Sandy Hook One Year After

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By James F. Tracy

Originally published at the Memory Hole

As the nation approaches the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, mainstream media are predictably excluding from their tragedy porn any substantive analysis of the idiosyncratic, misleading, and in some cases flagrantly propagandistic reportage of the event that might call the official story into question.

As with a majority of scandals and coverups over the past several decades where powerful interests are implicated, American journalism has become more and more complicit if not actively involved in delivering dubious information that establishes a dominant narrative, while thereafter failing to vigorously interrogate and amend faulty coverage that leads to vast public misconceptions.

The assassination of JFK, the falsely-reported Tonkin Gulf incident that sparked the costly Vietnam War, and the similarly questionable events of 9/11 that have together brought the US to the present national and geopolitical impasse all come to mind. One is left to ponder how the behavior of a wholly government-controlled media system would differ from our corporate-run consciousness industry that routinely and shamelessly showboats its First Amendment protections.

The consequences of such a communication breakdown are vast, with countless lives and entire nations having been undermined and destroyed. Moreover, the “first drafts of history” become plagued by myth and distortion that eventually cohere as collective memory, thus robbing a people of their self-determination, nullifying their humanity, and ensuring that the cycle repeats interminably.

Those rationally dissenting from the official record and who occupy positions to alter public opinion are usually written off by establishment-controlled media outlets as “conspiracy theorists,” “wackos,” and so on. If such individuals cannot be neutralized through defamation or blackmail, and if they possess information or occupy positions where they are capable of posing a serious and immediate threat to official fictions and thus the power structure itself, they are prone to becoming oddly “suicidal,” (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), or are simply killed outright (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, and here and here).

What else won’t we see in the corporate media’s series of heart-tugging memorials devoted to the anniversary of Sandy Hook? The two most recent and obvious indications that the event itself is at the very least a coverup include, first, the wholly unreported story of the Obama administration’s $2.5 million payout (read: bribe) to state and local law enforcement agencies directly involved in responding to the incident, and second, what is by almost any measure the entirely illegal destruction of pertinent evidence in the demolition of the crime scene itself.

Empowered by the internet as their primary means of communication, a broad array of independent researchers have conduced an impromptu “truth commission” that together calls the Sandy Hook narrative presented by corporate news media into serious question. For those with eyes to see and the ability to think critically they have also shamed the mainstream journalists directly involved in (mis)representing the event to the American public.

Yet without a genuinely independent investigation of the incident apart from the oversight and influence of the [Governor Dannel] Malloy and Obama administrations, the broader public will likely never know what actually took place on December 14, 2012 in Newtown Connecticut. As has too often been the case throughout the last half century, the prospects are high that yet another “big lie” has again taken root in the ever-malleable and somnambulent public mind.

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“Economic Recovery” is Just Deceptive Statistics

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Whenever there’s a cheerful jobs report propagated by corporate news, many of us know they’re lying (because it just doesn’t correspond to reality) though we might not know exactly how the numbers they use decieve us. At Counterpunch.org, Paul Craig Roberts dissects some of the figures cited by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as support for claims of an economic recovery. For example, their payroll jobs report says that the US economy created 203,000 jobs in November. Since it takes about 130,000 new jobs each month to keep up with population growth, the remaining 70,000 of the jobs would have only slightly reduced the unemployment rate yet it supposedly fell from 7.3 to 7.0 which is too much. It turns out the payroll survey counts a person holding two jobs as if it were two employed persons, while the unemployment rate is calculated from the household survey, which counts a person holding two or more jobs as one job. Though the two figures are often reported together, they actually have no connection.

Payroll numbers can be skewed by seasonal hiring and because the birth-death model used to estimate the numbers of unreported business shutdowns and startups often underestimate the former and overestimate the latter. The unemployment rate figures are innacurate because it leaves out people who have given up on looking for work. The greater the number of discouraged workers there are, the lower the rate of unemployment, according to the BLS.

So exactly where and what are the 203,000 new payroll jobs created in November? Paul Craig Roberts breaks down the figures as reported by the BLS and discovered that the majority are lowly-paid, part-time, nontradable (non exportable) domestic service jobs including:

…retail trade with 22,300 jobs, transportation and warehousing with 30,500 jobs, temporary help services with 16,400 jobs, ambulatory health care services with 26,300 jobs, home health care services with 11,800 jobs, and the old reliable waitresses and bartenders with 17,900 jobs.

This is the jobs profile of the American super economy. It is the profile of India 30 or 40 years ago.

