Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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Now, About Jared [Lee] Laughner . . .

 

COMMENT: In the wake of the shoot­ing in Ari­zona, many unan­swered (and often unasked) ques­tions sug­gest them­selves. To do jus­tice to the event will require more time and analy­sis than can be put into a Food For Thought post.

Suf­fi­cient analy­sis and dis­cus­sion will nec­es­sar­i­ly have to wait for a For The Record pro­gram and atten­dant descrip­tion.

In the mean­time, some of the salient ques­tions and points of inves­ti­ga­tion can be gleaned by fol­low­ing the links below:

1. Was there more than one per­son involved (per­haps a sec­ond shoot­er or “han­dler”)?

2. Was the  tar­get­ing of Gif­fords, who is Jew­ish, par­tial­ly or whol­ly inspired by Laugh­n­er’s alleged con­tacts with anti-Semit­ic online infor­ma­tion?

3. Much pub­lic­i­ty has been afford­ed Ari­zon­a’s immi­gra­tion laws, which (despite much offi­cial con­dem­na­tion) have inspired sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in oth­er states. Ari­zona neo-Nazi ele­ments have gar­nered pub­lic­i­ty “enforc­ing” the bor­der with Mexico–some of these ele­ments are asso­ci­at­ed with Ari­zona politi­cians who helped craft the immi­gra­tion law.

Was  Laugh­n­er per­haps inspired by racist/an­ti-immi­grant phi­los­o­phy?

4. Inter­net chat­ter has–predictably–featured Laughner/mind con­trol dis­cus­sion, alleg­ing that Our Boy may have been a vic­tim of the mind con­trol pro­grams that were under­tak­en and real­ized  by U.S. and oth­er intel­li­gence agen­cies.

In that con­text, it should be men­tioned that var­i­ous racist/­Naz­i/white-suprema­cist groups have been used as foot sol­diers by ele­ments of our nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. (Arti­cles from the mid-1980’s in the main­stream press report­ed that groups of that kind were seek­ing to acquire mind con­trol tech­nol­o­gy. This was in the pre-Inter­net era.)

Laugh­n­er’s attor­ney of the moment had pre­vi­ous­ly defend­ed Unabomber Ted Kaczyn­s­ki, who may well have been a vic­tim of phas­es of fed­er­al mind con­trol pro­grams exe­cut­ed under the aus­pices of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.

5. Is Laugh­n­er actu­al­ly fak­ing men­tal ill­ness in order to escape pros­e­cu­tion for his crimes?

6. Accounts of Laugh­n­er’s ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion have pro­duced what appears to be some­thing of an “ide­o­log­i­cal piz­za,” fea­tur­ing an amal­gam of pri­mar­i­ly right-wing views, mixed in with what are viewed as pri­mar­i­ly “lib­er­al” stances. One of the more intrigu­ing con­sid­er­a­tions con­cern­ing Laugh­n­er involves his appar­ent inter­est in the Zeit­geist movie, a 9/11 “Truth” pro­duc­tion that mix­es some valid infor­ma­tion with vari­ants on the tra­di­tion­al “Inter­na­tion­al Bank­ing Con­spir­a­cy” i.e. “Da Joos.”

A big hit on the Inter­net and gar­ner­ing a large fol­low­ing with­in the so-called “pro­gres­sive” polit­i­cal sec­tor, the doc­u­men­tary fea­tures promi­nent fas­cists and right-wingers, includ­ing Antho­ny Hilder (who fig­ures in the inves­ti­ga­tions of the Kennedy broth­ers and Mar­tin Luther King) and G. Edward Grif­fin, a John Birch Soci­ety offi­cer who’s oth­er polit­i­cal cred­its include work­ing for George Wal­lace and the Amer­i­can Inde­pen­dent Par­ty.

7. Debate has cen­tered large­ly on whether Laugh­n­er was real­iz­ing the agen­da of the Sarah Palin/Tea Par­ty branch of the GOP or whether he was insane. One need­n’t be sane in order to be moti­vat­ed by a polit­i­cal agen­da.

As many have point­ed out, the rhetoric of the GOP has been point­ed­ly incen­di­ary and elim­i­na­tion­ist. Although that may not have pushed Laugh­n­er over the edge, it may well have deter­mined his selec­tion of a tar­get.

In what Bill Clin­ton accu­rate­ly described as a “fact-free envi­ron­ment,” com­men­ta­tors have pre­dictably remained blind to the GOP’s his­tor­i­cal link with Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments. The most salient of those is the Nazi wing of the GOP’s eth­nic out­reach appa­ra­tus–a repos­i­to­ry for unre­con­struct­ed Third Reich alum­ni.

