org/ entity.jsp?entity=stratesec )
Alexis, according to his stepfather, worked an IT job inside “a building in the WTC complex.” (Daily Mail, Sept. 18) The address is off by a few meters. His stepson was employed by building contractors renovating the Fiterman Hall office tower for conversion into an urban campus of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, part of the CUNY system.
The 15-floor building at 81 Barclay Street represented the largest grant ever given to City University of New York. The donor was Miles Fiterman, a lumber tycoon and builder of prefab homes, based in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. The Bush Foundation and the Fiterman family are major donors to the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis. (Walker Annual Report, 2002)
Alexis’s IT job was not anything as flashy as programming or software design. He wired computer hardware as a lowly electrician’s apprentice. (His later job for the Navy was as an aircraft electrician and he did the same type of work for a Hewlett Packard subcontractor at several navy bases. The task is by no means easy. Connecting routers, modems, servers, encryption devices, monitors and phone lines for large-scale customers is more complicated than plugging in personal devices.)
Now the curious aspect to this situation is that the Fiterman tower sat cater-cornered (catty-corner in Deep South dialect) to the World Trade Center 7 building. The corners of the two structures were pointed at each other in an ominous fengshui relationship, as hostile as the beaks and claws of a pair of fighting roosters.
Conveniently located between the Filterman and WTC-7 was the New York Telephone Building, since taken over by Verizon. All wires led into the N.Y. Tel, and the bundles of phone cables were protected inside underground utility tunnels that are tall and wide enough for easy access by linemen.
An Internet installation company, especially in those days when DSL meant coaxial cable or dedicated phone lines, had access to the utility tunnels and links to telephone switch boxes. The CIA through one of its many fronts for wiretapping also had routine access to the NYT system.
At a time when not many office managers had a clue about the Internet, a DSL provider could easy install a network of wiring through conduits along the steel girders of the entire World Trade Center. Router closets and inverter boxes placed right on the support beams would attract no attention.
Thus, from the demolition control center in the Fiterman could run cables under the utility tunnels beneath narrow Barclay Street into the New York Telephone network feeding into the World Trade Center. Former military electricians, in the uniforms of a friendly Internet provide, then could efficiently install the boxes packed with electric detonators and explosives at critical points of the structure. Using pyrotechnics (fireworks) control software, the programmers would key in the timing sequence for the blast, as planned by an experienced building-demolition expert. The Internet is far more efficient a system for killing office workers and a rival faction inside the CIA than, say, battery-powered timing devices or chemical fuses.
The other compelling reason for using Internet-triggered demolition, besides easy unnoticed access to site, is that the blasts had to follow the crash of remotely controlled jetliners into the towers. The so-called hijacking is readily done with the remote cockpit software invented by same Israeli company that designed drone-piloting systems for the Israel Defense Force and also the Waterfall critical infrastructure that protects power plants from their Stuxnet virus. The Internet is a remarkable advance for terrorism, false-flag operations, propaganda preliminary to a political coup and for deceiving the public afterwards. 911 was the best pyrotechnics show ever, outdoing the Reichstag fire.
Explosives Inside Filterman
When the 47-story WTC-7 underwent a series of explosions and collapsed at 5:20 on the afternoon of September 11, the adjacent Post Office and N.Y. Telephone building sustained no damage. The Fiterman structure, on the other hand, lost much of its south-facing exterior.