PCR continues his analysis by citing the work of statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com), who found more misstated jobs that could be attributed to the government shutdown and reopening, the birth-death model, and concurrent-seasonal-adjustment errors. According to Williams, whose figures include long-term discouraged workers who cannot find a job, the US unemployment rate is actually 23.2%.

Of course there’s no recovery with a 23.2% unemployment rate, but to keep stocks and bonds at all-time record high levels, the Federal Reserve is printing $1,000 billion new dollars annually, potentially creating an economic bubble. Despite these issues, the BLS estimated a third quarter GDP growth of 3.6%. Paul Craig Roberts challenges this claim with the following figures:

US real median household income has declined from $56,189 in 2007 to $51,371 in 2012, a decline of $4,818 or 8.6%. http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/us/

US real per capita income has declined from $29,554 in 2007 to $27,319 in 2012, a drop of $2,235 or 7.5%.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 1,277,000 fewer seasonally adjusted payroll jobs in November 2013 than in December 2007.

He concludes by asking:

How it is possible for the economy to have been in recovery since June 2009 (according to the National Bureau of Economic Research) and there are 1,277,000 fewer jobs today than existed six years ago prior to the recession?

How has real Gross Domestic Product recovered when jobs and real consumer incomes have not?

Talking About Mandela

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By Margaret Kimberley

Originally published at Black Agenda Report

Nelson Mandela belongs to history now. We should be able to look at his whole life, his whole record in perspective. That perspective ought to include who is praising Nelson Mandela nowadays and why.

Freedom Rider: Talking About Mandela

Nelson Mandela’s passing provides an important and rare opportunity for discussion of some very serious issues. We should not fear principled critique of people we admire but instead we have been treated to maudlin self-indulgence, useless idol worship and wrongheaded defense of Mandela’s memory.

Everyone looms large in death, and it is especially difficult to be truthful when a person of Mandela’s stature passes away. South Africa’s apartheid system was an international pariah, reviled by most of humanity and Mandela was the icon who it was hoped would bring it down forever.

Black Americans saw themselves in images of Sharpeville and Soweto. Mandela stood in for our assassinated leaders, political prisoners and victims of COINTELPRO. The South African struggle became our struggle and our chance to achieve what we were denied here at home. Of course Mandela’s release from 27 years of imprisonment brought near universal joy but it should have also raised more questions.

Mandela was one of the signatories of the Freedom Charter, which among other things demanded the nationalization of South Africa’s resources and reparations for the theft of African land by the Europeans. He was a member of the South African communist party, as were other leaders of the African National Congress. We should have known that the South African government wasn’t letting him go free without exacting a huge price. It is difficult to look the gift horse in the mouth, but the silence created a vacuum which made it easier for the rule of international capitalists to stay in place, even as they appeared to give up political control.

Mandela’s early history is something to honor and remember but now his memory comes wrapped in the poison pill of acceptance by the corporate media and disreputable democratic and republican politicians. Now when right wingers condemn Mandela as a communist, his admirers cringe and deny what is true. Instead of examining what a communist is and why the party was supported by the movement, we see black people instead take the position of our enemies and use the word as a slur. We must remember that scorn from certain quarters is a badge of honor.

Contrast the reaction to Mandela’s death with that of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. While Chavez was equally beloved around the world, the American government gave no glowing tributes and sent no high level delegation. Chavez was every bit as deserving of praise and honor but unlike Mandela he succeeded in standing up to empire. He personally protested against George W. Bush and even called him the devil at the United Nations. Hugo Chavez prevailed when American presidents wanted him out of office. He won re-election and shamed this country when he donated Venezuelan oil to help poor Americans stay warm in the winter. Of course Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton were absent from his funeral.

Nelson Mandela had difficult choices to make. He chose to accept an IMF loan with strings attached that kept millions in poverty. He and his successors turned their backs on the Freedom Charter. No one can know his intentions but the results of those decisions were disastrous for the masses of black people in South Africa.

Mandela’s release from prison should have been seen as a new stage in the struggle and not the end of it. Those of us who came of age during the anti-apartheid movement and who truly loved the man have to admit the short comings of love when liberation is at stake.

There are many lessons to be learned during this time of mourning. Our emotions play an important role in inspiring us to take action against injustice but they can also betray us when we lack an understanding of what liberation really is.

Liberation may or may not come with a presidential inauguration. It certainly hasn’t come if the usual suspects in the corporate media, Pennsylvania Avenue and Downing Street suddenly give words of praise. The success of certain individuals is not liberation either. There are now black millionaires in South Africa but that does little good to the impoverished masses.