Our jour­nal­is­tic estab­lish­ment con­tin­ues to remain blind to the lega­cy of polit­i­cal mur­der in the Unit­ed States. With “lone nuts” hav­ing sup­pos­ed­ly authored the mur­ders of the Kennedy broth­ers, Mar­tin Luther King and many, less­er-known Demo­c­ra­t­ic and pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal fig­ures, we have cho­sen to be “Not-Sees,” to the great delight of the Nazis.

The poseurs of the right who claim that the GOP is not an advo­cate of polit­i­cal vio­lence are giv­en the  lie by irrefutable links between the GOP and our major polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, in par­tic­u­lar.

Discussion

15 comments for “Now, About Jared [Lee] Laughner . . .”

  1. Dave, thank you so much for putting this out there........people need to know this stuff. =)

    Posted by Steven | January 15, 2011, 9:13 pm
  2. You set the scene for an excel­lent show again, Dave Emory. The points that you touch here are right on tar­get and express the COMPLEXITY of the sit­u­a­tion. I am eager to hear you analyse all this. I take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to men­tion that I am work­ing on a web­site. It is a blog in which I am try­ing to bring togeth­er every­thing that we have to mas­ter in order to have a good under­stand­ing of the world in which we live, and to fight back. I am in no way pre­tend­ing that it could be as good as yours, but at least I am doing some­thing to join the fight. When you feel like it, take a look and leave a com­ment. I will read you with plea­sure.

    Have a great day and thanks again for every­thing you have done for the Resis­tance.

    Posted by Claude | January 16, 2011, 3:48 pm
  3. Lough­n­er’s posts on some game board as “Dare” may be combed for what­ev­er you want to find: http://www.earthempires.com/jared-loughner-arizona-shooter-posts

    Posted by Hornet Montana | January 16, 2011, 8:15 pm
  4. I would like to know who in the polit­i­cal peck­ing order would be a more impor­tant tar­get- a Rep. or a Fed­er­al Judge. I won­der also if the mas­sacres south of the bor­der have any­thing to do with the assas­si­na­tion of a judge who had drug task force expe­ri­ence. I would also like to know how and why Judge Roll got to the event, who may have spo­ken with him to con­vince him to go.

    Posted by bluemoon | January 20, 2011, 8:02 pm
  5. What about James Holmes and the hor­ri­ble vio­lence of the Col­orado Masacre? Is there a chance he is not just a men­tal­ly ill, lone nut?

    Posted by GK | July 22, 2012, 12:47 am
  6. Jovan Belch­er is the Kansas City Chiefs NFL Play­er who killed his girlfriend/mother of his 3 month old baby this week­end and then com­mit­ted sui­cide.

    The Chiefs are owned by the Hunt Fam­i­ly, which as I recall from
    Mr. Emory’s Broad­casts had appar­ent links to the Kennedy Assas­i­na­tion and the Amer­i­can Far Right.

    Belch­er while in col­lege was in a group, Male Ath­letes Against Vio­lence, and majored in child devel­op­ment. Many of the arti­cles I read about this con­tained ref­er­ences to increased calls for gun con­trol.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/chiefs/2012/12/01/jovan-belcher-kansas-city-chiefs-murder-suicide-maine-reaction/1739251/

    Posted by GK | December 2, 2012, 10:43 pm
  7. There’s been an exten­sive focus on how the New­town, CT, shoot­er was a shy lon­er with Asperg­er’s Syn­drome. It’s a per­son­al­i­ty type that is not asso­ci­at­ed with vio­lence and does­n’t real­ly explain the shooter’s report­ed inabil­i­ty to feel pain(there’s some­times height­ened pain resis­tance for those on the autis­tic spec­trum but the inabil­i­ty to feel pain is not nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Asperg­er’s). And now there are calls for a rethink­ing of men­tal health civ­il lib­er­ties with a pre­sumed focus now on shy, awk­ward young men that don’t quite ‘fit in’...because, you know, a pub­lic cam­paign that asso­ciates shy nerdi­ness with mass mur­der isn’t going to warp the devel­op­ment of an entire gen­er­a­tion of geeks or any­thing.

    Giv­en that the focus an the shooter’s appar­ent Asperg­er’s Syn­drome (with­out much of a look at oth­er dis­or­ders that could have co-exist­ed in this indi­vid­ual) is poten­tial­ly lead­ing to a men­tal-ill­ness phish­ing envi­ron­ment where ‘lon­ers’ viewed as height­ened social risks, there’s been a curi­ous lack of cov­er­age of the fact that Adam Lan­za was on the con­tro­ver­sial antipsy­chot­ic med­ica­tion, Fanapt:

    NY Mag­a­zine
    12/16/2012 at 11:02 PM
    Asperger’s Is a Red Her­ring to Explain the New­town Mas­sacre

    By Adam Mar­tin

    Friends of Nan­cy Lan­za, the moth­er of New­town shoot­ing sus­pect Adam Lan­za, told 60 Min­utes on Sun­day that he suf­fered from Asperg­er’s syn­drome, and that deal­ing with the con­di­tion dom­i­nat­ed both their lives. It’s already been report­ed that Lan­za report­ed­ly had the con­di­tion, but there’s no evi­dence it had any effect on his ram­page. As the nation sets out to under­stand how Fri­day’s mas­sacre came to pass, some are right­ly wor­ried that the high-func­tion­ing form of autism will become unfair­ly stig­ma­tized.