A strange thing then happened. After the WTC-7 upper floors imploded, only then quite inexplicably did a chunk of the Fiterman Building get blown off and soared over its much-reduced neighbor. Like a mortar round, the fragment flew a distance of 200 meters before smashing into the glass atrium of the Winter Garden, which adjoins the yacht harbor on the Hudson River. (“Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive by Joel Meyerowitz, Phaedon Press 2006, p.47)
The role of the Fiterman building in the total schema of 911 has gone virtually unnoticed. The power shot that cracked the glass arch of Winter Garden could not have been caused by the WTC-7 collapse, which exploded toward the opposite direction. The trajectory suggests that the Fiterman’s south face was blown away from inside by a powerful blast from around the 5th floor. The logical deduction is that explosives were being stored inside the Fiterman Building, located opposite WTC-7. (Several maps of the WTC complex are posted online)
Wiring the WTC
The unoccupied Fiterman building was ideal for a demolition team in need of ample space for explosives, strands of wires, detonators, vehicles, gas masks, a first-aid station, electric power generators, a water supply and temporary living quarters. The south-facing rooms had a direct view onto WTC-7 yet had some degree of protection from a blast from across the street, due to the Telephone Building. (The site of conspiracy-theory debunker James Randi has a forum on the Filterman, which contrary to his objective shows disturbing aspects of its demise. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=116127}
This scenario of an inside job better explains why Aaron Alexis was at Ground Zero on 911. Besides the subway station below the twin towers, there was also a maze of underground walkways that enabled him to pass underneath the WTC complex without risk from flying shrapnel, smoke and molten metal raining down onto the plaza. Not a single member of the firefighting and emergency team has yet come forward with recollections about a tall young black volunteer toiling in the dust for three days straight after the disaster.
The likelier reason for his brief presence is that Alex was ordered to conduct surveillance of the damage done to the towers and then inspect the temporary cables to WTC-7 from the covert operations center inside the Fiterman across the street. Those two extra days, September 12 and 13, were probably spent on evidence-removal duty, necessary tasks such as rolling up detonator wires and disposing of incriminating residue from Ground Zero. Much of this tedious work was done by flashlight at nighttime, when emergency crews unfamiliar with the underground passages dared not enter the smoking hulk.
Enigma Wrapped in Mystery
Soon after 5 p.m. on September 11, the CIA clandestine center in New York, which organized spying on the UN headquarters and monitored Al Qaeda worldwide, was blown to smithereens, killing key operatives investigating links between terrorists and high-ranking politicians. 911 truthers point to the scientific fact that debris from the twin towers could not possibly have caused the implosion of the WTC-7 intelligence center, which housed offices of the CIA and Secret Service. (although a subject of dispute by debunkers, it is now bwidely documented that the CIA and DoD shared the 25th floor, as cited in WTC-7, Chapter 5, by Gileanz, DiPaolo, et al.; a list of articles can be found at http://www.911review.org/Wiki/Building7Collapse.shtml)
Frank Calderon, who probably recommended the next-door Fiterman job to his stepson, and finagled a position with typical New York nepotism, was not among the casualties of WTC-7 blast, even if it is highly probable that he worked at that very site as a security guard, because otherwise he would have identified the building number in press interviews.
(Out of consideration for the family’s privacy and peace of mind, it must be stated here that these scenarios are hypothetical, limited by the scarcity of evidence, and done solely for the public benefit in trying to unravel an important chapter of recent history. That the pieces of this mystery fit together as tightly as a jigsaw puzzle is not grounds for harassment or annoying phone calls to the family or Navy Yard survivors.)
While the wreckage at Ground Zero was being slowly demolished by work crews, the exterior of the Fiterman structure was painstakingly wrapped with tarps as if its interior had to hidden from sight. Only much later was the structure demolished without a trace of the workmanship that had gone on inside. One thing is certain and that’s the Bush family, the Fitermans and Larry Silverstein won’t be discussing any of this in public.
The Missing Years
From autumn 2011 until his service with the Navy Reserves started in 2007, Aaron Alexis vanishes into thin air, on record at least. One of his personally traits that acquaintances mention is that Alexis never talked much. That goes with the training for a security clearance. Whatever work he may have performed during those six years would later qualify him to gain a higher-level security clearance at Navy communications centers that provide raw intelligence to the NSA and CIA.