Liberated people don’t live in squalor. They earn more than a living wage. They need not fear loss of job or life if they protest their salaries or working conditions. They have free health care and education. They don’t fear incarceration and they don’t live in stratified societies. They live in safety and the law treats them all as equals to one another. They can protest and oppose the power structure without fear of repercussion. South Africa doesn’t fit these criteria, neither does the United States, and we who love freedom and justice shouldn’t spare anyone when we express these simple and obvious truths.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Editor’s note: In contrast to the insightful and honest reporting from Black Agenda Report and other independent news sources, corporate news has predictably been downplaying “controversial” aspects of Mandela’s life that threaten the status quo. In some cases, their coverage reveals surprising negligence, insensitivity and/or stupidity.

Nightmare Fuel: Massive Swarms of “Crazy Ants” Spreading Across Texas

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The New York Times Magazine recently featured a story by Jon Mooallem on a new invasive ant species that seems straight out of a nightmare or horror film. From the article:

Entomologists report that the crazy ants, like other ants, seem drawn to electronic devices — car stereos, circuit boxes, machinery. But with crazy ants, so many will stream inside a device that they form a single, squirming mass that completes a circuit and shorts it. Crazy ants have ruined laptops this way and, according to one exterminator, have also temporarily shut down chemical plants. They are most likely climbing into these cavities to investigate possible nesting sites. But as David Oi, a research entomologist at the Department of Agriculture, told me, the science-fiction-ish theory that the bugs are actually attracted to the electricity itself can’t be ruled out.

Rasberry crazy ants do not have a painful bite, but they effectively terrorize people by racing up their feet and around their bodies, coursing everywhere in their impossibly disordered orbits. (They’re called crazy ants because their behavior seems psychotic.) Some people in Texas have become so frustrated with crazy ants that they have considered selling their houses or been driven to the verge of divorce. “Usually, the husband doesn’t think it’s such a big deal, and the wife is going batty,” one exterminator explained. An attorney living on an infested farm south of Houston told me: “It reminds me of the scenes in Africa, where you see flies crawling all over people. Occasionally they’ll knock one off, but for the most part they’re so accustomed to it that they finally give up.”

Crazy ants decimate native insects. They overtake beehives and destroy the colonies. They may smother bird chicks struggling to hatch. In South America, where scientists now believe the ants originated, they have been known to obstruct the nasal cavities of chickens and asphyxiate the birds. They swarm into cows’ eyes.

So far, there is no way to contain them. In the fall, when the temperature drops, the worker ants are subject to magnificent die-offs, but the queens survive, and a new, often larger crop of crazy ants pours back in the following spring. Rasberry crazy ants were first discovered in Texas by an exterminator in 2002. Within five years, they appeared to be spreading through the state much faster than even the red imported fire ant has. The fire ant is generally considered one of the worst invasive species in the world. The cost of fire ants to Texas has been estimated at more than $1 billion a year.

Rasberry crazy ants are now in 27 different counties in Texas and have also been spotted in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Georgia…

…Edward LeBrun, an ecologist at the University of Texas at Austin who has been studying the area, believes a single “supercolony” of crazy ants occupies as many as 4,200 acres in Iowa Colony and is spreading 200 meters a year in all directions.

The reporter gave the following horror-inducing account of his first encounter with the ants in Iowa Colony, a rural area south of Houston:

“See! See! See!” the Dukes kept telling me. Wherever they pointed, there were ants: under the door of a microwave oven, crawling out of the electrical outlets, heaped in the flower beds where I mistook them for fresh topsoil. It was shocking, and the Dukes seemed vindicated by my shock. “You don’t feel them crawling up your clothes?” Melvin’s wife, Sharlene, asked me at one point. She was walking around barefoot and in shorts, and I could see ants trickling across her feet and ankles and legs — spelunking between her toes. She clutched a can of a pesticide called Enforcer Instant Knockdown to her chest, more as a security blanket than as a weapon, and constantly swept her hands over her calves.

Soon ants were spiraling up the tongues of my sneakers, onto my sock. I tried to shake them off, but nothing I did disturbed them. Before long, I was sweeping them off my own calves. I kept instinctively taking a step back from some distressing concentration of ants, only to remember that I was standing in the center of an exponentially larger concentration of ants. There was nowhere to go. The ants were horrifying — as in, they inspired horror. Eventually, I scribbled in my notebook: “Holy [expletive] I can’t concentrate on what anyone’s saying. Ants all over me. Phantom itches. Scratching hands, ankles, now my left eye.” Then I got in my car and left.