    Adam Lan­za­’s moth­er had been increas­ing­ly con­cerned over her son’s well-being in the weeks before the tragedy, telling a friend just a week before that he was “get­ting worse” and that “she was los­ing him,” the New York Dai­ly News report­ed. That report makes no men­tion of Asperg­er’s syn­drome, but it cites Adam’s uncle who said he was tak­ing an anti-psy­chot­ic drug called Fanapt. The Atlantic points out that sev­er­al diag­noses have been bandied about in the press, includ­ing autism, Asperg­er’s, and “per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der.”
    ...

    In a dark coin­ci­dence, Fanapt was reject­ed for use in schiz­o­phre­nia treat­ment by Euro­pean Med­i­cines Agency’s Com­mit­tee for Med­i­c­i­nal Prod­ucts for Human Use (CHMP) because of con­cerns over it’s safe­ty on the same day of the shoot­ing.

    Peo­ple with Asperg­er’s Sny­drome are not nor­mal­ly placed on antipsy­chot­ic med­ica­tions and there was clear­ly some­thing else going on with the shooter’s men­tal state. The Fanapt pre­scrip­tion (and the med­ical records that pre­sumbly exist when he was pre­scribed the drug) might explain what that ‘some­thing else’ could have been. Obvi­ous­ly, it’s just as impor­tant for the media to point out that the vast vast major­i­ty of those on pow­er­ful psy­chotrop­ic med­ica­tions and/or are suf­fer­ing from a seri­ous men­tal ill­ness like schiz­o­phre­nia are also almost always non-vio­lent and tend to suf­fer in silence and inflict any vio­lent acts towards them­selves. With the ever grow­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans on some sort of psy­chotrop­ic drug the non-vio­lent nature of these indi­vid­u­als is an empir­i­cal real­i­ty. But to ignore the pres­ence of anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tions in this cock­tail of tragedy and talk only about the shooter’s Asperg­er’s Syn­drome as we try to make sense of it all is not going to help any­one. OK, almost any­one.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 17, 2012, 10:05 am
  8. Just a cor­rec­tion:
    It looks like the “Uncle” in the The NYMagazine arti­cle that made a ref­er­ence to the shoot­er being on a Fanapt pre­scrip­tion was a well-known a hoax­er named Johnathan Lee Rich­es and all ref­er­ences to him have been stripped from the orig­i­nal arti­cle. This is only one of a num­ber of hoax cam­paigns swirling around this event. Note that the shooter’s babysit­ter, Ryan Kraft, said that he knew the shoot­er was on med­ica­tion as ear­ly as age 10(although we had no idea those med­ica­tions were) while the lat­est reports from the police are that there is no evi­dence of med­ica­tion while acknowl­edg­ing that they have yet to obtain any med­ical records so the ques­tion still remains as to what med­ica­tion he may have been on in the lead up to this event. Giv­en that the nation­al pol­i­cy response this this tragedy appears to be mov­ing in a direc­tion of iden­ti­fy and “get­ting help” for those per­ceived to be “at risk”, we can be pret­ty sure that much of that “help” is going to come in the form of med­ica­tions. It would be a dark irony if an adverse reac­tion to a med­ica­tion played a role in an event that led to even more mass drug­ging of the the nation’s chil­dren.

    In a more gen­er­al sense, the US appears to be fac­ing a sit­u­a­tion where soci­ety much choose between some addi­tion gun con­trol OR some addi­tion “peo­ple con­trol” or both. And “peo­ple con­trol” appears to be cen­tral to the emerg­ing bipar­ti­san con­sen­sus. And this does­n’t sim­ply include pro­vid­ing more resources for the nation­al men­tal health sys­tem. I’ve been watch­ing quite of bit of the news coverage/punditocracy dis­cussing the nation­al response to this event and a theme that con­tin­ues to emerge is “because these indi­vid­u­als have no his­to­ry of vio­lence we’re going to have to have a sys­tem for iden­ti­fy­ing future mass mur­der­ers from the pool of non-vio­lent peo­ple that seem a lit­tle ‘off’ ”. Fox News, in par­tic­u­lar, has been real­ly push­ing the “he was a an awk­ward lon­er” angle. This might be a good time to remind folks of the fact that mass killers often desire the destruc­tion of the social fab­ric around them. Set­ting up a Minor­i­ty Report sys­tem for the nation’s awk­ward lon­ers is a won­der­ful first step in doing exact­ly that.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 18, 2012, 9:52 am
  9. @Dave
    At this point, what do you think the prob­a­bil­i­ty the alledged shoot­er, Aaron Alex­is, of today’s Navy Yard Attack in D.C. was a lone nut? Do the report­ed cir­cum­stances around the sto­ry raise any red flags, based on your many decades of research?