One outstanding clue to those missing years was his fluency in the Thai language, which enabled him to chant sutras more smoothly than most native Buddhists. (Taunton Daily Gazetter, Mass., as reported by AP) During the early phase of the war on terrorism, Thailand was a major transit point for defense contractors heading for Central Command bases in the Persian Gulf and special-forces camps inside Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.
The massive presence of contractors and intelligence agents in Thailand was apparent during my volunteer stint immediately after the 2004 Christmas tsunami. According to Thai sources, the death toll of foreign intelligence personnel began with the drowning of some 350 American uniformed servicemen when the tsunami hit the NSA listening post inside the Thai Navy’s 3rd region headquarters at Ban Thap Mo base on the Andaman Sea, just north of Phuket. (reported in a column by Kavi Chongkittavorn, The Nation newspaper, Bangkok)
More details emerged from local boat captains after they heard about my non-biased reporting from Kashmir and along the Afghan border. These small-craft pilots on the Muslim-predominant coast told me that some 3,600 American, British and Israeli defense contractors were killed by the tsunami after indulging in a holiday all-nighter on Patong Beach in Phuket. In Krabi, the Israeli Defense Force lost so many of its naval divers that its navy had to close the Gulf of Aqaba outside Eilat port to foreign ships for many months thereafter. Some 200 American mercenaries living in Bangkok were apparently buried in secret graves on the road to Phuket, which is why the Pentagon demanded the bodies of all tsunami victims be disinterred for identification. Was foul play involved? What does one expect from pirates?
The U.S. Navy dispatched four rapid littoral combat vessels from Hong Kong to Phuket, “the fastest ships ever seen”, according to the local pilots. On the fabled island of PhiPhi Don, location of the Leonardo DiCaprio film “The Beach”, Navy helicopters attempted to land but were chased off by local pirates armed with guns and machetes. Later, after all the safety deposit boxes in hotels were broken open and emptied, the helicopters airlifted out every foreign male corpse with a strong physical built to the Navy vessels, which are equipped with refrigerated morgues, for DNA identification in Yokusuka, Japan.
Up to that moment, the number of servicemen killed by the tsunami far exceeded the casualties in the Afghan War. Not a single computer or memory drive of any Western serviceman ever surfaced, and from what I could gather at the local bazaar and from an Israeli intelligent agent planted inside an NGO relief group, all the military hardware was sent toward the Red Sea via Malaysia and Indonesia. As the local boatmen put it, “Allah is Great”. For Bin Laden and his paymasters in the Gulf States, it was a post-Christmas shopping spree.
The wipeout on Dec. 26 showed the CIA to be boys in diapers. During the previous 18 months, a crew of CIA technicians installed any Agency communications center at a plush resort in the Krabi area. The reason is that the listening post at Ban Thap Mo was a joint-intelligence center, partially overseen by the Royal Thai Navy, to keep watch over Chinese and Indian naval activities on the petroleum-rich Andaman Sea. The super-secret Krabi spy facility was aimed at spying on Shell and BP operations in Sumatra, along with Petronas in Malaysia, and monitor their influence on the Thai and Burmese militaries. The CIA was determined to put the oil and gas fields of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Malaysia and India under the control of U.S. energy companies.
Was Aaron Alexis work for the CIA on the Andaman project, or was his work in Thailand restricted to monitoring the Muslim insurgents in south Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, which led to the arrest of top leaders in the Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiya, which bombed hotels in Jakarta.
There is one other CIA posting in Thailand that could use his technical skills then, and that is the rendition airfield and interrogation center at Udon Thani, the Vietnam-era airbase for B-52 bombers, in the Isaan region of northeast Thailand, run under the cover of a Radio Free Asia station. RF Asia was expanding its presence as a Internet news resource, right up his alley. This amazing fluency in Thai would have been seen as a job asset for the CIA. A point to note, here, is that the Alexis tire-shooting incident occurred in 2004 in Seattle, three years before he was seconded to the Navy, and the rendition controversy that rattled the Bush administration in 2006 may have been a factor for this transfer.
