OpEd News - October 5, 2017
Las Vegas Shooting
By Paul Craig Roberts
I don't know if the Las Vegas Shooting was a false flag attack, and if so, by who or for what purpose. I don't expect to ever know. A story is set in place by officials and media. The only way to ever know is to personally investigate. We would have to do the job that in former times would have been done by the press, but no more.
I don't know if the Las Vegas Shooting was a false flag attack, and if so, by who or for what purpose. I don't expect to ever know. A story is set in place by officials and media. The only way to ever know is to personally investigate. You would have to go to Las Vegas, examine the scene, ask questions of the hotel, investigate the answers if you get any, find and interview concert attendees who were shot, attend funerals and see bodies of those killed, speak to their families, learn about the weapon allegedly used, experience trying to shoot at targets far below and far away, compare the number of casualties with the recorded time of firing, and so forth. In other words, we would have to do the job that in former times would have been done by the press, but no more.
It is almost like the story is being kept from us. For example, from media reports that the event was just across the street from the hotel, I did not know that "across the street" was a distance of 390 yards (1,170 feet).
As I don't expect to ever have a confident opinion about what happened, I am not paying much attention to the mass shooting, or should I say alleged shooting. We are lied to and deceived so much that we can never tell when we are told the truth. It is like Dmitry Orlov says:
"Lies beget other lies, and pretty soon unbiased intelligence-gathering, rational analysis and proper mission planning become impossible.... a reputation for telling the truth can only be lost exactly once, and from then on the use of the phrase 'US intelligence sources' became synonymous with 'a conspiracy of barefaced liars...'
"Whatever message Washington and Western mass media are trying to push, a perfectly valid response is to point out all the times they have lied in the past, and to pose a simple question: When did they stop lying?"
Official explanations of such events as Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, and so forth, always throw up red flags, because the official explanations always studiously ignore contrary eyewitness and other evidence. Also, often there are not even smart phone videos of dead and wounded people. As far as I can tell, the bodies of 573 dead and wounded are absent in the Las Vegas video evidence. Considering the suspicion that such events cause, one would think the authorities would make a special effort to show the dead and wounded.
In other cases of mayhem, alleged bodies look like dummies or are covered and could be a pile of anything. The presence of crisis actors on the scene, as in the Boston Marathon Bombing, raise more questions. I remember when it was expected that police and media would investigate all evidence and clear away contradictions. Now all we get is an official story instantly ready and repeated endlessly by officials and media. This itself raises suspicions.
You will have to make up your own minds about Las Vegas. Here are some of the reported facts to consider:
The victims killed and wounded total 573. That number is the size of a military battalion. It is very difficult to turn an entire battalion into casualties with small arms fire even in a fierce combat situation. I don't know if it has ever happened. Can one person with no military training shooting down from 32 stories, which requires special sighting knowledge, at a distance of 390 yards -- the length of four football fields -- hit 573 people in a few minutes of firing? Jon Rappoport doesn't believe it.
Neither does the progressive Steve Lendman.
There are reports of multiple shooters.
There are reports of gun flashes from the 4th floor.
The windows on the hotel do not open and would require the glass to be broken.
Stephen Paddock doesn't fit the profile of a psychopath. Reports are he was a multimillionaire with airplanes and his own pilot. He enjoyed life. His brother is dumbfounded, said it makes no sense Stephen did the shooting.
The Mandalay Bay Hotel is reportedly a casino. If so, security cameras are everywhere. Why no videos of Stephen Paddock carrying in the many cases of 23 firearms and ammunition? How could maid service clean the room for three days and not see 23 firearms and their ammunition? Makes no sense.
Why 23 guns? The number is beyond superfluous. The large number almost suggests that the entire event is concocted as a gun control incident. The huge number of guns, the huge number of casualties. Finally, at last, enough "gun violence" to get gun control.
Skeptics are waiting to hear from the authorities how a person at such a distance managed to shoot so many people in such a short time and with what automatic rifle and caliber the deed was done. As this part of the story is especially difficult to believe, we will probably not get the explanation.
And it is not only the authorities and the presstitutes that truth is up against. There is also the lack of integrity in people with axes to grind. For example, Paul Street writing in CounterPunch says: "The Las Vegas massacre is just the latest in the Gun Lobby's long line of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil." The article is titled: "The NRA's Latest Terrorist Attack on U.S. Soil."