    Posted by GK | September 16, 2013, 9:39 pm
  10. Regard­ing the Wash­ing­ton Navy Yard shoot­ing, the mys­tery behind the dis­ap­pear­ing AR-15 and two addi­tion­al shoot­ers ini­tial­ly report­ed have sort of been cleared up. It sounds like it may have been miti­tary per­son­el respond­ing to the shoot­ing that were seen car­ry­ing the AR-15s. Police and fed­er­al agents were also amongst the respon­ders. So....WTF?

    Navy Yard: Swat team ‘stood down’ at mass shoot­ing scene
    By Deb­bie Siegel­baum BBC News, Wash­ing­ton
    18 Sep­tem­ber 2013 Last updat­ed at 14:37 ET

    One of the first teams of heav­i­ly armed police to respond to Mon­day’s shoot­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC was ordered to stand down by supe­ri­ors, the BBC can reveal.

    A tac­ti­cal response team of the Capi­tol Police, a force that guards the US Capi­tol com­plex, was told to leave the scene by a super­vi­sor instead of aid­ing munic­i­pal offi­cers.

    The Capi­tol Police depart­ment said senior offi­cials were inves­ti­gat­ing.

    Aaron Alex­is, 34, killed 12 peo­ple at the Wash­ing­ton Navy Yard.

    “I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say that some lives may have been saved if we were allowed to inter­vene,” a Capi­tol Police source famil­iar with the inci­dent told the BBC.

    Assault weapons ready

    A for­mer Navy reservist, Alex­is was work­ing as a tech­ni­cal con­trac­tor for the Navy and had a valid pass and secu­ri­ty clear­ance allow­ing him entry to the high­ly secure build­ing in south-east Wash­ing­ton DC.

    About 8:15 local time (12:15 GMT), Alex­is entered Build­ing 197, head­quar­ters for Naval Sea Sys­tems Com­mand, which builds and main­tains ships and sub­marines for the Navy, and opened fire.

    Armed with a shot­gun and a pis­tol he took from a guard he had shot, he sprayed bul­lets down a hall­way and fired from a bal­cony down on to work­ers in an atri­um.

    He fired on police offi­cers who even­tu­al­ly stormed the build­ing, and was lat­er killed in the shootout.

    Mul­ti­ple sources in the Capi­tol Police depart­ment have told the BBC that its high­ly trained and heav­i­ly armed four-man Con­tain­ment and Emer­gency Response Team (Cert) was near the Navy Yard when the ini­tial report of an active shoot­er came in about 8:20 local time.

    The offi­cers, wear­ing full tac­ti­cal gear and armed with HK-416 assault weapons, arrived out­side Build­ing 197 a few min­utes lat­er, an offi­cial with knowl­edge of the inci­dent told the BBC.

    ‘A dif­fer­ent out­come’

    Accord­ing to a Capi­tol Police source, an offi­cer with the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment (MPD), Wash­ing­ton DC’s main munic­i­pal force, told the Capi­tol Cert offi­cers they were the only police on the site equipped with long guns and request­ed their help stop­ping the gun­man.

    When the Capi­tol Police team radioed their supe­ri­ors, they were told by a watch com­man­der to leave the scene, the BBC was told.

    The gun­man, Aaron Alex­is, was report­ed killed after 9:00.

    Sev­er­al Capi­tol Police sources who spoke to the BBC asked to remain anony­mous for fear of reprisal.

    Capi­tol Police Offi­cer Jim Kon­c­zos, who leads the offi­cers’ union, said the Cert police train for what are known as active shoot­er sit­u­a­tions and are expert marks­men.

    “Odds are it might have had a dif­fer­ent out­come,” he said of Mon­day’s shoot­ing and the deci­sion to order the Cert unit to stand down. “It prob­a­bly could have been neu­tralised.”

    A spokes­woman for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment, which pro­tects the city of Wash­ing­ton DC, said alle­ga­tions that a Capi­tol Police Cert team was on scene and lat­er stood down were “not true”.

    On Wednes­day, the Capi­tol Police said in a state­ment its lead­er­ship had “opened a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion into the alle­ga­tions”.