Despite the best efforts of the CIA and NSA, the Christmas tsunami made it clear that the war on terrorism was already lost, regardless of divine will or the devil’s doing. Arrogance, corruption and ineptitude had scuttled the post-911 crusade.
As for Aaron Alexis, many of he acquaintances including Thai Buddhist friends have remarked that he constantly carped about insufficient funds and race discrimination. Yet at Christmas season 2004 he was lucky to be a lower-ranking contractor stuck on some remote U.S. base in a desert or in amazingly boring Qatar or Bahrain rather than partying on the beach at Phuket. Sometimes a bit of bad luck can be a blessing in disguise. Though I never saw him there, if Alexis did make it to south Thailand for the rescue and recovery work, it was no paradise. The stench of bloated decomposing corpses was hideous, clinging to one’s skin, hair and nostrils for weeks after.
Working for the NSA
By the end of 2007, Alexis was living in the USA. Readjusting to the States can be a huge letdown and even a culture shock after making as much as a thousand dollars a day as a defense contractor in the Persian Gulf. In Dubai, which boasts the longest bar in the world, you’d see the Americanos just arrived from Baghdad and Doha stumbling in at about 11 p.m. to splash out on single-malt whiskey or a Guinness stout and enjoy the eye-candy from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other stans passing themselves off as bleach-blonde Russians and easygoing Ethiopian ladies posing as exotic Eritreans and Somalis. Nothing’s real in Dubai, the land of mirages.
It’s all part of the pecking order, with Lebanese and Iranian women at the top of the desirables list down on through the former Soviet ranks, then the Chinese and last but least, the bottom-rung Eurotrash tourists. Reverse racism in the Gulf, under which brown, black and yellow beauty fetch more attention than white, is probably a reason why Aaron Alexis was so embittered on his return to the racial rightside-up United States.
The Rising Cost of Living
Alexis joined the Navy Reserves in 2007 and served until early 2011. Never promoted, he was a aviation electrician’s mate third-class, a grade with pay levels as low as the rank. The Navy Reserves is definitely not an officer-track opportunity or road to self-enrichment. Yet, during those four years, Alexis rented an apartment in Oak Hills, a high-end gated neighborhood of Fort Worth (Guardian, Sept.17) and on his many travels stayed at luxury hotels, including the Marriot in Providence, Rhode Island, which is favored by much higher-ranking officers.
What was the secret to a luxury lifestyle on a sailor’s budget? Answer: The CIA. The Agency routinely embeds its intelligence agents into the military Reserves, which provide weapons training, unlimited ammunition, base privileges, cheap beer, fast food, access to secure communications and free air transport to practically anywhere in the world. As a result, Navy and Marine Reserve units acting as the CIA paramilitary force often operated with better transport, superior firepower, more air cover and keener intelligence than regular Army units. (These points are based on my interview of a Marine reservist-CIA agent, who exposed the torture at Abu Graibh.) The Navy-Marine intranet, maintained by Hewlett-Packard, is the world’s largest institutional communications network. Bandwidth is never a problem.
While not embedded in the military, Edward Snowden was a dual CIA-NSA employee because of his assignment to human intelligence and on-the-ground covert operations in Geneva, Switzerland, along with eavesdropping. Aaron Alexis, in contrast, wore three hats NSA, CIA and Navy Reserves – thereby earning a sizeable pay package that allowed extended visits to Thailand and plush accommodations wherever he went.
Hop, Skip and Jump
A review of his movements shows that Alexis hops, skips and jumps from base to base on assignments for the NSA and CIA. The perks of working for several intelligence agencies include time off for language classes and extended vacation breaks en route to distant jobs. For a short while, at least, Aaron Alexis was something of a James Bond.