The gun control lobby has a massive vested interest in the official story. You can bet your life that the gun control lobby will ignore any and all problems associated with the official story. The story is exactly what they want in order to advance their cause.
As Paddock is a rich white male, the story also fits with Identity Politics. Paddock is another example of the evil white male. Here is the Identity Politics connection served up by the Washington Post: "All across America white men, some young, some of middle-age, are turning into wolves. Always, after they commit acts of terror, it is revealed out that these perpetrators were not men after all. They were beasts, mindless monsters whose evil was abstract and cold and terrible.
CNN says mass shootings are "a white man's problem." See "How America has silently accepted the Rage of White Men."
People are more interested in confirming their beliefs and prejudices than they are in the truth. If Paddock were a Muslim, Islamophobic people would cling to the official account.
Truth requires that people believe in truth more than they believe in their own biases and causes. In the United States, such people are increasingly rare.
Remember always the Roman question: "Who benefits?" That is where you will find the answer.
UPDATE: Paddock's girlfriend describes him as a "kind, caring, quiet" man who she envisioned a "quiet future" with. A woman knows a man. Her description is not one of a psychopath.
I have spoken to more experienced persons rated experts including US Marine snipers. They don't believe a word of the official story. Will, once again, the experts be got rid of by branding them "conspiracy theorists" as was done to 3,000 architects and engineers who challenge the official story of 9/11?
Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments.
The Guardian – October 4, 2017
What's a 'Lone Wolf'? It's the special name we give white terrorists
The Las Vegas shooter seems to fit every definition of a terrorist—apart from being Muslim.
By Moustafa Bayoumi
We have a double standard in the United States when it comes to talking about terrorism. The label is reserved almost exclusively for when we’re talking about Muslims.
Consider Stephen Craig Paddock, the shooter in Sunday’s massacre in Las Vegas. Is he a terrorist? Well, the authorities aren’t calling him one, at least not yet.
This is all the more remarkable because Paddock’s actions clearly fit the statutory definition of terrorism in Nevada. That state’s law defines terrorism as “any act that involves the use or attempted use of sabotage, coercion or violence which is intended to cause great bodily harm or death to the general population.”
Paddock shot and killed at least 59 people and injured more than 500 others. If that doesn’t qualify as a textbook definition of Nevada’s terrorism law, I don’t know what does.
Yet, when asked at a press conference in Las Vegas if the shooting was an act of terrorism, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo replied: “No. Not at this point. We believe it’s a local individual. He resides here locally,” suggesting that all terrorism is foreign in nature.
Lombardo didn’t call Paddock a terrorist, but he did label him a “lone wolf,” which in our lexicon is the special name we use for “white-guy terrorist.”
Nor is this oversight limited to Lombardo. Las Vegas’ mayor, Carolyn Goodman, also described Paddock not as a terrorist but as “a crazed lunatic, full of hate.” No doubt many other people will repeat the same sentiment in the days to come.
And Donald Trump, who craves every opportunity to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” avoided any mention of the word “terrorist” when discussing the tragic events of Sunday night.
Speaking from the White House, the president instead called the mass shooting “an act of pure evil.” Rather than offering sensible policy changes, such as greater gun control, the president had other ideas. He thinks we should pray more.
Paddock’s act though is, by definition, terrorism. Even under the stricter federal definition of terrorism, Paddock’s murderous rampage should qualify. The federal code defines “domestic terrorism” in part as “activities that appear intended to affect the conduct of government by mass destruction”. It’s hard, if not impossible, to understand how committing one of the largest mass shootings in American history is not “intended to affect the conduct of government”.
But one reason, beyond outright racism, why white people are less frequently charged with terrorism than Muslims in the United States lies with the little-known fact that while federal law does define “domestic terrorism”, it does not codify “domestic terrorism” as a federal crime. (At least 33 states do, however, have anti-terror legislation.) This is partly out of concern that such a statute could go a long way toward criminalizing thought and trampling on the first amendment.
Federal law does contain “hate crime” provisions, but in our present war on terror, it’s one thing to be convicted of “hate” and quite another of “terrorism”. Someone who hates is considered a bad person. Meanwhile, in the eyes of many, someone who is a terrorist doesn’t even deserve to be human.