    “The [Capi­tol Police] offered and pro­vid­ed mutu­al sup­port and assis­tance at the Wash­ing­ton Navy Yard on Mon­day,” said spokes­woman Lt Kim­ber­ly Schnei­der.

    ‘A blind eye’

    Sen­ate Sergeant-at-Arms Ter­ry Gain­er, who over­sees the Capi­tol Police depart­ment, con­firmed offi­cials were pulling radio logs from Mon­day’s inci­dent and inter­view­ing the offi­cers involved.

    “It’s a very seri­ous alle­ga­tion and infer­ence to indi­cate that we were on scene and could have helped and were told to leave,” he said. “It crush­es me if that’s the case.”

    Mr Gain­er said that while the depart­men­t’s pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty was to pro­tect the Capi­tol com­plex, which hous­es the US Con­gress, that mis­sion did not allow it to turn a “blind eye” when asked for help.

    Alex­is had a his­to­ry of men­tal health prob­lems, pre­vi­ous gun-relat­ed brush­es with the law, and cita­tions for insub­or­di­na­tion.

    On Wednes­day, US Sec­re­tary of Defense Chuck Hagel acknowl­edged “there were a lot of red flags” in Alex­is’ back­ground that had been missed in the secu­ri­ty clear­ance process which ulti­mate­ly result­ed in his hav­ing access to the secure build­ing where he under­took the attack.

    ...

    Also note that those “red flags” in Alex­is’ back­ground include a report from Rhode Island police that Alex­is was get­ting harassed by three peo­ple that were pro­ject­ing voic­es and vibra­tions into his head using microwaves (note that voice-to-skull tech­nol­o­gy using microwaves has been report­ed­ly researched by the US mil­i­tary). That police report was passed along to the Navy Yard:

    U.S. Navy was warned that Wash­ing­ton shoot­er ‘heard voic­es’

    By Phil Stew­art and Scott Mal­one

    WASHINGTON/BOSTON | Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:43pm EDT

    (Reuters) — Rhode Island police warned the U.S. Navy last month that Wash­ing­ton Navy Yard gun­man Aaron Alex­is had report­ed “hear­ing voic­es,” rais­ing fur­ther ques­tions about how he gained secu­ri­ty clear­ance at the com­plex where he went on a shoot­ing ram­page.

    Offi­cials say Alex­is, a Navy con­trac­tor and for­mer Navy reservist, opened fire at the Naval Sea Sys­tems Com­mand on Mon­day, killing 12 peo­ple before police shot him dead.

    The shoot­ing — a mile and a half from the U.S. Capi­tol and three miles from the White House — sent shock­waves through Wash­ing­ton.

    The Pen­ta­gon said it would review secu­ri­ty at mil­i­tary instal­la­tions around the world and the White House promised to review stan­dards for fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors.

    A Defense Depart­ment Inspec­tor Gen­er­al’s report pub­lished on Tues­day revealed secu­ri­ty laps­es that allowed 52 con­vict­ed felons to gain access to Navy facil­i­ties because bud­get cuts had under­mined vet­ting.

    Mean­while, the U.S. cap­i­tal paused to remem­ber the vic­tims, aged 46 to 73, who includ­ed retirees, par­ents and a bird lover.

    Police in New­port, Rhode Island, were so con­cerned about Alex­is’ behav­ior on a busi­ness trip there in August that they alert­ed Navy police.

    Alex­is told police he believed peo­ple were fol­low­ing him and “send­ing vibra­tions into his body,” accord­ing to a New­port police report.

    He told police that he had twice moved hotels to avoid the noise he heard com­ing through the floor and the ceil­ing of his rooms, and that the peo­ple fol­low­ing him were using “some sort of microwave machine” to pre­vent him from sleep­ing.

    “Based on the naval base impli­ca­tions and the claim that the involved sub­ject, one (Aaron Alex­is) was ‘hear­ing voic­es,’ I made con­tact with the on-duty Naval Sta­tion police,” a New­port police offi­cer wrote, adding that he faxed his report of the inci­dent to Navy police.

    The New­port police report said Navy police had promised to check if Alex­is was in fact a naval base con­trac­tor.

    Asked for com­ment, a spokesman said the Navy was look­ing into the mat­ter, with­out con­firm­ing any details.

    In addi­tion, CNN report­ed that Alex­is had con­tact­ed two Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion hos­pi­tals recent­ly and was believed to be seek­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal help.

    “Ini­tial reports indi­cate that this is an indi­vid­ual who may have had some men­tal health prob­lems,” U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma told Span­ish-lan­guage net­work Tele­mu­n­do.

    “The fact that we do not have a firm enough back­ground check sys­tem is some­thing that makes us more vul­ner­a­ble to these kinds of mass shoot­ings.”