The following are some of the locations where he worked. (Information on these military facilities can be found at GlobalSecurity.org and Wikipedia)
Fort Worth: His home base was the Naval Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base in White Settlement, Texas. Its landlocked airfield is used by fighter squadrons of the Navy, Marines and Air Force Reserves. More important, the base is headquarters for the Naval Reserve Intelligence Command, which along with its far-flung spy operations has also earned a reputation for breaking encrypted codes. There in Texas, the CIA and NSA collect and analyze data and analysis from their Reservist spies aboard planes and ships and with infantry brigades around the world. (White Settlement is where Alexis worked after leaving the Reserves as a waiter at a Thai restaurant, meditated at a Buddhist temple and was disappointed by a sweetheart. See the Daily Mail, Sept.18)
Seattle: There are no official disclosures about Alexis’s work assignment in this West Coast city where he had a run-in with the police over shooting out tires. Nevertheless his tasks are readily surmised. Naval Reserve Intelligence Area One/Northwest is based at Whidbey Island, site of the racy Richard Gere movie “An Officer and a Gentleman”. As an aircraft electrician’s mate, his task would have been to upgrade the on-board computers and encrypted radio transceivers on the Prowlers, Growlers and Aries jets, which are all used for electronic warfare. Pilot training here involves all four services across the Pacific theater.
(The narrow-apeture radar extensively used around the Puget Sound’s numerous naval facilities along with radar-suppressing electromagnetic pulses probably accounted for the severe psychological disorders Alexis suffered, including anxiety, paranoia and hearing voices inside his skull. (While passing the Whidbey area by car twice in June 2013, my Casio G-shock watch malfunctioned and the radio went dead.)
Newport: The naval station on the Rhode Island shore is home to 50 Reserves units from all four services. The base is also headquarters for the Naval Security Force, which trains military police for occupation of foreign countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and other territories. The Naval War College at this base provides a highly secretive training program for Navy Reserve Intelligence officers, and Alexis would have upgraded its Internet-based communications and learning network.
Bangkok and Hua Hin: The Joint U,S. Military Advisory Group, located near Lumpini Park, Bangkok, provides weapons and training to the Thai military. Alexis was mainly assigned to Hua Hin, a small port on the Gulf of Thailand, about an 80-minute drive south of Bangkok. The Thai navy forces have the unique duty there of protecting the residence of the King of Thailand, and also for seagoing interdiction against Muslim insurgents in the southern provinces along with signals-intercepts and intelligence gathering on jihadist groups operating in the south and adjoining Malaysia. (His Buddhist faith meant that Alexis was a low security risk in the war as compared with a follower of Islam. BTW, I formerly taught media studies at a university in Hua Hin, where I have observed naval exercises from the beach.)
Ichigaya, Tokyo: After leaving the Reserves in early 2011, Alexis was likely assigned by his subcontractor boss to the Hewett-Packard offices in Tokyo’s Ichigaya district, the headquarters of Japan’s Self-Defense Force and its anti-ballistic missile command. The CIA and NSA spy on their close allies. Trust is the hallmark of a defeated empire.
Fingers on Top Secrets
Whatever the corporate-controlled news media is reporting, Alexis was not a morose loser and misfit. In 2011, he enrolled as an online student to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Fort Worth. (Guardian, Sept. 17) Anyone contemplating suicide amid mass murder is not going to be studying aerodynamics, navigation, flight controls and the finer points of aircraft engineering.
After leaving the Navy Reserves, his new task with The Experts, an IT subcontractor based in Alexandria, Virginia, was to disconnect the Hewlett Packard signals-intercepts hardware in the Washington DC area, which includes the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Mead, Maryland. The mainframe computers and servers were being relocated to the new NSA West center at Buckley airfield in Aurora, Colorado.
This removal of equipment and personnel to the NSA-CIA centers in Colorado was ordered after series of post-911 debates and studies on the increasing risks of concentrating America’s core intelligence assets on the East Coast, or for that matter along the West Coast. With the same strategic considerations that guide China’s military, which puts its nuclear and missile forces deep inside the interior of continental Asia, America’s intelligence chiefs decided to reposition vital electronic intelligence-gathering capabilities to the Rocky Mountain region in the American heartland.