What this legal reality translates into is a world where the vast majority of the high-profile terrorism prosecutions brought in this country, the ones announced by the justice department with great fanfare and heralding a safer future, basically never revolve around domestic terrorism.
This became clear recently when the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, surprisingly said that the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia at the hands of a white nationalist sympathizer constituted “domestic terrorism”. But lawyers repeatedly pointed out that at the federal level, domestic terrorism “doesn’t constitute an independent crime or trigger heightened penalties”, according to the website justsecurity.org.
Instead, the high-profile terrorism cases that do trigger heightened penalties are the foreign terrorism cases that almost always involve Muslims, especially since the justice department’s prosecutions of international terrorism is determined by a list of some 60 designated “foreign terrorist organizations”, most of whom are active in Muslim-majority countries. Even material support cases directly related to domestic terrorism are rarely prosecuted in federal court.
A bias, in other words, is embedded in the structure of our laws and how we prosecute them. Foreign terrorism prosecutions put the focus on Muslims and foreign conflicts, while domestic terrorism gets downplayed in our federal courts.
Any predisposition one may have already had that it’s Islam that produces terrorism is thus repeatedly reinforced in who gets prosecuted under our laws. And those attitudes, bolstered by the law, become mainstream in our news media, on our television screens, and in our day-to-day conversations with friends and neighbors.
But in the United States far more people, by orders of magnitude, are killed by gun violence than terrorism carried out in the name of Islam. We just don’t pay attention.
In 2017 alone, there have been 273 mass shootings, about one a day, and 11,671 deaths due to gun violence, according to Gun Violence Archive. Those numbers may surprise you. They did me, and they’re abysmal.
In our society, the federal government often directs the attentions of the people through their policies and priorities. Today, especially under Donald Trump, federal authorities seem even less interested in talking about domestic terrorism.
When a mosque in Minnesota was bombed earlier this year, for example, the White House didn’t even bat an eyelid. Meanwhile, acts like Trump’s Muslim ban reinforce the idea that anyone, anyone at all who comes from one of the barred countries – almost all of whom are Muslim-majority – ought to be considered a security threat.
We should explain to our government that the interests of justice are served when the terrorism label is fairly and accurately applied.
We should point out to the government that, in their zeal to make the country safe from outsider threats, they are enabling domestic threats to proliferate. And we must hope that this administration in particular will see our warnings as a caution and not as a plan.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/lone-wolf-white-terrorist?akid=16166.286054.hl2D-l&rd=1&src=newsletter1083399&t=7
How America has silently accepted the rage of white men?
By Naaz Modan
In fact, America has been here 273 times in 2017 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which compiles deaths and injuries from shooting incidents and defines a mass shooting as any incident where four or more people are wounded or killed. According to their tally, there have also been 11,698 deaths as a result of gun violence so far this year. Between 2001 and 2014, 440,095 deaths by firearms occurred on US soil, while deaths by terrorism during those years numbered 3,412. Today, America faces approximately one mass shooting per day on average.
Mass shootings are a violent epidemic that have been met with fatal passivity for far too long. If mass shootings were perpetrated mostly by brown bodies, this would quickly be reframed and reformed as an immigration issue. If thousands died at the hands of black men, it would be used to excuse police brutality, minimize the Black Lives Matter movement and exacerbate the "raging black man" stereotype. If mass shooters identified as Muslim, it would quickly become terrorism and catalyze defense and security expenditures.
But this is a white man's problem. According to an analysis by Mother Jones, out of 62 cases between 1982 and 2012 (a time period that would not include the actions of Dylann Roof or Stephen Paddock, among others), 44 of the killers were white men and only one was a woman. Since 1982, mass shootings in the United States have been committed by white men who are often labeled "lone wolves" or "psychologically impaired." As a result, the government that would otherwise be mobilizing its institutions to bring about reform remains a stalwart of the Second Amendment and mass shootings' greatest ally. An over-affinity for guns among white men, dangerous against any other backdrop, gets defended as patriotism by many conservatives or even as white pride by those on the alt-right.
In fact, according to a 2014 poll conducted by Fox News, nearly seven in 10 Republicans believed that gun ownership is patriotic. If espoused by other groups, this sentiment and this number might be considered threatening. Instead, it is welcomed in a way that many believe gives tacit encouragement to potential mass shooters.