    The Navy gave Alex­is an hon­or­able dis­charge despite a series of eight to 10 mis­con­duct charges, rang­ing from traf­fic offens­es to dis­or­der­ly con­duct.

    SECURITY CLEARANCE

    Using a valid pass as an infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy con­trac­tor with a pri­vate com­pa­ny, Alex­is entered the Naval Sea Sys­tems Com­mand head­quar­ters with a shot­gun — bought legal­ly in Vir­ginia — and gained access to a hand­gun after he start­ed fir­ing, offi­cials said.

    He start­ed pick­ing off vic­tims in a cafe­te­ria from a fourth-floor atri­um, wit­ness­es said. Eight peo­ple were hurt, three with gun­shot wounds, before Alex­is was killed in a gun bat­tle with police.

    A U.S. defense offi­cial said a Nation­al Agency Check, a type of back­ground check, was com­plet­ed on Alex­is in August 2007 and he was deter­mined eli­gi­ble to han­dle “secret” mate­r­i­al in March 2008. Such clear­ances are valid for 10 years, mean­ing Alex­is had no need to renew his.

    Alex­is’ employ­er said it had enlist­ed a ser­vice to make what appeared to be two stan­dard, employ­ment back­ground checks on him over the past year, find­ing only a traf­fic vio­la­tion while twice con­firm­ing his “secret”-level secu­ri­ty clear­ance with the U.S. Defense Depart­ment.

    “The lat­est back­ground check and secu­ri­ty clear­ance con­fir­ma­tion were in late June of 2013 and revealed no issues oth­er than one minor traf­fic vio­la­tion,” The Experts, an infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, said in a state­ment.

    ...

    And now we’re learn­ing about mes­sage carved into the shooter’s gun say­ing “My ELF weapon”. ELF pre­sum­ably stands for “extreme­ly low fre­quen­cy”, usu­al­ly in ref­er­ence to an elec­tro­mag­net­ic wave (so an elec­tro­mag­net­ic wave like a microwave but a much low­er fre­quen­cy) lead­ing to spec­u­la­tion that he may have thought ELF tech­nol­o­gy was being used to harass him. Or maybe it’s a HAARP ref­er­ence:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post
    Offi­cials: Navy Yard shoot­er carved odd mes­sages into his gun before car­nage

    By Sari Hor­witz, Rachel Wein­er and Michael Laris,
    Updat­ed: Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 18, 11:52 AM

    Aaron Alex­is carved bizarre phras­es on the stock of his shot­gun before he killed 12 peo­ple at the Wash­ing­ton Navy Yard on Mon­day, and inves­ti­ga­tors are hop­ing the words pro­vide clues to what prompt­ed the shoot­ing, two law enforce­ment offi­cials said.

    The phras­es were “Bet­ter off this way” and “My ELF weapon,” accord­ing to the offi­cials, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing.

    The offi­cials cau­tioned they do not yet know what, if any­thing, Alex­is meant in the etch­ings.

    ELF gen­er­al­ly stands for “extreme­ly low fre­quen­cy” and can refer to weath­er or com­mu­ni­ca­tions efforts, among oth­er things.

    Alex­is, who was bat­tling men­tal health issues, told police in Rhode Island in August that he was hear­ing voic­es of three peo­ple who had been sent to fol­low him and keep him awake and were using “some sort of microwave machine” to send vibra­tions into his body, pre­vent­ing him from falling asleep, accord­ing to police reports.

    The law enforce­ment offi­cials said they do not know whether he was refer­ring to those vibra­tions in his carv­ings. The Navy has used extreme­ly low fre­quen­cies in sev­er­al capac­i­ties, includ­ing a joint effort with the Air Force on the High Fre­quen­cy Active Auro­ral Research Pro­gram (HAARP). HAARP is often cit­ed by con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists.

    Mean­while, in New York, Alexis’s moth­er expressed sor­row Wednes­day for her son’s car­nage.

    “Our son Aaron Alex­is has mur­dered twelve peo­ple and wound­ed sev­er­al oth­ers. His actions have had a pro­found and ever­last­ing effect on the fam­i­ly of these vic­tims,” Cath­leen Alex­is said in a state­ment read by a Brook­lyn pas­tor.

    “I don’t know why he did what he did and I’ll nev­er be able to ask him why. Aaron is in a place where he can no longer do harm to any­one. For that I am glad. To the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims, I am so very sor­ry that this hap­pened. My heart is bro­ken.”

    The family’s state­ment came as mil­i­tary offi­cials con­tin­ued to react to short­com­ings in the back­ground check sys­tem that allowed Alex­is access to mil­i­tary instal­la­tions despite his self-described men­tal prob­lems and a series of encoun­ters with law enforce­ment.