Swarming the Human Mind
Among their array of evermore advanced intelligence tools, the Pentagon and NSA have cooperated with the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) on a Hewett-Packard Israel project called The Swarm. Led by Ruth Berg, a former researcher at MIT and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, this image-based software assembles the files, emails, Twitter messages, voice calling and transactions of target individuals into an evolving map that can predict their innermost thoughts and future decisions. The Swarm is essentially the precognition program depicted in the Tom Cruise movie on pre-crime prevention. (www.hpl.hp.com/israel)
Precognitive mapping is also aimed at predicting hidden psychological disorders and criminal (disobedient) tendencies. The Swarm’s diagnostic algorithms are relevant to the neuroscience research of James Holmes, whose studies in molecular biology focused on the biological sources of non-predictable (disorderly, creative) behavior. Toward these goals of total mind-control, President Barack Obama early this year released $1 billion in funding for a national Brain Initiative. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/02/fact-sheet-brain-initiative) Its key U.S. private-sector partner is Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that produced LSD for the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program in the 1960s. (see US patent 2997470, Richard P. Pioch, Purdue University, “Lysergic Acid Amides “, 1956-03-05)
Alexis was prescribed a sedative at the VA hospital in Providence after complaining about his mental-health issues and later went to the VA in Washington DC for a refill. (Navy Times, Sept.18) The psychiatrists at the NSA and CIA probably viewed Aaron Alexis as a dedicated and loyal agent who was starting to show signs of a nervous breakdown. He was not exceptional. The only thing that made him stand out was the espionage vulnerabilities associated with his work.
Thousands of people worldwide are suffering from the same symptoms, which can be attributed to microwave telecommunications networks, aperture radar and electronic warfare technology, including voices shouting commands to commit violence, the unbearable torture of screeching noises inside the skull, short-term memory loss and blackouts. (My extensive interviews with a Japanese imprisoned for stabbing a British professor who specializes in telepathy theory led to the correlation of his disorders with the introduction of microwave transceivers on for the Motorola digital mobile phone service to U.S. military bases in Okinawa and the British Telecom’s experiments with the TETRA system in London.)
These symptoms of electromagnetic-related psychological disorders are usually wrongly diagnosed as PTSD, resulting in drug treatment with antidepressants that eventually worsen the condition. (there are many critics among veterans group; a short summary is ast http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43994382/ns/health- health_care ) At first the supervisors will shrug off incidents like the Seattle tire shooting, sweeping the problem under the carpet with excuses, for instance, the errant serviceman’s overdrinking or having the blues over a sexual affair gone sour. As the symptoms worsen and become no longer treatable with drugs, the institutional response is to find a way to dispose of the victim.
Any electronics technician who is conversant with the codes, hardware and software used by intelligences agencies is either a prized asset or a serious liability. There can be no in-between.. For his overseers, transferring Alexis to the new HP operations at NSA West in Aurora was a high-risk proposition. The time had come for preventative measures.
Termination Papers
Despite the high salary, much of it untaxed, the double identity that comes with an intelligence career can make for a lonely existence. Every one of his social contacts would have been routinely investigated and vetted to reduce the potential for espionage and a subsequent security breach. Thus, Alexis avoided family visits, which accounts for why his sister’s husband had never met him in person. For that same reason, immediately after the Washington Navy Yard incident, the controlled mass media intensively interviewed his circle of Thai friends in Fort Worth to determine whether any secrets had been spilled during meditation retreat, an espionage technique used by the Aum Shinrikyo sect on Soviet weapons scientists. (A series of articles was published in the Japan Times Weekly, based on reports from the National Police Agency and interviews with Aum members,)
After his visit to the VA hospital in Newport, as Alexis showed worsening signs. His superiors would have come to a final decision. To allow him to be confined in a sanatorium or move abroad to Thailand was out of the question, due to the risk of discovery by civilian doctors, other patients, attorneys and foreign spies.