Of course worse things happen to people, but there’s something uniquely unsettling about the feeling of being overtaken by insects. This type of fear is explored in the following passage from the article:

The Hungarian-born philosopher Aurel Kolnai gave the horrifying qualities of bugs some serious thought. Kolnai ultimately decided that what upsets us is “their pullulating squirming, their cohesion into a homogeneous teeming mass” and their “interminable, directionless sprouting and breeding.” That is, it’s the quantity of crazy ants that’s so destabilizing. As the American psychologist James Hillman argued, an endless swarm of bugs flattens your perception of yourself as precious and meaningful. It instantly reduces your individual consciousness to a “merely numerical or statistical level.”

While there’s definitely some truth to this, I think there’s a little more to it. Though we may instinctively avoid things which could possibly sting or bite, because bugs are also associated with the natural process of decomposition, a reflexive revulsion towards contact with insects (for most people) may also be an expression of the fear of death. Insects might also tap into a xenophobia towards creatures that are most unlike ourselves physically and behaviorally, though we might not be as different from insects like ants as we’d like to believe. Just like humans, the crazy ants can dominate an environment to such an extent that it becomes inhospitable to most other insects and animals. And while we all have the potential ability to think independently, there’s also the potential to adopt a “hive mind” or herd mentality. Perhaps it’s the subconscious awareness of such negative aspects we share with insects that horrify us as much as the differences.

Gallery of Creepy NRO Satellite Logos

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Last Thursday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence live-tweeted the launch of a US National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. What made the tweet quickly go viral was the attachment of the mission’s ominous and unsubtle logo: a giant malevolent octopus with it’s tentacles all over the planet. As reported by RT:

Along with the National Security Agency and more than a dozen others, the NRO is one of 16 federal offices under the directive of DNI James Clapper and is responsible for building and operating the spy satellites used to collect intelligence around the world. NRO-gathered intelligence was reportedly instrumental in the mission that brought US Navy SEAL’s to the home of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, and decades earlier the agency launched a school-bus sized satellite into orbit to spy on Soviets at the height of the Cold War.

This time around the ODNI says the satellite’s payload is mostly classified, but did admit over Twitter that around a dozen mini satellites funded by both the NRO and NASA will be brought along to orbit as well. Another thing they didn’t bother to acknowledge, of course, is how the lack-of-subtlety apparent in the Earth-strangling octopus emblem could quickly be used by critics of the US intelligence community as fodder to further condemn the government for admitting to their sheer and unmatched ability to control the world’s information.

…”You may want to downplay the massive dragnet spying thing right now,” Chris Soghoian, the chief technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, tweeted Thursday. “This logo isn’t helping.”

Andy Cush of AnimalNewYork uncovered a number of equally disturbing logos for past N.R.O. spy satellite missions including the following:

National Reconnaissance Office Launch 49, January 2011:  To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the NRO launches six satellites into space in 2010 and 2011. One of them, NROL-49, gets a black hawk rising from flames in front of the American flag for a logo. Its motto: melior diabolus quem scies, or “Better the devil you know.”

National Reconnaissance Launch 66, February 2011: One month after NROL-49, launch 66 took the devilish into goofier territory, featuring a satanic-looking minotaur flying over the Earth holding a modified Route 66 sign.

National Reconnaissance Office Launch 19, September 2003: NROL-19′s patch features the world’s most patriotic dragon clutching the globe with a diamond wrapped in its tail.

National Reconnaissance Office Launch 11, August 2000: This patch, featuring the eyes of what looks like an owl hovering over a darkened planet, could have used some cleaner design. Still, “We Own The Night” is an appropriately terrifying sentiment. Animals in space is beginning to feel like a theme.

National Reconnaissance Launch 38, June 2012: This three headed, world-destroying dragon is made only slightly less threatening by its latin motto, non morieris bello, which means something like “you will not die at war.” An alternate patch depicts the Egyptian god Anubis with a giant spear.

National Reconnaissance Office Launch 32, November 2010: The most illuminati-esque of the bunch, this terrible gradient-laden design puts an all-seeing eagle’s eye on top of a golden pyramid.

National Reconnaissance Launch 16, April 2005: The patch for NROL-16 may have marked the first time the U.S. government used a gorilla as a patriotic symbol.

National Reconnaissance Office Launch 10, December 2000: Last but not least, the “Great Bear” patch for NROL-10 is perhaps creepiest of all. What’s this jolly, star-covered guy doing as the symbol of a spy mission? We may never know.

