Professor's Questions About Sandy Hook Shooting Recall Columbine Massacre

Editor's Note:

“While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”
Anderson Cooper jumps on this portion of the sentence:

“While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—"
 
 before the following qualifying prep:

"at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”

This is intended to milk a reaction of outrage from his audience. 

Mr. Cooper doesn't quite know who he's messing with.  Personally, I would not want to go toe-to-toe with Professor James Tracy.  I've read his past work and he is one of the sharper knives in the drawer.  Anderson had to use a deceptive excerpt out of context in order for people to buy his fake righteous indignation.


The Daily Bell

Believe it or not, there are actually people out there who are convinced that last month's horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was staged. Anderson Cooper opened his show tonight taking on these conspiracy theorists. He said that ordinarily, he wouldn't give much thought to insane conspiracies, but one of the people pushing them is a Florida professor who raises doubts as to whether the shooting "ever took place" in the way that the media described, and the whole thing was just a huge conspiracy to get the country behind gun control. And as if that wasn't unbelievable enough, he also suspects that some of the parents of the children were really actors. – Mediaite.com

Dominant Social Theme: Sandy Hook conspiracy theories are appalling and outrageous.

Free-Market Analysis: A recent CNN/Anderson Cooper "Keeping Them Honest" segment focused on a media professor, James Tracy, who has publicly claimed that the Sandy Hook shootings "may not have happened at all, at least ... the way they have been described."
An article by the Sun Sentinel describes the Tracy controversy as follows:

FAU prof stirs controversy by disputing Newtown massacre ... A communication professor known for conspiracy theories has stirred controversy at Florida Atlantic University with claims that last month's Newtown, Conn., school shootings did not happen as reported — or may not have happened at all.

Moreover, James Tracy asserts in radio interviews and on his memoryholeblog.com, that trained "crisis actors" may have been employed by the Obama administration in an effort to shape public opinion in favor of the event's true purpose: gun control.

... In one of his blog posts, "The Sandy Hook School Massacre: Unanswered Questions and Missing Information," Tracy cites several sources for his skepticism, including lack of surveillance video or still images from the scene, the halting performance of the medical examiner at a news conference, timeline confusion, and how the accused shooter was able to fire so many shots in just minutes ...

Tracy said also has doubts about the official version of the Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9-11 terror attacks and the Aurora, Colo., theater murders.
"I describe myself as a scholar and public intellectual," he said, "interested in going more deeply into controversial public events. Although some may see [my theories] as beyond the pale, I am doing what we should be doing as academics."

Cooper is at his silky best in this segment, blasting away at the professor's theories and even implying that he ought to be fired for voicing such an opinion.

Meet Zbigniew Brzezinski, Conspiracy Theorist

Comedy Gold: The Clumsy Attempt at Discrediting 9/11 Truth in Portland

Standard Fare Replacing
Substantive Discourse

Once Portland 9/11 Meetup or the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance finish discrediting themselves, along comes a blog with anonymous posters aimed at discrediting all the 9/11 Truth groups in the Portland area.  I first thought our efforts were a mere drop in the bucket, so I see this site as a back-handed compliment.

As I said before, there are people in the Portland area who are scared to death of an effective 9/11 Truth movement.

True to the standard motif of dismissing the 9/11 Truth movement as a bunch of Anti-Semites, most Portlanders who demand a new investigation of 9/11 are accused of having contact with members of a group branded as infamously anti-Semitic, the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance.

It's important to note how much time went into so many queries, searches, cuts and pastes for over 50 different pages.   I can attest to their obsession with a look at the hit piece on yours truly.  An individual or group (as expected, anonymously) sent me a link to my hit page because they really wanted me to see it:

http://pdx911truthalliancedramatica.blogspot.com/2012/03/jack-jt-waldron.html

Personally, my goal has been to bask in the spittle of Bill O'Reilly's beet red temper tantrum, but this will have to be the next best thing.

Still, it gets a bit sad when the page that is supposed be so devastating gets giddy over the fact that I am on STRATFOR's email list.  There's also mention that, since I moved from Tucson to Portland a while ago, I had "Portland Based" in the blog description.  But it gets worse.  Somehow I mysteriously changed the verbiage of my blogger header description and removed the 'Portland based' reference.  Ah ha!  Got me!  Curses, Waybackmachine!  I had four short newsclips and 3-4 stories posted that were about Portland over the last year, but most of the posts are national or international news.  Still, there are people apparently 'high-fiving' each other over unearthing my "shell game".   I imagine by now you are starting to get the picture.