A man who knows much too much and cannot be helped might be deployed in other ways, as a fall guy for extrajudicial executions. On the morning of September 16, witnesses were reported in many media outlets as seeing two or three gunmen, one of them a black man of about 50 years of age, an unmistakable difference from the 34-year-old Alexis. The shorter stockier gunman was dressed in green fatigues and fired an AR-15.
When the FBI learned within several minutes that Alexis had rented the ArmaLite for two days only but did not purchase one from a gun store near his stepfather’s residence in Virginia, the AR-15 was dropped from media reports like a hot potato. The story was changed to a sawed-off Remington 12-gauge shotgun, a weapon that lacks an individual ballistic signature. Unlike a rifle bullet, buckshot leaves no traces on its pellets or inside the shotgun barrel.
Buckshot is, of course, not the ideal ordnance for a mass killing, as its lethality and accuracy are limited to close range. So far, no stories have emerged of Navy Yard victims with their heads blown off or intestines spilling out. Most were shot at some distance. The higher-pitched sounds of firing were reattributed to a pair of handguns he allegedly removed from two of his dead victims. It all adds up to an incoherent script, sloppily directed theater and poor gunnery, which in fact was not so imprecise. Most of the scriptwriters need to weeded out.
Lethal Price of National Security
Was the content of the brains of one man worth the killing of a dozen people? It’s worth far more than that to the intelligence services and their political masters. The elimination of a bunch of civilian employees nearing retirement is, if anything, a cost-saving measure for a military pinched by budget sequestration. Let the insurance companies carry the burden and save the money instead for another aircraft carrier. National security is sacrosanct, random people are expendable. As for the moral cost, nobody is innocent.
It is a fair assumption to suggest that among the dozen fatalities, one or more of the victims employed at some top-secret project at the Navy Yard was or were overdue for an exit. It is the proverbial case of killing two, three birds with one stone.
Why then has the CIA not yet terminated James Holmes as was done to Aaron Alexis? The neuroscientist remains alive because his scientific concepts are still marginally useful to the spymasters. Once the inquisitors are done squeezing out every drop of knowledge, the Joker, too, will meet his Maker. As precognition arrives with The Swarm, people will soon learn to become predictable at all times. Remember always: Silence is golden, obedience is platinum or you, too, could end up as collateral damage inside The Yard.
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Was the shooting a psyop with the additional advantage of getting rid of a potentially even more explosive leaker than Snowden?
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Holmes looked tidier on Monday than in the past. He had bright orange hair during his first court appearance and later had a bushy beard and unruly hair. On Monday, his beard was gone and his dark hair was combed neatly back. Cameras were not allowed in court Monday."
Back to the firing range:
"Man gets 25 years for Family Research Council shooting plot" by Jessica Gresko | Associated Press, September 20, 2013
WASHINGTON — A man who planned a mass shooting at the headquarters of a conservative Christian lobbying group in Washington last year was sentenced on Thursday to 25 years in prison for the plot that injured a security guard.
Floyd Corkins II was carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches and nearly 100 rounds of ammunition during the shooting at the headquarters of the Family Research Council. He later told authorities he planned to kill as many people as possible and to smear the sandwiches in his victims’ faces as a political statement. Chick-fil-A was making headlines at the time because of its president’s opposition to gay marriage, and the Family Research Council also opposes gay marriage.
During his sentencing hearing, Corkins apologized to the Family Research Council and the security guard he injured.
‘‘I realize resorting to violence to achieve a political end is never OK,’’ he said....
Unless you are a government.
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For some reason that shooting didn't get as much coverage from the propaganda pre$$.
"Gun-control advocates lose ground in the US; Despite recent shootings, fewer restrictions seen" by Reid Wilson | Washington Post, September 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — Nine months after the horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., advocates of stricter gun-control measures have had little luck in state legislatures across the country.