Make no mistake: this is war culture that has dressed up as Uncle Sam and embedded itself into the American psyche. Any other path -- let's say, for example, abortion or foreign-born terror -- that led to the destruction of life on this level would be attacked as violently opposed to American values. But because this culture is embraced by the race and party that controls the government, it continues to be celebrated and defended in the spirit of love of country.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/03/opinions/mass-shootings-white-male-rage-modan-opinion/index.html
Was Las Vegas another false flag?
by Stephen Lendman
The official narrative leaves much to be desired – conclusions drawn much too quickly, a disturbing red flag. Even Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade and Columbo needed time to solve murder mysteries.
On October 1, a mass shooting targeted the city’s Harvest country music festival.
Police claimed a lone gunman opened fire on the crowd from the Mandalay Bay hotel across Las Vegas Blvd., 390 yards away – 64-year-old Stephen Paddock called the perpetrator, found dead in his room.
Police claimed it was from a self-inflicted wound. Dead men tell no tales, Paddock conveniently unable to tell his side of the story.
Gunfire reportedly continued intermittently for around 10 minutes. Around two dozen firearms were found in Paddock’s 32nd floor room, including AR-15-style and AK-47-style rifles – two mounted on tripods, equipped with telescopic sights.
Two bump stocks was also found, devices letting semi-automatic weapons fire nearly as fast as fully-automatic assault ones, illegal in America since 1986.
The US army defines assault rifles as “short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachinegun and rifle cartridges. Assault rifles have mild recoil characteristics and, because of this, are capable of delivering effective full-automatic fire at ranges up to 300 meters (328 yards).”
The Mandalay Hotel was 390 yards from the concert venue. Nearly 600 people were killed or wounded in the attack.
It defies imagination to believe a 64-year-old man on his own could cause so much carnage in around 10 minutes of intermittent firing – about one casualty per second from a distance beyond the accurate range of the weapon or weapons used at night.
Paddock reportedly was a wealthy retired accountant, a frequent Las Vegas gambler. His brother Eric called him an ordinary guy, “not an avid gun guy (with) no military background…”
“There is no reason we can imagine why Stephen would do something like this.” No motive exists for the rampage, no explanation of how an arsenal of weapons were brought into the hotel unnoticed.
Paddock checked into the Mandalay hotel on Thursday, September 28, three days before Sunday’s incident. Yet housekeeping found nothing unusual in his room.
A weapons arsenal can’t be easily concealed. Even in satchels disassembled they’d look out-of-the-ordinary, so much luggage for one person for a short stay.
Raw video footage showed muzzle flashes from the 4th floor, not the 32nd where Paddock was staying.
The official story reported soon after the incident makes no sense, sounding more like an implausible grade B film than reality.
Most Americans are uninformed, out-of-touch and indifferent to horrors committed by their country, unable to distinguish between facts and fiction.
Virtually all instances of headline-making alleged threats or violent incidents are polar opposite how they’re portrayed.
False flags are a longstanding US tradition, originating in the mid-19th century, 9/11 the mother of them all.
Las Vegas appears the latest, clearly a well-orchestrated incident, likely planned well in advance of last Sunday, each time convenient patsies used, most people none the wiser.
Fear-mongering is used to convince people to sacrifice fundamental freedoms for greater security, not realizing that sacrificing one for the other assures losing both.
False flags are pretexts for militarism, wars, occupations, colonization, resource theft, and exploiting populations for profit – along with enacting police state legislation, facilitating state-sponsored ruthlessness, loss of fundamental freedoms the main domestic casualty.
Will Las Vegas be used for a greater assault on core constitutional rights, heading things toward possible martial law and suspending the nation’s founding document?
Will it be easier to escalate ongoing wars and launch new ones? Forget about gun control, no chance whatever of it being addressed legislatively.
Consider the irony. Trump banned travel to America from targeted predominantly Muslim countries, ordinary civilians there threatening no one when the real danger Americans face is home-grown.
It’s not Stephen Paddock or other convenient patsies blamed for state-sponsored crimes. It’s rogue elements running things in Washington.
Odds are they’re responsible for slaughter in Las Vegas. More evidence is needed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Stephen Lendman was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.
http://stephenlendman.org/2017/10/las-vegas-another-false-flag/
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