    Adm. Jonathan W. Green­ert, who serves as chief of naval oper­a­tions and was evac­u­at­ed from his Navy Yard res­i­dence short­ly after shots were fired in Monday’s dead­ly ram­page, told a con­gres­sion­al hear­ing on seques­tra­tion Wednes­day that any vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that may exist in secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures are unre­lat­ed to cost-con­trol mea­sures cit­ed in a recent Defense Depart­ment Inspec­tor General’s report.

    “We don’t cut bud­getary cor­ners for secu­ri­ty,” Green­ert told law­mak­ers.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 18, 2013, 1:00 pm
  11. On the same day of the Navy Yard Attack a man was arrest­ed for throw­ing fire crack­ers over the fence of the White House.

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/firecrackers-prompt-white-house-lockdown/story?id=20274545

    Was this a delib­er­ate orhes­trat­ed wan­rn­ing aimed at Oba­ma?

    With the 50th Aniver­sary of the JFK Assas­i­na­tion com­ing up, the coun­try being so divid­ed, and “lone nuts” run­ning around Wash­ing­ton D.C. caus­ing hav­oc and may­hem, I am def­i­nite­ly con­cerned for our pres­i­den­t’s safe­ty, and I sus­pect Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is too.

    Posted by GK | September 20, 2013, 5:19 am
  12. Worth post­ing again:

    Voice to Skull Tech­nol­o­gy in New York
    Decem­ber 12th, 2007

    Via: AdAge:

    New York­er Ali­son Wil­son was walk­ing down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman’s voice right in her ear ask­ing, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” She looked around to find no one in her imme­di­ate sur­round­ings. Then the voice said, “It’s not your imag­i­na­tion.”
    Indeed it isn’t. It’s an ad for “Para­nor­mal State,” a ghost-themed series pre­mier­ing on A&E this week. The bill­board uses tech­nol­o­gy man­u­fac­tured by Holoson­ic that trans­mits an “audio spot­light” from a rooftop speak­er so that the sound is con­tained with­in your cra­ni­um. The tech­nol­o­gy, ide­al for muse­ums and libraries or envi­ron­ments that require a qui­et atmos­phere for iso­lat­ed audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For ran­dom passers­by and res­i­dents who have to walk unwit­ting­ly through the area where the voice will pen­e­trate their inner peace, it’s anoth­er sto­ry.
    Ms. Wil­son, a New York-based styl­ist, said she expect­ed the voice inside her head to be some type of cre­ative project but could see how oth­ers might per­ceive it dif­fer­ent­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly on a late-night stroll home. “I might be a lit­tle freaked out, and I wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think it’s com­ing from that bill­board,” she said.
    Joe Pom­pei, pres­i­dent and founder of Holoson­ics, said the creepy approach is key to draw­ing atten­tion to A&E’s show. But, he not­ed, the tech­nol­o­gy was designed to avoid adding to noise pol­lu­tion. “If you real­ly want to annoy a lot of peo­ple, a loud­speak­er is the best way to do it,” he said. “If you set up a loud­speak­er on the top of a build­ing, everybody’s going to hear that noise. But if you’re only direct­ing that sound to a spe­cif­ic view­er, you’re nev­er going to hear a neigh­bor com­plaint from street ven­dors or pedes­tri­ans. The whole idea is to spare oth­er peo­ple.”
    Holoson­ics has part­nered with a cable net­work once before, when Court TV imple­ment­ed the tech­nol­o­gy to pro­mote its “Mys­tery Whis­per­er” in the mys­tery sec­tions of select book­stores. Mr. Pom­pei said the com­pa­ny also has test­ed retail deploy­ments in gro­cery stores with Proc­ter & Gam­ble and Kraft for cus­tomized audio mes­sag­ing. So a cus­tomer, for exam­ple, look­ing to buy laun­dry deter­gent could sud­den­ly hear the sound of gur­gling water and thus feel com­pelled to buy Tide as a result of the son­ic expe­ri­ence.
    Mr. Pom­pei con­tends that the tech­nol­o­gy will take time for con­sumers to get used to, much like the lights on dig­i­tal sig­nage and illu­mi­nat­ed bill­boards did when they were first used. The web­site Gawk­er post­ed an item about the bill­board last week with the head­line “Schiz­o­phre­nia is the new ad gim­mick,” and asked “How soon will it be until in addi­tion to the do-not-call list, we’ll have a ‘do not beam com­mer­cial mes­sages into my head’ list?”
    “There’s going to be a cer­tain pop­u­la­tion sen­si­tive to it. But once peo­ple see what it does and hear for them­selves, they’ll see it’s effec­tive for get­ting atten­tion,” Mr. Pom­pei said.

    http://cryptogon.com/?p=1713

    —————————————

    Sky Deutsch­land to broad­cast adverts direct­ly into train pas­sen­gers’ heads
    Sky Deutsch­land has devel­oped tech­nol­o­gy to trans­fer adverts from train win­dows direct­ly and silent­ly into com­muters’ heads.