In fact, if the gun debate is reignited after another massacre claimed 12 victims this month at the Navy Yard in Washington, it will take place in a country with fewer restrictions on firearms than were in place a year ago.
Gun-control advocates had hoped to pass new legislation in states where Democrats control the legislature and governor’s office. But only a handful of blue states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, and New York — advanced substantive laws....
On the local level, more than three dozen county and city governments have revised bans on guns in certain public places at the behest of the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun-rights organization based in Washington state....
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From our cold dead hands.
Time to get moving:
"Sturm, Ruger opening N.C. plant" by Emery P. Dalesio | Associated Press, August 14, 2013
RALEIGH, N.C. — Sturm, Ruger & Co. said Tuesday that it aims to keep up with demand for its guns by opening a new factory in the small North Carolina community already home to America’s largest firearms maker.
Southport, Conn.-based Sturm, Ruger says it will open a new factory in Mayodan to meet firearm demand that has risen since Congress and some states sought to toughen gun controls. The community is already headquarters to Freedom Group, which owns Bushmaster, Remington, and other firearms brands.
That is what happens. You tell people they should not or can not have something and they want it even more.
The plant is expected to employ more than 470 workers in Rockingham County, where the unemployment rate is 10.3 percent. Sturm, Ruger could receive nearly $13 million in state tax breaks, employee training, infrastructure construction, and other incentives, a state Commerce Department spokesman said. Local governments are expected to contribute more sweeteners next month.
Sturm, Ruger makes semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles as well as traditional hunting rifles and pistols. It said last month that it wanted to open its third factory in a former Unifi Inc. textile plant in Mayodan, the company’s first major expansion in more than 25 years.
Related: Lack of workers hinders textiles rebound
I've stopped reading such agenda-pu$hing $hit, sorry.
Connecticut’s firearms industry has been embattled since 20 first-graders and six educators were killed in the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
The price of the hoax.
The state then adopted a package of gun control measures that are considered among the strictest in the nation. They include an expanded assault weapons ban, additional background checks on gun purchases and ammunition purchases, and a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines.
Sturm, Ruger said last month that second-quarter profit soared 79 percent on higher sales on strong demand for guns.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Full Magazine
In June, Connecticut gun manufacturer PTR Industries said it is moving to South Carolina after Connecticut state lawmakers passed stricter gun control laws. The company’s plant near Myrtle Beach will employ 140 people, many of whom will relocate from Connecticut over three years.
I'm sure that will help the economy.
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Who is supposed to be watching out for all the guns anyway?
"ATF lost track of 420m cigarettes" by STEPHEN BRAUN | Associated Press, September 26, 2013
WASHINGTON — Government agents acting without authorization conducted dozens of undercover investigations of illegal tobacco sales, misused some of $162 million in profits from the stings, and lost track of at least 420 million cigarettes, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Wednesday.
In one case, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sold $15 million in cigarettes and turned over $4.9 million in profits from the sales to a confidential informant — even though the agency did not properly account for the deal.
The ATF’s newly appointed director, B. Todd Jones, said the audit covered only selected, ‘‘historical’’ ATF investigations between 2006 and 2011, and said the agency had tightened its internal guidelines since then.
The audit described widespread lack of ATF oversight and inadequate paperwork in the agency’s ‘‘churning investigations,’’ undercover operations that use proceeds from illicit cigarette sales to pay for the ATF’s costs. The audit came as a new blow to an agency still reeling from congressional inquiries into its flawed handling of the Operation Fast and Furious weapons tracking probes in Mexico, Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz wrote in the 53-page audit....
Related: Fast and Furious Forgotten
Yeah, it's okay to flood Mexico's city streets with them (or Syrian streets, for that matter). Now hand yours over, American.
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They must have been on a smoke break.
Related: New Boston ATF head wants to focus on street-level violence