Public Service Announcement: Conspiracy Theorist

UK Minister Compares Inaction on Climate Change to Hitler Appeasement

Reuters

World leaders who oppose a global agreement to tackle climate change are making a similar mistake to the one made by politicians who tried to appease Adolf Hitler before World War Two, a British government minister said on Thursday.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Huhne said governments must redouble efforts to find a successor to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on emissions, although it was unlikely that a breakthrough would be made at a conference later this year in Durban, South Africa.

The global economic crisis has pushed the search for a legally binding treaty to limit planet-warming emissions down the political agenda and countries do not want to lose their competitive edge by going it alone on strict climate targets, he said.

In a speech urging countries to keep pressing for a climate deal, Huhne evoked the memory of British wartime leader Winston Churchill and the fight against Nazi Germany led by Hitler.

“Climate change is getting less political attention now than it did two years ago. There is a vacuum, and the forces of low ambition are looking to fill it,” he said. “Giving in to the forces of low ambition would be an act of climate appeasement.

“This is our Munich moment,” he added, referring to the Munich Agreement, a 1938 pact that gave Hitler land in the former Czechoslovakia as part of a failed attempt to persuade him to abandon further territorial expansion.

“Winston Churchill…once said that ‘an appeaser is someone that feeds a crocodile, hoping that it will eat him last’.”

The Kyoto Protocol, which controls greenhouse gas emissions only in developed countries, expires at the end of 2012. Developing nations want to extend Kyoto, but Japan, Russia and Canada want a new, wider agreement.

Punjab fears Davis may be killed — even by CIA

International News

By Ansar Abbasi Saturday, February 19, 2011

 

ISLAMABAD: Apprehensions about a possible attempt on the life of Raymond Davis, including even by Americans themselves, have compelled the authorities in Lahore to boost his security and keep him at some distance from the US officials as well.

Fearing that the high profile prisoner may be killed, extraordinary security measures have been undertaken. These measures include limiting physical contact of Davis with even US officials and diplomats.

According to official sources, a directive has been issued to strictly check the food provided to the American killer. “A food committee has been constituted, which would ensure that he is not provided poisoned food in the jail,” a source said.

The source disclosed that the jail authorities had also been directed not to allow Davis any food from outside, including one sent by the US Consulate. “Even chocolates, brought by the US officials, would not be provided to Davis,” the source said, adding that surveillance cameras had also been installed zeroing in on Davis in the Kot Lakhpat Jail.

“We were asked to remove the surveillance cameras, installed to constantly monitor Davis, but we declined to do so because it is critical for his security,” the source said, explaining, “We can’t take any risk, we can’t rule out any possibility, we can’t afford to be lenient in any manner.”

Additionally, it has also been decided to avoid physical contact between Davis and US officials, who visit him as part of consular access facility allowed to him. His visitors would now be allowed to interact with him from across a glass wall, as it happens in the West and the US.

The authorities seriously apprehend that anyone, including US intelligence agencies, might try to kill the man, who despite being a technical assistant has the kind of importance that President Obama had to seek his early release and influential Senator John Kerry rushed to Pakistan and met all the important figures here to take him back to the United States as soon as possible.

Officials here wonder as to what was so special about Raymond Davis that Washington has simply panicked after his arrest. It is said that his activities, his actions, his extraordinary marksmanship, his possessions, including sophisticated weapon, ammunition, GPS, etc, and his physical build-up, show he is not what he claims to be. “Why the United States is so desperate to get him released immediately,” the source asked.

US Embassy Spokesperson Courtney Beale, when asked about the growing apprehensions of Pakistani authorities about the security of Davis and that even suspicions centred around US intelligence agencies, said, “This is ridiculous, and a mere conspiracy theory."

“The US would never ever want any of its diplomats to be killed,” she said, adding that those apprehending such an act from the United States, do not need to fear this. Already, the Punjab government has deployed multiple security cordons, including that of Rangers, at the Kot Lakhpat Jail to pre-empt a possible Hollywood-style sting operation by the US forces to get Raymond Davis released.

The Punjab authorities were apprehending that in sheer frustration, the Americans could conduct a sting operation. Thus they had taken all security measures. The security of Davis has been increased while keeping in mind all possibilities, including an assault on him, a terrorist attack and even a strike by the US commandos to get him forcibly released or killed.