    By Andrew Trot­man
    5:44PM BST 03 Jul 2013
    320 Com­ments
    Pas­sen­gers lean­ing their head against the win­dow will “hear” adverts “com­ing from inside the user’s head”, urg­ing them to down­load the Sky Go app.

    The pro­pos­al involves using bone con­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy, which is used in hear­ing aids, head­phones and Google’s Glass head­set, to pass sound to the inner ear via vibra­tions through the skull.

    A video for the Talk­ing Win­dow cam­paign released by Sky Deutsch­land and ad agency BBDO Ger­many states: “Tired com­muters often rest their heads against win­dows. Sud­den­ly a voice inside their head is talk­ing to them. No one else can hear this mes­sage.”

    The voice comes from a Sky-brand­ed trans­mit­ter made by Audi­va that is attached to the train win­dow.

    BBDO spokesman Ulf Brych­cy told the BBC: “If our cus­tomer Sky Deutsch­land agrees, we will start with the new medi­um as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

    “Some peo­ple don’t like adver­tis­ing in gen­er­al. But this is real­ly a new tech­nol­o­gy. [It might] not only be used for adver­tis­ing, but also for music, enter­tain­ment, mass trans­port infor­ma­tion, weath­er reports and so on.”

    Sky Deutsch­land said it had not made a deci­sion on whether to launch the cam­paign.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/10158311/Sky-Deutschland-to-broadcast-adverts-directly-into-train-passengers-heads.html

    Posted by Swamp | September 20, 2013, 10:04 am
  13. @GK–

    I don’t know. There are plen­ty of things that could indi­cate mind con­trol by some sort of gov­ern­men­tal or pri­vate cor­po­rate enti­ty.

    The order for the SWAT-like team was a strange one. I won­der about some of the con­cerns expressed by a source that Stephen Sin­gu­lar men­tioned. He was con­tact­ed about the O.J. case by some­one with­in the L.A. legal struc­ture, who not­ed that “neo-Nazis aren’t just on the fringes of soci­ety any more. They are inside of the sys­tem and they are doing a great deal of dam­age.”

    Alex­is was vent­ed by the same USIS that cleared Eddie Snow­den.

    That firm used to be owned by Car­lyle, now some out­fit called Rhode Island Equi­ty Part­ners, or some­thing close to that (I’m oper­at­ing by mem­o­ry).

    Frankly, with so much else going on and hav­ing cov­ered these lone nut shoot­ers at time, over decades, I have nei­ther the time nor the inter­est to pur­sue this.

    There are many much more impor­tant things going on.

    It will be inter­est­ing to see if the psy­chopaths, fas­cists and out­right mon­sters in the GOP man­age to hold Oba­macare hostage to the bud­get ceil­ing.

    It will be inter­est­ing to see if the GOP winds up doing incal­cu­la­ble dam­age to the U.S. and glob­al economies in the process.

    It will be inter­est­ing to see if the lint­head­ed Amer­i­can pub­lic and the crack-whores of the work­ing press hold them to account.

    Again, there are plen­ty of oth­er things going on, includ­ing some I haven’t cov­ered.

    Now that I’m doing pro­gram pro­duc­tion again, I have less time for post­ing in the FFT cat­e­go­ry.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | September 20, 2013, 3:57 pm
  14. Some­thing to note regard­ing the Navy Yard shooter’s claims of microwave-based harass­ment is that it’s just one exam­ple of how cur­rent tech­nolo­gies can mim­ic men­tal ill­ness. 50 years ago some­one hear­ing voic­es in their head could­n’t rea­son­ably say that there was microwave voice-to-skull tech­nol­o­gy that was being used against them. Nowa­days, a sim­ple google search can con­firm with­in sec­onds that yes, indeed, this tech­nol­o­gy just might exists. So how does knowl­edge about the exis­tence of tech­nol­o­gy that can induce symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness­es like schiz­o­phre­nia impact its pro­gres­sion in vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als descend­ing into mad­ness? It’s a strange poten­tial side-effect of tech­nol­o­gy. With things like con­sumer holo­gram tech­nol­o­gy com­ing soon we might be enter­ing a peri­od where going mad is even more bewil­der­ing than nor­mal.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 21, 2013, 3:09 pm
  15. The lone nut Amer­i­can who just died fight­ing for Isis in Syr­ia had the unusu­al name Dou­glass MacArthur McCain. Any­body else curi­ous about this guys his­to­ry and his name?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/27/how-douglas-mcarthur-mccain-became-the-first-american-to-die-fighting-for-the-islamic-state/

    Posted by GK | August 30, 2014, 11:34 am

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