Pearl Harbor: The Original 9/11

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Yesterday marked the 72nd anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, which from today’s perspective can be viewed as the template on which 9/11 was modeled after. In both cases, documentation exists implicating the U.S. government. In the case of Pearl Harbor, there’s the McCollum Memo which describes in detail the strategy used to successfully provoke the Japanese government into attacking. Shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack, Secretary of State Hull presented “peace terms” to the Japanese government that all but guaranteed an inevitable attack.

In the case of 9/11, there’s a policy document from Project for a New American Century called Rebuilding America’s Defenses, which provides a clear motive to create a “catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”. It’s not conclusive proof they were behind the attacks, but it’s suspicious to say the least that the people with established motives for conducting an event like 9/11 were responsible for national security at the time multiple unlikely and implausible coincidences made such a successful attack possible.

A number of other dubious aspects of the Pearl Harbor attack were compiled at Washington’s Blog last year, including:

Active Interference with Military’s Ability to Defend

It has also recently been discovered that the FDR administration took numerous affirmative steps to ensure that the Japanese attack would be successful. These steps included taking extraordinary measures to hide information from the commanders in Hawaii about the location of Japanese war ships (information of which they would normally be informed), denying their requests to allow them to scout for Japanese ships, and other actions to blind the commanders in Hawaii so that the attacks would succeed. See, for example, this book (page 186).

Key Military Players Incommunicado

In addition, the heads of the Army and Navy suddenly disappeared and remained unreachable on the night before Pearl Harbor. And they would later testify over and over that they “couldn’t remember” where they were (pages 320 and 335).

Gagging Whistleblowers

Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Navy classified all documents top secret, and the Navy Director of Communications sent a memo ordering all commanders to “destroy all notes or anything in writing” related to the attacks. More importantly, all radio operators and cryptographers were gagged on threat of imprisonment and loss of all benefits. (page 256).

Media Complicity

Amazingly, the Army’s Chief of Staff informed the Washington bureau chiefs of the major newspapers and magazines of the impending attacks before they occurred, and swore them to an oath of secrecy, which the media honored (page 361); and listen to interview here (we personally spent an hour speaking with Stinnett, and find him to be a highly credible and patriotic American.)

Postscript: Coincidentally, Philip Zelikow – the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, the administration insider whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of “public myths” thought to be true, even if not actually true, who controlled what the 9/11 Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission’s inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked – also happened to be the main guy defending the alleged unforeseeablity of the Pearl Harbor attack, who wrote a hit piece on Pearl Harbor historians like Stinnett.

Just like 9/11, Pearl Harbor was used as a tool to focus mass hatred on a race demonized by propaganda. The attack created a culture of fear allowing for suspension of civil liberties while crushing opposition to the war. Most importantly (for powerful interests pushing for war) the attacks were a pretense for pursuing and expanding global political and economic hegemony.

For a comprehensive compilation of evidence of U.S. government involvement in the Pearl Harbor conspiracy, see: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html

Saturday Matinee: What to Do in Case of Fire?

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“What to Do in Case of Fire?” (2001) opens with a montage of young anarchist squatters fighting police, making propaganda films, and constructing a homemade bomb in Berlin circa 1987. They plan to blow up a vacant mansion but the bomb is a dud, until thirteen years later when it injures a real estate broker and potential buyer in a fluke accident.

Only two of the original members of the anarchist collective, Tim and Hotte, are still squatting in the same communal housing since the 80s and are unable to prevent police from confiscating filmed evidence in a raid triggered by the bomb incident. Because all members of the collective are potentially linked to the bombing, Tim and Hotte scramble to track down former comrades and formulate an action plan before the evidence is examined. The reunion of old friends, including those who’ve settled into traditional family life or sold out for corporate jobs, stirs up a host of interpersonal conflicts which they must resolve in order to work together to remain free.

Though the film does at times seem to fall back on lazy stereotypes of anarchists, it at least puts them in a human light. Even less radical viewers could relate to certain struggles the protagonists are faced with, such as trying to balance freedom and security, being “successful” versus upholding one’s ideals, and coming to terms with friendships that change over time. It would have been interesting had the film delved deeper into Berlin’s anarchist and squatters movements, in my opinion, but it’s nevertheless a charming and fun mix of comedy, drama and heist genres.

Note: to activate English subtitles on the video, click on the Closed Captions (CC) icon on the bottom right corner while video is playing, click on the box that says “Portuguese (Brazil)”, click “Translate Captions”, click on “Afrikaans”, then you should be able to scroll down until you can click on “English”. The subtitle feature might not be available on some portable devices.